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fcastro2

Syria opposition praises France's anti-Assad stance | News , Middle East | THE DAILY STAR - 0 views

www.dailystar.com.lb/...frances-anti-assad-stance.ashx

syria france middle east ISIS politics

shared by fcastro2 on 06 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Syria's exiled opposition praised France Sunday for maintaining its "exemplary" opposition to President Bashar Assad after a group of French lawmakers made a controversial visit to Damascus this week.
  • The position of France has always been exemplary, and your country has consistently held to the side of the Syrian people against any attempt to rehabilitate the regime in Damascus under false protenses
  • The trip reignited debate in Europe over whether it was time to rebuild diplomatic ties with the Syrian regime in order to counter the greater threat from jihadi groups such as ISIS.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Those who argue they should cooperate with the Syrian regime to fight terrorism will only find the phenomenon worsenin
  • The National Coalition for Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces warmly welcomes the firm position expressed by France regarding the cause of the Syrian people and its aspiration to form a civil democratic state
  • According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights activist group, the conflict in Syria, which started as a pro-democracy uprising seeking Assad's ouster in March 2011 and morphed into a full-blown war, has left more than 200,000 people dead
  • fcastro2 on 06 Mar 15
     
    France is continuing to oppose Syrian President Bashar Assad stating that his government will not be the best group to combat terrorism. They continue to side with the Syrian people and their aspiration to forma civil democratic state. 
micklethwait

Libya: Where are the dividing lines? - Middle East - Al Jazeera English - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...g-lines-20149871934621546.html

shared by micklethwait on 14 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • The House moved to Tobruk after armed groups supportive of the General National Congress began to overrun the capital.
  • Libya's new parliament, dominated by self-styled secular and nationalist candidates, was formed after the heavy defeat of Islamist candidates in June elections.
  • In the House of Representatives camp, many figures have come together in opposition to the contentious political isolation law, which banned anyone involved with the former regime from political participation.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Errishi told Al Jazeera that oil revenues pass through the country's central bank. With members of Libya Dawn guarding the gates to the central bank, Errishi added that "the central bank is controlled by whomever is controlling Tripoli".
  • The UAE, which is home to Mahmoud Jibril, a leading politician opposed to Libya's Islamist groups, has been accused by the US of bombing sites held by Misrata forces with the help of Egypt.
  • t has also been alleged that Qatar, which plays host to Ali Salabi, a leading spiritual figure with close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, has provided weapons and support to Brotherhood-affiliated groups battling former general Haftar.
  • With the displacement of 100,000 people due to fighting in Tripoli and Benghazi, however, the Libya crisis may not yet have taken its worst turn. "If we see more brigades going to one side over the other," said researcher Hamedi, "this will lead to civil war. The role of the regional environment is to help the domestic equation reach a deal."
    • micklethwait
      micklethwait on 10 Oct 14
       
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  • allieggg on 14 Sep 14
     
    Due to Libya's lack of institutional structure and weak centralized government, rival militia violence and clashes have created constant chaos leading the country towards another civil war. After the fall of Qaddafi, who obliterated institutions necessary for a functional government, Libya has been unable to manage the state. The National Transitional Council, which replaced the Qaddafi Regime, turned into the General National Congress and was given 18 months to form a democratic constitution. When the deadline passed the constitution was incomplete, which forced Congress to organize elections to a new House of Representatives. The former GNC members declared a new self proclaimed GNC, electing Omar al-Hasi as their prime minister. The new GNC is not recognized by Libya's parliament nor is it by the international community. Al Jazeera says the country literally has two parliaments and two governments, creating inconceivable instability throughout the state. The newly elected House has moved to Tobruk after armed islamic GNC militia groups overran the capital, seizing control over the major institutions in Tripoli. Due to this lack of a functional government, the rest of the state has turned to chaos. After the civil war, anti and pro Qaddafi forces branched into militias striving for power. Without a working state and government, militias had to rely on themselves to provide security, and really have no incentive to give up arms and no true government to be a part of. General Khalifa Hifter, a former Qaddafi general who later joined the Libyan rebel army in 2011, formed an anti-militia militia, targeting islamist militias like Ansar al-Sharia. Hifter is not affiliated with either of the governments, but rather strives for a military government, and supreme control of the armed forces.
fcastro2

