Tag Archives: Iraq

ISIS still moving faster than coalition forces on Kobani; will Turkey enter?

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A second round of US-led coalition airstrikes hit ISIS positions around Kobani on Tuesday, but the group had tightened the circle around the town down to two miles (down from about five or so on Saturday, when the first airstrikes hit), according to CNN:

Rear Adm. John Kirby, spokesman for the Pentagon, said U.S. airstrikes overnight hit the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani.

A civilian inside Kobani, near the Turkish border, told CNN on Monday that ISIS was closing in.

The terror group is three kilometers (nearly two miles) east of the town, the civilian said on the condition of anonymity, basically confirming a report from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based monitoring group.
[…]
When asked why strikes in the Kobani area may appear to be limited, a senior U.S. official said — speaking separately on background — that factors which may make it appear that way include that the United States has no direct reliable intelligence on the ground and that precise and careful targeting is needed to avoid civilian casualties.

 
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Turkish border, Turkey’s government and military still seems to be weighing whether or not to become directly involved militarily in the civil war by crossing into Syrian territory — and perhaps weighing the long-term consequences of establishing and defending an autonomous Kurdish zone in northern Syria — but in any case they edged visibly closer toward intervention.

30 tanks and armored vehicles from a Turkish armored division have arrived at the border crossing with Syria within sight of where ISIS tanks and artillery have besieged Kobani. If the tanks cross the border, this would be the first time a foreign military’s ground forces have entered the fight against ISIS. The Turkish military reported that they fired on Syrian territory Sunday in response to ISIS shells landing on the Turkish side of the border, but so far no substantial action has occurred.

This may change if parliament approves an intervention, which is under discussion … or if ISIS forces directly attack Turkish troops — a scenario raised again this week by Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc in relation to the Turkish Special Forces stationed at the Tomb of Suleiman Shah in an enclave near Aleppo. The tomb, guarded by Turkey’s military since 1938 under the terms of a 1921 treaty with France, has been repeatedly and publicly identified by ISIS as a target all year. ISIS may have hesitated to attack the Turkish enclave, given that a direct assault might trigger an automatic invasion of Syria by all of NATO, under Article V. Turkey beefed up security at the tomb significantly earlier in the year (rather than withdrawing), but the troops there are reportedly tenuously supplied due to deteriorating local conditions as the Aleppo region becomes the center of fighting between Turkish-backed Syrian Arab rebels, the Syrian government, and ISIS.

In another development at Kobani, the Turkish government says they will allow Syrian Kurdish fighters to cross from Kobani into Turkey if forced to cede the field to ISIS, but only without their weapons. This continues the balancing act between humanitarian responsibilities as a refuge and their fear of a disintegration of the ceasefire and peace talks with the Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey itself. The Syrian Kurdish fighters are viewed as a potentially destabilizing factor in the effort to make peace within Turkey.
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Is the US-led Syria operation vs ISIS legal under international law?

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The BBC published a huge, multi-angle international law analysis by Marc Weller, Professor of International Law at University of Cambridge, on whether and to what extent the US-led operations against ISIS are legal under international law without United Nations approval. It’s a very well-balanced examination, with various arguments raised both ways for each specific element (such as operations inside Syria versus inside Iraq, or the legitimacy/sovereignty questions surrounding the governments of both Syria and Iraq).

Below is an excerpt specifically regarding the legal case for narrow military operations against ISIS, within Syria, without UN approval, on behalf of Iraq — the position that I find most plausible if any case can be made at all:

According to a ruling of the International Court of Justice in the 1986 Nicaragua case, where the US was found guilty of violating international law by supporting armed Contra rebels, self-defence could only be invoked by Iraq against Syria if IS acts as a direct agent of Damascus and under its operational control.

This is not the case. Instead, the Syrian government has lost all control over the parts of Syria held by IS.

Indeed, until very recently, it has made no attempt to dislodge it, leaving this task instead to the armed opposition groups. Damascus is manifestly unable or unwilling to discharge its obligation to prevent IS operations against Iraq from its own soil. Syria cannot impose the costs of its inaction or incapacity in relation to IS on neighbouring Iraq.

