Syria – Page 11

U.S troops will deploy to Iraq without congressional approval: Pentagon

November 21, 2014 by Nasheman

This Department of Defense photo shows US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey as he addresses questions from US military members during a town hall meeting in Baghdad, Iraq, November 15, 2014. AFP/DOD/ D. Myles Cullen

by Al-Akhbar

Some of the 1,500 new US troops authorized to “advise and train” Iraqi forces in their fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants will be deployed in Iraq within the next few weeks without waiting for Congress to fund the mission, the Pentagon said on Thursday.

Rear Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said leading elements of the US force would begin moving to Iraq in the coming weeks, even if Congress has not yet acted on a $5.6 billion supplemental request to fund the expanded fight against the militants who overran northwestern Iraq earlier this year.

Large swathes of land in Iraq have become ISIS strongholds as the extremist group, which declared a “caliphate” in the territory it seized in Iraq and Syria, drove Iraq’s army – the recipient of $25 billion in US training and funding since the 2003 invasion – to collapse.

Late October, the Pentagon revised its estimate of the cost of the US air war in Iraq and Syria, saying the price tag for the campaign against ISIS comes to about $8.3 million a day.

Since US airstrikes began on August 8, the campaign – which has involved about 6,600 sorties by US and allied aircraft – has cost the US $580 million, said Pentagon spokesman Commander Bill Urban.

In addition, the campaign, which has so far failed to stop ISIS from advancing, has also cost the Iraqi government $260 million.

Officials initially indicated they needed to get lawmakers to approve the funding for the troops deployment before the Pentagon could start the mission, but General Lloyd Austin, the head of US troops in the Middle East, recommended starting the effort using resources already available to him.

“The commander … can reallocate resources inside his theater as he deems fit. So he is going to .. try to get a jump start on this program,” Kirby told reporters, adding that congressional approval of the $5.6 billion was still needed to carry out the “more robust program.”

The Pentagon’s announcement came just days after US officials said some 50 troops had been sent to Ain al-Asad air base in Anbar province in Iraq to establish an operation to “advise and train” Iraqi troops.

Kirby said Austin thought that starting the expanded mission sent a message both to Iraqis and other coalition partners.

“It sends an important signal … about how seriously we’re taking this,” Kirby said. “The sooner we get started, the sooner Iraqi units will improve … and the sooner we’ll get coalition contributions to that particular mission.”

US President Barack Obama, who was elected in 2008 largely due to his promises to exit Middle Eastern military entanglements – especially in Iraq – and avoiding new ones, announced plans last week to double the number of American troops in Iraq, approving an additional 1,500 forces to establish sites to “train” nine Iraqi military brigades and three Kurdish peshmerga brigades.

The move came almost three years after US troops completed their withdrawal from Iraq after a nine year occupation that left the country in turmoil.

Iraq ranked first out of 162 countries on the Global Terrorism Index, the Australia and US-based Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) said in a report published Tuesday, giving the country a score of 10 out of 10.

According to the report, 80 percent of the lives lost to terrorist attacks in 2013 occurred in just five countries – Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria and Syria.

The influx in terrorist attacks raises questions about the effectiveness of the US “War on Terror” launched by the Bush administration after the 9/11 attacks, which included the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The campaign failed to eliminate or even reduce terrorism, as the report showed a steady increase in the death toll over the last 14 years, from 3,361 in 2000 to 11,133 in 2012 and 17,958 in 2013.

On the contrary, the campaign in general and the US invasion of Iraq in particular served as a recruitment tool for terrorist groups, such as ISIS, as figures show that terrorism rose precipitously in Iraq since 2003.

Kirby indicated additional US troops would begin deploying to Iraq before the end of the year.

“You’re going to start to see initial elements of the 1,500 or so additional start to flow in the next few weeks,” he said. “I think certainly by the end of the calendar year you’re going to see a much more robust presence, not just by the United States doing this but by coalition partners as well.”

Some 3,500 US troops are believed to be on Iraqi land.

ISIS claims Erbil suicide bombing

The US-led anti-ISIS campaign has so far failed to stop ISIS from gaining ground, thus drawing criticism from many sides, including the president of the Iraqi Kurdistan autonomous region, Massoud Barzani.

On Wednesday, following a suicide bombing that hit the usually secure capital of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, Barzani accused Western countries of not providing enough heavy weapons to help peshmerga forces deliver a “decisive blow” against ISIS militants.

Later on Thursday, ISIS claimed responsibility of the suicide attack in an online statement.

“We breached all the security checkpoints of the agent Kurdistan government and reached the heart of the city of Erbil,” the statement said.

It identified the bomber as Abdul-Rahman al-Kurdi, indicating that he was an ethnic Kurd.

The bomber struck the main checkpoint on the way to the provincial government headquarters in the northern city just before noon on Wednesday, killing four people and wounding more than two dozen.

The bombing was the worst attack to hit Erbil since September 29, 2013, when militants struck the headquarters of the Asayesh security forces in the city, killing seven people and wounding more than 60.

In that attack, the Asayesh said a suicide bomber detonated explosives at the entrance to their headquarters, after which they killed four more would-be bombers before a fifth blew up an ambulance rigged with explosives.

Kurdish peshmerga forces joined the battle against ISIS in August after the extremist group targeted ethnic and religious minorities, took control of the country’s largest dam and moved within striking distance of Erbil, where many Western expatriates, including oil industry and aid workers are based.

