Was Putin right about Syria?

Was Putin right about Syria?

    Friday, August 22, 2014   No comments

Now, the U.S. is contemplating extending airstrikes on Islamic State militants operating in Iraq in Syria — fighters belonging to a terrorist organization that is leading the war against Assad. The Islamic State's territorial gains in Iraq and continued repression and slaughter of religious minorities there and in Syria have rightly triggered global condemnation. "I am no apologist for the Assad regime," Ryan Crocker, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria, told NPR. "But in terms of our security, [the Islamic State] is by far the greatest threat."

The irony of the moment is tragic. But to some, it doesn't come as much of a surprise. Many cautioned against the earlier insistence of the Obama administration (as well as other governments) that Assad must go, fearing what would take hold in the vacuum.

One of those critics happened to be Russian President Vladimir Putin, who warned against U.S. intervention in Syria in a New York Times op-ed last September. He wrote:

    A strike would increase violence and unleash a new wave of terrorism. It could undermine multilateral efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear problem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and further destabilize the Middle East and North Africa. It could throw the entire system of international law and order out of balance.

Some of the crises Putin catalogs have worsened anyway, no matter American action or inaction. But Putin's insistence was couched in a reading of the conflict in Syria that's more cold-blooded than the view initially held by some in Washington. "Syria is not witnessing a battle for democracy, but an armed conflict between government and opposition in a multireligious country," Putin wrote, suggesting that the nominally secular Assad regime, despite its misdeeds, was a stabilizing force preferable to what could possibly replace it.

Putin decried the growing Islamist cadres in the Syrian rebels' ranks:

    Mercenaries from Arab countries fighting there, and hundreds of militants from Western countries and even Russia, are an issue of our deep concern. Might they not return to our countries with experience acquired in Syria?

That's a concern very publicly shared now by U.S. and European officials, who are alarmed by the considerable presence of European nationals among the Islamic State's forces. A British jihadist who spoke with a London accent is believed to have carried out the shocking execution of American journalist James Foley this week.

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James Foley 'beheading': West condemns 'barbaric' murder

James Foley 'beheading': West condemns 'barbaric' murder

    Wednesday, August 20, 2014   No comments

UK, France and other Western governments implicitly and explicitly supported jihadists in Syria, or looked the other way as Gulf rulers supported Nusra and ISIL to expedite the overthrow of Assad. They also looked the other way when their own citizens traveled to Syria to join ISIL. Nusra, and other violent groups. Listening to a likely British citizen carrying out this horrible crime highlights the gravity of that policy. We can now see the fruits of that short-sided, foolish policy. However, it is journalists, civilians, women, and minorities who are paying the heavy price. It is clear now that the West cannot fight ISIL in Iraq and support it or ignore it in Syria. It is about time that they develop a comprehensive strategy to overcome this global threat.


James Foley 'beheading': West condemns 'barbaric' murder

The US, UK and France have expressed abhorrence at the apparent beheading of American journalist James Foley by an Islamic State (IS) militant.

The jihadist group released a video of Foley, missing in Syria since 2012, saying his killing was revenge for US air strikes on its fighters in Iraq.

France said, if confirmed, it was barbaric; the UK said it was depraved.

Foley's mother Diane said he "gave his life trying to expose the world to the suffering of the Syrian people."

President Barack Obama is due to give a statement later. But White House National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said: "If genuine, we are appalled by the brutal murder of an innocent American journalist."

Foley, 40, has reported extensively across the Middle East, working for US publication GlobalPost and other media outlets including French news agency AFP.

In a statement, GlobalPost asked for "prayers for Jim and his family", adding that it was waiting for the video to be verified.
British accent

In the video, titled A Message to America, a man identified as James Foley is dressed in an orange jumpsuit, kneeling in desert-like terrain beside an armed man dressed in black.

He gives a message to his family and links his imminent death to the US government's bombing campaign of IS targets in Iraq.

Clearly under duress, he says: "I call on my friends, family and loved ones to rise up against my real killers, the US government, for what will happen to me is only a result of their complacency and criminality."

Then the masked militant, who speaks with a British accent, delivers a warning to the US government: "You are no longer fighting an insurgency. We are an Islamic army and a state that has been accepted by a large number of Muslims worldwide.
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The apparent murderer speaks with a British accent, as the BBC's Frank Gardner reports. Some listeners may find parts of this audio disturbing.

