I/IV. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/18/us-sanctions-isis-members-mosul-dam-strikes US places sanctions on senior Isis member as Iraq bombing campaign intensifies
Ban from financial dealings comes as the US launched air strikes against Isis positions around the Mosul Dam - Spencer Ackerman <http://www.theguardian.com/profile/spencerackerman> in New York - theguardian.com <http://www.theguardian.com/>, Monday 18 August 2014 19.44 BST Peshmerga fighters head to the Mosul dam that they 'recaptured' from Islamic State jihadists on August 17, 2014 near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. Photograph: Ahmad al-Rubaye /AFP/Getty The US State Department banned a senior member of the Islamic State (Isis) on Monday as the United States sharply intensified its new bombing campaign in Iraq. The designation came as US fighter jets, bombers and drones on Monday launched 15 strikes against Isis positions around one of Iraq's most important pieces of infrastructure, a third day of support for a difficult effort by Iraqi forces to retake the Mosul Dam that has doubled the lethal US strike total. Now banned from any financial dealings in the United States or with people in the United States is the group's spokesman, Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, a Syrian whose given name is Taha Sobhi Falaha. Also banned was Said Arif, an Algerian member of the rival Nusra Front who escaped house arrest in France and was linked to a plot to bomb the Eiffel Tower. The designations, which followed sanctions by the United Nations security council <https://news.yahoo.com/u-n-security-council-blacklists-islamist-militants-iraq-191259667.html> on the two Isis and Nusra members and four others, do not explicitly authorize military targeting of the banned Isis members. But they come as the US military sharply stepped up its air attacks on Isis positions by a critical dam, a departure by degree from the previous rounds of US air strikes. The US continued to provide air cover for a third day for a force of Kurdish fighters and Iraqi security forces <http://www.theguardian.com/world/middle-east-live/live/2014/aug/18/iraq-crisis-uk-mission-could-last-for-months-live-updates#block-53f1fb6ae4b038fb92169cad> as they attempted to wrest the Mosul Dam away from Isis. Fighting was said to proceed along a 30-mile front, and both sides traded competing claims on Monday of control of the dam. The US Central Command announced that a mix of manned and unmanned warplanes on Monday destroyed "nine [Isis] fighting positions", a checkpoint, an anti-aircraft gun mounted on a truck, an "emplacement belt" for homemade bombs, and at least seven Isis vehicles. Damage to the Mosul Dam could result in massive flooding across central Iraq and down to Baghdad. Like the previous waves of air strikes launched by the US over the past 10 days, President Barack Obama, in a letter to Congress <http://m.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/08/17/letter-president-war-powers-resolution-regarding-iraq> on Sunday, justified air strikes supporting the recapture of the dam on protection of US personnel <http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/08/force-protection-rationale-us-airstrikes-irbil-obama-isis>, as the hundreds of special-operations "advisers" and diplomats would be potentially imperiled by the flooding. But last week's strikes were aimed at breaking Isis's siege of Yazidi and other civilians atop Mount Sinjar and preventing Isis from entering Iraqi Kurdistan. By expanding the map of US airstrikes into Nineveh Province, traditionally under the control of Baghdad, Obama moved the US closer into outright war against the Islamist army that has overrun significant parts of Iraq and Syria. The numbers indicate the extent of the shift in approach. Over the past 10 days, US warplanes have launched 68 airstrikes. Central Command said on Monday that 35 of them have come "in support of Iraqi forces near the Mosul Dam" - meaning that just over half the total strikes have come since Saturday night. The State Department denied that striking Isis at the Mosul Dam represented mission creep. "Anything that threatens our people or facilities is fair game under the guidelines the president announced," said spokeswoman Marie Harf. Those attacks, authorized by Obama on Friday, according to the White House letter, follow a decision by Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki not to contest the elevation of his replacement <http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/14/iraqi-prime-minister-maliki-step-aside-abadi>, the US-backed Haider al-Abadi. For two months, Obama indicated that US military support to Baghdad would increase once Maliki, whose thorough alienation of Iraqi Sunnis contributed to Isis's rise, was out of the picture. Many Arab Iraqis had questioned Obama's decision to attack Isis on behalf of Iraq's ethnic minorities and not to protect their own interests. Obama said in his letter to Congress that the strikes on Isis at the dam would be "limited in their scope and duration". The State Department described Adnani, the Isis spokesman, as among "the first foreign fighters to oppose Coalition forces in Iraq." It said Arif had fled house arrest in France last year to join an Isis rival in Syria, the al-Qaida-aligned Nusra Front, after Arif had been convicted of involvement in a 2006 plot to assault French malls, police stations and the Eiffel Tower. II/IV. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/08/group-says-beheads-us-journalist-201481921364705346.html IS group claims beheading US journalist Islamic State group says it acted in revenge for US strikes against it and threatens to kill another US journalist. Last updated: 20 Aug 2014 05:22 James Foley, 41, was contributing videos to the AFP news agency for the media company GlobalPost [AP] The Islamic State group has released a video purportedly showing one of its fighters beheading US journalist James Foley, who had gone missing in Syria nearly two years ago. The video, titled "A Message To America," was posted on social media sites on Tuesday, suggesting that it was an act of revenge for US air strikes against the group's fighters in Iraq. Foley's mother, Diane Foley, released a statement through a Twitter account <https://twitter.com/findjamesfoley/status/501902507258302465> the family had used to campaign in which she confirmed his death and said he died "trying to expose the world to the suffering" of the Syrian people. "We implore the kidnappers to spare the lives of the remaining hostages. Like Jim, they are innocents. They have no control over American government policy in Iraq, Syria or anywhere in the world," the statement read. "We thank Jim for all the joy he gave us. He was an extraordinary son, brother, journalist and person. Please respect our privacy in the days ahead as we mourn and cherish Jim." The group claimed in the video to be holding another US journalist and said his life depended on US President Barack Obama's next move. "The life of this American citizen, Obama, depends on your next decision," said a masked man in the video posted on social media sites, speaking English with a British accent as he held a prisoner the video named as Steven Sotloff. The video could not immediately be verified. Foley, 41, was contributing videos to the AFP news agency for the media company GlobalPost before he was kidnapped on November 22, 2012 by unidentified gunmen. "We have seen a video that purports to be the murder of US citizen James Foley by ISIL. The intelligence community is working as quickly as possible to determine its authenticity," Caitlin Hayden, a spokesperson for the US National Security Council, said on Wednesday. "If genuine, we are appalled by the brutal murder of an innocent American journalist and we express our deepest condolences to his family and friends. We will provide more information when it is available." * New recruits * The IS has an army of more than 50,000 fighters in Syria, and recruited 6,000 people in the last month, a monitoring group said on Tuesday. Rami Abdel Rahman, the director of the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said that the group's recruitment push was gathering pace every month. Abdel Rahman said the new recruits in Syria included more than 1,000 foreign fighters from Chechnya, China, Europe and Arab countries. He said most had entered Syria from Turkey. The IS, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), grew out of the US-led war in Iraq, and entered the civil war in Syria last year. It has recently taken over vast areas of neighbouring Iraq and its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, earlier this year declared himself the caliph of territory captured on both sides of the border. III/IV. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28839343 18 August 2014 Last updated at 15:38 Iraq crisis: Refugee journeys from Mount Sinjar Pictures from a BBC reporting trip from northern Iraq into Syria, as Iraqi refugees fled Mount Sinjar after days of fighting. Snipped. IV. [A slightly dated interview, taken before the US launching air strikes against ISIS targets in a big way, particularly in coordination with the ground offensives by the Kurdish Army, and the recalcitrant al-Maliki eventually abandoning the chair of the Iraqi Prime Minister. It projected evidently too bright a prospect for the ISIS, but nevertheless manages to highlight some vital facts and provide some valuable insights.] A lasting presence for IS in Iraq and Syria: interview with Romain Caillet Romain Caillet and Christelle Gence 13 August 2014 https://www.opendemocracy.net/arab-awakening/romain-caillet-christelle-gence/lasting-presence-for-is-in-iraq-and-syria-interview-w On 29 June, after the spectacular takeover of Mosul and other Iraqi cities, the Islamic State (IS) declared a caliphate in Iraq and Syria. How can the sudden rise to power of IS be explained? What is the future of the caliphate, and of the region as a whole? Romain Caillet provides an assessment. Interview. Iraqis in flight from their homes in Mosul, July 2014 Iraqis in flight from their homes in Mosul, July 2014. Joseph Galanakis/Demotix. All rights reserved. Christelle Gence conducted the following interview with Romain Caillet in French, originally published on 15 July 2014 by SaphirNews under the title L'Etat islamique va s'installer durablement en Iraq et en Syrie. Due to the dynamic nature of the situation in Iraq, the author later added some paragraphs in August. Saphirnews: How do you explain the rise of the Islamic State in recent weeks, particularly since the capture of Mosul? Romain Caillet: The Islamic State (IS) - initially the Islamic State in Iraq, then the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, and now the Islamic State - has been a state within a state in Iraq for years. It has the support of the majority of Iraq's Sunnis, who feel marginalised by the Shiite regime of Nuri al-Maliki, which they see as sectarian. There was some evidence to suggest that Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, was a fiefdom of IS, so it was no surprise to see them take Mosul. S. What does this indicate about the situation in Iraq? RC. The