(Al-Akhbar, Reuters, AFP)

The War in Western Kurdistan and Northern Syria: The Role of the US and Turkey in the Battle of Kobani

November 18, 2014 by Nasheman

by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Global Research

A war is being fought for control over Western Kurdistan and the northern areas of Syria, including three de facto Kurdish enclaves there. The fighting in Western Kurdistan is a means to an end and not a goal in itself. The objectives of gaining control over Syrian Kurdistan and northern Syria are critical to gaining control over the rest of the Syrian Arab Republic and entail US-supported regime change in Damascus.

Western Kurdistan is alternatively called Rojava in Kurmanji, the dialect of the Kurdish language that is used locally there and spoken by the majority of the Kurds living in Turkey. The word Rojava comes from the Kurdish root word roj, which means both sun and day, and literally means «sunset» («the sun’s end») or the «end of the day» («the day’s end») in Kurmanji and not the word «west». The confusion over its meaning arises for two main reasons. The first is that in the Sorani or Central dialect of the Kurdish language the word roj is only used to refer to the day. The second is that Rojava connotes or suggests the direction of the west, where the sun is seen to set when the day ends.

The Siege on Ayn Al-Arab or Kobani

Despite the fact that neither the Syrian military nor the Syrian government controls most of Syrian Kurdistan and that a significant amount of the locals there have declared themselves neutral, the forces of the Free Syrian Army, Al-Nusra, and the ISIL (DAISH) have launched a multiparty war on Rojava’s mosaic of inhabitants. It has only been in late-2014 that this war on Western Kurdistan has gained international attention as the Syrian Kurds in Aleppo Governorate’s northeastern district (mintaqah) of Ayn Al-Arab (Ain Al-Arab) became surrounded by the ISIL in late-September and early-October. As this happened, the behaviour of the US and its allies, specifically the neo-Ottomanist Turkish government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, exposed their true objectives in Rojava and Syria. By the time that the Syrian Kurds in northeastern Aleppo Governorate were being encircled by the ISIL, it was clear that Washington and its counterfeit anti-ISIL coalition were actually using the ISIL outbreak to redraw the strategic and ethno-confessional maps of Syria and Iraq. Many of the Syrian Kurds think that the goal is to force them eastward into Iraqi Kurdistan and to surrender to Turkish domination.

Fears of another exodus in Syria—similar to the one that was felt when Turkey assisted Jubhat Al-Nusra’s violent takeover of the mostly ethnic Armenian town of Kasab (Kessab) in Latakia Governorate in March 2014—began to materialize. Nearly 200,000 Syrians—Kurds, Turkoman, Assyrians, Armenians, and Arabs—fled across the Syrian-Turkish border. By October 9, one-third of Ayn Al-Arab had fallen to the pseudo-caliphate.

The Stances of the US over Kobani Exposes Washington’s Objectives

Washington’s stance on Ayn Al-Arab or Kobani was very revealing of where it really stood in regards to the battle over control of the Syrian border city. Instead of preventing the fall of Kobani and supporting the local defenders which were doing the heavy fighting on the ground against the ISIL and containing its pseudo-caliphate, Washington did not move. The US position on Kobani is an important indicator that the US war initiated against the ISIL has been mere bravado and a fictitious public relations stunt aimed at hiding the real objective of getting a strategic foothold inside Syrian territory.

When the ISIL attacked the forces of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraqi Kurdistan in August 2014, the US acted quickly to help the KRG’s forces. In July, a month after the June capture of the Iraqi city of Mosul by the ISIL, which coincided with the military takeover of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk by the KRG, the ISIL began its siege of Kobani in Rojava. Up until October, the US just watched.

Even more revealing, the Pentagon announced on October 8 that the US-led bombing campaign in Syria, which it formally named Operation Inherent Resolve on October 15, could not stop the ISIL offensive and advances against Kobani and its local defenders. Instead the US began arguing and insisting for more illegal steps to be taken by NATO member Turkey. Washington began to call for Turkish soldiers and tanks to enter Kobani and northern Syria. In turn, President Erdogan and the Turkish government said that Ankara would only send in the Turkish military if a no-fly zone was established over Syria by the US and the other members of Washington’s bogus coalition.

Repackaging Plans for a Northern Buffer Zone in Syria

Using Kobani to make a case, the US and Turkish governments took the opportunity to repackage their plans for an invasion of Syria from 2011, which called for the establishment of a Turkish-controlled northern buffer zone and a no-fly zone over Syrian airspace. This time the plans were presented under the humanitarian pretext of peacekeeping. This is why the parliamentarians in the Turkish Grand National Assembly had passed legislation authorizing an invasion of the Syrian Arab Republic and Syrian Kurdistan on October 2, 2014.

Although Turkey passed legislature to invade Syria on October 2, Ankara remained cautious. In reality, Turkey was doing everything in its power to ensure that Kobani would fall into the control of the ISIL and that Kobani’s local defenders would be defeated.

Due to a lack of coordination between the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MIT) and Turkish law enforcement officials, a domestic scandal even emerged in Turkey when undercover MIT trucks were detained in Adana by the Turkish gendarmerie after they were caught secretly transporting arms and ammunition into Syria for Al-Nusra and other anti-government insurgents.

