Reuters journalist Maria Golovnina died of asphyxiation: autopsy | The names: This is who ISIS has recruited from the West
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More than 20,000 foreigners have flocked to fight for ISIS, the radical Sunni group that controls portions of Iraq and Syria.
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'Gestapo' tactics at US police 'black site' ring alarm from Chicago to Washingtonby Spencer Ackerman in New York, Zach Stafford and Mark Guarino in Chicago andOliver Laughland in New York
- Shocked politicians and rights groups call for inquiries into Homan Square
- Rahm Emanuel faces questions as top supporters examine ‘outrageous’ abuse
The US Department of Justice and embattled mayor Rahm Emanuel are under mounting pressure to investigate allegations of what one politician called “CIA or Gestapo tactics” at a secretive Chicago police facility exposed by the Guardian.
Politicians and civil-rights groups across the US expressed shock upon hearing descriptions of off-the-books interrogation at Homan Square, the Chicago warehouse that multiple lawyers and one shackled-up protester likened to a US counter-terrorist black site in a Guardian investigation published this week.
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BRUSSELS/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Western powers are preparing what they say may be their most potent weapon against Moscow's interference in Ukraine - a multi billion dollar aid package to rebuild a near-bankrupt state and realize the European dream cherished by many Ukrainians.
ISIS has seized even more Assyrian Christian hostages after taking over nearly a dozen Assyrian villages in northeastern Syria in the past few days, an activist said Thursday.
CAIRO (Reuters) - Two Egyptian policemen accused of killing a lawyer in custody were detained on Thursday on the orders of an Egyptian prosecutor, judicial sources said, a rare action against members of the security forces.
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Argentinian MPs back spy agency changes after prosecutor's death by Reuters in Buenos Aires
President says new state security body will be more accountable but opponents say legislation does little more than change agency’s name
Argentinian MPs have passed a bill to revamp the country’s intelligence service, parts of which President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has portrayed as sinister, accountable to no one and possibly responsible for the death of a star prosecutor.
The government submitted the bill after the state investigator Alberto Nisman was found dead on 18 January, a few days after he accused Fernández of trying to cover up Iran’s alleged role in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community centre. She rejected the accusation as “absurd”.
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ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - An official autopsy report on the death of Reuters journalist Maria Golovnina has concluded that she died of asphyxiation, the cause of which "at this stage cannot be established."
In December 2001, when the war on terrorism was only weeks old, victory appeared at hand with the fall of Kandahar, the southern Afghanistan city Osama bin Laden had called home. Now that the question is how best to confront a fresh horror, it’s worth noting that the city was taken not by U.S. troops but by the same tag team that liberated the rest of the country: scruffy Afghan militias advancing in pickup trucks behind U.S. air strikes. As Christmas approached, there couldn’t have been more than 50 Americans in town, most of them Special Forces so at home in local clothes that they were easier to spot by the bumper stickers on their pickups: I ♥ NY. The rest of us were reporters haunting public venues like the central market, where one morning I noticed a man standing apart. He wore a black turban and a knowing look, both markers of the Taliban, and had a question. “Why didn’t you come on the ground?” he said. “It would have been lovely if you came on the ground.”
I knew what he meant, but not nearly as viscerally as I did two years later, in Iraq, where we came on the ground. Why we came at all is a bit of a mystery, but it was pretty clear pretty early that our physical presence created its own reality, armored up yet vulnerable both to labels–“occupier” at best, but also “crusader”–and constant ambush. “If you’re trying to win hearts and minds,” a Marine major told me in Najaf, “maybe sending 100,000 19-year-olds with machine guns isn’t the best way to go about it.”
Not massing U.S. troops in Afghanistan after 9/11 was a masterstroke, even if it came about mainly because the Pentagon lacked a ready war plan for the country that had sheltered bin Laden. It’s not just that Afghanistan has a way of swallowing armies. (Ask the British; ask the Russians.) There is an essential elegance to using what the military calls standoff weapons in a fight made infinitely more difficult by your actual presence. Which is why it’s fortunate that Americans have shown little appetite for a large-scale ground war against ISIS.
The group was, after all, spawned by the occupation of Iraq. Many of its leaders are veterans of the U.S. military prisons that turned out to double as universities for jihad. But their aim is no longer to expel the invader. Just the opposite. Now they want to lure us in. The fundamentalist narrative embraced by ISIS calls for a return of U.S. forces to Iraq, modern legionnaires fulfilling the role of “Rome” in the end-time narrative the group believes it has set in motion. It’s a millennialist vision as complicated as the Book of Revelation, but the U.S. role is pretty simple: show up. For anyone seeking a logic behind the gruesome decapitations of American journalists and aid workers, there it is–provoke a reaction.
The bloodletting does summon the associations of terrorism, barbarity and peril that have beset Americans for more than a decade now. But associations are almost all they are. To date, ISIS has demonstrated no particular ambition to attack the West at home. (That remains the raison d’être of al-Qaeda, whose Syria affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra harbors the elite al-Qaeda bombmakers dubbed the Khorasan group.) ISIS eyes another prize. Having declared a caliphate on the river valleys and desert land it has conquered in Syria and Iraq, it aims to turn the clock back to the 7th century. It functions both as a government and as a sectarian killing machine, slaughtering Shi’ites and many others in the name of purification.
To retain its sense of inevitability, however, ISIS must expand–something it’s been unable to do in Iraq since U.S. air strikes began in August. Recent growth, such as it is, has all been virtual, via pledges of fealty from existing jihadi groups in Sinai, Libya and other ungoverned dots on the map. The mother ship itself is hemmed in. Shi’ites and Kurds man the bulwarks to the east. To the west lie Syrian state forces that ISIS–nominally a rebel group–has mostly left alone.
What to do? The U.S. clearly has a national interest in preserving Iraq. (We broke it; we bought it.) But sending Americans back into Anbar and Saladin provinces would provide ISIS with pure oxygen and fresh waves of volunteers, while feeding the narrative that the U.S. is in a war against Islam. We have the planes, but this looks like a fight for guys in pickups who want to take their own country back.
Vick is a TIME editor at large and was previously the Jerusalem bureau chief
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Family dysfunction, sexual failure, grotesque narcissism, sad delusions and dreams of martyrdom – the chilling portrait of a killer
If the lone wolf suicide bomber, the killer-martyr, the high school shooter, the avenger of all the slights and snubs from a hostile world, had a generic face, it might look a bit like Anders Breivik’s: pudgy, piggy-eyed, with thin blond sweaty hair and a sickly smile. Breivik is the perfect example of what the German writer Hans Magnus Enzensberger once called “the radical loser”, the angry fantasist who wants to bring the world down with him.
Åsne Seierstad has written an exhaustive account of this wretched man’s murder in 2011 of 69 boys and girls in a summer camp for young socialists, and eight adults after a bomb attack in Oslo. It is a ghastly story of family dysfunction, professional and sexual failure, grotesque narcissism and the temptation of apocalyptic delusions.
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On Sunday night, Citizenfour, a film about Edward Snowden holed up in a Hong Kong hotel room revealing the global spying programs run by the U.S. National Security Agency, won the Oscar for best documentary for its chilling portrait of technology and surveillance.
Three days later this week, in China, news surfaced that the country has banned government purchases from some of the largest U.S tech firms implicated in the very affairs revealed by Snowden, including most notably Cisco Sistems, but also Apple Inc, Citrix Systems, and Intel’s INTCMcAfee security business. The companies were recently banned from China government purchases, according to an analysis of the government-procurement list by Reuters. The number of approved foreign tech brands on China’s purchase list fell by a third.
Whether China is really worried about U.S. tech firms jeopardizing state security, or if it’s simply using the Snowden news as pretext for favoring domestic technology firms, is being debated. But U.S. companies being banished from the government purchase list clears up any doubt that China is an oppressive market for big U.S. tech firms.
China reacted almost immediately after Snowden divulged the NSA programs in mid-2013. Cisco said afterwards its China business had slowed to a crawl, in part because its IT-equipment was associated with spying. (It was later reported that the NSA intercepted Cisco routers to install surveillance equipment without the company’s knowledge, which Cisco CEO John Chambers later complained about to President Obama.) Last year, Microsoft’s Windows 8 was banned from Chinese government computers for what the government said were security concerns. Today, the country is trying to cleanse key industries in banking, state-owned enterprises, and the military from U.S. technology by 2020, according to reports.
