Yemen: Scores of civilians killed and injured by anti-aircraft fire and airstrikes on weapons depots

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Scores of casualties in Sana’a have been caused by anti-aircraft munitions shot by the Huthi armed group which detonated after landing in populated areas killing and maiming civilians, said Amnesty International.

During a week-long trip to the Yemeni capital, the organization spoke to medical staff at nine hospitals and residents who said that anti-aircraft weapons were the leading cause of casualties in the capital. Saudi Arabian-led coalition airstrikes against weapons depots in residential areas have triggered further explosions, also killing and injuring other civilians.

“Sana’a’s residents are caught in a deadly crossfire between the Saudi Arabian-led coalition airstrikes and anti-aircraft fire from the Huthi armed group. Both sides have failed to take the necessary precautions to protect civilian lives in violation of the laws of war. Instead they have carried out attacks that have had devastating consequences for the civilian population,” said Lama Fakih, Senior Crisis Advisor at Amnesty International.

“For the civilians affected, it doesn’t matter which side is responsible. They pay the same price.”

Sana’a’s residents are caught in a deadly crossfire between the Saudi Arabian-led coalition airstrikes and anti-aircraft fire from the Huthi armed group.

Lama Fakih, Senior Crisis Advisor at Amnesty International

Anti-aircraft fire

A doctor at al-Thawra hospital, one of the largest public hospitals in Sana’a, told Amnesty International that the vast majority - around 90% - of war wounded patients admitted to the hospital had been injured by anti-aircraft fire. He said that before the five-day ceasefire last week around 17-23 patients with such injuries were admitted to the hospital daily. A second doctor working at the hospital also confirmed that the majority of the 1,024 wounded patients treated there during the first month of the conflict, had also been injured by anti-aircraft fire.

This was backed up by staff at the German-Saudi hospital and al-Mu’yyad Modern Hospital, where a doctor told Amnesty International that the majority of the wounded treated there were women and children suffering from fragmentation injuries caused by anti-aircraft fire.

"The sheer number of injuries caused by anti-aircraft fire in Sana’a points to a disturbing pattern of attacks in which the obligation under international law to protect civilians during a conflict is being flouted,” said Lama Fakih.

The sheer number of injuries caused by anti-aircraft fire in Sana’a points to a disturbing pattern of attacks in which the obligation under international law to protect civilians during a conflict is being flouted

Lama Fakih

Amnesty International also met the parents of a child killed and four civilians who were injured by anti-aircraft fire, including a nine year old boy who was left with a broken leg and fragmentation wounds in his stomach, groin and foot.

Fatmeh, a mother of two, was injured along with her one-and-a-half-year-old-baby, when an anti-aircraft projectile struck their home in Sana’a on 30 March. She was left with several fragmentation injuries to her head, hand and body.

The parents of Karim Ali al-Sagheer Farhan, 13, described to Amnesty International how their son was killed by an anti-aircraft projectile on 27 April while he was leaving his home for the mosque for the noon prayer.

“I heard him scream Allahu Akbar and he was saying the shahada. I pulled my abaya on and then saw the neighbours taking him to the hospital…I knew it was anti-aircraft weaponry from the noise. There was no shelling that day,” Karim’s mother said.

 

Poster of Karim Ali al-Sagheer Farhan, 13, who was killed by an anti-aircraft projectile on 27 April while he was leaving his home to go to the mosque for noon prayers.

The Huthi armed group’s apparent use of anti-aircraft weaponry which detonates on impact either with an aircraft or when it has landed, known as contact fuzing, or misuse of air-burst munitions, has killed and maimed civilians, and amounts to a failure to take adequate precautions to protect the civilian population, which is a violation of international humanitarian law.

Air-burst anti-aircraft weaponry is designed to detonate in the air, potentially reducing civilian casualties. Video of Huthi anti-aircraft fire taken in Sana’a on 20 May clearly shows that at least in some instances they are using air-burst munitions.

Amnesty International calls on the Huthi armed group not to use any contact fuzed anti-aircraft weaponry and to take additional precautions to protect civilians when firing other anti-aircraft munitions, including air-burst. The Huthi armed group and the Ansarullah political wing should also investigate cases in which civilians have reportedly been harmed by their anti-aircraft weaponry and compensate those who have been harmed, including by paying for medical treatment and to repair damaged property.

Airstrikes on weapons depots

Many of the other civilian victims in the hospitals Amnesty International visited were injured by secondary explosions when attacks by Saudi Arabian-led coalition aircraft struck a weapons cache in the Mount Nuqum neighbourhood on 11 May.

Amnesty International interviewed four residents of Mount Nuqum who witnessed the attack and seven others who were injured in secondary explosions caused by the air strikes, including four children and two women. One of the women interviewed said that her son was killed in the same blast that had injured her. Around 40 people were killed in the strike according to the Ministry of Health, although Amnesty International could not independently verify this figure. Nearly 140 people injured in the attack were admitted for treatment at al-Thawra and Kuwait hospitals according to hospital staff and records.

The remnant of one of the weapons that struck civilian areas in Mount Nuqum after a weapons depot was hit by a coalition airstrike on 11 May causing some of the weapons there to launch

Scores of residents were also injured in an earlier airstrike on a weapons depot in Faj ‘Attan, on the outskirts of Sana’a, on 20 April.

