ISIS- SYRIA-THREAD

[Anthea]

The Associated Press

Officials: Islamic State, al-Qaeda reach accord in Syria
By Deb Riechmann

ISTANBUL — Militant leaders from the Islamic State group and al-Qaeda gathered at a farmhouse in northern Syria last week and agreed to stop fighting each other and work together against their opponents, a high-level Syrian opposition official and a rebel commander have told The Associated Press.

Such an accord could present new difficulties for the United States' strategy against the Islamic State.

While warplanes from a U.S.-led coalition strike militants from the air, the Obama administration has counted on arming "moderate" rebel factions to push them back on the ground. Those rebels, already considered relatively weak and disorganized, would face far stronger opposition if the two heavy-hitting militant groups are working together.

The Islamic State has seized nearly a third of Syria and Iraq with a campaign of brutality and beheadings this year. Al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, known as the Nusra Front, has fought the Islamic State for more than a year to dominate the rebellion against Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Their new agreement, according to the sources in rebel groups opposed to both the Islamic State and Nusra Front, would involve a promise to stop fighting and team up in attacks in some areas of northern Syria.

Cooperation, however, would fall short of unifying the rival groups, and experts think any pact between the two sides easily could unravel.

U.S. intelligence officials have been watching the groups closely and say a full merger is not expected soon — if ever.

A U.S. official with access to intelligence about Syria said the American intelligence community has not seen any indications of a shift in the two groups' strategy but added that he could not rule out tactical deals on the ground. The official insisted on anonymity because he said he was not authorized to speak publicly about the subject.

http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/c ... source=rss

[Anthea]

Syria's opposition warns of upcoming food shortage

Syrian opposition's self-declared government in exile warns of upcoming food shortage

ISTANBUL (AP) -- Syria's Western-backed opposition on Thursday called on international donors to help stave off a food crisis in the country where drought and civil war have caused a dramatic drop in wheat production this year.

The United Nations predicted earlier this year that Syria's wheat harvest could hit a record low of between 1.7 million and 2 million tons, about 50 percent below averages recorded between 2001 and 2011.

"While the bombardments are going on ... there is a very, very severe problem right now upcoming, and no one talks about that," said Abrahim Miro, finance minister of the opposition's so-called interim government, which is based in Turkey. "That problem is that we have severe food crisis coming in the coming few months."

The Western-backed Syrian National Coalition set up the interim government with the goal of governing opposition-held areas in northern Syria. But the idea never gained traction, and the interim administration is largely irrelevant to rebels fighting the government and Islamic extremists inside Syria.

Miro said there were several reasons for the wheat shortage, but blamed it especially on very low production and the fact that much of the wheat is produced in areas held by the Islamic State extremist group and the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad. An estimated 200,000 people have been killed in Syria since protests against Assad spiraled into violence in 2011.

Miro said a grain agency set up by the interim government managed to procure 18,000 tons of wheat from local farmers, but that is not enough. He said it covers just 4 percent to 10 percent of the wheat required to provide bread to 2.5 million Syrians living in Aleppo, Idlib, Daraa and Quneitra provinces.

"We have a shortage of 323,000 tons," Miro said. "We ask our friends to give us wheat in-kind. The ball actually is in their field. We hope they can react as soon as possible."

http://news.yahoo.com/syrias-opposition ... 39210.html

Anthea: Simple solution STOP feeding the savage murdering jihadist groups

[Anthea]

Fox News

ISIS denying food, medicine to hundreds of thousands in Syria, UN report says

GENEVA – The Islamic State group has denied food and medicine to hundreds of thousands of people and hidden its fighters among civilians since a U.S.-led coalition began launching airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, a U.N. panel investigating war crimes in Syria reported Friday.

The panel said Syrians and Iraqis are subjected to an Islamic State "rule of terror" from its calculated use of public brutality and indoctrination to ensure the submission of communities under its control, and that the tactics include repeated violations against children and women.

The conclusions from the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, a four-member panel of independent experts, are based on more than 300 interviews with people who fled or are living in IS-controlled areas and on collected video and photographic evidence.

"Those that fled consistently described being subjected to acts that terrorize and aim to silence the population," said Brazilian diplomat and scholar Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, who chairs the panel. He said whatever "services" the group provides to civilians is "always in the framework of this rule of terror," similar to criminal organizations that use such means to control populations.

Commission member Vitit Muntarbhorn told reporters in Geneva the report is meant to amplify the voices of victims, who describe executions, amputations, public lashings and the use of sexual slavery, child soldiers and widespread indoctrination.

The group has "become synonymous with extreme violence directed against civilians and captured fighters," the report said.

Humanitarian groups have been unable to reach almost 600,000 people in IS-controlled Deir el-Zour and Raqqa provinces, it says, and the group has obstructed the flow of medicine, doctors and nurses into Hassakeh province.

"The group deploys its fighters and materiel in close proximity to civilian areas," the report concludes, adding that since U.S.-led airstrikes began civilians living in the northern Syrian town of Manbij have described IS fighters positioning themselves in local homes and farms.

The 47-nation Human Rights Council in Geneva authorized the commission to investigate all alleged violations of international human rights law since March 2011 in Syria and to identify whenever possible those responsible, so that they can be prosecuted.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/11/14 ... port-says/

[Anthea]

New York Post

US strikes Khorasan militants in Syria

BEIRUT — U.S. aircraft fired missiles at al Qaeda militants in Syria for a third time as part of the international campaign against Islamic extremists, American officials and a Syrian activist said.