"So any attempt by you Obama to deny the Muslims their rights of living in safety under the Islamic caliphate will result in the bloodshed of your people."

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Saudi Top Cleric and Salafi Wahhabi authority: Qaeda, ISIL “Enemy No 1” of Islam

Saudi Top Cleric and Salafi Wahhabi authority: Qaeda, ISIL “Enemy No 1” of Islam

    Tuesday, August 19, 2014   No comments

Saudi Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh on Tuesday blasted Al-Qaeda and the Takfiri group, ISIL, as "enemy number one" of Islam, in a statement issued in Riyadh.

"The ideas of extremism, radicalism and terrorism... have nothing to do with Islam and (their proponents) are the enemy number one of Islam," the kingdom's top cleric said. Saudi Mufti Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh

He cited Takfiris from the Islamic State, which has declared a "caliphate" straddling large parts of Iraq and Syria, and the global Al-Qaeda terror network.

"Muslims are the main victims of this extremism, as shown by crimes committed by the so-called ISIL, Al-Qaeda and groups linked to them," the mufti said, quoting a verse in the Quran urging the "killing" of people who do deeds harmful to Islam.

"In the circumstances the Islamic nation is living through, several countries have been destabilized" by extremists, who "divide Muslims" in the name of religion, the mufti said.

He warned: "In Islam, after heresy, dividing Muslims is the greatest crime."
The mufti urged "tolerance, which was at the origin of Islam's growth and longevity."

The ISIL had pronounced its “caliphate” last June. The Takfiri group has been widely known for its brutal crimes against civilians in Iraq and Syria.

Damascus has repeatedly accused the Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states of destabilizing Syria through funding and arming Takfiri groups like ISIL and Nusra Front.

Last Week, Hezbollah Secretary General, Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah warned that several countries, including Saudi Arabia fear the threat of ISIL.

During an interview with Lebanese daily al-Akhbar, the resistance leader highlighted that some countries know what they have created and raised, and that's why their diagnosis of ISIL risk is the most accurate of others because they know what they have had, speaking about the "real horror" inside the Gulf countries and the Saudi Arabia because this thought have been taught for decades for people, schools and in the curriculum.

"Turkey and Qatar are backing ISIL, and I am convinced the Saudi Arabia's fear of it," Sayyed Nasrallah told al-Akhbar.

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The Coming Race War Won’t Be About Race

The Coming Race War Won’t Be About Race

    Monday, August 18, 2014   No comments

Will the recent rioting in Ferguson, Missouri, be a tipping point in the struggle against racial injustice, or will it be a minor footnote in some future grad student’s thesis on Civil Unrest in the Early Twenty-First Century?

You probably have heard of the Kent State shootings: on May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard opened fire on student protesters at Kent State University. During those 13 seconds of gunfire, four students were killed and nine were wounded, one of whom was permanently paralyzed. The shock and outcry resulted in a nationwide strike of 4 million students that closed more than 450 campuses. Five days after the shooting, 100,000 protestors gathered in Washington, D.C. And the nation’s youth was energetically mobilized to end the Vietnam War, racism, sexism, and mindless faith in the political establishment.

You probably haven’t heard of the Jackson State shootings.

On May 14th, 10 days after Kent State ignited the nation, at the predominantly black Jackson State University in Mississippi, police killed two black students (one a high school senior, the other the father of an 18-month-old baby) with shotguns and wounded twelve others.

There was no national outcry. The nation was not mobilized to do anything. That heartless leviathan we call History swallowed that event whole, erasing it from the national memory.

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David Cameron: [War on ISIL] is a battle against a poisonous ideology that is condemned by all faiths and by all faith leaders, whether Christian, Jewish or Muslim

David Cameron: [War on ISIL] is a battle against a poisonous ideology that is condemned by all faiths and by all faith leaders, whether Christian, Jewish or Muslim

    Sunday, August 17, 2014   No comments

 Stability. Security. The peace of mind that comes from being able to get a decent job and provide for your family, in a country that you feel has a good future ahead of it and that treats people fairly. In a nutshell, that is what people in Britain want – and what the Government I lead is dedicated to building.