All of the residents affected by the Mount Nuqum or Faj ‘Attan blasts told Amnesty International that no advance warning was given by coalition forces of an impending attack despite the apparent feasibility of such warnings and the likelihood that civilians living in such close proximity to the known storage facilities would be injured by secondary blasts. Failing to give an effective advance warning under these circumstances is a violation of the rules of international humanitarian law. The extensive harm to the civilian population resulting from these attacks also raises concerns about the proportionality of these strikes.

Amnesty International calls on Saudi Arabia and other coalition states involved in the airstrikes to take all feasible precautions to minimize the risks posed to civilians, as required by international humanitarian law. This includes cancelling or suspending an attack if it becomes apparent that the target is not military or that the attack is likely disproportionate; and giving effective advance warning of attacks which may affect civilians, unless circumstances do not permit. The Huthi armed group should also move its military positions away from populated civilian areas where feasible, Amnesty International said.

Given the mounting casualties in Yemen, Amnesty International is also calling on all states supplying weapons, ammunition, training or any other military technology/assistance to Saudi Arabia to exercise extreme caution and demonstrate that any military transfers will not fuel further civilian deaths and injuries.

“As airstrikes and anti-aircraft fire resume across Yemen, the number of civilian casualties is already beginning to rise,” said Lama Fakih.

“So far both sides have displayed a chilling indifference to the deadly impact of their actions on civilians. All parties to the conflict can and should take all feasible steps to minimize the risk to civilians.”

So far both sides have displayed a chilling indifference to the deadly impact of their actions on civilians

Lama Fakih

Coalition airstrikes have caused hundreds of civilian deaths since they began on 25 March 2015. Amnesty International has documented a number of cases in which airstrikes may have violated the rules of international humanitarian law.

Cases

Civilians injured or killed by anti-aircraft fire

30 March, Sa’wan neighbourhood, Sana’a

Amnesty International spoke with Fatmeh, 24, a mother of two who was injured along with her one and a half year old child on 30 March by an anti-aircraft projectile that hit their home in Sa’wan, Sana’a. At around 9pm a projectile struck their home injuring both of them. She had fragmentation injuries in her right hand, right armpit, and head. Her son suffered from fragmentation injuries to the head and to his hand. Her son had two operations to treat his injuries, her family could not afford to cover the costs of surgery to remove the fragments lodged in her head. She told Amnesty International that she was suffering from debilitating headaches, at times causing her to lose her sight, as a result. Amnesty International visited their home and observed the damage caused by the projectile. The physical evidence was consistent with an anti-aircraft strike.

Fatmeh's one-and-a-half-year-old son was injured on 30 March by an anti-aircraft projectile that hit their home in Sa’wan, Sana’a

Fatmeh’s husband also told Amnesty International that in the days he spent with his son while he was recovering in the al-Thawra hospital more than 10 people came into the emergency room every day who were suffering from anti-aircraft projectile injuries.

27 April, Shumaylah neighbourhood, Sana’a

Amnesty International also spoke with the parents of Karim Ali al-Sagheer Farhan, 13, who was killed by an anti-aircraft projectile on 27 April. Karim’s mother, who was home at the time of the strike, said that at 12pm she heard an anti-aircraft projectile strike in front of the house and then heard her son cry out:

“I heard him scream Allahu Akbar and he was saying the shahada. I pulled my abaya on and then saw the neighbours taking him to the hospital…I knew it was anti-aircraft weaponry from the noise. There was no shelling that day,” she said.

Karim’s mother and father went to the Yemen Jordan hospital where they were told by doctors and neighbours that their son had a shrapnel injury to the stomach and would need to undergo an operation. Karim’s father told Amnesty International that he was certain the injury was caused by an anti-aircraft projectile. Describing what happened, he said:

“[Karim] was at the gate of the house going to the mosque for the noon prayer. The anti-aircraft projectile failed to detonate in the sky and hit the ground and his stomach was hit with shrapnel…he went into surgery, but didn’t survive. From the impact of the strike and what people said who were at the site after he was injured we knew it was an anti-aircraft weapon. The whole area heard the explosion. There were no airstrikes here... A second shell hit the roof on Monday but it didn’t detonate.”

Karim’s father showed Amnesty International the projectile that hit the roof. He said the anti-aircraft fire was coming from Jabal al-Nahdayn, a Huthi armed group stronghold. He also provided Amnesty International with a copy of Karim’s medical records which stated he was injured by anti-aircraft fire.

5 May, Beit Baws neighbourhood, Sana’a

On 5 May at around 11AM, on his walk home from work, Sameer, 50, was injured by an anti-aircraft projectile on 50 Meter Road at a qat market in the Beit Baws area, his relative told Amnesty International. Sameer, who was badly injured in the attack, was still recovering in the intensive care unit at the al-Thawra hospital nearly two weeks after the incident. His relative, who visited him in the Essra’ Hospital where he was taken directly after the attack said that several other men were injured in the same incident and that he saw them at the hospital. He told Amnesty International that that day there were no airstrikes in the area, but that there was anti-aircraft fire.

6 May, Mount Nuqum neighbourhood, Sana’a

Amnesty International visited, Salah, 9, in the al-Thawra hospital where he was recovering from injuries sustained from an anti-aircraft projectile on 6 May. His left leg was broken and he had fragmentation injuries to his stomach, groin, and right foot. Salah’s uncle, who was with him in the hospital, told Amnesty International that Salah was injured while in Mount Nuqum, where he lives, on 6 May. He said that at the time Salah was in the street with his siblings and cousins.