American defense officials said the strike took place Thursday and targeted the Khorasan group, which the U.S. says is a special cell within al Qaeda’s Syrian branch — known as the Nusra Front — plotting attacks against Western interests. The officials did not provide any details, and spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.

Syrian activist Asaad Kanjo said the attack occurred near the town of Harem in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province near the Turkish border. He said residents reported seeing a drone fire two missiles that struck a Nusra Front base, killing at least two people.

It was the third time the U.S. has bombed the Nusra Front since the American-led coalition began conducting airstrikes in Syria in September against the Islamic State group and other extremists. The U.S. military says the attacks that have hit the Nusra Front have only targeted the Khorasan group, and not hit the wider Nusra organization.

Inside Syria, however, activists and rebels dismiss the U.S. attempt to distinguish between the Khorasan group and Nusra, saying they are one entity. Many analysts also question the distinction.

The strikes against the Nusra Front have touched off a wave of criticism among many in Syria. While the group is considered a terrorist organization by the United States, among the Syrian opposition it has a degree of support and respect because its fighters are on the front lines alongside other rebels battling President Bashar Assad’s forces in Syria’s 3 ½-year civil war.

Many Syrians also say the strikes against Nusra are helping Assad by weakening one of his strongest opponents.

http://nypost.com/2014/11/14/us-strikes ... -in-syria/

[Anthea]

Aleppo

[Anthea]

BBC News Middle East

UN says Islamic State imposing rule of terror in Syria

The militant group Islamic State is committing war crimes and imposing a "rule of terror" in areas it controls in Syria, a UN report says.

The report, based on more than 300 witness interviews, said IS was using "extreme violence" against civilians.

Men caught smoking have had their fingers amputated, while a female dentist who treated men was publicly beheaded, the report said.

The group has seized large parts of Syria and Iraq since June.

'Forced pregnancies'

The report by UN human rights investigators, entitled Rule of Terror: Living under Isis in Syria, is the first in which the UN closely examines tactics by IS, which is also known as Isis or Isil.

In addition to interviews with men, women and children who had fled or are living in IS-held areas in Syria, the report also examined photographs and videos distributed by the group.

Public executions by the group were common, with bodies frequently left on public display "as a warning to local residents", the report said.

It added that the international community had underestimated the threat the group posed to regional stability, and that the failure to find a political solution to the Syrian crisis had "left a dangerous vacuum" that was filled by the group.

The report also described:

IS fighters blocking supplies of food aid and medicines from reaching local populations
The raping, stoning and torturing of civilians
The sexual enslavement of minority Yazidi women, including forcing them to bear the children of IS fighters
The use of child soldiers, and gathering children for screenings of videos showing mass executions
IS militants basing themselves in civilian houses and farms in response to US-led air strikes

The report was written by the UN's Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic.

The commission was established in August 2011 by the UN's Human Rights Council with a mandate to investigate all alleged human rights violations in Syria.

The report said that other parties in the Syrian conflict, including the Syrian government, were also responsible for human rights violations against civilians and captured fighters.

However, it added that those groups were more likely to hide their activity, while IS "actively promotes abuses and crimes" to try to enforce its authority.

Islamic State's brutal tactics have sparked fear and outrage across the world, including from Muslim groups.

In February, al-Qaeda disavowed IS for its actions in Syria.

A US-led military campaign has been attacking IS targets since August.

In Washington on Thursday, US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel said that "steady and sustainable progress" had been made against IS.

The US-led air strikes had helped in "degrading and destroying Isil's [IS] war fighting capacity and in denying safe haven to its fighters", he said.

Meanwhile, on Friday, Iraqi officials said their forces had driven out IS fighters from the oil refinery town of Baiji, 200km (130 miles) north of Baghdad.

Around 200,000 people live in the town, and the refinery accounts for around a quarter of Iraq's oil production.

The town lies on the main road to Iraq's second-largest city, Mosul, which is under the control of IS.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-30056855

[Anthea]

BBC News Middle East

Will Aleppo finally fall to the Syrian army?
Lyse Doucet



On both sides of its divide, many now predict it is just a matter of time before Syria's second city falls.

And with it goes an icon of the uprising.

"It's a turning point," Adnan Hadad of the Aleppo Media Centre tells me in a Skype call after his most recent trip to eastern Aleppo.

That stretch of land is still held by an array of rebel forces, but Syrian troops are encircling it in a pincer movement to cut supply lines, an attempt to force surrender and defeat.

"It's the only big city controlled by moderate opposition groups and they're trying to keep the revolution going," he explained.

But the momentum in Aleppo now is widely seen to be with Syria's military, reportedly bolstered by fighters from Iran, Lebanon, and Afghanistan.

"Last year, it wasn't clear the regime would fight with all the resources and resolve necessary to keep [Aleppo]," one commentator in the city told me. "But they have."

Rebel ranks are weakened by infighting and distracted by other fronts against the Islamic State (IS) group that now controls large swathes of northern Syria, including a strategic approach to Aleppo.

I was shown a series of maps compiled by an aid agency which illustrate the steady advance of IS in recent months, despite waves of airstrikes by Western and Arab states.

The defeat of more moderate forces here would be a major blow to a Western backed opposition that has long eyed Aleppo as a possible staging post for an advance further south.

Frozen zone?

"The fall of east Aleppo would most likely precipitate a spectacular collapse among rebel ranks and herald their end as an effective actor in the civil conflict," observes Edward Dark, one of the few journalists still in the city, in an article for Al Monitor.