In the context of Kobani, numerous reports were made revealing that large weapon shipments were delivered to the heavily armed battalions of the ISIL by Turkey for the offensive on Kobani. One journalist, Serena Shim, would pay with her life for trying to document this. Shim, a Lebanese-American working for Iran’s English-language Press TV news network, would reveal that weapons were secretly being delivered to the insurgents in Syria through Turkey in trucks carrying the logo of the UN World Food Organization. Shim would be killed shortly after in a mysterious car accident on October 19 after being threatened by the Turkish National Intelligence Organization for spying for the Turkish opposition.

To hide its dirty hands as a facilitator, the Turkish government began claiming that it could not control its borders or prevent foreign fighters from entering Iraq and Syria. This, however, changed with the battle for Kobani. Ankara began to exercise what appeared to be faultless control of its border with Syria and it even reinforced border security. Turkey, which is widely recognized for allowing Jabhat Al-Nusra and the other foreign-backed insurgent forces to freely cross its borders to fight the Syrian military, began prevented any Kurdish volunteers from crossing the Syrian-Turkish border over to Kobani to help the besieged Syrian city and its outnumbered defenders. Only under intense domestic and international pressure did the Turkish government finally let one hundred and fifty token KRG peshmerga troops from Iraqi Kurdistan enter Kobani on November 1, 2014.

Turkey Takes Note of Syria’s Friends

The Syrian government rejected the suggestions coming from Ankara and Washington for foreign ground troops on its territory and for the establishment of a northern buffer zone. Damascus said these were intentions for blatant aggression against Syria. It released a statement on October 15 saying that it would consult its «friends».

In context of the US-Turkish invasion plans, the Turkish government was monitoring the reactions and attitudes of Russia, Iran, China, and the independent segments of the international community not beholden to Washington’s foreign policy objective. Both the Kremlin and Tehran reacted by warning the Turkish government to forget any thoughts about sending ground troops into Syrian Kurdistan and on Syrian soil.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksandr Lukashevych, the spokesperson of the Russian Foreign Ministry, announced that Moscow opposed the calls for a northern buffer zone on October 9. Lukashevych said that neither Turkey nor the US had the authority or legitimacy to establish a buffer zone against the will of another sovereign state. He also pointed out how the US bombardment of Syria had complicated the problem and influenced the ISIL to concentrate itself among civilian populations. His words echoed the warnings of Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, the permanent representative of Russia to the UN, that the US-led bombings of Syria will further degenerate the crisis in Syria.

On the part of Tehran, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian publicly announced that Iran had warned the Turkish government against any adventurism in Syria.

Why has Operation Inherent Resolve made the ISIL Stronger in Syria?

Is it a coincidence that the ISIL or DAISH gained ground in Syria as soon as the US declared war on it? Or is it a coincidence that Rojava contains most the oil wells inside Syria?

The inhabitants and resistance in Kobani fighting the ISIL offensive have repeatedly asked for outside help, but have defined the US-led airstrikes in Syria in no uncertain terms as utterly useless. This has been the general observation from the actual ground about the illegal US-led bombing campaign of Syria by local paramilitary and civilian leaders. Locally-selected officials in Syrian Kurdistan have repeatedly said, in one form or another, that the US-led airstrikes are a failure.

The People’s Protection Units (Yekineyen Parastina Gel, YPG; the all-female units are abbreviated as YPJ) of Kobani made multiple statements that pointed out that the US bombing campaign did nothing to stop the ISIL advance on Kobani or throughout Syria. While calling for Kurdish unity and a united front between Syria, Iraq, and Iran against the pseudo-caliphate of the ISIL, Jawan Ibrahim, an YPG officer, has said that the US and its anti-ISIL coalition are a failure as far as the YPG and Syrian Kurds are concerned, according to Fars News Agency (FNA).

Before the US officially inaugurated its campaign in Syria by lunching airstrikes on Ar-Raqqa, the ISIL’s fighters had left the positions that the US and its petro-sheikhdom Arab allies bombed. Instead of bombing the ISIL, the US has been bombing Syrian industrial and civilian infrastructure. While saying that some of these bombings, which include civilian homes and a wheat silo, were mistakes, it is clear that the Pentagon strategy of eroding an enemy state’s strength by destroying its infrastructure is being applied against Syria.

After heavy criticism and international pressure, the US began to drop token medical supplies and arms shipments for the locals and Kobani’s local defenders. Some of these US arms got into the hands of the ISIL. The Pentagon says this was the result of miscalculations and that the ISIL were not the intended recipients. Skeptics, however, believe that the Pentagon deliberately parachuted the US weapons near places that the ISIL’s battalions could easily see and obtain them. The arms caches included hand grenades, rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), and ammunition, which were all displayed in at least one video produced by the ISIL during the battle for Kobani.

In parallel to the reluctant help of the US, the Turkish government was pressured into allowing a token number of KRG peshmerga fighters from Iraq cross its border into Kobani on November 1. These pershmerga, however, are part of the security forces of the corrupt, Turkish-aligned KRG. In other words, «Turkey’s Kurds» (as in their allies; not to be mistaken for Turkish Kurds) were allowed to enter Kobani (instead of the YPG, YPJ, or volunteers). Since Turkey’s detrimental role in Kobani became widely known, Ankara was also fearful that the fall of Kobani would effectively end the peace talks between the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Turkish government and result in a massive revolt in Turkish Kurdistan.

Useless US Bombing War Against the ISIL or Stealth US War Against Syria?