“We were playing [in the street]” Salah said. “It was 5PM, prayer time. The plane was there and they tried to hit it with the Raja [anti-aircraft weaponry].”

Salah, 9, at the al-Thawra hospital where he was recovering from injuries sustained from an anti-aircraft projectile on 6 May

Salah’s uncle told Amnesty International that anti-aircraft fire was a regular occurrence in their neighbourhood. “They are always striking [this area],” he said. “We’ve started to know from the remnants when it is a Raja [anti-aircraft weaponry]…two weeks before another boy and an older man were also injured by a Raja.” He was optimistic that Salah would be walking again in one month

5 or 6 May, Damar al-Ghar neighbourhood, Sana’a

Amnesty International spoke to Amal, a woman from the Damar al-Ghar neighbourhood who was recovering from injuries at the al-Thawra hospital from an anti-aircraft projectile that hit the neighbourhood 10 or 11 days before. Amal said that she was getting kids from the family together to leave the area when the projectile struck, injuring her near a school in her neighbourhood. She said that they heard the plane overhead but she did not see it, and that no airstrikes struck the neighbourhood that day.

Mount Nuqum, airstrike on weapons depot on 11 May 2015

Ahmad, a resident of Mount Nuqum present during the airstrike early in the evening on 11 May 2015, told Amnesty International that he heard four large explosions following aerial attacks. The airstrikes hit a weapons cache in the mountain which then set off a series of secondary explosions and projectiles. Ahmad said that the secondary projectiles continued to go off until 7am the next day. He said that anti-aircraft weapons that had been stored in the mountain were “dropping like rain” on the neighbourhood. Ahmad estimated that the weapons cache was about 200-250 meters away from the homes in the congested residential area.

Damage to a civilian home in Mount Nuqum after a weapons depot was hit by a coalition airstrike on 11 May

One of the residents injured in the secondary blasts was Bassel, a 16-year-old resident of Mount Nuqum who was helping to evacuate women from the area after the strikes had started. He told Amnesty International:

“I was trying to evacuate women from the area just before the strike at 6:30pm. We were in front of the Ghamdan School with our relatives. There were no fighters there. People were running away. I was walking when I was hit. One guy came in a car and took me to the hospital. My mom was also hit with shrapnel.”

Bassel’s right leg was amputated below the knee as a result of his injury.

Bassel, 16, was injured in secondary blasts caused after a coalition airstrike struck the weapons depot in Mount Nuqum on 11 May

Amnesty International also met Firas, a four year old who was injured in his home near to Mount Nuqum on 11 May from a secondary explosion, and spoke to a relative who was with him at the hospital. Firas’ left hand and right leg had been injured by shrapnel. His mother, the relative told us, also had a fragmentation injury to her face.

Syria not a launching pad for attacks on west says al-Nusra chief in TV interview

Abu Mohamed al-Jolani, the head of al-Qaida’s Syrian ally, said his mission was to bring down the Assad regime, but all options would be open if US kept attacking

The Guardian

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(The interview (in Arabic)  was posted on the blog yesterday)

Al-Qaida’s Syria affiliate would not use Syria as a launching pad for attacks on the west, its chief said in a wide-ranging televised interview on Wednesday.

Without showing his face, Abu Mohamed al-Jolani said his group, al-Nusra Front, would protect Syrian minorities that renounced the regime.

The interview was Jolani’s second with Qatari-owned al-Jazeera TV since a similar appearance in 2013. The interviewer, Ahmad Mansur, said it was broadcast “from liberated lands in Syria”.

All that could be seen of Jolani was a black shawl, a check shirt and gesturing hands.

“The instructions that we have are not to use al-Sham as a base to launch attacks on the west or Europe, so as not to muddy the current war,” Jolani said.

“Our mission in Syria is the downfall of the regime, its symbols, and its allies, like Hezbollah.” Hezbollah is the powerful Shia movement fighting alongside the Bashar al-Assad regime.

But if the United States kept attacking them, he said, “all options are open. Anyone has the right to self-defence.”

Jolani also denied the existence of the Khorasan group, which the US had said was an offshoot of al-Qaida that was plotting attacks against the US.

Nevertheless, he lambasted the US for its air raids against al-Nusra in Syria and accused it of coordinating with the Assad regime on the use of air space.

“America is propping up the regime,” he asserted, leaning forward in an ornate gold-encrusted chair.

Al-Nusra and its extremist rival Islamic State have been designated as terrorist organisations by the US since the end of 2012.

In recent months, al-Nusra has led a rebel coalition in a series of key victories in Syria’s north-west Idlib province, including the capital and a large military base.Since September, a US-led international coalition has been raiding jihadist positions in Syria, although most strikes have targeted IS.

The gains have opened the road for a potential jihadist advance on Latakia and Tartus, coastal provinces that are home to Syrian minorities including Christians and Alawites, the offshoot of Shia Islam to which the Assad clan belongs.

Extremist groups in Syria, including al-Nusra and IS, have been accused of targeting these minority communities. But al-Nusra’s chief seemed to try to play down those fears, saying his group “only fights those who fight us”.

“If the Alawites leave their religion and leave Bashar al-Assad, we will protect them,” he said.