Some believe this could be fertile ground for the UN's new plan for a "freeze zone," which aims to de-escalate violence through local truces and open a space to deliver humanitarian aid.

"The UN plan is controversial," Adnan Hadad explains.

"Some fighters want to avoid a long siege and are ready to accept a freeze, but others want to keep fighting."

The regime, scenting victory, is certain to refuse to stop its advance unless the situation is "frozen" to its clear advantage.

On a visit to Aleppo this week, the military took us to front lines where rebel fighters were recently pushed back.

In al-Arkub, deserted houses show all the ravages of recent battles.

Only a few families remain in the blocks, which are barely habitable.

"We can't afford to live anywhere else," 16-year-old Wael tells me.

He strides past a Syrian military post clutching plastic bags bulging with food that he has bought in an adjacent neighbourhood for family members waiting inside.

"There's been heavy fighting but it's better now," he says.

"Now there are soldiers just outside our door."



On the northern edge of Aleppo, the Sheikh Najjar industrial zone, is also back in government hands.

But it is a desolate landscape of burnt out factories and heaps of twisted metal girders.

A warehouse near the entrance is still painted with the black flag of Jabhat al-Nusra and walls inside are daubed with graffiti.

"It's a suicide mission to travel there," asserts Fares Shehabi, who has just been re-elected as head of Aleppo's Chamber of Industry.

The chamber is now in business from an elegant villa in a leafy neighbourhood in central Aleppo.

Its old headquarters in a graceful mansion was blown to pieces by explosives detonated in one of the many underground tunnels used with devastating effect by the rebels.

Barrel bombs

On the road to the industrial zone, vehicles are diverted through a military barracks to avoid sniper fire.

Shehabi says he found his destroyed factories full of leaflets and other materials from IS fighters who used it as a "propaganda centre".

"We want the army to finish all of them off," he insists.

"The people of Aleppo have had enough."

I ask about the government's use of indiscriminate barrel bombs, which have caused widespread civilian casualties.

"Yes, unfortunately there are some civilian deaths, but these bombs are targeting all the terrorists," he insists as he lists the range of enemies including IS and al-Qaeda.

At Aleppo University, where the city's uprising began with peaceful protests in 2012, student lodgings have been transformed into a neighbourhood for the dispossessed.

It is now home to 40,000 people who have managed to escape more dangerous areas.

Traders have moved in with stalls selling food and cheap clothing, and there are swings and slides and a rusted Ferris wheel for the children.

Dunyia, a young teacher with sparkling eyes and a bright smile, gathers a noisy crowd of young ones around her to sing rousing songs.

But inside the narrow dark corridor of a student hall - in a small room with two bunk beds shared with three sisters, a young brother and her mother - resolve cracks.

"I'm tired, so tired," she sobs.

"I just want everything to go back to what it was. Everything is bad now."

Dwindling energy

Some 400,00 Syrians have escaped to the safer side of the city but about 300,000 are said to be still living in neighbourhoods in rebel held areas.

Food is not scare yet but as a siege takes hold, prices are rising, and people have few means to survive.

"We're urging the government to give us access to all areas," says Matthew Hollingworth, who heads the UN World Food Programme in Syria.

UN agencies, working with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent Society, recently achieved some breakthroughs in crossing front lines, but access is still rare.

West Aleppo is still a place with tree-lined avenues and fine restaurants serving its fabled cuisine.

But at best, there are a few hours of electricity a day - no matter which side you live on.

And there is dwindling energy among its people to continue a fight that has cost far more than anyone in this city could have imagined.

In Syria's dark war, the fate of Aleppo now casts a long shadow.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-30049219

[Anthea]

Yahoo News

Islamic State faces war of attrition in Syria's Kobane
By Sammy Ketz

Beirut (AFP) - The Islamic State group is locked in a war of attrition in the Syrian border town of Kobane, where Kurdish fighters backed by US-led air strikes are mounting fierce resistance.

Two months after IS launched a major offensive to try to capture the strategic prize on the Turkish frontier, the jihadists have failed to defeat the town's Kurdish defenders.

"Several weeks ago, it looked like Kobane would fall, but it is now clear that it will not," said Romain Caillet, a French expert on jihadist movements.

"IS controls more than half of the town but is unable to advance further," he told AFP.

Buoyed by a string of victories in Syria and Iraq, IS launched a major offensive on September 16 to seize Kobane and expand its self-proclaimed Islamic "caliphate".

The jihadists believed they would quickly conquer the small town in northern Syria, which was little known to the outside world before the deadly fighting broke out.

Even the United States and Turkey warned in October that the town was teetering on the brink.

IS took over dozens of villages surrounding Kobane, known in Arabic as Ain al-Arab, besieging the town's Kurdish fighters.

On October 6, the jihadists reached the gates of Kobane, triggering panic among civilians.

Tens of thousands fled across the border into Turkey in fear of the reputed brutality of the IS fighters.

The jihadists, equipped with advanced weaponry seized from Iraqi and Syrian troops, then fought their way into central Kobane.

But their advance has since faltered in the face of fierce Kurdish resistance and US-led bombings on IS targets.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, more than 600 jihadists and nearly 370 Kurdish fighters have died in the battle for Kobane.

The fighting also killed around 24 civilians in Kobane, which used to be home to around 150,000 people, most of them Kurds.

IS "now faces a war of attrition that is costing it more than its Kurdish adversaries", said Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Britain-based Observatory.