The US-led bombing campaign is not intended to defeat the ISIL, which is also doing everything it can to destroy the fabrics of Syrian society. The US-led bombing campaign in Syria is intended to weaken and destroy Syria as a functioning state. This is why the US has been bombing Syrian energy facilities and infrastructure, including transport pipes, under the excuse of preventing the ISIL from using it to sell oil and gather revenues.

The US rationale for justifying this is bogus too, because the ISIL has been transporting stolen Syrian oil shipments through transport vehicles into Turkey and, unlike the case of Iraq, not using the transport pipes. Moreover, most the oil stolen by the ISIL has been coming from Iraq and not from Syria, but the US has not taken the same steps to destroy the energy infrastructure in Iraq. Additionally, the purchases of stolen oil from both Syria and Iraq have taken place at the level of state actors. Even the European Union’s own representative to Iraq, Jana Hybaskova, has admitted that European Union members are buying stolen Iraqi oil from the ISIL.

The Pentagon’s two different approaches, one for Iraq and one for Syria, say a lot about what Washington is doing in the Syrian Arab Republic. Washington is still going after Syria and in the process it and Turkey wants to either co-opt the Syrian Kurds or to neutralize them. This is why the battle for Kobani was launched with Turkish involvement and why there was inaction by the US government. Also, when it comes down to it, the ISIL or DAISH is a US weapon.

The Syrian government knows that Washington’s anti-ISIL coalition is a façade and that the masquerade could end with a US-led offensive against Damascus if the US government and Pentagon believe that the conditions are right. On November 6, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Al-Muallem told the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar that Syria had asked the Russian Federation to accelerate the delivery of the S-300 anti-aircraft surface-to-air missile system to prepare for a possible Pentagon offensive.

Syrian rebels reject UN's Aleppo truce plan

November 14, 2014 by Nasheman

FSA commander says proposal only serves Assad regime, amid reports of fresh violence and arrest of prominent dissident.

Images of a reported strike in Aleppo’s al-Marjeh district showed men digging through rubble. Photo: Reuters

by Al Jazeera

The opposition-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) in Aleppo has rejected a UN truce proposal that seeks to suspend fighting in Syria’s second city, a day after the government hinted at considering it.

Zaher al-Saket, FSA military commander in the city, said on Wednesday that the proposal only serves the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, and pledged that his troops would continue their fight.

“First I would like to say that we completely reject this so-called freeze plan and truce,” he said in an interview with Al Jazeera.

“We learned not to trust the Assad regime because they are cunning and only want to buy time. We saw what happened in Homs and we will never accept the same scenario in Aleppo.”

The news came as forces loyal to Assad dropped a barrel bomb on Wednesday on Aleppo’s al-Marjeh neighbourhood, according to activists.

Images from the aftermath of the reported strike showed men digging through a rubble of a building.

There was no immediate report on casualties from the attack.

Staffan de Mistura, UN special envoy to Syria, said on Tuesday the Syrian government had responded with “constructive interest” to the UN proposal.

De Mistura set out the plan last month that would allow humanitarian aid through, and will lay the groundwork for peace talks.

As he continues to press for a diplomatic solution, there is no sign of let-up in fighting on the ground.

Syrian state media reported on Wednesday that two rockets were fired at a school in the central province of Hama, killing seven children.

Opposition leader detained

Separately Syrian authorities detained a prominent Damascus-based writer and dissident, Louay Hussein, as he was trying to leave the country at the Syria-Lebanon border bound for Spain.

Hussein is a longtime opposition activist and the leader of Building the Syrian State.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported on Wednesday Hussein’s arrest, saying he was taken to the justice palace in Damascus.

Human rights groups said the government has rounded up tens of thousands of Syrians, many of whom disappear in custody never to be seen again.

A UN panel last year accused Assad’s government of committing a crime against humanity by making people systematically vanish.

More than 195,000 people have been killed in Syria since the beginning of the conflict in March 2011, with successive attempts at internationally backed negotiations failing to yield a peace deal.

Nearly 10 million people have been displaced by Syria’s civil war, and more than three million have fled the country.

More than 850 killed in 50 days of coalition air strikes

November 13, 2014 by Nasheman

by SOHR

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) documented the death of 865 people since the U.S led coalition started its strikes on Syria in 23/Sep until last night, including 50 civilians (8 children, 5 women), killed by coalition air strikes on oil fields and refineries in al-Hasakah and Der-Ezzor countrysides, al-Raqqa, Around Menbej northeast of Aleppo, and Idlib countryside.

68 fighters from Jabhat al-Nusra were killed by coalition air strikes on their HQs in the western countryside of Aleppo and the northern countryside of Idlib 746 fighters from the IS most of them were Non-Syrian fighters, were killed by coalition airstrikes on their HQs and groupings in Homs, Hama, al-Hasakah, al-Raqqa, Der-Ezzor, and Aleppo.

A fighter from Islamic battalions killed by coalition air strikes on ISIS HQ in Ma’dan in al-Raqqa countryside.

We, in SOHR, believed that the real number of casualties in ISIS is more than 746, because there is absolute secrecy on casualties and due to the difficulty of access to many areas and villages that have witnessed violent clashes and bombardment.

Worth to mention that the coalition air strikes targeted oil refineries and oil fields in Der-Ezzor, al-Hasakah and al-Raqqa, what led to material damages in these refineries and oil fields.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights expresses its strong condemnation, to the fall of the civilians, as a result of the coalition air strikes, and Calls neutralize civilians areas from the military operations from any party, because the the Syrian people who have lost hundreds of thousands and been displaced in millions, is looking forward to a decent safe life away from Humiliation, detention, and destruction, a life of democracy, justice, freedom and equality.