collapse of the regime of Nuri al-Maliki, which allowed IS to take many cities, not only in the region of Nineveh, but also in the regions of al-Anbar, Kirkuk, and Diyala, shows two things: the failure of al-Maliki to govern Iraq on the one hand, and the total failure of the Americans to remove the Sunni Arab elite from Iraq's governance and army. We see the results of this today. Despite the billions of dollars sunk into Iraq, the Americans have been unable to form either a government with the Shiite community or a new army - a strategy that has resulted in the marginalisation of the Sunni community. S. You say that the majority of Sunnis support IS? RC. The overwhelming majority of Sunnis supported insurgency against the al-Maliki regime. It turns out that this insurgency is led by IS. Maybe it will not last, maybe people will eventually refuse literalist applications of sharia by IS or find them too authoritarian. However, virtually all Sunnis today support this insurrection. Without an air force, helicopters or any real heavy weapons, and with the means that they do have, IS would have been unable to take all these cities if they did not have the broad support of the population. It is particularly significant that during a speech on 12 July, one month after the takeover of Mosul, 'Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, formerly close to Saddam Hussain and current leader of the Iraqi Baathists, paid tribute to IS, characterising its fighters as heroic knights at the forefront of the battle. Never has an Arab nationalist spoken of a jihadi group in such glowing terms, which demonstrates IS's popularity amongst Sunnis regardless of their ideological affiliation. Following an ultimatum from IS to either convert to Islam or accept the status of dhimmi or non-Muslim citizen (entailing the payment of jizya, a special tax, and accepting an inferior status to Muslims), the Christians of Mosul left in droves on 18 July. This mass exodus has been condemned by the Baathists. However, this development still does not imply a rupture with the Islamic State, since it is the exodus of the Christians that is being condemned; the condemnation at no point explicitly mentions the Islamic State itself. S. Where does IS derive its means? Who pays for it? RC. They are self funded. Before taking the oil wells in the region of Mosul, they levied about $100 million per year in tax (extortion, revolutionary tax). Then, there are also the [resources from] the operating oil wells in Syria and Iraq, and the taking of western hostages. IS has virtually no foreign support. Just reading its literature, it's clear that its worst enemies are Saudi Arabia and the Gulf regimes, which they vilify regularly. Remember as well that most rebel brigades fighting IS in Syria today are financed, armed, and sometimes trained by the Gulf regimes. S. Why are IS and Saudi Arabia worst enemies? RC. One of the most famous works in the contemporary jihadist corpus is a treatise entitled, The Shameful Actions Manifest in the Saudi State's Disbelief. The author of this book, Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, a Jordanian sheikh of Palestinian origin, outlines three elements justifying the takfir or exclusion of this state from the sphere of Islam, namely: its military alliance with the United States (especially since the Gulf War); Saudi participation in international institutions (as Saudi Arabia is a founding member of the UN); and finally, the increasing use of more systematic positive law in the Saudi court system. S. For now, IS is accepted by the Sunni population. What could reverse this state of affairs? RC. The Al-Jazeera journalists were surprised to see people cheering on IS in Mosul; they could not believe their eyes. The allegiance of the tribes in the Syrian Euphrates valley is more volatile [The recent revolt by the Shu'aytat clan, which took hold in a dozen villages between Mayadin and Bukamal in the Deir Ezzor region, confirms the volatility of Syrian tribal allegiances. The revolt seems to have been triggered by IS's ban the evening before on tobacco and the water pipe for the entire Deir Ezzor region]. But for now, IS is massively supported by the Sunni population of Mosul, which prefers IS to al-Maliki's Shiite regime. S. So could IS settle permanently in Iraq? RC. Yes, I think IS will settle permanently. Sunnis know that IS is their only hope of becoming masters again. They certainly have a demographic disadvantage in Iraq (where they are a minority), but ISIS's goal is to merge these territories with Syria to reverse this demographic relationship and have a Sunni state straddling Iraq and Syria. Perhaps eventually, more moderate people than those of IS will take their place. But I think the Middle East as we know it is finished; the regional boundaries from the Sykes-Picot agreement (signed in 1916 between France and Britain to define the borders of the Middle East) no longer exist. The idea that the borders will disappear is not new. Walid Jumblatt, the Druze leader, already expressed this idea when the revolution started in Syria in 2011. Robert Fisk reformulated it in an article for The Independent a few weeks ago, when IS bulldozed a wall of sand that served as a border between Iraq and Syria. S. Will IS manage to establish itself in a lasting way in Syria? RC. Certainly. Currently, they occupy more than 90 percent of the area of Deir Ezzor (in eastern Syria). Generally, the Euphrates valley, where the population is culturally very similar to Iraqi Sunnis, is clearly under the control of IS. So there is a historical coherence in a state like