Kurdish forces on Wednesday cut off a key supply route used by the jihadists, according to the Observatory, which monitors the war in Syria through a network of local sources.

- 'A trap' -

Kobane has become a major symbol of resistance against IS, which has committed widespread atrocities and imposed its harsh interpretation of sharia law.

The town's capture would be a major prize for the jihadists, giving them unbroken control of a long stretch of Syria's border with Turkey.

But after IS seized dozens of Kurdish villages and broke the defences of Kobane in mid-October, "then it fell into a terrible trap," said Caillet.

Initially the United States said it did not consider Kobane to be strategic, but then "US warplanes went into action" launching strike after strike against IS positions, he said.

Every time IS seized a building, positioning dozens of fighters inside, the US-led coalition warplanes would bombard them, killing a large number of militants.

Caillet said that foreigners, including French, Uzbek and Chechen jihadists, have been battling alongside Syrian combatants.

"There were even five French (jihadists) killed in a single strike," he said.

- 'Urban warfare' -

Abdel Rahman said the two sides had remained deadlocked, even since about 150 heavily armed Iraqi peshmerga forces entered Kobane at the end of October to reinforce their Syrian Kurdish comrades.

Kobane has become the scene of "urban warfare in a town divided into two," he said.

Snipers are playing a key role, with jihadists positioned on rooftops in areas under their control and on the battle frontlines, said Abdel Rahman.

He also doubts the town will fall to IS thanks to the "high morale" of the town's Syrian Kurdish defenders and their peshmerga reinforcements.

IS still controls vast areas around the town, but has deployed most of its fighters to the frontlines, leaving its positions vulnerable to attack.

"This is making the group increasingly nervous," said Abdel Rahman.

The fierce fightback has even sparked hopes among Kurds that IS could be driven out of the town.

"We are witnessing the defeat" of IS in Kobane, said Farhad Shami, a Kurdish journalist inside the battleground town.

http://news.yahoo.com/islamic-state-fac ... 22775.html

[Anthea]

When the Islamic State were happily destroying dozens of villages

on it's way to Kobani

Why did not anyone prevent them from reaching the city?

IS travelled in convoys over open countryside

It's approach to Kobani was seen from many miles away

Kurds did not just wake up one morning to discover IS in it's midst

If we in Roj Bash Kurdistan knew what was happening

Kurds in the Kobani Canton surely were aware

Why was nothing done by anyone

to prevent the attack on Kobani?

[Anthea]

Fox News

Archaeologists dig at site of ancient city near Islamic State-controlled territory in Syria

GAZIANTEP, Turkey – Archaeology and war don't usually mix, yet that's been the case for years at Karkemish, an ancient city on the Turkey-Syria border where an excavation team is boasting of its latest treasures found just meters (yards) from Islamic State-controlled territory.

Karkemish, dating back more than 5,000 years, is close to the Syrian city of Jarablous, which now flies the black banner of the Islamic extremist group fighting in the Syrian conflict.

Nicolo Marchetti, a University of Bologna professor and team leader, says the site is secured by Turkish soldiers and tanks.

The importance of Karkemish has been long known to scholars because of references in ancient texts.

Excavation work was halted by World War I and again by hostilities between Turkish nationalists and French colonizers from Syria.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/11/15 ... territory/

[Anthea]

Fox News

Western-backed Syrian rebels hemorrhaging on multiple fronts: assassinations, surrender

BEIRUT – During a key battle in the rugged mountains of a northern province earlier this month, U.S.-backed Syrian rebels collapsed before an assault by al-Qaida fighters. Some surrendered their weapons. Others outright defected to the militants.

A detailed account of the battle in Idlib, from a series of interviews with opposition activists by The Associated Press, underscores how the moderate rebels that Washington is trying to boost to fight the Islamic State group are instead hemorrhaging on multiple fronts.

They face an escalated assault by Islamic extremists, which activists say are increasingly working together to eliminate them. At the same time, a string of assassinations has targeted some of their most powerful commanders.

"This is the end of the Free Syrian Army," said Alaa al-Deen, an opposition activist in Idlib, referring to Western-backed rebel groups. "It's the beginning of an Islamic emirate."

Thousands of rebels have died fighting the Islamic State group this year, a war that has overshadowed and undermined the struggle to topple President Bashar Assad. Now the Nusra Front — al-Qaida's branch in Syria, which previously was also fighting against the Islamic State group — has turned on more moderate factions. Two opposition figures told AP this week that Nusra Front and the Islamic State group have gone so far as to agree to work together against their opponents, though so far their forces have not been seen together on the ground.

Nusra's pivot in part is in response to U.S. airstrikes, which have targeted the al-Qaida branch in addition to Islamic State militants, several activists said. Nusra has been hit three times in strikes the U.S. has said were aimed at a secret cell of high-ranking al-Qaida militants plotting attacks against the West. The strikes have ignited tensions between Western-backed groups and more extreme factions, who feel that that the Americans are hitting everyone except Assad's forces.

In the fighting earlier this month, the Nusra Front drove U.S.-backed factions almost completely out of the northwestern province of Idlib, where they had been the predominant force. During the battles, two of the strongest Western-backed forces — the Hazm Movement and the Syrian Revolutionaries Front — were defeated and several other allied groups simply vanished.

The Syrian Revolutionary Front, headed by commander Jamal Maarouf, oversaw groups ranging from village-based militias to factions with hundreds of men. Around 10,000 to 20,000 fighters are estimated by activists to have been under his command.