Until now, China hasn’t explicitly banned U.S. tech products, but it has gradually distanced itself from foreign tech. Earlier this month, China’s banking regulator said it was planning to require source code from any suppliers of IT products used by its banks. That is greeted as a nonstarter by Microsoft Corp, IBM and Cisco. If approved, the rule would effectively shut them out of billions of dollars of contracts. Industry analysts say the Chinese are years away from building their own equipment on par with say, Cisco’s, but they are getting closer.
The stripping of Cisco and Apple from the approved government list is the latest salvo in an ongoing tech conflict between the U.S. and China. The U.S. has similarly discriminated against Chinese telecommunications equipment makers for “state security” reasons. In 2012, a U.S. congressional committee warned that Huawei products could be used for spying—a charge the company continues to deny—but did not release evidence to support its claims. Huawei, the biggest telecom infrastructure maker in the world, can’t bid for U.S. government projects or large U.S. telecom contracts. ZTE , the second largest telecom infrastructure maker in China, is similarly banned.
In China, the situation has grown so poor for foreign IT that Cisco, in its latest quarterly results announced two weeks ago, said China sales dropped by 19%. Cisco’s public relations department won’t even directly address the topic of discrimination in China.
Except for Apple, which posted record sales in large part because its iPhone 6 dominated China’s market, there’s little reason to expect future good news for big U.S. tech in the Middle Kingdom. Snowden changed the dynamics in an already uneasy relationship. Now the effects are showing.
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Three men have been charged with conspiring to support Islamic State (Isis), including two who planned to travel to Syria to fight on behalf of the radical group, says New York police. New York mayor Bill de Blasio says the city is working hand-in-hand with the FBI and stepping up its efforts to stop individuals who may be trying to carry out plots on behalf of Islamic State Continue reading...
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The European Union has invited the Russian and Ukrainian energy ministers to a meeting in Brussels on Monday to try to resolve the conflict over gas supplies, according to two EU officials.
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Kremlin-controlled Gazprom said on Thursday it would exempt gas supplies to rebel-held regions from its main contract with Ukrainian Naftogaz, days before Kiev uses up gas volumes it has already paid for.
The regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad has long had a pragmatic approach to the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), says a Syrian businessman with close ties to the government. Even from the early days the regime purchased fuel from ISIS-controlled oil facilities, and it has maintained that relationship throughout the conflict. “Honestly speaking, the regime has always had dealings with ISIS, out of necessity.”
The Sunni businessman is close to the regime but wants to remain anonymous for fear of repercussions from both ISIS supporters and the regime. He trades goods all over the country so his drivers have regular interactions with ISIS supporters and members in Raqqa, the ISIS stronghold in Syria, and in ISIS-controlled areas like Dier-ezzor.
The businessman cites Raqqa’s mobile phone service as an example of how there is commerce between the regime, Syrian businesses, and ISIS. The country’s two main mobile phone operators still work in Raqqa. “Both operators send engineers to ISIS-controlled areas to repair damages at the towers,” he says. In addition, there are regular shipments of food to Raqqa. “ISIS charges a small tax for all trucks bringing food into Raqqa [including the businessman’s trucks], and they give receipts stamped with the ISIS logo. It is all very well organized.”
The businessman has a driver who lives in an ISIS-controlled area near Dier-Ezzor. “My driver is always telling me how safe things are at home. He can leave the door to his house unlocked. ISIS requires women to veil, and there is no smoking in the streets. Men can’t wear jeans either. But there are no bribes, and they have tranquility and security. It’s not like there are killings every day in the streets like you see on TV.”
And, he notes, ISIS pays well — slightly less than the pre-war norms but a fortune in a war-torn economy: engineers for the oil and gas fields are paid $2,500 a month. Doctors get $1,500. Non-Syrians get an expatriate allowance, “a financial package that makes it worthwhile to work for ISIS,” says the businessman.
Assad does not see ISIS as his primary problem, the businessman says. “The regime fears the Free Syrian Army and the Nusra Front, not ISIS. They [the FSA and Nusra] state their goal is to remove the President. But ISIS doesn’t say that. They have never directly threatened Damascus.” As the businessman notes, the strikes on ISIS targets are minimal. “If the regime were serious about getting rid of ISIS, they would have bombed Raqqa by now. Instead they bomb other cities, where the FSA is strong.” That said, the businessman does not believe that the regime has a formal relationship with ISIS, just a pragmatic one. “The more powerful ISIS grows, the more they are useful for the regime. They make America nervous, and the Americans in turn see the regime as a kind of bulwark against ISIS.”
A senior Western diplomat who specializes in the Syrian civil war agrees that ISIS is seen as an asset by Assad. “They will do whatever it takes to devalue the opposition, even if it means strengthening ISIS. They know that if it comes to choosing between the black flag [of ISIS] and Damascus, the international community will choose Damascus.” And the strategy has worked extremely well. “The way it’s going now, it’s a matter of months, not even a year, that the moderate opposition is so weakened that it won’t be a factor anymore. So in just a few months from now the regime will be able to achieve its strategic goal of forcing the world to choose between Damascus and the black flags.”
So by ignoring the conflict between the Syrian opposition and the Assad regime to focus purely on ISIS may solve problems in the short term, says the diplomat, “but there will be more problems to come. These are the ingredients for a further escalation of the conflict — alienating large parts of the Sunni population, so that they have no choice but to join ISIS. Not for ideological reasons, but because they will do whatever it takes to overthrow the regime in Damascus.” Not only that, it will widen the geographical boundaries of the conflict by making this a fight of all Sunnis. “It’s a clear recipe for further escalation well beyond the geographical boundaries of the current conflict.”
However, Damascus believes that once it has neutralized most of the opposition, it can then defeat ISIS with ease. “ISIS alone, the regime can deal with them. What Assad wants is international recognition of his legitimacy as Syria’s President,” says the businessman. “When the war is over, he can easily handle ISIS with the help of Hizballah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.”
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Every U.S. military official says degrading and defeating the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria isn’t a job that can be done by the Pentagon alone. But it also cannot be done without the Pentagon. That’s the bind President Obama finds himself in as he seeks a way to cripple ISIS without putting U.S. combat boots on the ground inside Iraq and Syria (beyond the 3,100 now there to train Iraqi forces and protect the U.S. embassy and other facilities).
So far, the American heavy lifting in the fight against ISIS has come from the skies, where U.S. warplanes have dropped more than 8,200 bombs and missiles on ISIS targets in 2,500 air strikes in Iraq and Syria dating back to August. While Syrian rebels, largely Kurdish, have been able to hold on to the town of Kobani, they haven’t regained any ground. In Iraq, the Pentagon estimates that the Kurdish pesh merga forces have retaken a scant 1.3% of the contested territory ISIS has seized in the past year.
But U.S. officials believe, with sufficient training—and continuing allied airpower—the Iraqi army, Kurdish forces and moderate Syrian rebels will be able to defeat ISIS and take back the territory it seized over the next several years.
The key test of the strategy will come as early as April, when the Pentagon hopes to launch an offensive to retake the northern Iraq city of Mosul, which ISIS seized last June after it drove out the Iraqi army in a humiliating defeat. The Pentagon estimates a 25,000-strong force made up of Iraqi army and Kurdish pesh merga units will be able to overwhelm the up to 2,000 ISIS militants believed to be in control of Mosul. The fight is so vital to validating the U.S. approach that Pentagon officials have made clear that if the Iraqis aren’t adequately trained—and if the aerial bombardment around Mosul hasn’t done enough damage—the assault could be delayed by months.
The Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria represents a villain “right out of central casting, just like in a James Bond movie,” says Thomas Donnelly, a defense expert at the American Enterprise Institute. It’s an apt analogy: while there’s no doubt these fanatics are murderous thugs, how much of the shadow they’re now casting around the globe is really theirs, and how much is media magnification due to crafty use of their horrific YouTube videos?
For that matter, the anonymous warning from a senior U.S. military official Feb. 19 that the Iraqis could be willing to try to retake Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, from ISIS as early as April shows the U.S. and its allies also are playing the perceptions game. While propaganda has long been typical in war, it’s playing an increasing role in the clash between ISIS and the civilized world because the conflict now underway isn’t a traditional war.
In today’s wired world, lone wolves striking in Copenhagen and Paris—or small groups in Afghanistan and Libya—can give the impression of ISIS spreading like wildfire. But that’s misleading because in all those places it represents a sliver of the local populace that, while a clear and present danger to the locals, isn’t a threat to their political control.