The U.S. Needs to Rethink Its Anti-ISIS Approach in Syria | TIME - 0 views

time.com/...u-s-anti-isis-campaign-syria

ISIS syria politics US strategy

shared by fcastro2 on 09 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • As a result, morale among nationalist fighters in northern Syria has plummeted
  • ISIS remains essentially unchallenged in its heartland in northern Syria, despite repeated U.S. air strikes
  • In the south, nationalists have fared better at keeping ISIS out and Jabhat al Nusra in check, partly due to a coherent, rational U.S.-led support program operating covertly out of Jordan
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • A strategy to beat the jihadists and make sure they stay beaten must be locally-driven, led by nationalist forces supported by the Sunni population that forms the insurgency’s social base.
  • The U.S.-led air campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) has scored some points in Syria, weakening ISIS’s oil infrastructure and revenues and keeping the group out of Kobane
  • the promised U.S. train-and-equip program is unlikely to reverse the nationalists’ losses or jihadists’ gains in northern Syria
  • air strikes alone, and treating nationalist groups as agents rather than partners, violates this principle
  • , the U.S. has helped nationalists in the south avoid the fragmentation, infighting, and lawlessness that weakened them and benefited the jihadists in northern Syria
  • ISIS offers conquered populations the choice between submission – which brings a sense of order and some protection from regime violence – or futile resistance and death
  • Jabhat al Nusra has driven nationalist forces out of much of their core territory in northern Syria, and ISIS continues to threaten those that remain
  • Even if the coalition wants to avoid confronting regime forces, it can and should concentrate air strikes closer to ISIS’s front lines with the nationalist insurgency, helping the latter block ISIS advances in cooperation with local Kurdish forces when possible
  • the United States has excluded them from the coalition military effort
  • , U.S. interests would be better served by a two-pronged approach in northern and southern Syria, helping nationalist rebels contain ISIS and compete with Jabhat al Nusra for control of the insurgency.
  • U.S. airstrikes on jihadists have spared the regime’s forces and inadvertently killed Syrian civilians
  • that Sunni Muslims are under siege by oppressive regional minorities, Iran, and even the United States itself
  • Ironically, the coalition campaign has contributed to the near-collapse of nationalist forces in northern Syria who, despite their imperfections, were ISIS’s most effective rivals and competed with Jabhat al Nusra for leadership of the insurgency
  • campaign has had serious local side effects that have undermined the broader, long-term objective of degrading and destroying ISIS in Syria and preventing the Al Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat al Nusra, from replacing or thriving alongside ISIS
  • fcastro2 on 09 Mar 15
     
    The U.S. should no long really solely on air-strikes to bring down the ISIS group in Syria but it needs other strategic plans. They need to work with the people in Syria and gain their support and trust in order to defeat ISIS.
cthomase

In Libya, you can buy an anti-aircraft gun on Facebook - 0 views

qz.com/...-anti-aircraft-gun-on-facebook

war revolution Libya weapons

shared by cthomase on 07 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • cthomase on 07 Apr 16
     
    In Libya, Facebook isn't just for likes, pokes, shares or posts; you can also buy weapons, and not just guns or knives, but heavily artillery and anti-aircraft guns. Private Facebook groups run by militias are selling left over arms and ammo from the Gaddafi regime.
ccfuentez

Human Trafficking and the Human Rights Agenda Against Eritrea | Red Sea Fisher - 0 views

redseafisher.wordpress.com/...-rights-agenda-against-eritrea

Eritrea human-trafficking Anti-Regime Educational Opportunity

shared by ccfuentez on 03 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • “Ruthless Kidnapping Rings Reach From Desert Sands to U.S. Cities.” The article chronicles the touching personal accounts of Eritrean refugees being kidnapped and taken for ransom in Egypt’s Sinai desert.
  • we intend to give opportunities to study in the United States to those who oppose the regime
  • ccfuentez on 03 Feb 16
     
    In 2013, human trafficking in Eritrea was gaining a lot of international attention, especially from the piece, "Ruthless Kidnapping Rings Reach From Desert Sands to US Cities." In 2009, a possible solution was made to send large numbers of youths to the United States in order for them to receive an opportunity to get a better education.
Briana S

ISIS executes Syrian youth after anti-jihadist protest - 1 views

www.dailystar.com.lb/...ter-anti-jihadist-protest.ashx

Syria ISIS Islamic State execution protest American airstrikes

shared by Briana S on 24 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • Briana S on 24 Sep 14
     