The fighting began when a group of men in the Idlib village of Bara defected from a faction loyal to Maarouf and joined Ahrar al-Sham, an ultraconservative Islamist force.

Maarouf first sent his nephew to Bara to retrieve the men's weapons but that mission failed. Then Maarouf ordered his fighters to surround and shell Bara, according to local journalist Muayad Zurayk, activists Mohammed al-Sayid and Alaa al-Deen, and another two activists from nearby Aleppo province.

Ahrar al-Sham asked the Nusra Front for help, and the conflict quickly spread. Other Islamist factions, Jund al-Aqsa and Suqour al-Sham, took Nusra's side.

The Hazm Movement got involved when its fighters at a checkpoint halted Nusra militants trying to reach the battle. The Nusra fighters chased the Hazm men back to their stronghold, the nearby town of Khan Sunbul, which the extremists then overran. At least 65 Hazm fighters defected to the al-Qaida branch, the activists and a high-level Syrian opposition official based in Istanbul told AP.

Within days, Maarouf's men and Hazm fighters were routed from most of the province, most fleeing into neighboring Aleppo. Around seven other allied factions melted away, according to three activists.

The activists identified the groups as Western-backed because they possess TOW anti-tank missiles, which they said only U.S.-supported groups have.

Washington announced this summer that it intends to arm Syrian moderates to fight the Islamic State group, but it is awaiting congressional approval. The U.S. has only acknowledged giving non-lethal aid to rebels, but the CIA has said it is running a training program in Jordan, and officials have said third parties have provided U.S.-made weapons to factions vetted by Washington.

"There was hope that they might prove to be an effective force in the crackdown on the al-Qaida presence in Syria — but that has been dashed," said Aymenn al-Tamimi, an expert on rebel groups. "They are not strong enough."

Western-backed groups are also being eroded in other ways. There has been a series of mysterious slayings targeting powerful rebel leaders fighting the Islamic State group.

The extremist group — and to a lesser extent the Nusra Front — are likely behind most of the killings, but Assad's government has also increased pressure on moderate rebels since the start of the U.S.-led air campaign, said Torbjorn Soltvedt, Mideast analyst at risk advisory firm Maplecroft.

Among the recent apparent targeted killings:

— A suicide attack killed more than two dozen officials from the ultraconservative Ahrar al-Sham group, including its leader Hassan Aboud, while they were holding a meeting in Idlib province.

— A government airstrike on the northern town of Deir Sunbul, believed to be targeting Maarouf, killed his daughter.

— A car bombing in a Damascus suburb wounded Ahmad Taha, the leader of the Umma Army, and killed his son and nephew.

— A shooting in another Damascus suburb killed the commander of Fatah al-Sham, Fahd Mahmoud al-Kurdi.

— A bombing in Aleppo killed Omar Moussa, a Hazm Movement commander.

On Oct. 23, a gunman shot dead Ayman Abdul-Rahman, commander of the Liwa Tawheed group, inside an Internet cafe in the northern town of Hreitan, then walked out to a waiting getaway car, said Ibrahim Saeed, an Aleppo activist. Abdul-Rahman was one of the first commanders in the rebel Free Syrian Army to fight against the Islamic State group.

Now many rebel commanders are laying low, Saeed said. "We don't know where they live or where they go or where they sleep."

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/11/15 ... sinations/

[Anthea]

ROJAVA : SYRIA'S SECRET REVOLUTION

Published on 14 Nov 2014

Is the Middle East’s newest country a territory called “Rojava”? Out of the chaos of Syria’s civil war, mainly Kurdish leftists have forged an egalitarian, multi-ethnic mini-state run on communal lines. But with ISIS Jihadists attacking them at every opportunity — especially around the beleaguered city of Kobane, how long can this idealistic social experiment last? From the frontlines to the refugee camps, Our World has gained exclusive access to Rojava, and a revealing snapshot of Syria’s secret revolution.

phpBB [video]

[Anthea]

Yahoo News

Lebanon's Druze, unhappily, are being dragged into Syria's war

The minority Druze are split over whom to support in Syria - with some community leaders backing Assad as the best chance for their own survival. But others, like Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, disagree.
By Nicholas Blanford

Deadly clashes pitting Syrian Sunni jihadis against Druze militiamen loyal to President Bashar al-Assad has exposed divisions within this small esoteric community that spans the Syria-Lebanon border.

The bloody wars roiling the Middle East from Lebanon to Iraq’s border with Iran are essentially political struggles for power and control. But the two main protagonists are adherents of the Sunni and Shiite branches of Islam. That leaves the region’s religious minorities, like the Druze who only number around one million in the Middle East, facing the agonizing – and potentially existential – decision of who to support in order to ensure communal survival. But siding with one risks turning the other into an enemy.

“We want to be left alone, but what do we do if neither side wants to leave us alone?” asks Kamal Naji, the mukhtar, or mayor, of Rashaya, a picturesque Druze town of old red-tiled stone houses nestled at the foot of the western slopes of Mount Hermon. The Lebanon-Syria border bisects Mount Hermon's summit, which at 9,200 feet is already dusted with the first of the winter snows.

On the eastern, Syrian, side of Mount Hermon, recent clashes near the village of Arneh between Druze fighters serving with the pro-Assad National Defense Force militia and Jabhat al-Nusra, Syria’s Al-Qaeda franchise, left more than two dozen Druze dead, a high number for this close-knit community.