THE PENTAGON VIEW
Let’s start with a couple of givens, from the Pentagon’s perspective. First of all, the U.S. military is now engaged in its third war in Iraq since 1991 not because ISIS represents a clear threat to U.S. soil. Rather, it’s simply in keeping with 1979’s Carter doctrine, when that President made clear that the Persian Gulf was a vital national-security interest that the U.S. would go to war to protect. It came on the heels of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, and the edict was clearly aimed at Moscow’s thirst for petroleum. The flow of oil from the region continues to lubricate the world’s economy, and ISIS, by destabilizing the states in the region, could disrupt it.
Yet if the Pentagon’s top spies disagree over what to do about ISIS, what hope is there for the average citizen to figure it out? “We are in a global war with a radical and violent form of the Islamic religion, and it is irresponsible and dangerous to deny it,” retired Army lieutenant general Michael Flynn said in a Jan. 20 warning published in Politico. Flynn was pushed out of his job early as the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency last August for his management style and views on Islamic terrorism. “There is no cheap way to win this fight,” he wrote, saying the U.S. must treat ISIS, and Islamic groups like it, the way Washington dealt with Germany and Japan in World War II, and the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War.
His successor is far less concerned—striking, given that he’s a Marine, a breed rarely given to understatement. While ISIS “can do us harm, they don’t pose an existential threat to the United States,” Lieut. General Vincent Stewart, told the House Armed Services Committee Feb. 3. While the U.S. military could launch more robust attacks against ISIS, Pentagon officials stress that if allied military successes outrun political progress in the region, there will be nothing positive to fill the gap left by ISIS’s destruction. “If I were to map out what ISIL would love to do, ISIL would love to have the United States and western countries out of the region and slowly take apart those other moderate nations who would counter their radical ideology,” Stewart said. “And if they could do that, then they could have a fairly easy opportunity to create the state that they think is appropriate for the region.”
The split over options goes beyond DIA. “If American combat troops are not committed to destroy that standing army, the Islamic State will grow and prosper,” warns retired Marine colonel Gary Anderson. “Young Muslim men world-wide, and some women, are flocking to their banner because they are successfully defying us and mocking us.” Anderson’s solution is nasty, brutish and short. “Go in hard with overwhelming force and destroy their standing army,” he argues. “It would be a relatively short and bloody fight.” Repairing the rubble would be left to the surviving residents.
But that remains a minority view in and around the Pentagon. The measured persistence of the U.S. campaign ultimately will pay off, says a retired four-star general who commanded in Iraq, and was willing to speak only so long as he was not identified by name. “The Americans have shown tremendous patience,” he says, “just as long as there’s not an endless stream of casualties without achieving progress.” While it doesn’t show up on the evening news—ISIS kills Western reporters—the Islamic militants are “getting hammered every day, except when there are dust storms or some other weather event that prevents employment of the intelligence assets,” the retired four-star says. “Imagine the morale in a force where they’re driving down the road and 21 vehicles are taken out very quickly.” Clearing ISIS from Iraq “is doable,” he says; Syria less so until Bashar Assad’s fate is sealed.
ISIS’S ORDER OF BATTLE
The core of ISIS consists of between 25,000 and 35,000 fighters in its self-declared caliphate straddling Iraq and Syria (all of these numbers, Pentagon officials stress, are rough estimates, and can vary from day to day and person to person). About half of them have journeyed to those two ancient lands specifically to fight. Its ranks include about 3,400 from the West, an estimated 150 of them American. The U.S. believes it has killed 6,000 ISIS militants. That suggests the U.S. and its allies have killed about 20% of ISIS’s forces.
Prior to air strikes restricting their massing and movements, ISIS generally operated in motorized companies of about 100 men, largely aboard pickup trucks—and U.S.-built Humvees, once they plundered them from the Iraqi security forces following the fall of Mosul. Their trained units are capable of basic military tactics, along with the ability to plant IEDs and conduct quick raids. “ISIS is a movement that would be hiding in caves if it did not have a professional cadre of trained, internationally recruited professional light infantry occupying towns and cities in Iraq and Syria,” retired Marine Anderson says. “They are very good at what they do, and the rabble of Iraqi/Syrian/Kurdish militias opposing them—and I include the Iraqi army here—is not going to dislodge them, even with American air support.”
WHAT SHOULD OBAMA DO?
Pentagon officials bridle when asked why progress in the now seven-month old campaign against ISIS seems to be moving so slowly. The nearly 2,500 air strikes are small bore compared with earlier air campaigns conducted by the U.S. military. Allied support is spare: U.S. warplanes are responsible for 80% of the air strikes. And the U.S.-led effort to train only 5,000 moderate Syrian rebels a year to reclaim Syrian soil from ISIS has yet to train a single one. So far, the Pentagon has vetted 1,200 of them for training, which is slated to begin next month in Jordan.
There are now 3,100 U.S. troops in Iraq, limited to advising Iraqi troops and protecting the U.S. embassy and other sites. “Our campaign design does not require the introduction of large numbers of U.S. forces,” Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at Texas A&M University Feb. 19. “The campaign design does not lend itself to the introduction of large forces which will then immediately take ownership of the issues. Rather, it calls for the introduction of a coalition which includes Iraqis, Kurds, Jordanians, Saudis, Emirates, Qataris, because that’s their issue. They are closest to it and have the most at stake.”
This seemingly-slow pacing is deliberate, Pentagon officials say. They want to make sure that whatever they achieve militarily can be backed up politically. “Clearing is easy,” the retired four-star general who commanded in Iraq says privately. “Clearing and holding the land you’ve taken is hard.” That requires a political infrastructure in place to fill the governing gap once ISIS is ousted.
But progress is puny. While Iraq is nearly 170,000 square miles in size (437,000 square kilometers), the Pentagon has assessed who controls only the 73,000 square miles (190,000 square kilometers), or 43%, that it deems to have value because population and infrastructure are there. In the less than half of Iraq assessed by the U.S. military, the U.S.-backed central government in Baghdad controls 30,000 square miles (77,000 square kilometers), or 18%. The Kurds control 22,000 square miles (56,000 square kilometers), or 13%. ISIS controls 21,000 square miles (55,000 square kilometers), or 12%.
A senior Pentagon official says that including all of Iraq in the calculation would give ISIS a greater share of Iraqi territory, but declined to offer an estimate. The U.S. and its allies, primarily the Kurdish peshmerga, have retaken about 700 square kilometers (270 square miles) of territory—about 1.3%—once held by ISIS in northern Iraq.
There’s only one way to take land, and that’s with well-trained ground forces. That’s why retired Marine general Anthony Zinni thinks the time is right for Obama to acknowledge reality and tell the nation he is sending 10,000 American troops into the fight. Zinni ran the U.S. military in the Middle East and Persian Gulf regions as chief of U.S. Central Command from 1997 to 2000, and still has business dealings in the region. He’s just back from a trip to Cairo, and he says he’s hearing a growing willingness among regional powers to put troops on the ground to fight ISIS—so long as the U.S. is alongside them.
Rumbles from Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates all suggest those nations are willing to fight on the ground. “I think this is all designed to try to push the United States to put something on the ground,” Zinni said Feb. 23. “If we put a couple of brigades in, I think you’d get five or six regional countries. And I think you could twist the arms of the French, the Belgians and maybe even the Brits.”
Two U.S. brigades, with their supporting personnel, would total about 10,000 troops. Zinni says the nations in the region are not coordinating their efforts in an effort to lure the U.S. into the fight on the ground. “But they’re getting scared, and have gotten angry at ISIS’s atrocious behavior and they’re willing to step up,” he says. “It would have to be a whole set of bilateral relationships, and we would have to pull it together.
The U.S. would have to act as the catalyst to make this happen, says Zinni, who was an early advocate of sending U.S. ground troops into the fight. “There’s an opportunity now to put a small piece in terms of ground forces in there, and get a lot more from these countries, and be the glue that puts it together,” he says. “There is no unifying structure and no single entity out there that can bring this all together—it has to be the United States,” Zinni insists.
But what about Obama’s pledge to keep U.S. combat boots out of the fight? “They have a moment here and it’ll blow by if they’re not careful,” he says. Obama “could always say that the situation on the ground has changed, and the willingness of the Arabs to stand up to this gives us this moment,” says Zinni, showing why he’s a better general than a politician.
ANOTHER BIG WAR?
But Pentagon officials say Zinni and others advocating a bigger U.S. role in the conflict overlook key questions: While Iraq has allowed 3,100 American troops on its soil, it hasn’t granted permission for a larger force. And those pushing for a special-forces decapitation strikes against ISIS leaders ignore the fact that intelligence on their whereabouts is sparse (it took the U.S. a decade to find Osama bin Laden, and nearly a year to launch the attack that killed him once his suspected lair had been located in Abbottabad, Pakistan).
Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said last month that the U.S. push against ISIS has stalled. “The area that they control, have influence, has actually grown and there’s not a lot of prospect in the near term of pushing that back,” he said. He dismissed the President’s options as binary. “I think the President is misleading when he says it’s either sending in a bunch of ground troops or `doing what I want to do’,” Thornberry said. “I do think our approach has to be working with regional allies. They are looking for more U.S. leadership, and part of the challenge is when you place restrictions on what our people can do, how much they can help, then obviously you’re going to be limited.”
Thornberry echoes a GOP refrain: that Obama is leery of using force. “I’m just worried, given the track record, that the President puts political constraints on what we can do rather than just focused on how to get this job done,” he said. “Political constraints are not going to get this job done, even if everything goes well. This is hard enough, even if we don’t tie our own hands.”
Neither the U.S. nor the rest of the world has done a good job convincing young Muslims that ISIS isn’t a good option, Thornberry added. “There is widespread agreement that the ideology is enormously appealing to huge numbers of Muslims, not a majority, but yet especially those in poor economic circumstances, those who feel depressed,” he said. “The appeal of that ideology to those young males in particular is something the world has not come to grips with.”
The international community, Thornberry said, is looking at ISIS through 20th Century eyes. “Part of our problem is that we tend to look at this country by country, and it is not a country by country issue,” he said. “It is a global issue that we’re not dealing with.” How should it be handled? “I’m not going to say an Arab NATO, but some sort of way that countries can work together to confront the ideology as well as what they’re doing on the ground militarily.”
Unlike al-Qaeda, with its plan to create a caliphate, “these guys short circuit that and go right to the caliphate, start behaving like a state, providing social services for their people, send out ambassadors,” Thornberry said. “It just reminds us, we’ve got to be careful about looking at things the way that we want to see them and not seeing what’s really happening.”
The AEI’s Donnelly believes that a determined President could—and should—get a green light from Congress to wage a bigger fight against ISIS. “If the President made the case forcefully, the American people would say, `Hell yea—this is behavior we cannot tolerate,’” Donnelly says. “A President can get what he wants from Congress in wartime.”
But some maintain that Republican calls for a bigger U.S. role—including getting rid of Assad—would likely lead only to a replay of the unsatisfying U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. “Greater U.S. involvement in the Syrian civil war is increasingly portrayed in political circles as the main alternative to the Obama Administration’s current approach,” the liberal-leaning National Security Network think tank said ina Feb. 18 report. “But…strategies for the United States to fully enter the Syrian civil war would most likely draw the United States into an unwinnable quagmire and unsustainable nation-building project.”
THE CURRENT CAMPAIGN
A U.S. war planner from Central Command expressed confidence in the seven-month old war’s course during a Feb. 19 background Pentagon briefing. “Our mission has not changed in terms of the degradation, dismantle and eventual defeat of ISIL,” he said. “It remains true to form. And it is generally unfolding as we had planned.” But he stressed, as the Pentagon has repeatedly, that the fighting will likely continue well on into the future, with no termination date yet penciled in. “This is going to take time,” he said. “The degrade phase alone we knew would be a long period of time.”
Dempsey estimated Feb. 19 that it would take up to three years for Iraq to regain its territorial integrity (he didn’t offer a timetable for Syria). “But I think the issues will be generational—20, 30 years—because there is an internal conflict within Islam, and within the Arab world, between moderates and radicals that just isn’t going to end because they stop fighting,” he added.
The U.S. strategy is plain: halt ISIS’s advance by pounding it from the air until local ground forces, with some U.S. help, are ready to attack and retake the land, and—most critically—the cities, under its control. The initial goal is to push ISIS out of Iraq, and then go after them inside Syria.
The U.S. and its allies have dropped more than 8,200 bombs and missiles in close to 2,500 air strikes on ISIS targets, roughly split between Iraq and Syria. The weapons range from 20-pound warheads atop Hellfire missiles fired from Predator and Reaper drones, to 2,000-pound GPS and laser-guided behemoths dropped from B-1 bombers and other warplanes.
The U.S. and its allies attack ISIS targets wherever they’re found, Pentagon officials say. But there weren’t that many to begin with, and many have been destroyed. ISIS fighters hide amid civilians in towns, which reduces the chances they’ll be attacked. “Militarily, ISIL is in decline,” the Central Command briefer said. The constant bombardment has curbed ISIS’s plans to expand, and its options. “He’s in the land of `ors’ versus `ands’ now.”
The U.S.-led air strikes, and the Iraqi and Kurdish ground forces, have penned in ISIS. “This is an enemy that we still assess to be in a defensive posture,” Rear Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said Feb. 13. While ISIS boasts of its expanding caliphate, it only represents moves “into more ungoverned spaces in Syria,” he added. “The way you govern is you’ve got to have people to govern. So the population areas are the most important areas that we’re focused on.”
A key challenge will be beefing up the now-disappeared Iraq-Syrian border to keep ISIS out of Iraq once it is pushed back into Syria. Even now, the Central Command briefer said, “the safe havens that he has in Syria, and his ability to migrate back and forth, still gives him that micro-offensive capability” shown by the recent attack on the western Iraqi town of Baghdadi.
Through Feb. 4, allied air strikes had damaged or destroyed 4,817 ISIS targets, ranging from tanks (62) to Humvees (257) to “fighting positions” (752), basically fancy foxholes. The strikes also focused on decapitating ISIS’s command, hitting 26 “leadership buildings” and 102 “HQ buildings.” The list isn’t the kind of “target-rich environment” the U.S. Air Force likes. There are few strategic targets listed—nearly two-thirds are troops, foxholes and the vehicles used to get the troops to those foxholes.
“Those are things that ISIL no longer has,” Kirby told reporters. “They’re gone. They’re destroyed. They can’t use them anymore. And this is an enemy that has a limited ability to reconstitute strength, at least material strength.”
But the notion of ISIS is a hierarchical organization misses a key point. Even as it is under daily attack, it has evolved into “a decentralized, diffused, aspirational social movement that follows few orders and few chains of command,” Dafna Rand, who served on Obama’s National Security Council staff, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee Feb. 12.
Syria remains the big issue, just as Pakistan remained a key drag on the U.S. effort in Afghanistan because it offered sanctuary to Taliban militants fighting U.S. troops just across the border. “What we’ve learned from Vietnam forward is you cannot defeat an insurgent group if it has a refuge in a neighboring country,” James Jeffrey, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Iraq from 2010 to 2012, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee Feb. 12. “You have to do something about Syria, and you can’t do anything about Syria without having a better policy towards Assad.”
Training sites for the Syrian rebels are being established in Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. Iraqi Sunnis also are being trained in Anbar province. “It may not be as fast as some would like, but the inclusion of the Sunni tribes, the inclusion of the Sunnis writ large is an absolute critical component to this all working,” the Central Command briefer said Feb. 19. “And the leadership in Iraq is moving in the right direction to accommodate that.”
Military force can’t defeat ISIS by itself. “U.S. military action must be tied to a civil-military strategy that offers the best possible hope of producing a stable and friendly nation as its ultimate outcome,” Anthony Cordesman, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote Feb. 13. “No amount of tactical victories in the field, and no amount of U.S. military force that merely defeats the immediate enemy threat, will create that stability.”
THE NARCISSISTIC VIEW OF WAR
Americans are skeptical of another military mission in Iraq following the years, and U.S. lives, expended in Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11. But one of the Army’s pre-eminent thinkers urges his countrymen not to take the wrong lessons from those campaigns. “The lesson is not that these kinds of missions are impossible,” Army Lieut. General H.R. McMaster told Time Feb. 19. “One of the key lessons is we made it just about as hard on ourselves as we could have, by not acknowledging the need to consolidate gains in either Afghanistan or Iraq.” McMaster, an incumbent member of the Time 100, says inadequate pre-war planning doomed the effort to preserve the “fragile victory” that the U.S. had achieved in Iraq.
He expresses concern that despite the videos, Americans aren’t paying enough attention to the foe. “I wish we could get the American people more interested in who we’re fighting,” he says, with a touch of exasperation. “When you hear statements like `Americans are weary of the effort,’ and so forth, sometimes we don’t spend enough time talking about the nature of our enemies.”