Britain – our economy, our security, our future – must come first. After a deep and damaging recession, and our involvement in long and difficult conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is hardly surprising that so many people say to me when seeing the tragedies unfolding on their television screens: “Yes, let’s help with aid, but let’s not get any more involved.”

I agree that we should avoid sending armies to fight or occupy. But we need to recognise that the brighter future we long for requires a long-term plan for our security as well as for our economy. True security will only be achieved if we use all our resources – aid, diplomacy, our military prowess – to help bring about a more stable world. Today, when every nation is so immediately interconnected, we cannot turn a blind eye and assume that there will not be a cost for us if we do.

The creation of an extremist caliphate in the heart of Iraq and extending into Syria is not a problem miles away from home. Nor is it a problem that should be defined by a war 10 years ago. It is our concern here and now. Because if we do not act to stem the onslaught of this exceptionally dangerous terrorist movement, it will only grow stronger until it can target us on the streets of Britain. We already know that it has the murderous intent. Indeed, the first Isil-inspired terrorist acts on the continent of Europe have already taken place.

Our first priority has of course been to deal with the acute humanitarian crisis in Iraq. We should be proud of the role that our brave armed services and aid workers have played in the international effort. British citizens have risked their lives to get 80 tons of vital supplies to the Yazidis trapped on Mount Sinjar. It is right that we use our aid programme to respond rapidly to a situation like this: Britain has given £13 million to support the aid effort. We also helped to plan a detailed international rescue operation and we remain ready and flexible to respond to the ongoing challenges in or around Dahuk, where more than 450,000 people have increased the population by 50 per cent.

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Maliki and other Iraqi policians are bickering about their rights to power while poor Iraqis are struggling to say alive; Yazidi victims of ISIS dying of thirst on mountains

Maliki and other Iraqi policians are bickering about their rights to power while poor Iraqis are struggling to say alive; Yazidi victims of ISIS dying of thirst on mountains

    Monday, August 11, 2014   No comments

ISR Comment: While thousands and thousands of Iraqis are victimized by ISIL and its affiliates, Iraqi politicians are fighting about who has the right to form a government. Those politicians should be sent to live in these mountains, not these poor, vulnerable people. Shame on you Maliki, shame on you all politicians.

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Yazidi victims of ISIS dying of thirst on mountains

Stranded on a barren mountaintop, thousands of minority Iraqis are faced with a bleak choice: descend and risk slaughter at the hands of the encircled Sunni extremists or sit tight and risk dying of thirst.

Humanitarian agencies said Tuesday that between 10,000 and 40,000 civilians remain trapped on Mount Sinjar since being driven out of surrounding villages and the town of Sinjar two days earlier. But the mountain that had looked like a refuge is becoming a graveyard for their children.

Unable to dig deep into the rocky mountainside, displaced families said they have buried young and elderly victims of the harsh conditions in shallow graves, their bodies covered with stones. Iraqi government planes attempted to airdrop bottled water to the mountain on Monday night but reached few of those marooned.

“There are children dying on the mountain, on the roads,” said Marzio Babille, the Iraq representative for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). “There is no water, there is no vegetation, they are completely cut off and surrounded by Islamic State. It’s a disaster, a total disaster.”

Most of those who fled Sinjar are from the minority Yazidi sect, which melds parts of ancient Zoroastrianism with Christianity and Islam. They are considered by the al-Qaeda-inspired Islamic State to be devil worshippers and apostates.
The dramatic advance of the extremist Sunni fighters has torn the ethnic and religious fabric of the country, with Christians and Shiites also uprooted from cities and towns.

The Islamic State’s takeover of Sinjar, the first major setback for Kurdish forces protecting the country’s north, sent about 200,000 people fleeing, according to the United Nations. Some 147,000 have arrived in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, flooding refugee camps.

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Hillary Clinton: 'Failure' to Help Syrian Rebels Led to the Rise of ISIS

Hillary Clinton: 'Failure' to Help Syrian Rebels Led to the Rise of ISIS

    Sunday, August 10, 2014   No comments

President Obama has long-ridiculed the idea that the U.S., early in the Syrian civil war, could have shaped the forces fighting the Assad regime, thereby stopping al Qaeda-inspired groups—like the one rampaging across Syria and Iraq today—from seizing control of the rebellion. In an interview in February, the president told me that “when you have a professional army ... fighting against a farmer, a carpenter, an engineer who started out as protesters and suddenly now see themselves in the midst of a civil conflict—the notion that we could have, in a clean way that didn’t commit U.S. military forces, changed the equation on the ground there was never true.”