UNHCR: 13.6 million displaced by conflict in Iraq and Syria

November 12, 2014 by Nasheman

Syrian Kurdish refugees try to get warm around a fire at a refugee camp in the town of Suruc, Sanliurfa province, on November 7, 2014. AFP / Aris Messinis

by Al-Akhbar

About 13.6 million people, equivalent to the population of London, have been displaced by conflicts in Syria and Iraq, many without food or shelter as winter starts, the UN refugee agency said on Tuesday.

“The whole humanitarian community is facing shortfalls. People are becoming numb,” said Amin Awad, who heads UNHCR’s Middle East and North Africa bureau.

“Now when we talk about a million people displaced over two months, or 500,000 overnight, the world is just not responding,” he told reporters in Geneva.

The 13.6 million include 7.2 million displaced within Syria – an increase from a long-held UN estimate of 6.5 million, as well as 3.3 million Syrian refugees abroad, 1.9 million displaced in Iraq and 190,000 who have left to seek safety.

The vast majority of Syrian refugees have gone to Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Turkey, countries which Awad said “are putting us all to shame” with their support for homeless Syrian families.

“Other countries in the world, especially the Europeans and beyond, should open their borders and share the burden.”

UNHCR says it is short of $58.5 million in donations to prepare 990,000 people for winter, money that would cover basic supplies such as plastic sheeting and warm clothing.

Awad said Russia and China, both in the UN Security Council, came in bottom of a list of top donors and should contribute more.

“Politically they cannot really be indifferent, therefore humanitarian is an imperative and it has to be put first and foremost if there is no (political) settlement … They need to contribute one way or the other, like the others do,” he said.

Lack of funds

The UN refugee agency said Tuesday it had been forced to slash the number of people it can help prepare for winter in conflict-ravaged Syria and Iraq for lack of funds.

Awad lamented that his agency was forced to make “tough choices.”

The agency said it was facing a shortfall of $58 million (47 million euros) for its efforts to prepare millions of displaced people in Syria and Iraq for winter.

As a result, as many as one million displaced people desperate for blankets, kerosene, warm clothes and other items needed to keep warm and dry may have to go without assistance, it warned.

“I wish we could support everybody, and I wish that we could keep everybody warm,” Amin told reporters in Geneva, adding however that “the world is not responding.”

“Many fled with nothing,” UNHCR spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told reporters.

With winter already on the doorstep, and temperatures falling as low as minus 16 degrees Celsius in some parts of Syria and Iraq, UNHCR has already invested $154 million in winter aid for the devastated countries.

But because of the funding shortfall, it has been forced to revise down the number of people it can help.

The agency had planned to help 1.4 million people in Syria and 600,000 people in Iraq, but now expects to reach only 620,000 in Syria and 240,000 in Iraq.

As a result, UNHCR said it was being forced to make “some very tough choices over who to prioritize.”

“The needs are massive but funding has not kept up apace with the new displacement,” Fleming said.

Those at higher, colder altitudes, as well as vulnerable people such as the sick, the elderly and newborns, are first in line for aid, Amin said.

He noted that 11 young children froze to death in Syria last year.

“The same can happen this year with children, elderly and frail persons,” he warned.

(Reuters, AFP)

The U.S. launches another dumb war in the Middle East. Why hitting ISIS will just make matters worse

November 11, 2014 by Nasheman

For most of this century, we’ve been fighting wars to enhance our security, and each time, we find ourselves with more enemies and less security.

by Steve Chapman, Reason

War, it’s been said, is God’s way of teaching Americans geography. Maybe we do learn how to locate the countries we invade or bomb on a map. But recent experience indicates how much we don’t know about those societies and how slow we are at learning.

The United States is still involved in a 13-year-old war in Afghanistan, and President Barack Obama has undertaken a new one against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, just three years after he withdrew the last of our troops from Iraq. The administration is also carrying on a drone missile campaign—which looks eerily like war from the receiving end—in Pakistan and Yemen.

Yet the republic has just concluded an election campaign that gave almost no attention to what the United States government is doing, or should be doing, in these places. For the most part, the topic was discussed in only the vaguest terms, but often it was simply absent. No country in history has ever done so much fighting in so many places with so little interest from its own citizens.

Nor do the people in power who make these ambitious commitments necessarily have a clue where they will lead. Over and over, things turn out in ways that come as a complete and thoroughly unwelcome surprise.

No one could have imagined in October 2001, when we went into Afghanistan to crush the Taliban and al-Qaida, that we would still be there 13 years later and so would they. Nor did we realize that our crucial supposed ally in the fight, Pakistan, would prove not merely unhelpful but downright hostile.

As New York Times correspondent Carlotta Gall documented in her book “The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001-2014,” the government of Pakistan was actively helping our foes while reaping $23 billion in aid from Washington. U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke eventually realized, “We may be fighting the wrong enemy in the wrong country.”

Unexpected? Of course. But it’s the sort of thing that happens when governments act with slivers of knowledge and mountains of hubris, relying on bright visions and brute force. That’s how we stormed into Iraq and won a swift military victory—which we proceeded to squander by disbanding the Iraqi military and banning former members of Saddam Hussein’s party from the new government.

