Days after seizing the Syrian desert city of Palmyra, Islamic State militants blew up the notorious Tadmur Prison there, long used by the Syrian government to detain and torture political prisoners.
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shared by Emilio Ergueta on 04 Jun 15
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Using Violence and Persuasion, ISIS Makes Political Gains - NYTimes.com - 0 views
www.nytimes.com/...is-making-political-gains.html
violence nytimes ISIS Middle East politics crisis terrorism
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The demolition was part of the extremist group’s strategy to position itself as the champion of Sunni Muslims who feel besieged by the Shiite-backed governments in Syria and Iraq.
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The Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, has managed to advance in the face of American-led airstrikes by employing a mix of persuasion and violence.
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While the Obama administration has focused on confronting the Islamic State militarily, experts say the group’s recent victories point to the need for a political component in the strategy to counter the group — even after nearly 4,000 airstrikes by the American-led coalition and what United States officials say are the deaths of 10,000 ISIS militants.
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Sunnis form an aggrieved majority in Syria, where repression of a mostly Sunni uprising by Mr. Assad’s government, backed by Shiite-led Iran, exploded into war.
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shared by katyshannon on 16 Nov 15
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Paris Terror Attacks: Officials Searching for Man Involved in Deadly Massacre - NBC News - 0 views
www.nbcnews.com/...ogether-assailants-ids-n463716
paris terror attacks officials searching massacre nbc news crisis history isis suicide bombers france belgium
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French authorities were racing Sunday to hunt down any potential accomplices to the wave of terror attacks unleashed in Paris as the investigation widened beyond this nation's borders.
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A French man believed to be directly involved in Friday's massacre in Paris is on the run and the subject of an international manhunt, French security officials said Sunday evening.
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Investigators said the man rented a Belgian-registered black Volkswagen Polo, which was allegedly used and abandoned by the hostage-takers who killed at least 89 people inside a Paris concert hall. advertisement He was identified by officials as Salah Abdeslam, 26, from Brussels.
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Abdeslam is allegedly the brother of another suspect currently in custody and being questioned — and of one of the deceased attackers, officials said.
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French officials were working with authorities in Belgium, Spain and Serbia in an attempt to shed more light on the attack, which ISIS claimed responsibility for and which French President Francois Hollande described as an "act of war."
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Less than two days after the attacks Sunday, French warplanes conducted raids in Syria, targeting ISIS' stronghold in Raqqa, the defense ministry said. Reuters reported that the operation was France's biggest strike against ISIS in Syria to date.
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"The raid ... including 10 fighter jets, was launched simultaneously from the United Arab Emirates and Jordan. Twenty bombs were dropped," the ministry said in a statement.
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The airstrikes, which were carried out in coordination with the U.S., hit a command post, a jihadist recruitment center, a munitions depot and a militant training camp, the statement said.
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Paris Prosecutor Francois Molins said seven terrorists died in the attack on Friday. Officials initially said there were eight attackers — as did ISIS. It seems now Abdeslam is believed to be the eighth attacker.
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A French prosecutor also said officials have identified two more assailants, whose names were not released to NBC News — a 20-year-old who was part of the attack on the Stade de France and a 31-year-old who was part of the attack on one of the restaurants in the 10th arrondissement. Both were French nationals living in Belgium.
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"We consider this means they have a network," Francoise Shepmans, mayor of the town of Molenbeek where the individuals were detained, told Belgium's TV RTBF.
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shared by katyshannon on 23 Feb 16
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U.S.-Russia Deal on a Partial Truce in Syria Raises More Doubt Than Optimism - The New ... - 0 views
www.nytimes.com/...fire-in-syria-obama-putin.html
u s deal truce syria doubt optimism new york times politics crisis history culture obama putin assad
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The United States and Russia announced an agreement on Monday for a partial truce in Syria, though the caveats and cautious words on all sides underscored the obstacles in the way of the latest diplomatic effort to end the five-year-old civil war.
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Under the terms of the agreement, the Syrian government and Syria’s armed opposition are being asked to agree to a “cessation of hostilities,” effective this Saturday. But the truce does not apply to two of the most lethal extremist groups, the Islamic State and the Nusra Front, raising questions about whether it will be any more lasting than previous cease-fires.
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The agreement calls for the Syrian government and the opposition to indicate by noon on Friday whether they will comply with the cessation of hostilities, a term carefully chosen because it does not require the kind of agreement in a formal cease-fire.
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The United States is responsible for bringing the various opposition groups in line while the Russians are supposed to pressure the government. Washington and Moscow also agreed to set up a hotline to monitor compliance by both sides.