He said Christians living under the rule of al-Nusra were living in peace and that in a future state ruled by Islamic law, the financially capable would pay “jizya,” or tax reserved for non-Muslims.

Jolani promised to defeat the Lebanese movement Hezbollah, which has significantly bolstered the Assad regime in the mountainous border region between Syria and Lebanon.

“Hezbollah knew the ugliness of the Syrian regime,” Jolani warned. “It knew its fate was directly linked to Bashar’s fate.

“Qalamun will be an important gateway for Damascus when the battle for the capital begins. As soon as Bashar is defeated, it will be the end for Hezbollah.”

As he did in his interview in 2013, the Nusra chief said the end of the Assad regime was near.

“I assure you, the fall of Bashar is not far away,” he said. “I do not want to project much optimism, but there are very positive signs.”

He rejected a political end to the conflict, saying that any political agreement “reached in the halls of Washington ... would cost the blood of the Syrian people”.

He also firmly denied receiving any state funding, saying that Nusra was financed by its own businesses activities and contributions from individual donors.

Wednesday’s interview was the first in a two-part series, to be continued next week.

Real News Video: ISIS Gains Strategic Ground in Iraq and Syria

Reese Erlich, author of Inside Syria, says that ISIS showcased its tactical and military savviness in Ramadi. The problem for the US is that it still has no reliable allies that can fight on the ground. 

WikiLeaks Releases 500K U.S. Cables from 1978 on Iran, Sandinistas, Afghanistan, Israel & More

Democracy Now!

"On Wednesday, WikiLeaks added more than half a million U.S. diplomatic cables from 1978 to its Public Library of US Diplomacy database. The documents include diplomatic cables and other diplomatic communications from and to U.S. embassies and missions in nearly every country. "1978 actually set in progress many of the geopolitical elements that are playing out today," Assange said. "1978 was the beginning of the Iranian revolution … the Sandinista movement started in its popular form … the war period in Afghanistan began in 1978 and hasn’t stopped since."...."

Iraqi Offensive Against Ramadi Stalls Amid ISIS Bombings

17 Troops Killed in Suicide Attacks

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One day into their much-hyped offensive against the ISIS-held city of Ramadi, Iraqi troops and their allies have stalled almost immediately, with reports that the troops entered the grounds of the university, but were unable to retake it.

Troops are mostly on the outskirts of Ramadi, and 17 troops were killed in a series of suicide attacks against the front lines almost as soon as they announced the offensive.

Though Shi’ite militias predicted a victory over ISIS almost immediately in Ramadi, experts of downplaying the chances of a quick victory, and the Pentagon confirmed ISIS is continuing to fortify the city in anticipation of a counteroffensive.

ISIS doesn’t seem overly concerned by the offensive, either, sending some of its forces out to capture Hashd al-Shaabi, another village in the Anbar Province.

Iraqi military officials say their near-term goal is to surround the city, and attributed their inability to make any progress through the last day to a sandstorm, which they say ISIS used to their advantage.

In Sisi's world Hamas is terrorist, Israel a friend

By: Wael Kandil

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Comment: Sisi’s Egypt has aligned with Tel Aviv on policy towards the resistance in Gaza, says Wael Kandil.

There is a saying in Egypt that the verdict of the law is the highest form of truth, but the plain truth now is that Egypt under Abdel Fatah al-Sisi considers itself closer to Israel than Palestine.

On Tuesday, the Court of Summary Matters in Cairo ruled it did not have the jurisdiction to look into a lawsuit accusing Israel of terrorism.

Contradictiory rulings

This ruling comes after one not long ago deeming Hamas a to be terrorist organisation, and a second that decided – ostensibly, for lack of jurisdiction - to refuse to deem Israel a terrorist entity. The only surprise in this was that some claimed they were taken by surprise.

Israel has been a friend of the Sisi-led power grab in Egypt. Immediately following the coup, Israel asked the US not to freeze its annual $1.3bn of military aid to Egypt.

Soon after, Israel attacked the Palestinian people in Gaza, while Sisi's new regime attacked the people of Sinai.

This underscored the intimate alliance between Egyptian policy and Israel. Israel's Maariv newspaper, for example, proclaimed that the most important outcome of the war with Hamas was that it had solidified its strategic partnership with Egypt.

Eric Trager, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said: "Sisi shares Washington and Israel's view of Hamas as both a terrorist organisation and a strategic threat. Washington can count on Sisi as a partner in isolating Hamas."

Strategic realignment

Those who believe the hatred shown by the coup regime in Egypt towards Hamas is a tactic used for the sake of putting pressure and bargaining are sorely mistaken. It is most definitely a fixed strategy, borne out of the strategic alliance between Cairo and Tel Aviv.

The Egyptian regime is fully aware its survival depends on Israeli and US approval, especially with respect to the regime's role in setting the pace of Arab-Israeli relations and keeping them within the margins of - Israel's - safety.

The court's recent verdict is completely compatible with the regime's doctrine. But what is interesting are the reactions from the elites, especially bombastic pseudo leftists and pseudo nationalists who until recently excelled at covering their insignificance and their bias in favour of tyrannical and corrupt regimes by condemning Israel.

Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of al-Araby al-Jadeed, its editorial board or staff.This is an edited translation from our Arabic website.

Current Al-Jazeera (Arabic) Online Poll

This is another poll of the is-the-Pope-Catholic variety; it asks:

Do you believe that the formation of the "popular mobilization" militias in Iraq was on a sectarian basis?