The Germans hid their death camps during World War II. But that’s not the case with ISIS, who uses video to recruit and instill fear in prospective enemies. “ISIL’s brutality is so apparent now because they’re promoting themselves,” McMaster says. “It’s not our reporting that got the American people to say, `Damn, it’s really worth fighting these guys!’—it’s their own propaganda!” Part of the problem, McMaster says, is that the U.S. public views war through too narrow a lens. “We don’t even focus on our enemies; we talk in terms that sometimes could be criticized as narcissistic,” he says. “We define these conflicts in relation to us, rather than pay due attention to the nature of our enemies, what’s at stake, and why it’s worth the effort.”
RETAKING MOSUL
The first real test for the U.S. and its allies will be the fight to retake Mosul, which ISIS seized from the Iraq army last June. The Pentagon is “still shooting for” an April-May launch of the battle to retake the country’s second-largest city. But that’s optimistic, and “we have not closed the door on continuing to slide that to the right”—into the future—the Central Command official said Feb. 19.
Iraqi forces have conducted 20 smaller ground offensives in recent months, and most of them have been “very successful,” the Central Command official said. Small numbers of U.S. troops—dozens to hundreds—could actually accompany Iraqi forces on that mission, to call in air strikes, gather intelligence, and advise the Iraqi forces. That decision, assuming a late-spring offensive, is only weeks away.
“I would not rule out using American ground troops to take territory if that’s necessary to defeat ISIS,” Jeffrey said. But he would rule out a “long-term American presence on the ground, as we saw in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Vietnam. It does not work.” Obama “is clearly very nervous about the use of military force, particularly ground forces, without a lot of allies, without a lot of legal backing, without the support of you and everybody else,” Jeffrey said at that Feb. 12 hearing. “…he thinks that we have gotten very committed, almost like a drug, to using military force, rather than other means of national power.”
In a bit of psyops, the Central Command briefer detailed just what the up to 2,000 ISIS fighters burrowed into Mosul will face when the fight kicks off. They will total up to 25,000, more than 10 times the defending ISIS force. That’s more than double the historic ratio needed to dislodge and defeat an enemy force in a city. “There will be five Iraqi army brigades, there will be three smaller brigades that will comprise a reserve force,” the Central Command official said. “There will be three pesh[merga] brigades that will help contain from the north and isolate from the west, and then there will be what we’re calling a Mosul fighting force, which will be compromised of largely police and tribal that are being put together right now of mostly former Mosul police.”
There’s no sign yet that ISIS fighters in Mosul are quaking in their boots. And while the Pentagon is guardedly optimistic the U.S. and its allies will prevail, critics have their doubts. “Retaking Mosul is going to be like Fallujah on steroids,” the AEI’s Donnelly says, referring to a pair of bloody battles in that western Iraq city that killed more than 100 Americans. “If I were President, I’d tell Martin Dempsey, `We have to win, and win faster.’ And if that means American boots on the ground, so be it.”
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Iran has taken a lead role in defending the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad and strengthening the Baghdad government in the war against the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS). But that doesn’t mean Iran views the United States as an ally in that war, even if they share a common enemy in ISIS.
Abdullah Ganji, the managing-director of Javan newspaper, which is believed to closely reflect the views of the government and the powerful Iranian Revolutionary Guards, says that U.S. support for ISIS is in fact a way of ensuring Israel’s security and disrupting the Muslim world in the cause of advancing Western interests.
“We believe that the West has been influential in the creation of ISIS for a number of reasons. First to engage Muslims against each other, to waste their energy and in this way Israel’s security would be guaranteed or at least enhanced,” says Ganji. “Secondly, an ugly, violent and homicidal face of Islam is presented to the world. And third, to create an inconvenience for Iran.”
Iran’s relations with the U.S. have been strained since the 1979 Islamic Revolution ousted the U.S.-backed Shah of Iran and negotiations are currently underway between Iran and Western nations, including the U.S., to ensure the Islamic Republic does not produce nuclear weapons.
Ganji went on to say that much of ISIS — its propaganda, structure and weapons — were all the work of the West. “A group that claims to be an Islamic one and has no sensitivity towards occupied Muslim lands in Palestine but is bent on killing Muslims as its first priority, it’s not a movement with roots in Islamic history. Not only many of its weapons but its methods of operation, its propaganda methods and many of its internal structures are Western, that’s why we are distrustful of the roots of ISIS,” he says.
“As the Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Khamenei] also said, [the coalition forces] have on a number of times even made weapon drops for ISIS. How is it that they have laser-guided precision munitions and bombs but drop weapons for the wrong people? And not only once but at least a number of times,” he says, referring to incidents when weapons dropped from U.S. aircraft landed in ISIS-controlled areas rather than the intended Kurdish-controlled areas.
“Iran cannot cooperate with the United States against ISIS because it doesn’t trust America, it doesn’t believe in their honesty in combatting ISIS. Iran can’t trust the U.S. to begin something and to continue to the end. It acts patronizingly and will change its path whenever it feels it is justified. We are also worried that the U.S. is using ISIS as a pretext to return its troops into Iraq,” Ganji says. “I believe that the U.S. prefers a weak ISIS that cannot be a major threat but will still cause inconvenience for Iran, Iraq and Syria and generally what they themselves called the Shiite crescent.”
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Reports say the masked man with a British accent who has featured in several Islamic State beheading videos has been identified.
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• Armed hooligans burst into Novi Pazar dressing-room
• Zarko Udovicic has gun held to his head by fans
• Zarko Udovicic has gun held to his head by fans
A player with the Serbian top-flight club Novi Pazar has been threatened by the team’s own supporters at gunpoint after missing a penalty.
Describing the incident as “a new low in Serbian professional
football”, the world players’ union Fifpro said that Novi Pazar’s Zarko Udovicic sent his penalty over the crossbar in the 85th minute of last Saturday’s game at FK Rad, who won 1-0.
Continue reading...football”, the world players’ union Fifpro said that Novi Pazar’s Zarko Udovicic sent his penalty over the crossbar in the 85th minute of last Saturday’s game at FK Rad, who won 1-0.
Shocked staff fear further damage and ‘cultural cleansing’ under the militants’ rule
Reports this week that Mosul’s central library has been ransacked by Isis and 100,000 books and manuscripts burned has cast an international spotlight on a new wave of destruction that has been raging through the northern Iraqi city since last summer.
Earlier this month the head of the UN’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) voiced alarm over “one of the most devastating acts of destruction of library collections in human history.” Director general Irina Bokova said the destruction involved museums, libraries and universities across Mosul.
Continue reading... The Moscow Times |
Russia Could Cut off Gas to Ukraine by 'End of Week'
ABC News Russia could cut off supplies to neighboring Ukraine by the end of the week if it does not get further payments from the country, a spokesman for the gas company Gazprom said Thursday. Sergei Kupriyanov said in televised remarks that "if no new funds are ... Russia Slams Western Threats of New Sanctions Over UkraineVoice of America Russia's Gazprom says can exempt rebel-held areas from Ukraine gas contractReuters Russia trades will not follow Greek game theoryFinancial Times Wall Street Journal -MiamiHerald.com -Sputnik International all 1,863 news articles » |
 Toledo Blade |
DC legalizes pot in capital, despite threats from Congress
Toledo Blade Posters encouraging people to vote yes on D.C. Ballot Initiative 71 to legalize small amounts of marijuana for personal use are readied in Washington in October. ASSOCIATED PRESS Enlarge. WASHINGTON — The District of Columbia defied threats from ... and more » |
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US authorities have discovered a sophisticated tunnel, equipped with lights and ventilation, leading from southern Arizona into Mexico. Report by Claire Lomas.
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South Korea Strikes Down Adultery Lawby By CHOE SANG-HUN
An estimated 53,000 South Koreans have been indicted under the law since the authorities began keeping count in 1985.
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Scotland Yard: no details on probe after identity of ‘Jihadi John’ revealed by Griff Witte, Brian Murphy
LONDON — Britain’s counterterrorism chief said Thursday that authorities will not disclose details of investigations into the Islamic State fighter previously known as “Jihadi John” despite a report identifying him as a Kuwait-born computer programmer from West London.Read full article >>
A suicide bomber struck the security team of the NATO’s top civilian representative in Afghanistan, killing at least two people.
Dick Costolo promises to change culture around harassment: ‘We’re going to get a lot more aggressive about it, and it’s going to start right now’
By its own
boss’s admission, Twitter “suck at dealing with abuse and trolls”. Now Dick Costolo has shed a little more light on how the company plans to change that.
boss’s admission, Twitter “suck at dealing with abuse and trolls”. Now Dick Costolo has shed a little more light on how the company plans to change that.