Hence, under the doctrine of self-defence, the zone of operations of the campaign to defeat IS in Iraq can be extended to cover portions of Syria beyond the control of the Syrian government.

[…] short of forming an unsavoury alliance with the Assad government, the strongest legal basis for action against IS in Syria is ancillary to the campaign now being conducted in Iraq. This may also extend to other affected states, such as Jordan. The theatre of operations may extend to parts of Syria as may be strictly necessary to conclude that campaign successfully.

 
If they want to shake off the comparison to George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq and want to make this Syrian operation have a veneer of legality, the Obama Administration should say over and over again something along these lines:
We have been requested by the sovereign government of Iraq to halt and destroy a non-state combatant force attacking them from across the Syrian border. The government of Syria has not only failed to prevent the establishment of and cross-border attacks by this non-state actor, but they have actively allowed them to flourish within their own borders. Therefore, we are acting to halt attacks against Iraq from inside Syria, on behalf of the government of Iraq, which lacks the capacity to defend itself from the origin point of these attacks, located within its neighbor’s territory.

I’ve made clear on this blog that I think this operation in Syria is deeply misguided and a big mistake, but I figured I’d at least look into the possible case for why this is legal, since even that has been unclear to me. The above is the best I’ve been able to piece together so far.

File photo of the United Nations Security Council.

File photo of the United Nations Security Council.

Pro-American Kosovo’s Syrian Jihad

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15 years after a US-led NATO bombing campaign freed the predominantly Muslim province of Kosovo from Serbia, youth unemployment stands at 70%. Now more than a hundred young residents, from a country with a huge statue of Bill Clinton in the capital (photo below), have gone off to join anti-American terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq.

Balkan fighters have participated in Islamist insurgencies elsewhere in the past, but more often against Russia — which, unlike the US, supported Serbia against its Muslim neighbors in the former Yugoslavia. This time, would-be combatants from places like Kosovo are joining ISIS, a group that has moved beyond attacking places in Syria and is now staging suicide attacks in Iraq’s capital against the US-supported government — using at least one Kosovar recruit so far — and has called for attacks on U.S. and British citizens everywhere.

The talk and stories of people disappearing to the Syrian conflict from Kosovo, a country of 1.8 million people, now abound. This is especially true after Kosovar fighters began propagandizing from Syria to folks back home over social media. Even some former NATO assets have reportedly joined up to become jihadists in Syria. In another case, a man kidnapped his 8-year-old son away from his wife and went to Syria with him. Senior religious officials in Kosovo have been arrested for allegedly preaching recruitment on behalf of extremist religious groups in Syria, including ISIS.

The general population disapproves very strongly of the one or two hundred citizens who have gone to join extremist groups in Syria. But Kosovo has no jobs for the vast majority of young men. In contrast, ISIS can offer excitement and a sense of purpose, along with food provisions and payroll funds from the millions of dollars added daily to its cash reserves. And the situation is not unique. Nearby Bosnia, which also has been experiencing very high unemployment and has an even more extensive prior history of contributing recruits to Islamic extremist insurgencies all over, has seen some of its citizens be similarly lured to the civil war in Syria.

The lessons, as always, are that you can’t fix every problem with airstrikes and you can’t fight extremism without fighting poverty and joblessness. A multi-million dollar Western grant for jobs training and creation in the Balkans wouldn’t go amiss right now. Too bad they’re cutting such programs in their own countries already.

Statue of Bill Clinton in Pristina, Kosovo, November 2009. (Credit: Arian Selmani via Wikimedia)

Statue of Bill Clinton in Pristina, Kosovo, November 2009. (Credit: Arian Selmani via Wikimedia)

US planes hit ISIS siege forces outside Amirli, Iraq

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A week ago I asked why there seemed to be a double standard regarding US response toward the Shiite Iraqi Turkmen community at Amirli, which was facing a severe humanitarian crisis after two months of ISIS encirclement, not unlike the situation at Mount Sinjar that had prompted the US to intervene militarily to break the siege around the Yazidi Kurds. The UN and other groups had begun calling for a relief mission to send more food and medicine to Amirli and were puzzled as to why a strong response had not already occurred.