So far, 97% have voted yes. 

ما وراء الخبر-معركة الأنبار بين ضعف الجيش والدعم الأميركي

Watch Ghada Owais Kick Ass!

Go Ghada!!

بلا حدود-أبو محمد الجولاني أمير جبهة النصرة

Ali Farzat's Cartoon: The Daily Meal Trap

الواقع العربي- آثار إغلاق مصر لمعبر رفح

DNA 27/05/2015: عون.. نصرالله.. ومعارك الوجود

Fall of Ramadi betrays Obama administration's 'credibility gap'

Isis capture of Iraq city reveals contradictions in White House ‘happy talk’, reminding critics of Donald Rumsfeld downplaying Iraq occupation

Spencer Ackerman in New York
The Guardian

Link

The fall of Ramadi has not just exposed the weakness of Barack Obama’s nine-month war against the Islamic State. It has also exposed his administration to accusations of a growing credibility gap between optimistic White House pronouncements and the grim realities on the ground.

Iraq launches counterattack against Isis near Ramadi

Read more

Iraq veterans, thinktank analysts and former US officials have begun drawing comparisons to Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon during the darkest days of the Iraq occupation. Then as now, some suspect the US is sacrificing a truthful description of the war to avoid pressure to escalate.

“Perhaps reality has smacked the administration over the head with a two-by-four in recent days,” said retired army colonel Peter Mansoor, a multi-tour Iraq veteran who served as executive officer to general David Petraeus during the 2007-08 Iraq surge.

The long-simmering critique has boiled over after Ramadi fell to Isis fighters, a circumstance administration officials downplayed before and after the capital of Anbar province was overrun earlier this month. Administration pronouncements on Ramadi now openly contradict assurances issued just days earlier.

On Saturday, defense secretary Ashton Carter excoriated the Iraqi military for showing “no will to fight” Isis, after it abandoned Ramadi – a city it had previously held for a year.

Yet just days before, the senior US military officer, general Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had defended the Iraqi withdrawal as a strategic retreat to a more defensible position. “The [Iraqi Security Force] was not driven out of Ramadi, they drove out of Ramadi,” Dempsey told the Wall Street Journal on 20 May.

“The Iraqis, with coalition support, are making sound progress,” Marine brigadier general Thomas Weidley, the chief of staff of the US military command prosecuting the war, told Pentagon reporters on 15 May. Weidley conceded that Isis had for days assaulted the city, but pointed to “165 air strikes” which had been launched in the past month to help government forces keep Ramadi.Five days before that, as Isis fighters carried out a string of assassinations and bomb attacks that heralded their capture of the city, senior US officials insisted that their coalition – not the insurgents – still held the momentum.

“We firmly believe Daesh is on the defensive throughout Iraq and Syria, attempting to hold previous gains, while conducting small-scale, localized harassing attacks, occasional complex or high-profile attacks, in order to feed their information and propaganda apparatus,” Weidley said, using a dismissive Arabic acronym for Isis.

Asked about Isis hoisting its flag in Ramadi, Weidley suggested that Isis was merely “taking photos and documenting small-term gains and then using it for propaganda purposes”.

By 26 May, more than a week after Ramadi fell, a Central Command press release boasting of a robust coalition commitment to defeating Isis referred vaguely to “recent tactical-level setbacks”.

In the weeks before Ramadi fell, Pentagon officials dismissed fighting in the surrounding, mainly Sunni province of Anbar as a sideshow.

On 14 April, Dempsey said Ramadi – the capital of Anbar provice, which sits between Isis strongholds in Syria and the Iraqi capital of Baghdad – was “not symbolic in any way”, calling the oil refinery at Baiji “a more strategic target”. Baiji is about 180km south of Mosul, Iraq’s second city, which US warplanners have publicly prioritized over Ramadi since autumn – an emphasis they have now reversed.

“Anyone who was looking at the situation could tell that the loss of Ramadi would be hugely significant,” Mansoor said.

Mansoor, now a history professor at the Ohio State University, bemoaned “happy talk that the strategy is working and all they need to do is adjust at the margins”, saying it “could create a credibility gap going forward if they don’t become more forthright”.

Beyond Ramadi, questionable administration statements about Iraq and Isis have accumulated for months.

In April, the Pentagon released a map that seemed to show Isis losing its hold on territory throughout Iraq by more than 25%. Despite the administration’s daily air strikes and its deployment of 3,000 “noncombat” military forces back to Iraq, Susan Rice, Obama’s national security adviser, said on 20 May that Obama has “ended two wars responsibly” – while both wars continue. 

The deployment of those forces, many of them elite troops that the administration prefers to call “advisers” to the Iraqi military, has stretched the White House assurance against “boots on the ground” to the breaking point. So has the on-the-ground contributions to the war made by Shia militias and Iranian forces, which took the city of Tikrit back from Isis even as senior US generalsdenied they were present.

Even the Pentagon’s website for the war prefers the relatively antiseptic term “Targeted Operations Against [Isis] Terrorists”. Meanwhile, a campaign that Obama unilaterally launched in August with the limited goal of preventing a “humanitarian catastrophe” has sprawled into daily strikes in two countries. The US military acknowledges causing only two civilian casualties despite launching more than 3,000 such air strikes.