    ISIS fighters executed innocents in a Syrian town Friday, after hundreds of residents demanded they leave following regime airstrikes that targeted the jihadists but also incidently killed civilians as well- the Islamic State executed the innocents publicly
allieggg

Lessons from the Libyan War | The American Conservative - 0 views

www.theamericanconservative.com/...lessons-from-the-libyan-war

libya civil war US Intervention politics war american conservative

shared by allieggg on 23 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • In the Libyan case, this involved attributing to anti-regime forces the “values” that Americans wanted to believe that they had, and it meant investing the conflict in Libya with far greater global significance than it actually possessed.
  • The earlier assumption that the “Arab Spring” was something that the U.S. ought to be encouraging went unexamined, once again because our “values” dictated that Washington must do this.
  • the idea that a Libyan intervention would allow the U.S. “to realign our interests and our values” was reportedly a significant factor in the decision to take military action. Thus one faulty assumption (that our “values” were at stake) led to another (we must “realign our values and our interests”) and that led to a terrible decision.
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  • U.S. intervention in Libya was unpopular throughout the region because most people in these countries don’t trust the U.S. and resent our government’s interference no matter which side Washington chooses to take.
  • One more lesson that the Libyan war should teach us is that the U.S. and its allies are far too quick to want to take sides in foreign disputes and conflicts, and they are then far too eager to throw their weight behind that side in order to make sure that “our” side wins.
  • That ought to put the U.S. in a position where it can serve as a neutral mediator to find a way to resolve the conflict without further bloodshed. Instead the U.S. too often chooses to pick a side and helps to intensify and escalate conflicts that might be limited and contained through mediation.
  • allieggg on 23 Nov 14
     
    This article basically condemns the intentions of US intervention in Libya. Larison conveys that the assumption that US intervention was crucial in Libya to oust Gaddafi was based on attributing "values" that Americans wanted to believe that they had, putting far more significance on the conflict than it truly possessed. US intervention was unpopular in the region because of distrust in the US and resentment to interference regardless of the side Washington chooses to take. The author says this tells us that the US is far too quick to take sides in foreign conflict, and far too eager to throw their weight behind their side to make sure it wins. The US ought to serve as a neutral mediator resolving conflict rather than initiating further bloodshed through their impulse to "do something" immediately. 
wmulnea