According to residents of Rashaya and leading Druze figures in Lebanon, the fighting was provoked by the Syrian army. The army launched an attack on Jabhat al-Nusra which controls the village of Beit Jinn, four miles to the south of Arneh. But when the fighting began the Syrian troops withdrew, leaving the Druze militiamen to face the Sunni militants.

The move was seen as a cynical attempt to stoke Sunni-Druze hostilities to force the latter group to remain loyal to the Assad regime. It is a suspected ploy that Walid Jumblatt, the paramount leader of Lebanon’s Druze and an arch critic of Mr Assad, hopes will backfire on Damascus.

FEAR AND SECTARIANISM

“I have been trying to convince the Druze to reconcile with their natural environment [in Syria] which is Sunni,” says Mr. Jumblatt. “They [the Druze of Arneh] were used as part of this Machiavellian propaganda put out by the regime, this so-called alliance of minorities [against the majority Sunnis]. Hopefully, they will see what the regime is trying to do to them and will reject it.”

Mr Jumblatt inherited the mantle of Druze leader in 1977 after his father, Kamal, was assassinated, purportedly on the orders of Mr. Assad’s father and predecessor as president, Hafez al-Assad. Since then, Jumblatt has become a master of navigating the treacherous waters of sectarian minority politics, earning the nickname “the weathervane” for his ability to make and break alliances to suit the interests of his community, which forms about seven percent of Lebanon’s 4.5 million population. Today, he maintains a typically paradoxical stance of overt criticism of the Assad regime while enjoying warm ties with Lebanon’s powerful Shiite group Hezbollah, a key ally of Damascus.

The backbone of the Assad regime is composed of Alawites, members of a Shiite splinter sect. Other minorities in Syria, the Christians, Druze, Shiites and some Kurds, have generally sided with the Assad regime out of fear of the Sunni majority.

“Alawites to the grave and the Christians to Beirut,” was a battle cry of some extremist Sunnis in the early stages of the conflict in 2011, a sentiment that fueled the worries of Syria’s minorities of massacres and expulsion.

Those fears have hardened with the emergence in the past two years of radical Sunni jihadi groups, especially the Islamic State, which has carved out a fiefdom across parts of Syria and Iraq and controls it with an iron fist. In northern Iraq, IS has carried out large-scale massacres of Shiites and persecution campaigns against a kaleidoscope of minorities inhabiting the area, including Yazidis, Shabaks, Assyrians and Turkmens.

“The Yazidis are leaving Iraq… the Christians in Iraq are already finished, the Christians in Syria will leave too,” says Jumblatt. “The only Christians remaining in the region will be in Lebanon and the Copts [of Egypt]…. We are seeing the end of the post First World War Arab states and it will last many years.”

SUPPORT FOR SYRIA

But some Lebanese Druze disagree with Jumblatt’s call on Syria’s Druze to abandon the Assad regime, believing that minorities must unite in the face of the extremists of the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra.

“The situation is very serious, dangerous and sensitive,” says Faisal Daoud, a former lawmaker, head of a pro-Syrian political faction and resident of Rashaya.

He says that the fighting in Arneh was the result of the village coming under attack from Jabhat al-Nusra.

“As a minority we have to defend our villages when they [Sunni extremists] commit crimes [against us]… Walid Jumblatt has no choice but to join us when we face an existential threat,” Mr. Daoud says.

The deadly clashes in Arneh have cast a pall over the Druze villages set among the steep stony hills of the Rashaya district. There is a lingering fear that Jabhat al-Nusra could infiltrate across Mount Hermon to attack Lebanese Druze villages or attempt to build a stronghold on the Lebanese side of the border, replicating a situation found in Lebanon’s northern Bekaa Valley, where several hundred Sunni militants are holed up along the mountainous frontier.

Those fears are probably unfounded: Mount Hermon is an imposing physical obstacle for Syria-based militants to traverse, especially given the lack of road-worthy routes across the mountain. Furthermore, Sunnis living in the area, who are sympathetic to the Syrian opposition, have warned against any major rebel incursion into Lebanon.

Still, the Druze are closely watching the rugged border.

“We are not sleeping comfortably at night. We are keeping an eye on everything,” says a middle-aged Druze sheikh, one of two dressed in traditional black baggy trousers and white knitted skullcaps sitting on a wall enjoying the morning sun. “If a bird crosses the border, we will know about it here.”

http://news.yahoo.com/lebanons-druze-un ... 23387.html

[Anthea]

The Independent

War with Isis: Islamic militants have army of 200,000, claims senior Kurdish leader

Exclusive: CIA has hugely underestimated the number of jihadis, who now rule an area the size of Britain
Patrick Cockburn

The Islamic State (Isis) has recruited an army hundreds of thousands strong, far larger than previous estimates by the CIA, according to a senior Kurdish leader. He said the ability of Isis to attack on many widely separated fronts in Iraq and Syria at the same time shows that the number of militant fighters is at least 200,000, seven or eight times bigger than foreign in intelligence estimates of up to 31,500 men.

Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of the Kurdish President Massoud Barzani said in an exclusive interview with The Independent on Sunday that "I am talking about hundreds of thousands of fighters because they are able to mobilise Arab young men in the territory they have taken."

He estimates that Isis rules a third of Iraq and a third of Syria with a population of between 10 and 12 million living in an area of 250,000 square kilometres, the same size as Great Britain. This gives the jihadis a large pool of potential recruits.

