I/V. http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-terror/what-life-inside-isis-capital-city-raqqa-syria-n211206 What Life Is Like Inside ISIS' Capital City of Raqqa, Syria By Ghazi Balkiz and Alexander Smith
Even for a devout Muslim like Abu Saif, daily life in a Syrian city conquered by ISIS is defined by tyranny and oppression. ISIS has imposed its brutal version of Islamic law in Raqqa, which serves as the Sunni militant group's capital, as well as other cities it has seized in Syria and Iraq. Raqqa was targeted in the first wave of U.S-led airstrikes aimed at toppling ISIS earlier this week. Abu Saif, whose name has been changed for his own safety, told NBC News that "severed heads on fences, and people who are crucified" have become normal sights as ISIS "terrorizes the people and asserts control." He said the militants use armed patrols to guarantee the obedience of the city's around 300,000 civilians. The "Hisbih Brigade" imposes rules for men, the "Khansa Brigade" for women. Members of both "roam around 24 hours a day ... terrorizing, scaring, forcing" residents, Abu Saif said. "Their principle is that you are either with them or against them," he added. "People have started growing their beards, people have started praying on time, and during prayer times all the shops close," Abu Saif said. "All this might come across as small details for some people, but this is a whole lifestyle change for civilians. I think that the majority of civilians are against this." Abu Saif, who says he prays five times a day, is a supporter of an Islamic state based on religious laws. But he rejects the actions of the militants as wrong and un-Islamic. However, Abu Saif conceded that ISIS deserved credit for what they'd accomplished. "With the departments they have established, they really have created a state," he said. "One cannot deny that, for instance, they opened a consumer protection office. If one has a restaurant and they came to check it out, and the meat was bad, or it was exposed to dirt or sunlight, they would take expired material and dispose of it as a sanitary action. They follow up on these issues completely with the departments they have created." Abu Saif said ISIS "imprisoned one of their own because they found out that he took something from someone and then sold it." An ISIS police officer directs traffic in Raqqa, Syria, on September 18. However, women's rights have suffered under ISIS rule. "As for women, they have to wear what we started calling the shield, a full body cover from head-to-toe," Abu Saif said. "Women are not allowed to leave the house without a male companion." These rules on women leaving the house have forced many to stop going to school or college, he added. "Schools and universities are a big disaster, they have changed the curriculum a lot," Abu Saif said. "They forbade law studies, philosophy, and other social studies, which they consider infidel studies and 'outside the Shariah [strict Islamic law] of Allah.'" Before Syria's civil war erupted in 2011, Raqqa was ruled by the oppressive regime of President Bashar Assad, and then was taken by the rebel forces. But Abu Saif said that during this time of chaos and revolution he could at least leave the house and go to work. The same cannot be said living under ISIS, which has centered many of its operations around the city and therefore been a focus of U.S. airstrikes. "I cannot support or be against the American bombardment of Raqqa," said Abu Saif, who managed to flee the city before the coalition started bombing. "There are always civilian casualties. I will only support American bombardment if they target the Assad regime, too." Abu Saif's account comes days after television channel France 2 aired footage it said was shot in secret <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TkuAIKoI28>by a woman inside Raqqa. The film, which could not be independently verified by NBC News, showed armed men everywhere, including a woman in a full Islamic veil carrying an AK-47. But according to Abu Saif, some people have embraced life under ISIS. "The support [for ISIS] came from people whose knowledge of Islamic legislation is weak," he said. "Those people think that what they see -- what ISIS is doing -- is implementation of Shariah." II/V. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-publicly-execute-leading-lawyer-and-human-rights-activist-in-iraq-9756197.html <http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-terror/what-life-inside-isis-capital-city-raqqa-syria-n211206> Isis publicly executes leading lawyer and human rights activist in Iraq Militants kidnapped and tortured Samira Saleh al-Naimi for five days before executing her Loulla-Mae Eleftheriou-Smith <http://www.independent.co.uk/search/simple.do?destinationSectionUniqueName=search&publicationName=ind&pageLength=5&startDay=1&startMonth=1&startYear=2010&useSectionFilter=true&useHideArticle=true&searchString=byline_text:%28%22Loulla-Mae%20Eleftheriou-Smith%22%29&displaySearchString=Loulla-Mae%20Eleftheriou-Smith> Thursday 25 September 2014 Isis militants have publically executed Samira Salih al-Nuaimi, a leading lawyer and human rights activist, who the terror group claimed that had abandoned Islam. Al-Nuaimi was kidnapped by Isis (also known as Islamic State) on 17 September after she allegedly criticised the militant group's destruction of places of worship in Mosul, Iraq, since it had taken control of the city, in comments posted on Facebook. She was then kidnapped from her home by a group of masked men and tried in a self-styled Sharia court for apostasy, which for the militants is considered to be an act of abandoning Islam by converting to another faith, or by committing actions that are against the Muslim faith. The militants then tortured al-Nuaimi for five days. Al-Nuaimi, who according to the Gulf Centre For Human Rights had worked on detainee rights and poverty, was then sentenced to "public execution" and killed on Monday. Her Facebook page appears to have been removed since her death. "By torturing and executing a female human rights lawyer and activist, defending in particular the civil and human rights of her fellow citizens in Mosul, Isis continues to attest to its infamous nature, combining hatred, nihilism and savagery, as well as its total disregard of human decency," Nickolay Mladenov, the U.N. envoy to Iraq, said in a statement. Isis took hold of Mosul in June, implementing a harsh version of Islamic law and killing hundreds in the process. It has forced religious minorities to convert to Islam, pay special taxes or die, and imposed a strict dress code on women in the city, going so far as to veil the faces of female mannequins in store fronts. The UN said that on Tuesday, in the nearby town of Sderat, militants broke into the house of a female candidate in the latest provincial council elections, killed her and abducted her husband. On the same day another female politician was abducted from her home in eastern Mosul. She remains missing. IIIV http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/how-isis-uses-captured-oilfields-to-finance-its-campaign-1.2777834 How ISIS uses captured oilfields to finance its campaign 'They're relying on very small transactions, and a lot of them,' to finance their operations By Mark Gollom, CBC News <http://www.cbc.ca/news/cbc-news-online-news-staff-list-1.1294364> Posted: Sep 25, 2014 6:31 PM ET Last Updated: Sep 26, 2014 10:22 AM ET ISIS is said to control a few smaller fields in northern Iraq with significantly more oil under control in eastern Syria, where they have undisputed control of the eastern territory. Most estimates place production in Iraq and Syria at around 80,000 barrels a day (Reuters) To finance its militant campaign in Iraq and Syria, ISIS has relied heavily on the revenue it generates from captured oilfields, some of which are now being targeted by U.S.-led airstrikes. - *U.S. airstrikes hit ISIS oil sites for second day in a row* <http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/u-s-airstrikes-hit-isis-oil-sites-for-2nd-day-1.2778577> - *British prime minister urges U.K. Parliament to join airstrike campaign in Iraq * <http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/david-cameron-urges-parliament-to-join-airstrikes-against-isis-1.2778586> ISIS oil production has been estimated at tens of thousands of barrels a day, and generates between $1 million and $3 million a day of revenue, analysts say. But the challenge for the militant group, which is said to control at least 11 oilfields, is finding buyers for its product. "No big traders, no serious companies are going to fool around with that oil," says Matthew M. Reed, vice-president of Foreign Reports, a Washington-based consulting firm that analyzes oil and politics in the Middle East. "That oil is essentially radioactive at this point. No one wants to touch it." What that means is that the vast bulk of ISIS's oil sales is going to so-called "middlemen," who own their own tanker trucks and who have connections to established smuggling networks in northern Syria and southern Turkey, or to local refineries in places like Syria, Iraq, Kurdistan and Turkey. - *Members of the anti-ISIS coalition <http://www.cbc.ca/news/multimedia/members-of-the-anti-isis-coalition-1.2777451>* - *The Current: To fight ISIS, the West must consider financial warfare <http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2014/09/22/to-fight-isis-the-west-must-consider-financial-warfare/>* - *ANALYSIS: Why Turkey is reluctant to join U.S-led coalition against ISIS <http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/why-turkey-is-reluctant-to-join-u-s-led-coalition-against-isis-1.2775425>* "They're relying on very small transactions and a lot of them in order to move the oil because they're selling it by tanker truck more often than not. And a tanker truck can't hold that much oil," Reed said. Robin Mills, a Dubai-based energy consultant and the author of two books on the politics of oil, said that these rogue tankers will fill up at the fields and cross the border at smuggling points. "This is a long, established smuggling trade that's gone on for many years," Mills told CBC's *The Current*. Refined oil being used in places fighting ISIS ISIS is also refining some of this oil itself and selling the product in the local market. As well, the group is using some of it to supply its own war effort, Reed said. "There's good reason to believe that the refined product coming from ISIS oil is actually being used in places that are fighting ISIS," he added. And that includes the sworn enemy of the groups, the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which is probably getting oil either directly or indirectly from ISIS-controlled fields or territories. "The regime in Damascus has pulled its punches with ISIS from the beginning in order to promote the idea that all of Assad's enemies are terrorists," Reed said. "So if you allow ISIS to flourish and then ISIS in return also gives you breathing space -- let's say it allows oil to pass through its territory, allows refineries they could cut off to keep operating under regime control -- it benefits both sides." ISIS is said to control a few smaller fields in northern Iraq but most of its oil comes from eastern Syria, where it has undisputed control of most of that territory. - *On mobile? Click here to see a map of the countries in the anti-ISIS coalition* <http://www.cbc.ca/news/multimedia/members-of-the-anti-isis-coalition-1.2777451> However, international companies that were operating those fields have since fled the region, Mills said, and while ISIS has had some success attracting oil engineers, "production is far below what it used to be." Working on skeleton staff Most estimates place oil production in the ISIS-controlled parts of Iraq and Syria at around 80,000 barrels a day, but that is a sharp decline from pre-conflict days. In Iraq for example, those same assets would have produced around 220,000 barrels a day, Luay al-Khatteeb, founder and director of the Iraq Energy Institute, told CNN. "In a lot of these places it sounds like they're working on skeleton staffs of engineers and others who are able to run the refineries," Reed said. "S ome of those people are just doing it to keep their jobs, others certainly are under threat. They have been told they have to show up." The oil is also being sold at a steep discount, in some cases as low as $25 a barrel. But that is still a price that allows ISIS to generate up to $3 million dollars a day, some analysts say. Carjackings, bank robberies, extortion, kidnappings for ransom are also used to fund its organization. But Reed said there seems to be a general agreement that oil is the number one revenue stream for them. "It's the only thing they have to sell, really, and you can only steal so much from the people." He said it's too early to tell what impact the recent U.S.-led airstrike on at least four oil installations and three oilfields controlled by ISIS will have on their operations or revenue. But al-Khatteeb told CNN that the impact of these strikes is "going to be immense and grave." "If they are hitting the facilities and the oil convoys on the smuggling roads they will significantly disrupt supply and regular production. If the bombardments continue it will impact the energy supply and deny ISIS much-needed fuel for their mobility and the servicing of the communities under their rule." With files from The Associated Press IV/V. http://rt.com/uk/190844-parliament-vote-airstrikes-iraq/ UK MPs vote overwhelmingly for ISIS airstrikes in Iraq Published time: September 26, 2014 09:40 Edited time: September 26, 2014 20:05 <http://www.independent.co.uk/search/simple.do?destinationSectionUniqueName=search&publicationName=ind&pageLength=5&startDay=1&startMonth=1&startYear=2010&useSectionFilter=true&useHideArticle=true&searchString=byline_text:%28%22Loulla-Mae%20Eleftheriou-Smith%22%29&displaySearchString=Loulla-Mae%20Eleftheriou-Smith> MPs have voted to back Britain joining US-led airstrikes on Islamic State in Iraq in a vote on Friday. Attacks could begin within days, as ministers admit that UK military intervention could last two or three years. *READ ALSO:* Anti-ISIS military campaign 'could go on for years' - UK Defence Secretary <http://rt.com/uk/190644-fallon-air-strikes-isis/> 'Don't bomb Iraq & Syria!' Stop the War protests at Downing Street <http://rt.com/uk/190532-uk-isis-iraq-cameron/> MPs voted overwhelmingly in favour of strikes against Islamic State (also known asISIS, or ISIL), with 524 voting for and 43 voting against. Britain's three biggest parties, coalition government partners the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, plus the opposition Labour party, all officially backed the bombing campaign. The government insisted the intervention was legal under international law because it was requested by the Iraqi prime minister. The motion did not propose any UK involvement in airstrikes in Syria, where a US-Arab coalition began bombing IS militants on Tuesday. A year ago, British MPs rejected airstrikes on Syria to oppose the government of President Bashar Assad. In a sign of nervousness over possible Islamic State retaliation against the UK, London Mayor Boris Johnson has urged the city's residents to remain *"vigilant"* on public transport. Cameron told MPs early in Friday's debate the situation in Syria is *"more complicated"* than Iraq because of its *"brutal dictator"* President Assad and the civil war that has been ongoing there for the past three years. The cause of the problem is the *"poisonous narrative of Islamist extremism",* said Cameron, adding that Muslims must *"reclaim their religion from these extremists".* Cameron called for political efforts to support an *"inclusive"* and *"democratic"* governments in Iraq and Syria. But he added that the British military has an indispensable role to play. There is *"no realistic prospect"* of defeating Islamic State without it, the PM said. The Iraqi government*"need our military help and it is in our interest and theirs to give it."* He told MPs they had to weigh up the consequences of both action and inaction. *"If we allow ISIL to grow and thrive there's no doubt in my mind that the level of threat to the country would increase."* Referring to the UK's intervention in Iraq in 2003, Cameron said: *"This is not 2003 but we must not use past mistakes as an excuse for indifference or inaction."* The Labour leader of the opposition, Ed Miliband, supported the PM's statement, but called for diplomatic efforts to go hand-in-hand with airstrikes. *"Those who advocate military action today have to persuade members of this House and the country not only that ISIL is an evil organisation but that it is we, Britain, who should take military action in Iraq,"* said Miliband. *"**Intervention always has risks but a dismembered Iraq would be more dangerous for Britain,**"*he added. Miliband told MPs there is *"already evidence"* that the US-led airstrikes are having the effect of holding back Islamic State. He also believes that the action being proposed is proportionate. The CIA estimates IS could have as many as 31,000 fighters in Iraq and Syria, where the group have seized large swathes of territory in recent months. IS threatened to kill British hostage Alan Henning in a video showing the beheading of British aid worker David Haines earlier this month. Haines's daughter backed proposed airstrikes on Wednesday and said that IS should be *"eradicated".* UK Defence Secretary Michael Fallon says Britain's armed forces will be involved in Iraq for the *"long haul"* of at least three or four years to defeat IS. Speaking to House magazine, he said Britain has a *"very direct interest"* in battling IS to stop terrorist attacks on British soil. Concerns have been raised over the UK's allies in action against IS. Conservative MP Zac Goldmsith has cautioned that the UK needs to take a *"much tougher line"* toward its allies such as Saudi Arabia *"who have been fuelling and funding terrorism for decades".* Despite cross-party unity on intervention, some MPs vowed to vote against the airstrikes. Labour MP Rushanara Ali, the shadow education minister, resigned from the party's front bench to abstain from a vote on military action in Iraq. Whips from each of the main parties had told their members to support the motion. Anti-war activists staged an emergency protest outside Downing Street on Thursday evening against the possibility of military action in Iraq. Protester take part in a Stop the War demonstration opposite Downing Street in central London on September 25, 2014.(AFP Photo / Carl Court) UKIP leader Nigel Farage, who was holding his party's annual conference at Doncaster Racecourse on Friday, a stone's throw from Labour leader Miliband's constituency, has also criticised the government's plan for airstrikes. *"The trouble with bombing is you kill lots of civilians,"* Farage told the BBC. He argued that any successful operation would require *"boots on the ground"*, but said there was no appetite for that. However, a poll conducted for The Sun newspaper, published on Friday, revealed that 57 percent of UK residents surveyed said they supported bombing IS in Iraq, compared to 24 percent who were against it. Support for a bombing campaign is up by one-fifth on a similar poll last month. Asked whether they backed strikes on IS in Syria, 51 percent approved of spreading the intervention while 26 percent opposed it. Meanwhile, 43 percent backed sending ground troops to Iraq, or considering sending them there. V/. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/27/world/europe/british-parliament-vote-isis-airstrikes.html?_r=0 3 Nations Offer Limited Support to Attack on ISIS By STEPHEN CASTLE <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/stephen_castle/index.html> and STEVEN ERLANGER <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/e/steven_erlanger/index.html>SEPT. 26, 2014 LONDON -- Britain, Belgium and Denmark lined up Friday behind the United States in its fight against the Islamic State group, agreeing to military operations in Iraq -- but drawing a line for now against direct intervention in Syria. Even the half-step of support, however, offered a boost to President Obama's effort to cast the fight as a global campaign to beat back a jihadist force that has assembled thousands of radical fighters and seized territory straddling Iraq and Syria. The entry of the British into the coalition -- which now includes five Arab states, France, Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark -- provides Washington with a broader consensus for what is described as an extended campaign waged without a resolution authorizing the use of military force by the United Nations Security Council. But Europe's resolve stopped at the border with Syria, where the Islamic State has built the foundations of its self-declared caliphate. Europeans have been reluctant to take military action inside Syria, in part out of concern about fueling a larger regional conflict, in part because of public opinion in their own nations and in part because of a desire to avoid helping the Syrian government, led by President Bashar al-Assad, to survive the rebellion against him by a wide array of opposition groups, including the Islamic State. As British lawmakers debated the merits of airstrikes, protesters outside Parliament in London made their position clear. Credit Will Oliver/European Pressphoto Agency For now, the attacks within Syria have been carried out only by the United States and five Arab nations that consider the Islamic State to be a threat to them and to regional stability. European leaders asserted that failing to confront the Sunni radicals would leave their own nations vulnerable to attack by fighters, including European citizens, who have been trained by the radical group and can travel relatively easily from the battlefield to Western Europe. In Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron called Parliament back from recess to approve British participation. But his policy was limited by what the opposition Labour Party was willing to support. And Labour, itself divided, refused to countenance the idea of attacking Syria. "In military terms, the vote has no significance whatsoever, but politically it has more importance," said James Strong, a foreign policy expert at the London School of Economics, of the British vote. "There is a sense in the United States that if even Britain thinks it is a bad idea, then it probably is." The parliamentary motion specifically rules out the deployment of any British ground troops in Iraq, although the British are active in training and equipping the Iraqis, mostly Kurds, who are fighting the Islamic State. While Mr. Cameron argued that there is "a strong case" for carrying the air war to Syria, as Washington is doing, he also promised that any British military involvement in Syria would require another parliamentary debate and vote, which is considered unlikely before the general election next May. Friday's motion was approved 524 to 43, and essentially means that six British Tornado fighter jets that have been flying reconnaissance missions over Iraq can now be ordered to drop bombs as well. Royal Air Force Tornado warplanes preparing to land at a British base in Cyprus last month. Credit Pavlos Vrionides/Associated Press Mr. Cameron was desperate to avoid the humiliation of August 2013, when his motion to authorize the bombing of Syria alongside the United States, to punish the Assad government for using chemical weapons, was defeated in Parliament. <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/30/world/middleeast/syria.html> Then, the Labour Party leader, Ed Miliband, opposed the government motion, and both he and Mr. Cameron were considered to have mismanaged the vote. In the end, President Obama, too, decided last year not to bomb Syria and instead accepted a Russian proposal to oversee the elimination of