Both decisions sounded sensible—but only because our leaders were so ignorant of Iraq that they had no idea what the effects would be. In practice, we managed to turn huge numbers of Iraqis against us and spawn an insurgency that would kill thousands of our troops. We also inadvertently rained blessings on our longtime enemy to the east. The U.S. fought a war against Iraq, and the winner was Iran.

The war on Islamic State is even more rife with uncertainty, because so many of its enemies are our enemies. If we do damage to it, we are indirectly strengthening the mullahs in Tehran, al-Qaida and Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. We’re also bolstering the irresponsible Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad whose persecution of Sunnis gave rise to the group.

The Wall Street Journal reports that by hitting Islamic State targets in Syria, we helped al-Qaida units to defeat the “moderate” Syrian rebels we have helped in their fight against Assad. Meanwhile, our NATO ally Turkey balks at assisting us. Why? Because those fighting on “our” side include Kurdish groups allied with separatists it has been fighting for 30 years.

For that matter, the U.S. air war is the best recruiting tool the Islamic State ever had. Already, a confidential UN Security Council report recently noted, some 15,000 foreigners have poured into the region to join it and other extremist groups.

“Numbers since 2010 are now many times the size of the cumulative numbers of foreign terrorist fighters between 1990 and 2010—and are growing,” it said, according to The Guardian. As usual, we’re creating jihadis faster than we kill them. Chances are excellent that we are also sowing an array of unforeseen problems that will haunt us for years to come.

For most of this century, we’ve been fighting wars to enhance our security, and each time, we find ourselves with more enemies and less security. By now it should be clear that is not a coincidence. If the war on Islamic State solves nothing or makes things worse, we will be unhappy, but we shouldn’t be surprised.

Steve Chapman is a columnist and editorial writer for the Chicago Tribune.

Washington moving towards wider war in Iraq and Syria

November 10, 2014 by Nasheman

by Bill Van Auken, WSWS

There are new indications that Washington is moving toward a wider and protracted military intervention in the Middle East in the name of combating the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

In the wake of last weekend’s collapse of US-backed Syrian “rebels” in the face of an offensive by Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, the Al Nusra Front, plans are being prepared to extend the three-month-old US-led bombing campaign deeper into Syria. The ostensible purpose of these air strikes would be to provide air support for the Western-backed militias formed to prosecute the war for regime change against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

The concern within US military and intelligence circles is that the Nusra Front fighters appear poised to seize control of the strategic Bab al-Hawa border crossing with Turkey, which has served as a key conduit for funneling arms and other aid to the Syrian “rebels.”

A substantial portion of that aid, including heavy weapons such as TOW anti-tank missiles and GRAD rockets, fell into the hands of the Nusra Front last weekend as the American-backed groups—the Syrian Revolutionary Front and Harakat Hazm (Steadfastness Movement)—surrendered without a shot being fired. Many of the members of these groups then joined the Nusra Front.

“The recent fighting in northwestern Syria has been taking place a long way from areas farther east where US and Arab warplanes have been pounding Islamic State positions,” the Washington Post reported Wednesday. “But US concern has grown rapidly in recent days amid fears about the [Bab al-Hawa] border crossing, according to senior administration officials who spoke about internal discussions on the condition of anonymity.”

The report cited discussions about likely “complications” arising from air strikes in the area, in particular whether the Syrian government would “tolerate an expansion” of the war beyond Iraq and areas of Syria near the Iraqi border, which have fallen under ISIS control.

There are, however, multiple demands that Washington carry out such an expansion with the aim of directing the US-led war precisely at toppling the Assad regime.

This is the position being advanced by the governments of both France and Turkey. French foreign minister Laurent Fabius wrote an opinion column published by several media organizations earlier this week calling on the US and its allies to shift the military intervention away from the Kurdish border town of Kobane, where there have been regular US bombings, to the city of Aleppo. Previously Syria’s industrial capital, Aleppo has been the scene of stepped up fighting as the Syrian government seeks to consolidate its control by defeating the so-called rebels.

“France cannot resign itself to the breakup of Syria or to the abandonment of the Aleppans to this fate,” Fabius wrote. “That is why—together with our coalition partners—we must focus our efforts on Aleppo, with two clear objectives: strengthening our support for the moderate Syrian opposition, and protecting the civilian population from the twin crimes of the regime and Daesh [ISIS]. After Kobane, we must save Aleppo.”

Just two days later, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu warned that if Aleppo were to fall to the government forces, Turkey could face a major new refugee crisis. “This is why we called for a safe zone as well as taking measures against not only the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [ISIS] but also the Assad regime,” he said. Turkey has called for the creation of a “buffer zone” inside Syria along the Turkish border. Such a “buffer” would serve the dual purpose of providing a safe haven for the Western-backed “rebels” and breaking up the autonomous zones created in the border area by Syrian Kurds, which Ankara sees as a threat in terms of its own conflict with the country’s Kurdish population.

Turkey has also advocated the imposition of a “no fly zone,” which would entail a massive bombing campaign against Syria’s air force and air defenses.

These same positions find support within Washington from, among others, Arizona Republican Senator John McCain, who, after Tuesday’s midterm election, will become chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, giving him access to a significant lever for shifting the US toward a more aggressive policy.

On the eve of the election, McCain charged that the collapse of the American-backed “rebels” to the Nusra Front constituted proof that “the administration’s current strategy in Syria is a disaster.” He demanded a greater military intervention to “protect the Syrian people.”