Well, his former secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, isn’t buying it. In an interview with me earlier this week, she used her sharpest language yet to describe the "failure" that resulted from the decision to keep the U.S. on the sidelines during the first phase of the Syrian uprising.

“The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad—there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle—the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled,” Clinton said.

As she writes in her memoir of her State Department years, Hard Choices, she was an inside-the-administration advocate of doing more to help the Syrian rebellion. Now, her supporters argue, her position has been vindicated by recent events.

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Around 20,000 protesters marched through London waving Palestinian flags and chanting anti-Israel slogans

Around 20,000 protesters marched through London waving Palestinian flags and chanting anti-Israel slogans

    Saturday, August 09, 2014   No comments

 Thousands of demonstrators descended on the streets of central London this afternoon to protest at the bombing of Gaza by Israeli forces.

Waving placards and the black, white, green and red flag of Palestine, the marchers converged on the BBC's Broadcasting House near Oxford Circus.

Chants of "Free, Free, Palestine" were shouted across London's busy West End as marchers then made their way to Hyde Park to be addressed by speakers including George Galloway and Diane Abbott.

Organised by the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign and Stop the War, the march passed peacefully, according to most onlookers.

Pupils from Ed Miliband's old school, Haverstock, in Chalk Farm, north London, joined the march, accompanied by a samba band.


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Hard choices for a gun-shy President: How Obama Evolved on the Issue of ‘Genocide’ in Iraq

Hard choices for a gun-shy President: How Obama Evolved on the Issue of ‘Genocide’ in Iraq

    Friday, August 08, 2014   No comments

As a first-time presidential candidate in 2007, Barack Obama built his campaign around a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. Nothing could shake him from his plan to end what he called a “dumb” war. At a New Hampshire campaign stop that July, Obama was asked whether he might delay a pullout if it meant preventing outright genocide in Iraq.

No, Obama said. “[If] that’s the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now — where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife — which we haven’t done.”

Almost exactly five years later, Obama has ordered military action in Iraq “to prevent a potential act of genocide,” as he put it in his public remarks Thursday night.

For now, that action will consist of airlifting supplies to thousands of members of Iraq’s Yazidi religious sect, trapped atop a mountain and surrounded by the fanatical Sunni militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and greater Syria (ISIS). But it could also include air strikes against those ISIS fighters.

Did Obama flip-flop on a matter as serious as genocide? 

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Gaza is a crime made in Washington as well as Jerusalem: The carnage unleashed on the Palestinians is part of a decades-old routine that depends on western support

Gaza is a crime made in Washington as well as Jerusalem: The carnage unleashed on the Palestinians is part of a decades-old routine that depends on western support

    Thursday, August 07, 2014   No comments

by Seumas Milne
Global revulsion at the mind-numbing carnage of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza seems finally to have spurred some of the western political class to speak out. The resignation of Sayeeda Warsi, Britain’s first Muslim cabinet minister, in protest against her government’s “morally indefensible” stance, emboldened Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, to demand the suspension of arms export licences to Israel.

Last week it was Ed Miliband who condemned Israel’s invasion and the prime minister’s “silence on the killing of innocent Palestinian civilians”. Even the United States administration denounced its strategic protege’s “disgraceful” bombardment of a school, while Barack Obama described Palestinian suffering as “ heartbreaking” – as if he had nothing to do with it.

Now that Israelis and Palestinians have arrived in Cairo to turn the ceasefire into something more long-lasting, perhaps it feels safer to take a stand. But a month of indiscriminate brutality in which 1,875 Palestinians and 67 Israelis have been killed is still presented, grotesquely, as a war of Israeli self-defence – rather than as a decades-long confrontation between occupier and occupied, in which western governments stand resolutely on the side of the occupier.

And while the overwhelming majority of Palestinian dead are civilians – 430 of them children – and 64 of the Israeli dead are soldiers, it is Hamas that is branded terrorist, rather than the Israeli armed forces armed with the most sophisticated targeting technology in the world.

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