It took longer than it ought to have but tonight we have a resolution to the double standard as U.S. airstrikes began on ISIS positions around the town of Amirli and coalition humanitarian aircraft arrived with help:

American warplanes launched airstrikes on Sunni militants who have been besieging the town of Amerli in northern Iraq on Saturday, in a broadening of the campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

The Pentagon announced the expanded strikes Saturday night. Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said that American planes also airdropped food, water and humanitarian aid to the town of Amerli, home to members of Iraq’s Turkmen minority. The town of 12,000 has been under siege by the militants for more than two months.

Aircraft from Australia, France and the United Kingdom joined the United States in dropping the supplies, Admiral Kirby said in a statement.

 

Update, August 31, 2014: Iraqi ground troops and Shiite paramilitary forces arrived into the town today after several days of slowly fighting ISIS through the surrounding area. The airstrikes cleared the final path.

Click on the map to navigate in Google Maps.

Click on the map to navigate in Google Maps.

The town, located several dozen miles east of Tikrit or south of Kirkuk, is at the nexus of the Sunni Arab heartland and greater Iraqi Kurdistan. Relations between Kurdish political leadership — who are closely aligned with the United States — and the Iraqi Turkmen people have sometimes not been good, as I explored in the post last weekend.

Yazidis tell of betrayal (and rescue) by Arab friends

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The New York Time has a story on some accounts by Iraqi Yazidi Kurds of being betrayed to ISIS — and its fanatical agenda of killing all non-Sunnis — by close friends.

But his friend’s assurances did not sit right with Mr. Habash. That night, he gathered his family and fled. Soon afterward, he said, he found out that Mr. Mare had joined the militants and was helping them hunt down Yazidi families.

 
Your friends say “everything will be ok” and next thing you know they’re trying to kill you. It reads quite a bit like a small-scale Iraqi version of the Rwandan Interahamwe, the semi-impromptu and mass-hysteria-driven Hutu militia in 1994 that hacked Tutsi friends and family to death by the hundreds of thousands during the genocide.

The Times’ anecdotes are consistent with reporting by AFP a couple weeks ago:

“The Metwet, Khawata and Kejala tribes — they were all our neighbours. But they joined the IS, took heavy weapons from them, and informed on who was Yazidi and who was not. Our neighbours made the IS takeover possible,” the distraught white-bearded Hassan said.

Speaking to AFP in a transit camp run by the local Kurdish authorities for the displaced, Haidar said his childhood friend was among those who joined the IS. “I was shocked. The IS brainwashed him, and he started informing on who was Yazidi,” he said. “I would have been executed immediately had they found me.”

 
I guess this kind of happens everywhere when things go sideways into an ethnic slaughter.

Fortunately, as the Times also reported, there were also some bright spots in the crisis, as there also are in most such situations:

Though Mohsin Habash’s family suffered because of one Arab neighbor, he pointed out that they were saved with the help of another: a longtime friend who led a convoy of Yazidi refugees to safety at great risk.

The convoy drove through the night, passing ISIS-controlled territories undetected. Mohsin Habash believes it was because his friend knew the Arab areas better than any of the Yazidis.

Hours later, they reached Syria. From there, Mohsin Habash’s friend introduced them to another Arab man who took the group the rest of the way to the border with Kurdistan. “He saved us,” Mr. Habash said.

 
Even in the darkest moments, like when massive ethnic or sectarian cleansing is being attempted, some people still give us hope for humanity. (You can read some more examples from other cases here.)

Troubling double standard on besieged Iraqi town of Amirli

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The UN is trying to draw attention to Amirli, Iraq, which ISIS has laid siege to for the past two months. The town, located several dozen miles east of Tikrit or south of Kirkuk, is home to 20,000 Shia Iraqi Turkmen living at the nexus of the Sunni Arab heartland and greater Iraqi Kurdistan — and ISIS plans to wipe them out. No Iraqi, Kurdish, or Western military force has stepped in to help. [Update: On Saturday, August 30, 2014, U.S. airstrikes began, while relief aircraft from Australia, Britain, and France dropped in supplies. Iraqi ground offensives began several days earlier.]