An escalation of the war is a virtual certainty now the US midterm elections are over. As Foreign Policy commented Wednesday: “When it comes to foreign policy, a GOP win could make it easier for Obama … if the president decided to shift his strategy against the Islamic State, [to] win Congressional backing for sending ground troops to Iraq or Syria.”

A revealing indication of the intense and protracted character of the war that US imperialism is preparing in the Middle East was provided by theWashington Post ’s well-connected national security correspondent, Walter Pincus.

“The Defense Department is certainly preparing for a long fight,” Pincus wrote, citing a recent notice to military contractors of department plans for an eight-year contract for the Air Combat Command of the US Air Force, set to begin in October 2016. The contract is for operating and supporting the command’s “major war reserve materiel facilities in Oman, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.”

Among the items to be pre-positioned at these sites are mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles (MRAPs), massive amounts of ammunition and “medical contingency hospitals for expeditionary medical support.” The plan also calls for creating “facilities and equipment that could house 3,300 airmen and 72 fighter aircraft at expeditionary locations.”

In the meantime, the Pentagon’s Central Command announced Wednesday it had carried out four air strikes in Syria and 10 in Iraq since Monday. A CENTCOM spokesman said the strikes had hit various ISIS vehicles, bunkers and small units.

From Iraq itself, however, came a different account of the US bombing runs. In al-Qaim, in western Anbar province near the Syrian border, security officials told the National Iraqi News Agency that a US warplane fired two missiles into a popular market in the center of the city. The explosions ripped through the crowded market, leaving at least seven Iraqi civilians dead and 27 others wounded, many of them critically.

How many Muslim countries has the U.S bombed or occupied since 1980?

November 7, 2014 by Nasheman

Barack Obama, Oslo, Norway Photo: Sandy Young/Getty Images

by Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept

Barack Obama, in his post-election press conference yesterday, announced that he would seek an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) from the new Congress, one that would authorize Obama’s bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria—the one he began three months ago. If one were being generous, one could say that seeking congressional authorization for a war that commenced months ago is at least better than fighting a war even after Congress explicitly rejected its authorization, as Obama lawlessly did in the now-collapsed country of Libya.

When Obama began bombing targets inside Syria in September, I noted that it was the seventh predominantly Muslim country that had been bombed by the U.S. during his presidency (that did not count Obama’s bombing of the Muslim minority in the Philippines). I also previously noted that this new bombing campaign meant that Obama had become the fourth consecutive U.S. President to order bombs dropped on Iraq. Standing alone, those are both amazingly revealing facts. American violence is so ongoing and continuous that we barely notice it any more. Just this week, a U.S. drone launched a missile that killed 10 people in Yemen, and the dead were promptly labeled “suspected militants” (which actually just means they are “military-age males”); those killings received almost no discussion.

To get a full scope of American violence in the world, it is worth asking a broader question: how many countries in the Islamic world has the U.S. bombed or occupied since 1980? That answer was provided in a recent Washington Post op-ed by the military historian and former U.S. Army Col. Andrew Bacevich:

As America’s efforts to “degrade and ultimately destroy” Islamic State militants extent into Syria, Iraq War III has seamlessly morphed into Greater Middle East Battlefield XIV. That is, Syria has become at least the 14th country in the Islamic world that U.S. forces have invaded or occupied or bombed, and in which American soldiers have killed or been killed. And that’s just since 1980.

Let’s tick them off: Iran (1980, 1987-1988), Libya (1981, 1986, 1989, 2011), Lebanon (1983), Kuwait (1991), Iraq (1991-2011, 2014-), Somalia (1992-1993, 2007-), Bosnia (1995), Saudi Arabia (1991, 1996), Afghanistan (1998, 2001-), Sudan (1998), Kosovo (1999), Yemen (2000, 2002-), Pakistan (2004-) and now Syria. Whew.

Bacevich’s count excludes the bombing and occupation of still other predominantly Muslim countries by key U.S. allies such as Israel and Saudi Arabia, carried out with crucial American support. It excludes coups against democratically elected governments, torture, and imprisonment of people with no charges. It also, of course, excludes all the other bombing and invading and occupying that the U.S. has carried out during this time period in other parts of the world, including in Central America and the Caribbean, as well as various proxy wars in Africa.

There is an awful lot to be said about the factions in the west which devote huge amounts of their time and attention to preaching against the supreme primitiveness and violence of Muslims. There are no gay bars in Gaza, the obsessively anti-Islam polemicists proclaim—as though that (rather than levels of violence and aggression unleashed against the world) is the most important metric for judging a society. Reflecting their single-minded obsession with demonizing Muslims (at exactly the same time, coincidentally, their governments wage a never-ending war on Muslim countries and their societies marginalize Muslims), they notably neglect to note thriving gay communities in places like Beirut and Istanbul, or the lack of them in Christian Uganda. Employing the defining tactic of bigotry, they love to highlight the worst behavior of individual Muslims as a means of attributing it to the group as a whole, while ignoring (often expressly) the worst behavior of individual Jews and/or their own groups (they similarly cite the most extreme precepts of Islam while ignoring similarly extreme ones from Judaism). That’s because, as Rula Jebreal told Bill Maher last week, if these oh-so-brave rationality warriors said about Jews what they say about Muslims, they’d be fired.

But of all the various points to make about this group, this is always the most astounding: those same people, who love to denounce the violence of Islam as some sort of ultimate threat, live in countries whose governments unleash far more violence, bombing, invasions, and occupations than anyone else by far. That is just a fact.