Proof that Isis has created a large field army at great speed is that it has been launching attacks against the Kurds in northern Iraq and the Iraqi army close to Baghdad at the same time as it is fighting in Syria. "They are fighting in Kobani," said Mr Hussein. "In Kurdistan last month they were attacking in seven different places as well as in Ramadi [capital of Anbar province west of Baghdad] and Jalawla [an Arab-Kurdish town close to Iranian border]. It is impossible to talk of 20,000 men or so."

The high figure for Isis's combat strength is important because it underlines how difficult it will be eliminate Isis even with US air strikes. In September, the CIA produced an estimate of Isis numbers which calculated that the movement had between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters. The underestimate of the size of the force that Isis can deploy may explain why the US and other foreign governments have been repeatedly caught by surprise over the past five months as IS inflicted successive defeats on the Iraqi army, Syrian army, Syrian rebels and Kurdish peshmerga.

The US and its allies are beginning to take on board the obstacles to fulfilling President Obama's pledge to degrade and destroy Isis. General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, arrived in Baghdad on Friday in a surprise visit. He said he wanted "to get a sense from our side about how our contribution is going". Earlier in the week, he told Congress that to defeat Isis an efficient army of 80,000 men would be necessary. Few in Iraq believe that the regular army is up to the task, despite winning a success last week by retaking the refinery town of Baiji and lifting the siege of the refinery, the largest in Iraq.

In a wide-ranging interview, Mr Hussein spelled out the new balance of power in Iraq in the wake of the Islamic militants' summer offensive and the military re-engagement of the US. The Kurdistan Regional Government now faces Isis units along a 650-mile front line cutting across northern Iraq between Iran and Syria. Mr Hussein said that the US air intervention had enabled the Kurds to hold out when the unexpected Isis assault in August defeated the peshmerga and came close to capturing the Kurdish capital Irbil: "They were fighting with a strategy of fear that affected the morale of everybody, including the peshmerga."

As well as terrifying its opponents by publicising its own atrocities, Isis had developed an effective cocktail of tactics that includes suicide bombers, mines, snipers and use of US equipment captured from the Iraqi army such as Humvees, artillery and tanks. To combat them, Mr Hussein says the Kurds need Apache helicopters and heavy weapons such as tanks and artillery.

The Kurdish leaders are now much more relaxed about Isis because they have a US guarantee of their security. The grim experience of the US in seeing the collapse of the government and army in Baghdad, which the Americans had fostered at vast expense, also works in favour of the Kurds.

Mr Hussein does not like to talk about it today, but the Kurdistan Regional Government got a nasty surprise in August when it asked the Turkish government for help in stopping Isis only to be told Ankara planned no immediate assistance. It was only then that the Kurds turned to Iran and the US, both of which immediately acted to prevent a complete victory by the Islamic militants. Iran sent some officers, military units and artillery while the US started air strikes on 8 August.

Mr Hussein speculates that the CIA and US intelligence agencies may only have been speaking about "core" fighters in claiming that the jihadis had at most 31,500 men under arms. But the fighting over the past five months has shown that Isis has become a formidable military force. "We are talking about a state that has a military and ideological basis," said Mr Hussein, "so that means they want everyone to learn how to use a rifle, but they also want everybody to have training in their ideology, in other words brainwashing."

A sign of the military professionalism of Isis is the speed with which they learned to use captured US tanks, artillery and other heavy equipment captured after the fall of Mosul on 10 June. The same thing happened in Syria where Isis captured Russian-made arms which it rapidly started using. The most likely explanation for this is that IS's ranks contain many former Iraqi and Syrian soldiers whose skills Isis has identified. Mr Hussein says that the peshmerga has been impressed during the fighting by Isis's training and discipline.

"They will fight until death, and are dangerous because they are so well-trained," said Mr Hussein. "For instance, they have the best snipers, but to be a good sniper you need not only training on how to shoot, but discipline in staying put for up to five hours so you can hit your target."

There is supporting evidence for Mr Hussein's high estimate for Isis numbers. A study by the National Security Adviser's office in Baghdad before the Isis offensive showed that, when 100 jihadis entered a district, they would soon recruit between five and 10 times their original number. There are reports of many young men volunteering to fight for Isis when they were in the full flood of success in the summer. This enthusiasm may have ebbed since the US started air strikes and the Isis run of victories ended with their failure to capture Kobani in northern Syria despite a long siege.

In an impoverished region with few jobs, Isis pay of $400 (£250) a month is also attractive. Moreover, Mr Hussein says that in the places they have conquered Isis is remodelling society in its own image, aiming to educate people into accepting Isis ideology.

The Kurds have recovered their military self-confidence in the knowledge that they are backed by the US and Iran. The peshmerga have taken back some towns lost in August, notably Zumar close to the Syrian border, but not Tal Afar and Sinjar where 8,500 Yazidis are still besieged on their mountain top. But there are limits to how far the Kurds are willing to advance even if they succeed in doing so. Mr Hussein says that the Kurds can help an Iraqi army, supposing a non-sectarian one is created, but "the Kurds cannot liberate the Sunni Arab areas".

This is the great problem facing a counter offensive against Isis by Baghdad or the Kurds: it will be seen by the five or six million Sunni Arabs in Iraq as directed against their whole community. Hitherto, the US has been hoping to repeat its success between 2006 and 2008 in turning many Sunni against al-Qaeda in Iraq. Mr Hussein ticks off the reasons why repeating this will be very difficult: the Americans then had 150,000 soldiers in Iraq to back up anti-al-Qaeda tribal leaders. Isis will savagely punish anybody who opposes it. "We have seen what happened in Anbar to the Albu Nimr tribe [that rose up against Isis]. They stood bravely against the terrorist but 500 were killed. It was a disaster."