Twitter is planning to shift “the cost of dealing with harassment” on to the people accused of that harassment, not on the people who endure it, said Costolo in an interview with the New York Times.
Continue reading...EU Court Hands Setback to US Deserter Seeking Asylumby webdesk@voanews.com (Reuters)
A U.S. soldier who deserted because he thought the Iraq war was illegal could have grounds for seeking asylum in Germany, but only if he can show he would have been involved in war crimes, Europe's highest court said on Thursday. The European Court of Justice added that even if Andre Shepherd could prove war crimes were very likely to have been committed, he would still have to show he had no alternative to desertion, such as becoming a conscientious objector. The Luxembourg-based...
BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Argentine lawmakers passed a bill on Thursday to revamp the country's intelligence service, parts of which President Cristina Fernandez has portrayed as sinister, accountable to no one and possibly responsible for the death of a star prosecutor.
KIEV (Reuters) - Ukraine announced on Thursday that it would begin withdrawing artillery from the front line with separatist rebels in the east, a move that amounts to recognition that a ceasefire meant to take effect on Feb. 15 is holding at last.
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A man with a British accent seen in ISIS beheading videos is believed to be Mohammed Emwazi, Reuters reports, citing The Washington Post and BBC.
(This February 25 story was corrected to show Russia lost $151 billion in capital outflows last year, not Cyprus)
A British paratrooper was awarded the highest British military honor Thursday for his actions during a firefight in 2013 in Afghanistan.
Lance Corporal Joshua Leakey, 27, is only the third serviceman to receive the Victoria Cross for service in Afghanistan and the fifteenth since World War 2, according to the BBC.
Leakey was with a group of British and American troops who were pinned down on the side of a hill in Helmand province by about 20 insurgents. During the Taliban attack, he ran through heavy fire multiple times to assess the situation, assist the wounded U.S. Marine Captain, and fire on the enemy, ultimately helping the troops regain the initiative. During the battle, 11 Taliban were killed and four were wounded.
Condom maker's shares surge after South Korea legalises adultery by Jonathan Kaiman in Beijing
Unidus, the country’s largest contraceptive manufacturer, saw a 15% spike in the value of its stock after law banning extramarital sex was repealed on Thursday
In South Korea, extramarital sex just got a whole lot safer.
On Thursday, the country’s highest court overturned a 62-year-old law banning adultery. Shortly afterwards, the share price of the country’s biggest condom maker, Unidus, surged 15%, the daily limit on the country’s Kosdaq market.
Continue reading...
Declassified Al-Qaeda documents obtained after the 2011 raid of Osama bin Laden's Pakistan compound have been presented at the U.S. trial of a suspect charged in a British terrorism plot.
Paris police have made three arrests in the mystery of unmanned drones buzzing over landmarks in the French capital - yet seem no closer to finding those to blame.
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South Korea Overturns Adultery Banby webdesk@voanews.com (VOA News)
A South Korean court has struck down a controversial, decades-old law that bans extra-marital sex. The Constitutional Court on Thursday ruled by a vote of
7-2 against the adultery ban, which was enacted in 1953. "Even if adultery should be condemned as immoral, state power should not intervene in individual private lives," said presiding justice Park Han-Chul. More than 5,400 people have been indicted on adultery charges in the past six years, according to official figures, though jail terms were rarely given out under the law. The adultery ban initially was seen as an attempt to promote gender equality, since married women had few other rights. But the law became increasingly unpopular as South Korean culture rapidly modernized in recent decades. It is the fifth time since 1990 that the Constitutional Court has tried to overturn the ban. All other attempts failed to secure the six votes needed. In a dissenting opinion issued Thursday, justice Ahn Chang-Ho said the law helped protect family values, and warned the move would spark a "wave of debauchery." Following the ruling, shares surged to the daily limit of 15 percent for South Korea's biggest condom maker, Unidus Corp.
7-2 against the adultery ban, which was enacted in 1953. "Even if adultery should be condemned as immoral, state power should not intervene in individual private lives," said presiding justice Park Han-Chul. More than 5,400 people have been indicted on adultery charges in the past six years, according to official figures, though jail terms were rarely given out under the law. The adultery ban initially was seen as an attempt to promote gender equality, since married women had few other rights. But the law became increasingly unpopular as South Korean culture rapidly modernized in recent decades. It is the fifth time since 1990 that the Constitutional Court has tried to overturn the ban. All other attempts failed to secure the six votes needed. In a dissenting opinion issued Thursday, justice Ahn Chang-Ho said the law helped protect family values, and warned the move would spark a "wave of debauchery." Following the ruling, shares surged to the daily limit of 15 percent for South Korea's biggest condom maker, Unidus Corp.
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'Net Neutrality' Coming Closer to Reality for US Internet Sectorby webdesk@voanews.com (VOA News)
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission will vote Thursday on a proposal that would ensure the nation's Internet sector operates as a free and open marketplace. The commissioners are expected to approve a proposal offered by chairman Tom Wheeler that would ban so-called paid prioritization, in which big Internet service providers would charge content providers a higher fee to stream their material over cyberspace faster than smaller customers. Wheeler's proposal, which he announced earlier this month, would regulate the Internet under a section of the decades old Communications Act that regulates the telephone industry like a public utility. In an opinion piece for Wired magazine, Wheeler said his proposal would "preserve the Internet as an open platform for innovation and free expression." President Barack Obama asked the agency back in November to approve the "strongest possible rules" to protect net neutrality and ensure the equal treatment of all Internet traffic by service providers. Internet providers oppose the plan, saying government regulation would discourage investment. Net neutrality had been in place before a federal court ruled against it. The FCC responded with a plan last year that would have allowed such major ISPs as AT&T and Comcast to make deals with companies like Google and Facebook to provide them with faster paths for their content to consumers. But the proposal was strongly opposed by consumer groups and some other Web companies.
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A suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden car into a Turkish embassy car in Kabul, killing one Turkish soldier and wounding at least one other. The car targeted was used by a team protecting NATO's senior civilian official in Afghanistan, Turkish diplomat Ismail Aramaz. The attack was just outside the Iranian embassy, which is next to the Turkish mission. (RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan)
Russian fighter jets will take part in exercises on thwarting a potential attack over the Barents Sea, off the coasts of Russia and NATO member state Norway.
 Зеркало недели |
Литва заявила о перехвате истребителями НАТО российских Ан-22 и Ан-72
Взгляд Штабной офицер литовской армии Донатас Сухоцкис сообщил, что итальянские истребители Typhoon, дислоцированные в литовском Шяуляе, в среду вечером поднимались для сопровождения пролетавших над Балтийским морем транспортных самолетов Ан-22 и Ан-72 ВВС России. Запад убежден, что Кремль хочет напасть на ПрибалтикуНезависимая газета Истребители НАТО были подняты для сопровождения самолетов ВВС РФ над БалтикойИнтерфакс Истребители НАТО перехватили два российских самолета над БалтикойКорреспондент.net Калининградское Независимое Информационное Агентство (КНИА) -Новый Калининград.Ru -Биржевой лидер Все похожие статьи: 26 » |
Reports: British 'Jihadi John' Identifiedby webdesk@voanews.com (VOA News)
Media reports say the masked Islamic State militant who appeared in several videos of hostages being brutally beheaded has been tentatively identified as a British citizen with a degree in computer programming. Reports Thursday quoted friends of Mohammed Emwazi as saying they believe he is the tall, London-accented speaker, dubbed "Jihadi John." The man appears in the videos clad completely in black, with a mask over his face and a holster under his arm. U.S. and British officials have yet to comment on the news reports about his identity. Emwazi is reported to be a Kuwait-born, middle-class Londoner who practiced Islam. Friends and acquaintances say they believe he began to radicalize in the past few years after trips to Africa and the Middle East. He is reported to have been a "person of interest" to British security authorities, although security officials have not confirmed this.
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Even though negotiations are still ongoing and success is far from guaranteed, President Hassan Rohani could come under pressure if his administration succeeds in reaching an enduring agreement that would reign in Tehran's nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief.
British security services identified the man, who has seemed to have beheaded several foreign hostages in Islamic State videos, as Mohammed Emwazi from London.
The Ukrainian military said it was starting to withdraw heavy weapons from the front line in its conflict with Russian-backed rebels on February 26 after reporting that there were no combat fatalities for a second straight 24-hour period.