Libya's civil war: That it should come to this | The Economist - 3 views

www.economist.com/...factional-chaos-it-should-come

shared by wmulnea on 11 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • It is split between a government in Beida, in the east of the country, which is aligned with the military; and another in Tripoli, in the west, which is dominated by Islamists and militias from western coastal cities
  • Benghazi is again a battlefield.
  • The black plumes of burning oil terminals stretch out over the Mediterranean.
  • ...69 more annotations...
  • Libya looked like the latest fragile blossoming of the Arab spring
  • Army commanders, mostly of Arab Bedouin origin, refused orders to shoot the protesters
  • the revolutionaries cobbled together a National Transitional Council (NTC) claiming to represent all of Libya
  • Volunteers from students to bank managers took up arms, joining popular militias and only sometimes obeying the orders of defecting army commanders trying to take control
  • In August Western bombing of government bases surrounding Tripoli cleared an avenue for the revolutionaries to take the capital.
  • Recognised abroad, popular at home and enjoying the benefits of healthy oil revenues—97% of the government’s income—the NTC was well placed to lay the foundations for a new Libya
  • he judges, academics and lawyers who filled its ranks worried about their own legitimacy and feared confrontation with the militias which, in toppling Qaddafi, had taken his arsenals for their own.
  • militia leaders were already ensconced in the capital’s prime properties
  • The NTC presided over Libya’s first democratic elections in July 2012, and the smooth subsequent handover of power to the General National Congress (GNC) revived popular support for the revolution.
  • Islamist parties won only 19 of 80 seats assigned to parties in the new legislature, and the process left the militias on the outside
  • The Homeland party, founded by Abdel Hakim Belhad
  • tried to advertise its moderation by putting an unveiled woman at the head of its party list in Benghazi
  • The incumbent prime minister, Abdurrahim al-Keib, a university professor who had spent decades in exile, fretted and dithered
  • He bowed to militia demands for their leaders to be appointed to senior ministries, and failed to revive public-works programmes
  • which might have given militiamen jobs
  • Many received handouts without being required to hand in weapons or disband, an incentive which served to swell their ranks
  • the number of revolutionaries registered with the Warriors Affairs Commission set up by the NTC was about 60,000; a year later there were over 200,000. Of some 500 registered militias, almost half came from one city, Misrata.
  • In May 2013 the militias forced parliament to pass a law barring from office anyone who had held a senior position in Qaddafi’s regime after laying siege to government ministries.
  • In the spring of 2014, Khalifa Haftar, a retired general who had earlier returned from two decades of exile in America, forcibly tried to dissolve the GNC and re-establish himself as the armed forces’ commander-in-chief in an operation he called Dignity
  • The elections which followed were a far cry from the happy experience of 2012. In some parts of the country it was too dangerous to go out and vote
  • Such retrenchment has been particularly noticeable among women. In 2011 they created a flurry of new civil associations; now many are back indoors.
  • Turnout in the June 2014 elections was 18%, down from 60% in 2012, and the Islamists fared even worse than before
  • Dismissing the results, an alliance of Islamist, Misratan and Berber militias called Libya Dawn launched a six-week assault on Tripoli. The newly elected parliament decamped to Tobruk, some 1,300km east
  • Grasping for a figleaf of legitimacy, Libya Dawn reconstituted the pre-election GNC and appointed a new government
  • So today Libya is split between two parliaments—both boycotted by their own oppositions and inquorate—two governments, and two central-bank governors.
  • The army—which has two chiefs of staff—is largely split along ethnic lines, with Arab soldiers in Arab tribes rallying around Dignity and the far fewer Misratan and Berber ones around Libya Dawn.
  • Libya Dawn controls the bulk of the territory and probably has more fighters at its disposal.
  • General Haftar’s Dignity, which has based its government in Beida, has air power and, probably, better weaponry
  • the Dignity movement proclaims itself America’s natural ally in the war on terror and the scourge of jihadist Islam
  • Libya Dawn’s commanders present themselves as standard-bearers of the revolution against Qaddafi now continuing the struggle against his former officers
  • Ministers in the east vow to liberate Tripoli from its “occupation” by Islamists, all of whom they denounce as terrorists
  • threatens to take the war to Egypt if Mr Sisi continues to arm the east. Sleeping cells could strike, he warns, drawn from the 2m tribesmen of Libyan origin in Egypt.
  • Yusuf Dawar
  • The struggle over the Gulf of Sirte area, which holds Libya’s main oil terminals and most of its oil reserves, threatens to devastate the country’s primary asset
  • And in the Sahara, where the largest oilfields are, both sides have enlisted ethnic minorities as proxies
  • ibya Dawn has drafted in the brown-skinned Tuareg, southern cousins of the Berbers; Dignity has recruited the black-skinned Toubou. As a result a fresh brawl is brewing in the Saharan oasis of Ubari, which sits at the gates of the al-Sharara oilfield, largest of them all.
  • Oil production has fallen and become much more volatile
  • oil is worth half as much as it was a year ago
  • The Central Bank is now spending at three times the rate that it is taking in oil money
  • The bank is committed to neutrality, but is based in Tripoli
  • Tripoli may have a little more access to cash, but is in bad shape in other ways
  • Fuel supplies and electricity are petering out
  • Crime is rising; carjacking street gangs post their ransom demands on Twitter
  • In Fashloum
  • residents briefly erected barricades to keep out a brigade of Islamists, the Nuwassi
  • “No to Islamists and the al-Qaeda gang” reads the roadside graffiti
  • Libya’s ungoverned spaces are growing,
  • Each month 10,000 migrants set sail for Europe
  • On January 3rd, IS claimed to have extended its reach to Libya’s Sahara too, killing a dozen soldiers at a checkpoint
  • The conflict is as likely to spread as to burn itself out.
  • the Western powers
  • have since been conspicuous by their absence. Chastened by failure in Afghanistan and Iraq, they have watched from the sidelines
  • Obama washed his hands of Libya after Islamists killed his ambassador
  • Italy, the former colonial power, is the last country to have a functioning embassy in Tripoli.
  • Even under Qaddafi the country did not feel so cut off
  • Dignity is supported not just by Mr Sisi but also by the United Arab Emirates, which has sent its own fighter jets into the fray as well as providing arms
  • The UAE’s Gulf rival, Qatar, and Turkey have backed the Islamists and Misratans in the west
  • If oil revenues were to be put into an escrow account, overseas assets frozen and the arms embargo honoured he thinks it might be possible to deprive fighters of the finance that keeps them fighting and force them to the table
  • Until 1963 Libya was governed as three federal provinces—Cyrenaica in the east, Fezzan in the south and Tripolitania in the west
  • The old divisions still matter
  • the marginalised Cyrenaicans harked back to the time when their king split his time between the courts of Tobruk and Beida and when Arabs from the Bedouin tribes of the Green Mountains ran his army
  • Tensions between those tribes and Islamist militias ran high from the start.
  • July 2011 jihadists keen to settle scores with officers who had crushed their revolt in the late 1990s killed the NTC’s commander-in-chief, Abdel Fattah Younis, who came from a powerful Arab tribe in the Green Mountains. In June 2013 the Transitional Council of Barqa (the Arab name for Cyrenaica), a body primarily comprised of Arab tribes, declared the east a separate federal region, and soon after allied tribal militias around the Gulf of Sirte took control of the oilfields.
  • In the west, indigenous Berbers, who make up about a tenth of the population, formed a council of their own and called on larger Berber communities in the Maghreb and Europe for support
  • Port cities started to claim self-government and set up their own border controls.
  • Derna—a small port in the east famed for having sent more jihadists per person to fight in Iraq than anywhere else in the world
  • opposed NATO intervention and insisted that the NTC was a pagan (wadani) not national (watani) council
  • Some in Derna have now declared their allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the caliph of the so-called Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq.
  • In December the head of America’s Africa command told reporters that IS was training some 200 fighters in the town.
blantonjack