Overall, Mr Hussein says he does not see any convincing sign of resistance from the Sunni Arabs. Many of them may be unhappy, particularly in Mosul, but this is not translating into effective opposition. Nor is it clear what outside force could organise resistance. The Iraqi army might be acceptable in Sunni areas but only if it is reconstituted so that is not dominated by the Shia.

At the moment, the Kurds see little sign of its presence. They have been asking for regular troops to defend the Mosul Dam on the Euphrates so they can use up to 3,000 peshmerga stationed there, but no Iraqi troops have turned up. "Those who are now defending Baghdad are the army of the [Shia] parties. To re-establish a professional army needs time."

Mr Hussein did not say so, but it may be too late to establish a competent cross-confessional regular army in Iraq. The counter-offensive by Baghdad is led by the three main Shia militias which have almost the same ideological fervour and sectarian hatred as Isis. Any advance on the battlefield leads to the population deemed loyal to the losing side taking flight so the whole of northern Iraq has become a land of refugees.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 63418.html

[Anthea]

BBC News Middle East

Syria's refugees yearning for the lost 'old life'
By Fergal Keane

Since the conflict began I have followed the stories of refugees from Syria's war. I am left with the images of haunted people.

There was the mother in Arsal, Lebanon, who described how she was nearly forced to strangle her own child to stop it betraying the presence of a group of terrified refugees to President Assad's militia.

Now in Lebanon, and cradling her child, she was tormented with guilt because of what had nearly happened.

Others had intervened to help her refuse the demand of the man telling her to kill the child. As we spoke flurries of snow whipped through the window into the bare concrete room where she lived with her husband and another refugee family.

There was the conscripted soldier who had deserted the Syrian army and tried to flee by sea to Europe from the Turkish port of Izmir. The crossing ended in disaster with people drowning all around him.

He remembered their hands clutching at him as he struggled to swim to safety. He was a classical guitar player and dreamed of teaching in the west. But he had lost his guitar, a man without music stranded on the edge of Europe.


Um Attallah, who was a refugee at the Zaatari camp in Jordan

There was the old woman, aged 105, I met sitting on the flinty ground in the vast refugee camp at Zaatari in Jordan.

Born when mighty empires ruled the Middle East Um Atallah told me she simply wanted to die now, though she still kept the key to her home. A few weeks later she passed away.

And there was the young gay man I met in Beirut who had endured brutal rape in one of Assad's torture chambers.

Slight, soft-spoken he had been an activist for human rights in Damascus. His anguished description of how the secret policemen had violated his body was among the most harrowing accounts of the Syrian conflict I have heard.

I have met refugees in wind blasted camps in Turkey, in cold concrete rooms on the Lebanese border, in the sprawling camps of Jordan, in half-built houses in Beirut, among the thousands camped out in fields around Calais seeking a passage to Britain.

They are the people of the "old life." It is the phrase I have heard most commonly among the dispossessed and the lost. The "old life" with its home, work, school, orchard, streams, favourite café, familiar streets, neighbourly chat, seasonal rituals.

Searching for work

The countries bordering Syria have taken the brunt of the crisis by hosting millions of refugees. The rest of the world has offered to resettle 50,000 Syrians - more than half of those in Germany.

So far only 7,000 have been able to take advantage of the scheme - an extraordinarily low figure which critics say is symptomatic of the poor international response to the Syrian crisis.

Among the world powers Britain and France - who have the strongest colonial links to the region - are offering to resettle mere hundreds of Syrians.

Yahya Khedr is one of those who have fled to France. His family was among more than 100 people I met in a Parisian park where they were waiting for help from the French authorities.

Yahya was a prosperous businessman who was working in Europe when the war broke out. He rushed back to Syria and brought his family to safety after a long journey over desert and sea to Europe.

"I will never get the old life back," he told me when I first met him last March.

I accompanied his family that night as they searched for a place to stay. Eventually, in the early hours, a sympathetic Arab businessman offered to pay for a room in a budget hotel.

Yahya's eight months' pregnant wife, Amoun, sat on the edge of the bed staring into the distance, exhausted by the endless movement.

With anti-immigrant feeling on the rise across much of Europe it is not a good time to be arriving as a refugee from Syria.

Eleonore Morel, Director of The Primo Levi Foundation, a French NGO that helps torture victims, points to the struggle of heads of families to find work during harsh economic times.

"The men can end up feeling useless," she said, "because they are used to being the providers and to protecting their families."

Far from the populist stereotype of migrants and refugees the Syrians I have met are anxious to support themselves and avoid dependence on the state or anybody else.

'I am in chains'

I met Yahya again last week. He was a depressed figure. For the last eight months the family have been living in the eastern border town of Besancon.

The French government provided accommodation while the family's asylum request was considered.

The good news was that his wife Amoun had been granted asylum and the couple's baby was a French citizen by birth. But because Yahya was working in Europe when war erupted his own claim was taking longer.

Until asylum is granted he is not allowed to work. "I feel torn down within. I cannot provide for my children. I'm in chains," he told me, "I'm really scared of the future. I'm afraid of everything."

Amoun Khedr had already given up mentally on the idea of staying in Europe. Somehow a way would be found to go home.

Cradling her baby son, Ismail, she said: "I hope he will be a good omen. That he will bring us safety so we can go home and start our lives again."

For her the "old life" was still a dream to cling to, a buttress against the misery of exile.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-30082428