that. In Syria, the Euphrates valley is inhabited by tribes that were forcibly settled when the borders were only faintly outlined, and these nomadic tribes were straddling territories in Iraq and Syria. I did interviews with people who are not close to IS, but feel they belong to a tribe, who feel more Bedouin than Syrian. They have always felt closer to Iraqis than to the Syrians of Damascus or the coast - and that's without even touching upon the religious question. Beyond that, they also share a common culture. So, does IS have the option of establishing itself further beyond the valley of the Euphrates? I do not know. To the west of Aleppo and in the region of Idlib, where people very much feel themselves to be Syrians, and not at all close to the Iraqis, there is a wholesale rejection of IS. S. What are Nuri al-Maliki's responsibilities in the current situation? RC. He has practiced sectarian policies marginalising Sunnis. He also led many to believe that the fight against IS is a fight between Shia and Sunni. He even said that ISIS was the army of Yazid [who killed Hussein, the son of Ali and grandson of the Prophet during the battle of Karbala in 680], which was shocking even if Yazid is not a positive reference in the Sunni tradition. Nuri al-Maliki systematically refers in his speeches to the Shiite memory and the fight against the Umayyads. This has antagonised the Sunni Arabs, who were the elites of Saddam Hussein's regime. For decades, they were used to being dominant, but then found themselves in a humiliating situation which they reject. This is rather different to the case of the Sunni Syrians who were subject to 40 years of Alawite power, which explains the resignation of many vis-à-vis the regime of Bashar al-Assad. In contrast, until 2003, the Sunni Arabs in Iraq were the undisputed masters of the country. Since then, all observers agree that the Sunni community has been marginalised. Until 2003, the army and the intelligence services were held by Sunnis, and all these people were overnight excluded from power, leaving many with a desire for revenge. They had skills, and many joined the ranks of IS. For the first time in history, a jihadist group has leaders at its helm who are former high-ranking officers and former officials of the intelligence services. This organisation has real strategists at its helm. This is key. These are not mere religious [extremists] who have been radicalised and want to blow themselves up. These are professionals of war, intelligence and strategy. S. Is western intervention feasible? RC. Western intervention could stop them. But in the current configuration, the west can not intervene in Iraq because all Sunnis are with IS at the moment. If the west intervened in a civil war between Sunnis and Shiites, it would be accused of taking sides. On the other hand, Syria is more complex than being simply a war between Shiites and Sunnis. Since western countries have refused to intervene against the [Alawite] regime of Bashar al-Assad, if the west intervenes in Iraq against the Islamic State which is Sunni, then, Sunnis in the region will view this move as systematically intervening against Sunni interests and always favouring the Shiites. The west would also be accused of playing Tehran's game, disqualifying the west in the eyes of Iraqi Sunnis, and radicalising Syrian Sunnis. Generally speaking, the Muslim world would have the impression that the west supports Iranian expansionism. Just as the United States' unconditional support of Israel feeds anti-American sentiment, the west's unconditional support for Iranian expansionism would feed Sunni resentment well beyond the case of Iraq. In Iraq, the overflow of the Islamic State's offensive towards Kurdistan, an area of importance to Washington and other Western countries, has forced the US to intervene militarily, striking the positions of jihadists near Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, where many American and European companies are established. Moreover, in Erbil, only the jihadists oppose the Kurdish forces, making things simpler for the US than in the rest of Iraq, particularly in the Sunni Arab areas. In those areas, the Americans would like to obtain a political solution by bringing together certain actors of the insurgency into a national unity government, which would initially involve the departure of Nuri al-Maliki, and then open up to independent Sunni tribes and different Islamist actors. Will these actors accept abandoning their alliance with IS in favour of the promise of a new place in Iraqi institutions? While the emergence of a new sahwa or awakening movement in Iraq is a case not to be ignored, key stakeholders feel they have been abandoned by the Americans. After being used to fight the jihadists in 2007, these stakeholders were put under the tutelage of al-Maliki without any political autonomy when the Americans left Iraq in 2011. S. Who then could intervene? RC. As soon as the population is no longer on IS's side, there could be an intervention by the Kurds, assisted by other anti-IS forces within the Sunni community. This could take many forms: through perhaps considerable western support to the Iraqi government involving continuous aerial bombing; or simply Sunni forces revolting against IS with support from the Kurds. However, in both cases, intervention would require that the Sunni population is no longer on the side of IS, and I do not know if that will happen. This translation is by Laura Mitchell of the Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre (NOREF) -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