Jack Keane, the former army vice chief of staff and an architect of the surge, told a Senate panel on Thursday that the specter of the Rumsfeld Pentagon, which for years insisted the Iraq occupation faced merely minor difficulties, had returned.

“I hear a disturbing and frightening echo of the summer of 2006 when administration senior government – when a different administration, senior government officials and military senior generals came before this committee and in the face of compelling evidence that our strategy in Iraq was failing, these officials looked at you and defended that strategy and told you that overall the strategy was succeeding,” Keane testified.

From the White House, the administration has taken the view that the war would always be “long and difficult”, as deputy press secretary Eric Schultz said on 18 May, and the fall of Ramadi is a “setback” that does not herald broader flaws in US strategy. “We’ve had other periods of setback too that have been followed shortly by important progress,” press secretary Josh Earnest said on 19 May.

Taking a broader view, Obama last week rebuffed the idea that he “overlearned the mistake of Iraq”, suggesting that the limits he has placed on the US military commitment to Iraq reflect and hedge against Iraqi sectarianism that outside pressure cannot resolve.

“If the Iraqis themselves are not willing or capable to arrive at the political accommodations necessary to govern, if they are not willing to fight for the security of their country, we cannot do that for them,” Obama told the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, adding: “No, I don’t think we’re losing.”

If Joe Biden calls, head for the hills

By Rami Khouri

Link

If I were Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Abadi, I’d be slightly worried that I received a telephone call from U.S. Vice President Joe Bidenon Monday assuring continued American military support and coordination to combat ISIS. Last week, ISIS made dramatic gains by taking over the provincial capital of Ramadi without much of a fight from Iraqi official and militia forces or supporting air power from Arab and foreign countries.

Also worried should be the people of Iraq and of many Arab countries, because the combination of Arab and Western military forces fighting against ISIS seems to have produced limited results in the past year since the jihadi group started to seriously expand from its northern Syria heartland. ISIS today is among the fastest, if not the fastest, growing political movements in the Arab world. It is still expanding in parts of Iraq and Syria, and picking up adherents among smaller movements in other Arab countries and a few non-Arab countries. How is this possible, after 12 years of nonstop American-led warfare, military training, democracy promotion and state-building in Iraq?

Understanding the answers to that question strikes me as an urgent task for all Arab citizens and leaders, who are either directly menaced by ISIS and Al-Qaeda, or potentially threatened by them. I say this because so many tens of millions of disgruntled, discarded, disposable Arabs who have not found life, identity, dignity, justice or hope in their failed status as citizens now could play their last desperate card of joining ISIS, or simply waving its flag in defiance, as a tortured protest of their demeaned condition. Only some thousands here and there have done this to date. But tens of millions are potential candidates to do so if conditions in the Arab region remain the same, which seems to be the case.

The combination of American and Arab armies in action in recent years has not been very impressive or reassuring for ordinary Arab men and women who dearly seek to live a normal, plain, unexceptional life – a life that is not dominated by local and foreign attacks, terrorism, mass refugee flows, imploding governments, weakened economies, heightened sectarian violence, ethnic cleansing, endemic corruption, public decapitations and flogging, and, now, the emergence of ISIS and other extreme movements like it.

So if your secretary tells you that Joe Biden is on the phone, and you live anywhere between Morocco and Bangladesh, you might do well to make sure you have an emergency travel bag packed. I say this because the likelihood of your having to flee your hometown in haste is much higher than it is for citizens in those little towns in Iowa and New Hampshire where American presidential candidates these days speak mostly gibberish about American foreign policy in the Middle East, whose consequences speak loudly in Ramadi last week.

The United States has spent trillions of dollars since 2003 and has lost thousands of dead and tens of thousands of injured – first by invading and effectively destroying the Iraqi state that had functioned for much of the previous century; then by feverishly and, it turns out, amateurishly training and equipping a new Iraqi army to replace the one it dismantled in 2003 on the orders of a real life comic strip character named Paul Bremer; and now by resuming military action in the form of more training and equipping schemes, alongside aerial attacks against ISIS. For what? By whose mandate? Perhaps this is why ISIS is the fastest growing political brand in the Arab region.

Iraqis themselves also have paid a high price in the hundreds of thousands of their citizens who have been killed by a variety of groups, including invading Anglo-American forces, other Iraqis (including state forces in some cases) motivated by ugly sectarianism, and nowadays by ISIS and similar militant Sunni purveyors of death and the destruction of long-standing Iraqi societies. Corrupt and dysfunctional Iraqi governance and ineffective armed forces in the wake of the 2003 Anglo-American invasion are a 50-50 joint venture of Iraqis and Americans working together to provide one of modern history’s most vivid examples of what should be avoided in statecraft.

What should be avoided is local dictatorships supported by foreign powers, as was Saddam Hussein’s cruel and vicious Baathist endeavor for years. This is followed by those same foreign powers attacking and dismantling the same country, as well as hapless parties trying to patch the country back together again with harebrained schemes concocted by ignorant and totally unaccountable throwback colonial-style administrators.

So I would find a desk to hide under, or a nearby ferryboat to India or Greece, if Joe Biden calls soon. It would be much healthier for Arabs and Americans alike to stop repeating the catastrophic policies of using force to resolve local tensions.

The only resolution across the world has always resided in the reality of ordinary, satisfied citizens who are treated decently by their own authorities and foreign powers alike.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly by THE DAILY STAR. He can be followed on Twitter @RamiKhouri.