 Вести.Ru |
Порошенко создает военно-гражданские администрации на востоке Украины
Вести.Ru Президент Украины Петр Порошенко в четверг подписал закон, которым предусматривается создание военно-гражданских администраций в населенных пунктах Донецкой и Луганской областей, передает РИА Новости. Соответствующий закон возвращен в Верховную раду с подписью ... Порошенко подписал закон о военно-гражданских администрацияхКомсомольская Правда в Украине Порошенко подписал закон о создании в Донбассе военно-гражданских администрацийКомсомольская правда Петр Порошенко подписал закон о создании в Донбассе военно-гражданских администрацийКоммерсантъ Интерфах-Запад -РИА Новости -РБК Все похожие статьи: 83 » |
Russia Says Sanctions Threats Aimed To Whip Up Hysteriaby noreply@rferl.org (RFE/RL)
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov lashed out at U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and other Western officials on February 26 over threats to impose further sanctions against Moscow if it does not alter its conduct in Ukraine.
At a news conference in Budapest on February 17, Russian president Vladimir Putin engaged in one of his favorite pastimes: sparring with journalists. One reporter asked if Putin thought the newly brokered ceasefire in Ukraine’s Donbas region would hold. If not, what would Russia do if the United States sent weapons to the Ukrainian army? “Arms supplies are already taking place,” Putin asserted. Then, in a manner more suited to sports commentary than diplomacy, Putin declared that, in any case, the military game was already over in the Donbas. Kyiv (and by implication, the United States) had been beaten, by a rag tag rebel team of miners and farmers. “It is never easy to lose of course and is always a misfortune for the losing side, especially when you lose to people who were yesterday working down in the mines or driving tractors. But life is life, and it has to continue. I don’t think we should get too obsessed about these things,” said Putin. With these flippant remarks, Putin depicted the Ukrainian military defeat as a round in a much bigger tournament where everyone is a bit player in Russia’s competition to call the shots in its neighborhood. Right now Putin thinks he is on a winning streak.
(Recommended: Does Putin Want a War?)
In Ukraine, and in his whistle-stop trip to Hungary, Putin is out to score points for Russia. He is not out to win friends in Ukraine or Europe. Nor is he out to restore a Russian empire, or build a new Moscow-centric geopolitical order. Putin wants respect for Russia, not external obligations. He wants respect in the old-fashioned, hard-power sense of the word. Other countries should proceed with caution if they consider trampling on Russia’s interests. In the neighborhood, now that he essentially has the Crimean city of Yalta back in the fold, Putin wants to turn the clock back seventy years to the old “Yalta agreement” of 1945. He is pushing for a new division of spheres of influence. For Putin, the contours of Russia’s sphere correspond with the historic boundaries of the Russian Empire and the USSR. Here, Moscow’s priorities override all others. Russia—as Putin has stressed in numerous speeches––is the only country in this neighborhood with a unique civilization (rooted in Russian Orthodoxy and language), a long imperial history, a robust economy (based on energy and abundant natural resources) and the capacity to defend its territory and project power abroad. In the international arena, the United States and China are in the same category (although Putin is often scathing about the United States), but few other states have independent standing.
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Putin is a practitioner of realpolitik in its starkest form. In his interactions with regional leaders, Putin has laid out his view that all the states that emerged from the USSR are appendages of Russia. They should pay fealty to Moscow. Other European countries, including the former great powers of France, Germany and the UK, are satellites of the United States, grouped under the umbrella of NATO and the European Union. The unaligned operate in the shadows of two blocs, as Putin put it once to Georgian leaders. The only open question for Putin is who gets to decide the final borders of his new Yalta, Russia or the United States. The future of Ukraine and the Donbas are one set of decision points. Elsewhere, Russia has announced it will lift border controls between Russia and Georgia’s separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia; and Putin is questioning other borders in the Soviet Union’s old stomping grounds in the Baltics and Eastern Europe. He is challenging the European Union’s frontiers by appealing to eastern Orthodox countries like Greece and Cyprus, where politicians and populations feel aggrieved at their treatment by the austere Protestant powers of northern Europe who set the tone for European economic reform.
(Recommended: Putin's Goal for Ukraine)
Redrawing borders in Crimea was Putin’s first major victory. Putin has long expressed his personal sense of humiliation when Russia lost its geopolitical position in Europe with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Twenty-five years later, Putin told the world Russia was no longer in retreat. In his March 18, 2014 speech marking Crimea’s annexation, Putin savored a moment of personal triumph. Russia had taken back Crimea. Now it would chart its own course in Europe and the world. For the historical record, Russia had never accepted the international order created by the United States and its European allies in the 1990s, Putin declared. It had “swallowed the insult” of the loss of territory and population, because the country was then in such a severe condition that it simply could not realistically defend its interests. Today, Putin emphasized, Russia is a very different country.
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Greetings of day to you, illiterate Western scum! I, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, am happy to make speaking to you again here on Wonkette dot com! You have all recovered from watching of decadent movie award show, yes? Very political show this year, with talk of all the black men you have in prison and women you do not pay money to and such. Very embarrassing. At Russian Oscars, Mr. John Legend and Ms. Patricia Arquette would have been dragged out behind theater and been shot. Along with director who did not cut their microphones. Technicians who hooked up microphones. Cameramen who did not pan cameras away. Entire audience that applauded … you get picture.
Very funny, though, to see Mr. Glenn Greenwald and Lindsay Mills, girlfriend of Mr. Edward Snowden, onstage winning Oscar for documentary about him. I hope Lindsay brings statue back home to Mother Russia for Vladimir to hold at next brunch at Edward’s flat. Will be better than Super Bowl ring. Never in wildest dreams did we think Snowden operation would include Oscar win. This is most successful – what is word – “trolling” by our FSB in history.
But what I speak to you today of, Wonkette, is not further dissolution of your culture with ridiculous award shows. No, Vladimir wishes to tell story. Last week he is in office when he hears very funny tale. Let Vladimir set scene:
INT. VLADIMIR OFFICE – KREMLIN
VLADIMIR PUTIN, Russian president, very imposing and handsome man, sits behind large desk. He wears no shirt, his physique impressive like rolling taiga in Gogol story. Truly, he is amazing specimen.
Enter MEDVEDEV, Russian prime minister.
MEDVEDEV: Comrade President!
PUTIN: Dmitry Anatolyevich, what news do you bring me?
MEDVEDEV: Funny story from New York City, Comrade.
PUTIN: Prokhorov finally shot all his players for underperforming?
MEDVEDEV: Funnier. You have heard of this Scott Walker, governor of the former socialist state of Wisconsin?
PUTIN: Yes, yes. A funny little man. Beady eyes.
MEDVEDEV: That is him. He has been very controversial, with destroying state government and labor unions and universities. He now wants to be president to replace Agent Obama.
PUTIN: Damn that Obama. After all we did to plant him in America and get him elected. Are we sure since he cannot repeal Amendment 22, he also cannot just ignore it?
MEDVEDEV: Comrade President, we have been over this…
PUTIN: Yes, fine. Go on about the ferret Walker.
MEDVEDEV: It seems Walker was in New York City for fundraising for election. He is at dinner, speaking to crowd of Republican – what is word – fat cats. He is talking about how Ronald Reagan fought with air-traffic controllers in early 1980s to break union.
PUTIN: Yes yes, I recall. That old drunk Noonan claimed it scared Soviets so much, entire empire later collapsed.
MEDVEDEV: Da, Comrade President. Scott Walker makes same claim! Reagan is his hero. And now Scott Walker has fought unions in his state.
PUTIN: No.
MEDVEDEV: Da again! I quote from racists at National Review: “Walker believes his stance against unions in Wisconsin would be a signal of toughness to Islamic jihadists and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.”
The two men howl with laughter so much they fall to floor and roll around. Both struggle to feet, calming down, look at each other, and begin howling again so much Putin has to lean against desk. And he is usually very strong, virile man.
PUTIN: (wiping tears from eyes) Mother Russia is in for it now, Comrade Prime Minister!
MEDVEDEV: Indeed, Comrade President! Us and the Islamic jihadists!
PUTIN: The mighty Scott Walker faced down all those middle-school algebra teachers and now he will take on mighty Mother Russia as we quiver in our boots! The sun is setting on our empire, Dmitry Anatolyevich!
MEDVEDEV: We cannot allow this to happen, Vladimir Vladimirovich!
PUTIN: Indeed! Convene the Federal Assembly! Call the military!