Syria's stockpiles of chemical weapons, and dismantling its production facilities. This time, with one British hostage executed <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/world/middleeast/islamic-state-says-it-has-executed-david-cawthorne-haines-british-aid-worker.html> by the Islamic State and two more threatened, Mr. Cameron did his homework, consulting his backbenchers and working out a deal with Mr. Miliband, who has argued that bombing in Syria would help Mr. Assad and would be "better" with a Security Council resolution, which Russia and China are considered unlikely to allow. The other main European military power, France, is also wary of participating in airstrikes in Syria. President François Hollande on Tuesday said France joined the coalition in bombing Iraq because the government in Baghdad had asked, sidestepping a question on Syria by saying that every country in the coalition needed to share the burden of required tasks. One French official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the French position was that no action should be taken that would have the effect of aiding Mr. Assad. "That is a crucial point for us because we think that his stubbornness is a major factor in the crisis, as well as an essential driving force in the crisis," the diplomat said. "So what we don't want is that airstrikes allow al-Assad forces to redeploy themselves on the ground." Belgium's Parliament on Friday approved the deployment of fighter jets, cargo planes and military support to help with the fight in Iraq. In Denmark, Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt said her nation would contribute seven fighter jets to the coalition in Iraq. Germany has not taken part in the conflict militarily but has agreed to supply aid and provide training to Kurdish forces and Iraqi security forces. Britain is still dealing with the trauma of 2003, when the country felt that Prime Minister Tony Blair, too eager to stand alongside Washington, pushed Britain into war in Iraq with false intelligence about Saddam Hussein supposedly having weapons of mass destruction. Only since then have prime ministers thought it wise to get parliamentary authorization before military action. The vote last year, which some considered the first time a British prime minister had been defeated on a major military issue since the American War of Independence, dented Britain's reputation as America's closest ally in the fight against terrorism. The debate on Friday was seen as a test of Britain's stomach for further military intervention alongside the United States after Iraq and the hardly more popular war in Afghanistan. As he outlined his case for intervention, Mr. Cameron faced persistent questioning from lawmakers about the campaign's objectives, the risk that the mission could expand beyond its initial scope and the readiness of Iraqi forces to take advantage of air support. But some lawmakers also argued that the motion did not go far enough. "We would want to see a stable Iraq and -- over time -- a stable Syria too; ISIL degraded and then destroyed as a serious terrorist organization," Mr. Cameron said in Parliament, using another name for the Islamic State. "But let me be frank: We should not expect this to happen quickly. The hallmarks of this campaign will be patience and persistence, not shock and awe." Mr. Cameron said the militant group had "already murdered one British hostage and is threatening the lives of two more," adding that, for Britain, there "isn't a walk-on-by option." Supporting the call for airstrikes, Mr. Miliband was nonetheless careful to present himself as even more cautious than Mr. Cameron. Mr. Miliband said that he understood the unease in parts of Britain about another military engagement. "Let us be clear at the outset what is the proposition: airstrikes against ISIL in Iraq," Mr. Miliband said. "Not about ground troops, nor about U.K. military action elsewhere. And it is a mission specifically aimed at ISIL." He said that a "dismembered Iraq" would be more dangerous to Britain than taking military action now, and that Britain should pride itself on its "tradition of internationalism." At the United Nations on Friday, the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, told reporters that the American-led airstrikes should be done with the "cooperation" of the Syrian authorities, without which, he said, airstrikes would be against the law. Asked if Russia would play a role in the future, Mr. Lavrov said, "We are fighting against terrorism consistently, constantly, not just when someone announces a coalition. It's not some pop-up idea for us." Alan Cowell contributed reporting from London, Somini Sengupta from the United Nations, and Maïa de la Baume from Paris. -- 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.