مفاجآت سورية جديدة

رأي القدس

MAY 26, 2015

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تسرّبت أنباء عن قرب قيام «جبهة النصرة» السورية إعلان انفكاكها عن تنظيم «القاعدة». يأتي ذلك بعد إشارات صريحة أرسلها التنظيم السنة الماضية حين طالب الأمم المتحدة بإخراجه من لائحته للمنظمات الإرهابية ورفعه علم الثورة السورية على معبر القنيطرة في هضبة الجولان السورية بعد الاستيلاء عليها من النظام في أيلول/سبتمبر من العام الماضي، بدلاً من خاتم النبي محمد الذي يستخدمه تنظيم «الدولة الإسلامية» و»الجبهة» راية لهما، والذي أصبح نقطة علام تعلن تحدّي القوانين الأممية ودالة على انتهاكات لا تحصى قام بها تنظيم «الدولة الإسلامية» بينما حاولت «النصرة» ما استطاعت النأي بنفسها عنها.
ويتذكر السوريون طريقة تعامل «النصرة» مع راهبات دير مار تقلا في بلدة معلولا وامتداح رئيسة الدير الأم بيلاجيا سياف بعد عودتها إلى دمشق أمير الجبهة في منطقة القلمون علناً وبدون خوف من أجهزة أمن النظام السوري التي ما لبث موالوها أن شنّوا حرباً هوجاء عليها مطالبين بطردها من الكنيسة لـ»تعاطفها مع المجرمين».
يتعلّق التوجّه السياسي المذكور لـ»جبهة النصرة» بعوامل عديدة منها:
التنامي الكبير لنفوذ تنظيم «الدولة الإسلامية»، الأمر الذي أدّى إلى صراعات عسكرية بين الجهتين ومهّد الأسباب اللازمة لحصول افتراقات في القراءة السياسية و»الشرعيّة» للواقع السوري والعربي والعالمي.
- حاجة قوى عربية وغير عربية فاعلة في الساحة السورية للتعامل مع «جبهة النصرة» باعتبارها قوّة فاعلة على الأرض يصعب تجاهلها ولا يفيد استعداؤها إلا في توسيع جبهة الخصوم الكثر، وهو أمر قد يدفع أفرادها وقياداتها في لحظة ما إلى أحضان «الدولة الإسلامية».
- التراجع في نفوذ تنظيم «القاعدة» وتضارب الأنباء عن صراعات داخله وعن إمكانية إعلان قائده المصري أيمن الظواهري «حل بيعة» فروع التنظيم حول العالم، وهي أنباء تسرّبت بدورها من «جبهة النصرة» نفسها، وهو ما مهّد لتحالفها مع جماعات أخرى كجماعة «أحرار الشام».
- يتعلّق الأمر أيضاً بالطبيعة «الشاميّة» للتنظيم، وهي طبيعة معروف ابتعادها عن الغلوّ والتطرّف وعلاقتها بالواقع العينيّ وتفاصيله أكثر من ارتباطها بالأيديولوجيا، ومثال عليه ما حصل بعد تحرير مدينة إدلب حين نفى أبو محمد الجولاني، زعيم «النصرة»، النيّة في إقامة إمارة فيها، مشدداً على ضرورة التحالف مع جماعات جهادية أخرى، وهي ممارسة بعيدة جدّا عن ممارسات «الدولة الإسلامية» القائمة على إقصاء أي طرف آخر والنزعة الجامحة إلى ممارسة السلطات، بدءاً من اسمها، ووصولاً إلى صكّها النقود والجوازات وتدخّلها المباشر في كافة شؤون «مواطنيها».
رغم رايتهما الواحدة، وأصولهما الأيديولوجية المتقاربة («تنظيم القاعدة»)، يعبّر التنظيــــمان عن مزاجين جغرافيين وســــياسيين متباعـــدين جذريّا، فكثير من أطــــر وكوادر «الدولة الإسلامية» في العراق جاء من الضباط البعثيين في الجيش العراقي وكوادر الدولة الـــذين أقصوا بعد الاحتلال الأمريكي (ومن هنا ربما يأتي هاجس «الدولة» الملحّ)، فيما جاء مقاتلو «النصرة» من الأرياف والأحشاء المهملة للمدن السورية وهم يستبطنون كرهاً شديداً للدولة السورية و»بعثييها» وضباطها.
إعلان «جبهة النصرة» ابتعادها عن تنظيم «القاعدة»، إذا حصل، هو إعلان أولي لافتراق الوعي الإسلامي الجهادي السوري عن شقيقه العراقي، وهو أيضاً محاولة للتصالح مع الواقع العربي والعالمي، الأمر الذي يشير إلى إمكان وجود مخرج من المأزق الهائل الذي شكّله تنظيم «الدولة الإسلامية» للإسلام، وللعرب والعالم.

رأي القدس

US-Iraq: Blame in vain

Behind the bickering and recrimination lies a sinister endgame.

By Marwan Bishara

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It's petty and it's pitiful.

Watching the US, Iran and their client government in Baghdad spar and bicker like schoolboys after getting their butts kicked, yet again, by a group of rogue jihadists, borders on the surreal.

Their public taunting and recrimination after the fall of Ramadi has exposed the childish and bankrupt politics that lies beneath their military incompetence. But it may also signal something far more sinister.