Those who sit around in the U.S. or the U.K. endlessly inveighing against the evil of Islam, depicting it as the root of violence and evil (the “mother lode of bad ideas“), while spending very little time on their own societies’ addictions to violence and aggression, or their own religious and nationalistic drives, have reached the peak of self-blinding tribalism. They really are akin to having a neighbor down the street who constantly murders, steals and pillages, and then spends his spare time flamboyantly denouncing people who live thousands of miles away for their bad acts. Such a person would be regarded as pathologically self-deluded, a term that also describes those political and intellectual factions which replicate that behavior.

The sheer casualness with which Obama yesterday called for a new AUMF is reflective of how central, how commonplace, violence and militarism are in the U.S.’s imperial management of the world. That some citizens of that same country devote themselves primarily if not exclusively to denouncing the violence and savagery of others is a testament to how powerful and self-blinding tribalism is as a human drive.

Hassan Nasrallah: Conflict in Middle East political, not sectarian

November 6, 2014 by Nasheman

The head of Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, Hassan Nasrallah speaks in a rare public appearance addressing thousands of his supporters on November 3, 2014 the Lebanese capital’s southern suburbs. (Photo: AFP)

by Al-Akhbar

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said on Monday that the current turmoil in the Middle East region was a “political,” not “sectarian” conflict.

Addressing thousands of supporters in the southern suburbs of Lebanon’s capital on the religious festival of Ashura in a rare public appearance, Nasrallah repeated that his movement was waging war against radical Islamists and Israel, not against Sunnis.

“Portraying the current conflict as one between Shias and Sunnis is a major mistake,” Nasrallah said in his second appearance among his supporters in a few months.

“I address all Shias in the region: You need to understand that Sunnis are not our enemies. We are not at war with Sunnis.”

“I address Sunnis in the region: Shias are not at war with you. We are both, together, at war with extremist groups like the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS),” he added.

Nasrallah said that what happens in the Middle East would decide its future for years to come.

“Our battle is against radicals who want to crush everybody else and against Israel,” Nasrallah said.

“This is not a battle against Sunnis,” he added, going on to call on Sunni Muslims to practice caution in regard to the current developments.

Hezbollah supports Michel Aoun for Lebanon’s presidency

Bringing up the current political stagnation in Lebanon, the Hezbollah chief said his movement would back its main Christian ally, Michel Aoun, in the country’s long-delayed presidential vote.

Lebanese parliament is tasked by the constitution to select a president, a decision that has already been put off 14 times as the war in Syria continues to divide rival political blocs.

Nasrallah blamed the political paralysis on external factors.

“Lebanese political factions are restrained by regional vetoes and these decisions are responsible for Lebanon’s presidential vacuum,” he said on Monday.

He reiterated his call for national dialogue to solve the crisis, adding that Hezbollah was willing to sit down with “any political group.”

While discussing Lebanese internal matters, Nasrallah also praised Prime Minister Tammam Salam and the Future Movement political party for their roles in defusing clashes in the northern city of Tripoli.

Nasrallah calls for Ashura rallies despite threats

Nasrallah called for a large turnout on Tuesday, which sees the peak of Ashura, a commemoration that marks the killing of Imam Hussein, one of the most revered figures of Shia Islam.

Ashura events have increasingly become targets of deadly bombings and attacks over the years.

“Tomorrow we will prove that we are above any threat, any danger, any challenge,” Nasrallah said.

Nasrallah addressed the crowds again by video link on Tuesday morning, where he condemned recent attacks on Ashura commemorations in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Nigeria.

He also condemned recent Israeli aggressions in Jerusalem and the storming of the al-Aqsa compound by Zionist extremists.

He reiterated comments on ISIS and Islamist extremist.

“The takfiri project will be defeated sooner or later,” he said. “The fall of ISIS is inevitable.”

“These takfiris will be defeated in all areas and countries, and we will feel honored that we played a role in their defeat,” he added.

(Anadolu, AFP, Al-Akhbar)

Free Syrian Army (FSA) founder warns of airstrikes, says ISIS not U.S. target

October 23, 2014 by Nasheman

FSA founder, Colonel Riad al-Asaad

by Mohamed Al Faris; Editing by Ridha Ali, Zaman Al Wasl

Founder of rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) on Saturday said that planned U.S. airstrikes will eliminate Syrians’ revolution as it will strengthen Bashar al-Assad and his key ally, Iran.

Syria’s army defector Colonel Riad al-Asaad, who met with National Coalition’s Secretary-General Nasr al-Hariri on Friday, expressed concern to Zaman al-Wasl over the planned American airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), saying: “Syrian revolution will be eliminated under this pretext.”

The war-wounded officer also has warned of the American invitation to Iran to join the International coalition against ISIS.

Al-Asaad called on moderate rebels to mass efforts for more unity to revive the Syrian revolution after being kidnapped by radical Islamist groups and West-backed agendas. “We are looking for rebel commanders who share us the national concern,” he added.

The United States is planning to carry out airstrikes against ISIS 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, according to Reuters.

Other Western powers have been more reluctant to launch military strikes in Syria, which could be seen to bolster al-Assad.

On Friday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that Iran had a role to play in a global coalition to tackle Islamic State militants.

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, according to Reuters.

Meanwhile, more than 191,000 people killed and over 9 million forced to flee their homes.