MEDVEDEV: Why bother when our enemy is the mighty Scott Walker, conqueror of all the public schools in Waukesha! Comrade President, when faced with such a force, you know there is only one thing to do.
The two men stare at each other. Slowly it dawns on Putin.
PUTIN: As you say, Dmitry.
He faces audience, thrusts manly chest forward, raises mighty fist.
PUTIN: Comrade…Fire up the Doomsday Machine!
The two men collapse helplessly in laughter again.
HA HA HA! Do you like story? Scott Walker, scourge of schoolteachers, such lackey of Koch brothers that this happened, is now ready to take on Russian bear in geopolitical wrestling match! This is most Vladimir has laughed since George Bush saw my soul!
Okay, good fun, Wonkette. We will speak again soon. Unless Walker becomes president, in which case entire Russian state will be cowering in bunker. Until then, Molotov!
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· · · ·
Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to take control of Ukraine along the border down to Crimea, and it's beginning to look like that may happen, retired Army Col. Jack Jacobs told CNBC on Monday.
"He'll effectively have total control over that area along the Black Sea, which will make Ukraine a land-locked country," the Medal of Honor recipient and MSNBC military analyst said in an interview with "Power Lunch."
That will give Putin control over the Russian speakers in the area and will give him a warm-water port in the Black Sea, Jacobs pointed out.
Alexei Nikolsky | RIA Novosti | Kremlin | Reuters
Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin.
Despite a cease-fire agreement last week, new attacks have continued in Ukraine. That led Ukraine to delay a promised pullback of heavy weapons from the front line Monday.
Meanwhile, the United States doesn't seem willing to do what it takes to put a stop to Putin, Jacobs said.
"We don't even have support among the Europeans for economic means to really squeeze Putin," he noted.
Jacobs said that's because Europe does not want to break any economic connection with the country.
"They've thrown in the towel already. They're not on our side and we're not going to do anything to irritate Western Europeans, quite frankly."
The European Union is Russia's biggest trading partner. Russian imports from the EU accounted for 123.2 billion euros ($139.6 billion) in 2012, according to the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the European Union.
Last week, the EU announced a new list of sanctions against pro-Russian separatists, Russian military leaders and politicians but experts have voiced doubt about how the measures will impact Russia's economy.
—CNBC's Dina Gusovsky and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
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* Putin's decisions hold the key to Ukraine's future
* Rebels have seized key town, Kiev fears new offensive
* Obama under pressure to give Kiev lethal weapons
MOSCOW, Feb 23 (Reuters) - In Russia, Vladimir Putin likes to portray himself as the saviour of the nation. In Europe and the United States he has come to be seen as a threat to the new world order.
What the Russian president does next in Ukraine is key to the country's future, as well as that of Europe and his own.
Putin looks to have the upper hand at this stage despite Western economic sanctions that are hurting Russia's economy, as Ukraine is rapidly becoming all but ungovernable for its pro-Western leaders, undermining its drive to join mainstream Europe.
With Crimea in Russian hands for almost a year and eastern Ukraine controlled by separatists loyal to him, Putin could allow the rebels to try to seize more territory with what the West says is Russian military support.
Kiev fears a new rebel offensive is imminent on Ukraine's Sea of Azov coast which could open a corridor to Crimea.
Putin's next steps will be determined by what he thinks is best for him, and not necessarily by what Western critics see as expansionist policies or what his admiring electorate sees as the defence of national interests.
"All options are open," said a senior Western diplomat in Moscow. "But ultimately it is all about Putin keeping power and he will do what he has to do to achieve this."
The diplomat, with close knowledge of the negotiations which led to the peace deal reached by the German, French, Ukrainian and Russian leaders in the Belarussian capital Minsk on Feb. 12, saw only a slim chance of a good outcome for Ukraine.
The best possible outcome, he said, was a return to the pre-conflict situation of 2013. Others included a long, intense war, or a "frozen" or low-level conflict in the east that makes Ukraine impossible to govern or tears it apart.
The setbacks to the Minsk deal since the rebels disavowed it by taking a strategic town they said was not covered by the truce have prompted new calls for U.S. President Barack Obama to give Kiev lethal weapons to defend Ukraine.
"Vladimir Putin wants Ukraine not to be part of Europe, and he is succeeding in doing so," Republican Senator John McCain said in a television interview on Sunday.
PUTIN'S MAP
For Putin, who denies sending troops and weapons to east Ukraine, the map of Russia and its "near abroad" is more comforting than a year ago.
Crimea has been reclaimed, and Ukraine's drive to join Europe's mainstream and possibly NATO seems more problematic now that Moscow has shown how far it will go to prevent this. Russian-speaking east Ukraine has not become part of Russia, but is now more in Moscow's sphere of influence than Kiev's.
Russia also dominates South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two breakaway regions of Georgia. Moscow recognised their independence after a five-day war with Tbilisi which Russia won in 2008 and has held sway there ever since.
Moscow signed a border agreement with South Ossetia last week, a move which Tbilisi said moved Russia closer to annexing the territory, and forged a "strategic partnership" agreement with Abkhazia last November.
Further afield, Russian forces have been deployed as "peacekeepers" in the Transdniestria region of Moldova since intervening to back separatists more than 20 years ago.
These may or may not be patterns for Putin to follow although the same Kremlin adviser, Vladislav Surkov, has a role in policy-making for the Georgian regions as well as for Ukraine. Destabilisation of Ukraine, making it impossible to govern and take into NATO, may be preferable to conquering it.
Some Western officials see Putin's ambitions in other parts of the former Soviet Union.
British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said last week Putin posed a "real and present danger" to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Valdis Dombrovskis, vice president of the European Union's executive European Commission, said Russia was redrawing the map of Europe by force.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Russia was "undermining international diplomacy and multilateral institutions - the foundations of our modern global order."
U.S. HEGEMONY
Putin is challenging what he sees as U.S. hegemony and a world order shaped around Washington's interests, where he believes the United States sets certain standards for others but does not adhere to them itself.
But more is at stake for Putin and Russia in Ukraine than in any other former Soviet republic: he says he sees it as one nation with Russia and the cradle of Russian civilisation.
A report released by the EU Committee of Britain's House of Lords signalled the European Union had not grasped this in the buildup to the crisis, identifying a "catastrophic misreading" of the mood in the Kremlin.
Sergei Karaganov, head of Russia's independent Council for Foreign and Defence Policy think-tank, also believes the West got it wrong after the Cold War ended by failing to understand Russia's concerns over Ukraine, and particularly that it might join NATO.
The consequences, he says, include a turn towards a strong leader in Russia and disenchantment with Western-style democracy and values.
But, like Putin, he says policy changes must come from Europe - not from Russia - to reduce the chances of conflict.
His comments underline that, a year since the overthrow of a Moscow-leaning president in Ukraine that culminated in the separatist rebellions in the east, the gulf between Moscow and the West is as dangerously wide as ever.
"After winning the Cold War, the whole of Europe is losing it now," Karaganov wrote in Rossiiskaya Gazeta newspaper last week. "And it is entering the next phase of international relations disunited, again on the verge of confrontation or even a major war." (Reporting by Timothy Heritage; Editing bySonya Hepinstall)
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Like its neighbour, Greece, Cyprus has been critical of western sanctions imposed on Russia for its part in the conflict in Ukraine and Nicosia's latest move to allow the Russian navy access to its ports will no doubt raise eyebrows in Europe.
The rapprochement carries great risks for Cyprus and Russia, experts warned.
"For Cyprus, this might prove to be a dangerous card to play. This will irritate the U.S. no end, and might see a less supportive U.S. approach over the future of northern Cyprus (which is Turkish territory)," Ash warned.
"Cyprus also likely views Russian support as important in allowing development of offshore gas fields—therein the Russian-Egyptian-Cypriot angle is becoming interesting," he added.
Ivory said Russia was taking a risk, too.
"On the face of it, from the Cypriot perspective they need Russian money but I would argue that it's much more nuanced than that. It's unlikely that a Grexit will occur but if it did and there was another Cypriot banking crisis then it would be a disaster for Russia given that its economy is already suffering from the ruble's decline and economic sanctions."
"Russia's economy is still very much interconnected with the global and European economy so any shocks there such as a Lehman-type event elsewhere would have an extremely profound effect on the country."
The top U.S. military commander in Europe has said the situation in Ukraine is "getting worse every day" as government forces struggled against Russian-backed rebels, but he declined to say whether he favored supplying defensive weapons to Kiev.
Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian president, is likely to order the pulling back of heavy weapons under the ceasefire, a source says
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