ISIS Supporters: Syria Will Be A "Graveyard For Russians" - 0 views

www.vocativ.com/...ll-be-a-graveyard-for-russians

ISIS Syria war Russia

shared by blantonjack on 09 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • blantonjack on 09 Mar 16
     
    ISIS supporters and Syrian rebel groups are vowing to turn Syria into a "graveyard for Russians," launching what collectively amounts to an anti-Russia propaganda campaign that in part is calling on fighters to prepare for war against the major world power. Jaish al-Islam, a coalition of Islamist units battling the Syrian regime, is especially contributing to the online fight. This comes after the Russian military upped their bombing efforts against ISIS bases
csherro2

Syria: The story of the conflict - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-middle-east-26116868

syria arab spring revolution War politics

shared by csherro2 on 09 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • It has acquired sectarian overtones, pitching the country's Sunni majority against the president's Shia Alawite sect,
  • The rise of the jihadist groups, including Islamic State, has added a further dimension.
  • both sides of the conflict have committed war crimes - including murder, torture, rape and enforced disappearances.
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • A UN commission of inquiry,
  • the total numbe
  • said it could only have been carried out by Syria's government.
  • regime and its ally Russia blamed rebels.
  • More than 3 million people have fled Syria since the start of the conflict,
  • A further 6.5 million people, 50% of them children, are believed to be internally displaced within Syria,
  • Western powers,
  • half the country's population.
  • rebel groups are also deeply divided
  • most prominent is the moderate National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces
  • Iran and Russia have propped up the Alawite-led government of President Assad and gradually increased their support,
  • support of Lebanon's Shia Islamist Hezbollah movement.
  • The Sunni-dominated oppositio
  • Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Arab states along with the US, UK and France.
  • rise of radical Islamist militia in rebel ranks and the arrival of Sunni jihadists from across the world has led to a marked cooling of international and regional backing.
  • alarsso on 09 Mar 15
     
    This article delves into the issues of war crimes, chemical weapons, humanitarian issues, and the rise if islamist groups interventions
  • hkerby2 on 31 Mar 15
     
    This website offers eight steps to understanding the Syrian conflict. The sections include: uprising turns violent, descent into civil war, war crimes, chemical weapons, humanitarian crisis, Syrian refugees in the region, rebels and the rise of the jihadists, peace efforts, & proxy war
  • csherro2 on 29 Mar 16
     
    More than 250,000 Syrians have lost their lives in four-and-a-half years of armed conflict, which began with anti-government protests before escalating into a full-scale civil war. More than 11 million others have been forced from their homes as forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and those opposed to his rule battle each other - as well as jihadist militants from so-called Islamic State.
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