Just how major is the setback? Is it merely "tactical" - as US President Barack Obama contends - or is it the scandalous embarrassment his generals portray it to be? How strategic is the failure? How steep is the slippery slope towards total humiliation?

US criticises Iraqi government for Ramadi loss

Has the real fight to liberate Anbar finally begun, or is the fight in defence of Baghdad?

No stomach to fight

Last weekend, US Secretary of Defence Ashton Carter attributed the recent setbacks around Ramadi to a lack of will on the part of the Iraqi military.

Iranian and Iraqi officials were quick to shoot back. It's Washington that lacks any will, claimed General Qassem Soleimani, head of the Iranian Quds Force - it's the US that doesn't have the stomach to fight.

For the Iranian general, Washington is complicit. The Americans are in bed with ISIL. It's a conspiracy.

According to Army Brigadier General Kurt Crytzer, who has been in charge of US special operations forces in Iraq for the past six months: "Many Iraqi troops believe American forces are secretly supplying [ISIL]."

While the general contends that this "misunderstanding" is the result of a public diplomacy failure, he says it's widespread (even Soleimani "believes" it), and could leave US forces "vulnerable to reprisal attacks from their nominal allies in the fight against the militants".

Mind you, the bickering in Washington over the successes and failures of the US propaganda war has been going on since 9/11. But it has gained urgency and momentum with ISIL's phenomenal success at recruiting young people from around the world.

Once again, the Pentagon is 'surprised' and its Iraqi minions are astonished. But if 'sudden' and 'unexpected' are critical components of any surprise, how could it be a surprise to see ISIL gaining ground a year after more of the same?

Colossal failures

It's not the first, second or even third time, alas. It's been a year since the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) took over Mosul (and Raqqa in Syria) causing a major shock and awe in Washington and Baghdad. Since then, it has achieved a number of gains culminating in the takeover of Ramadi, capital of Anbar province (as well as Palmyra in Syria).

Once again, the Pentagon is "surprised" and its Iraqi minions are astonished. But if "sudden" and "unexpected" are critical components of any surprise, how could it be a surprise to see ISIL gaining ground a year after it did more of the same?                                            

For some time now, Washington and Baghdad have claimed that defeating ISIL will take time, but that they've at least succeeded in containing its expansion. Well, that doesn't seem to have worked either, does it?

It is now amply clear that despite hefty US military and operational assistance, despite major Iraqi deployments in the Anbar province, and despite heavy US aerial bombardment of ISIL, the Iraqi government is unable to contain - let alone defeat - ISIL.

And the most intriguing part is the fact that Washington and Baghdad are not even fighting a classical guerrilla group hidden in the middle of a jungle or in a rugged mountainous terrain. ISIL behaves like a regular army, moving in open spaces (the desert for God's sake!), occupying military bases, taking over cities, providing services and imposing their own system of governance.

They even paraded their way through major Iraqi cities like Ramadi and Mosul.  

Absence of political will

To be sure, the absence of will is not exactly military, let alone psychological; it's political.

After all, why would mainly Shia government troops want to "liberate" Sunnis who loathe them as much as they loathe ISIL? And why would the corrupt mid and upper leadership of the military and Special Forces be willing to fight when their leadership is divided (between Haider al-Abbadi and Nouri al-Maliki), or when the Iranian-backed militias and US bombers could do their bidding just the same?

It's clear to every rational and relevant decision-maker in Baghdad and Washington, that Shia-Sunni reconciliation is a precondition for winning against ISIL.

A Shia militia sniper provides cover for Iraqi army troops [Getty]

Abbadi replaced Maliki after the latter failed to bridge the sectarian divide, and even deepened it. Supported by Washington, Abbadi was expected to rectify the situation in order to improve his political standing in the country and improve his military chances against ISIL.

For a short while, it seemed that the new Iraqi government was making some headway against ISIL, notably in Tikrit. And it was hoped this would create a domino effect leading to the defeat of ISIL in other Sunni areas without the need for political reconciliation.

That prompted a Washington summit in April where the US president reportedly reminded the Iraqi prime minister of the importance of national reconciliation and asked him to move away from Iranian influence. For his part, Abbadi asked Obama for more sophisticated weapons and sustained US aerial support. Neither happened.

After a protracted conflict, Ramadi finally fell to ISIL, resulting in an embarrassing setback - not to say humiliating defeat.

But is that all there is to it? What next?

The endgame in Iraq

For both Washington and Tehran, the endgame in Iraq will be a game without end - a cynical and dangerous game.

Public recrimination aside, the Pentagon is not entirely unhappy watching the Iran-backed militias and ISIL militants fight it out until both sides are totally worn out. This partially explains why Obama changed his mind and gave Abbadi the green light to involve the Iranians in this fight.

But the Iranians aren't exactly displeased to see the US repeatedly embarrassed every time it gets involved in a Middle East conflict.

Both have suspiciously been betting on a protracted conflict that shatters their enemies, bearing in mind that the "enemy of my enemy" could be a tactical friend - if only for a while.  

At this stage, both are seriously shamed by ISIL's string of victories. All the while, Iraqis continue to suffer and die. The same goes for Syria.

Come now, let's be honest about this. Do generals and decision-makers in Washington and Tehran (not to mention a whole lot of others) care about human life in Ramadi or Palmyra? Do they give a damn about Mosul or Raqqa, other than making strategic points and settling political scores?

Marwan Bishara is the senior political analyst at Al Jazeera.