Though surrounded by more than 30 villages (presumably Sunni Arab) that have defected to ISIS, the town was able to seal itself off and maintains a tenuous lifeline to the outside via periodic helicopters. So far they’ve held out without much help since June — essentially just a small number of Iraqi soldiers and any weapons they had on hand — but they are now running out of food. Children are reportedly eating only once every three days.

amirl-iraq-map
Click on the map above to zoom out to the wider region.

Here’s one eyewitness report:

No Kurdish peshmerga, who have been fighting the Islamic State, have reached Amerli. There are only a few Iraqi soldiers who have remained after the retreat of the armed forces in June.

Haider al-Bayati, an Amerli resident, said the town is sealed off in all directions, with the nearest Islamic State position only 500 meters. With only helicopters able to bring in food, residents face starvation. Electricity has been cut off. The town has no hospital — the sick and injured must either be treated at a clinic staffed by nurses or evacuated by air.

With the helicopters only able to carry about 30 people per day, women have died in childbirth because of the lack of doctors, and according to residents, “People are dying from simple wounds because we don’t have the means to care for them.”

Dr Ali al-Bayati, who works for a humanitarian foundation has been moving in and out of the town by helicopter, added, “We are depending on salty water, which gives people diarrhoea and other diseases. Since the siege started, more than 50 sick or elderly people have died. Children have also died because of dehydration and disease.”

Former MP Mohammed Al-Bayati claimed that the town was being targeted by the Islamic State because of its Turkmen population. Noting the high-profile international effort to help the refugees of Sinjar after that town was overrun by the jihadists, he asserted, “Unfortunately, the situations are treated with two different standards”.

 
The question, then, is why the United States and the international community has not rallied to relieve the besieged town as they have done for the 40,000 starving Yazidis who were encircled for a week or so on Mount Sinjar.
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Syrian regime finally turns on ISIS (after helping it rise)

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The Wall Street Journal reports that the Assad government has dropped its “blind-eye” strategy and flipped to start attacking ISIS head-on. The Journal has assembled a very comprehensive explanation of how Bashar Al-Assad’s government in Damascus manipulated mutually opposing rebel factions to weaken coherent opposition to the regime and enable them to crush the US/Western-backed side of the three-way war. They describe this new review as being “pieced together from interviews with Syrian rebel commanders and opposition figures, Iraqi government officials and Western diplomats, as well as al Qaeda documents seized by the U.S. military in Iraq.”

Here’s a concise account by an Assad supporter in Iraq about the evolution of the strategy:

Earlier in the three-year-old Syrian uprising, Mr. Assad decided to mostly avoid fighting the Islamic State to enable it to cannibalize the more secular rebel group supported by the West, the Free Syrian Army, said Izzat Shahbandar, an Assad ally and former Iraqi lawmaker who was Baghdad’s liaison to Damascus. The goal, he said, was to force the world to choose between the regime and extremists.

“When the Syrian army is not fighting the Islamic State, this makes the group stronger,” said Mr. Shahbandar, a close aide to former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who said Mr. Assad described the strategy to him personally during a visit in May to Damascus. “And sometimes, the army gives them a safe path to allow the Islamic State to attack the FSA and seize their weapons.”

“It’s a strategy to eliminate the FSA and have the two main players face each other in Syria: Assad and the Islamic State,” said Mr. Shahbandar. “And now [Damascus] is asking the world to help, and the world can’t say no.”

 
Backed into a corner, we saw senior UK officials just today having to deny that Britain would switch to supporting the Syrian government again, in response to ISIS. So while the world may still “say no” to Assad, they’ve certainly be put into an awkward position.

Back to the Wall Street Journal account, we learn that the government in Western Syria has finally turned its attention toward the threat in the east: Read more