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President Obama sealed the final terms of the arrangement in a phone call with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who has become perhaps the most influential player in the Syrian war since Russia thrust itself into the conflict in September on behalf of its client, Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad.
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The diplomatic efforts did yield a small victory: Aid was delivered for the first time in months to several towns after the combatants gave permission under intense pressure.
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On the ground in Syria, the prospects for an end to the bloodshed seemed even more elusive. In the last week alone, more than 100 people in Homs and Damascus were killed by suicide bombings by the Islamic State.
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Airstrikes by the Syrian government and its Russian allies in Aleppo and elsewhere have killed scores of people, including in at least five hospitals, one aided by the international charity Doctors Without Borders.
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Farther east, scores of civilians were said by locals to have been killed in airstrikes by the American-led coalition fighting the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.
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The priorities, Mr. Obama told Mr. Putin, were to “alleviate the suffering of the Syrian people,” accelerate a political settlement and keep the focus on the coalition’s battle against the Islamic State.
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hundreds of thousands of Syrians remain trapped in areas that are classified as besieged or hard to reach, without regular access to food and medicine. Humanitarian groups caution that the more access to aid is used as part of political deals, the less the combatants will provide it unconditionally, as required under international law.
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The agreement came after one false start: Secretary of State John Kerry announced in Munich on Feb. 12 that the truce would take effect in a week, but the target date passed as the two sides wrestled over how to carry it out. On Sunday, in Amman, Jordan, Mr. Kerry spoke three times by phone with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, to iron out the details.
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On Monday, while flying back to Washington, Mr. Kerry briefed ministers from Britain, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey about the agreement, according to a senior State Department official. He is expected to discuss the truce when he testifies at a budget hearing Tuesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
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Mr. Kerry has tended to be more optimistic than the White House about the prospects for a diplomatic solution in Syria. But his statement on Monday was also notably reserved. He did not mention the Feb. 27 date and said that while the agreement represented a “moment of promise,” the “fulfillment of that promise depends on actions.”
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Analysts expressed skepticism about the deal, noting that in the five days before the truce takes effect, the Syrian forces and their Russian allies could inflict a lot more damage to Aleppo through bombing raids. Some speculated that Russia might expand its military campaign to Idlib, southwest of Aleppo, where Nusra fighters are also operating.
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“This depends entirely on the good faith of Russia, Iran and the Assad regime, none of whom have shown much good faith in the last five years,” said Frederic C. Hof, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who worked on Syria policy during the first term of the Obama administration.
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In Riyadh on Monday, a Saudi-backed consortium of Syrian opposition groups and political dissidents said they would agree to the terms of the truce. But Riad Hijab, who coordinates the group’s efforts, did not expect the Syrian government, Iran or Russia to abide by it since, he said, Mr. Assad’s survival depended on “the continuation of its campaign of oppression, killing and forced displacement.”
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For the Obama administration, a partial truce in Syria may simply be a way to keep a lid on the violence there while it turns its attention to planning and carrying out military operations against Islamic State fighters in Libya.
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Some analysts said the agreement was less an effort to end the fighting in Syria than to ease the bloodshed enough to allow more humanitarian aid to reach stricken cities like Aleppo.
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shared by maddieireland334 on 06 Mar 16
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Taliban Say They Won't Attend Peace Talks, but Officials Aren't Convinced - The New Yor... - 0 views
www.nytimes.com/...officials-arent-convinced.html
Taliban policy peace talks Pakistan US international
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he Taliban said on Saturday that they would not participate in international peace talks, citing what they claimed were increased American airstrikes and Afghan government military operations.
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The talks, convened by the United States, China, Pakistan and Afghanistan, were expected to start this month in Pakistan.
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Afghan and Pakistani government officials said the talks would continue despite the Taliban statement, but pushed the start date back to sometime later this month.
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In a statement posted on the insurgents’ website, the Taliban denied that a representative would attend the talks.
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Previous talks have taken place without Taliban representatives present, but Afghan and Pakistani officials had expressed confidence that direct talks between the Afghan government and the militants would resume in March, and they maintained that position on Saturday.
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The official said the Pakistan military leader, Gen. Raheel Sharif, who visited Kabul last week, had assured Afghan leaders that talks would go ahead.
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Direct talks began last summer in Pakistan, but quickly fell apart after Afghan officials concerned about the authority of the insurgent delegation leaked word that the Taliban’s longtime leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, had been dead for two years.
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The leader who took over, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, had been known to favor participation in the negotiations. Since Mullah Mansour took power, the group has been riven by dissension over the leadership change, and fighting off challenges in some areas from insurgents allied with the Islamic State group.
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The request does not seem to have gone over well with Taliban leaders, who have insisted that their political office in Qatar is the only address for peace talks.
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While there are no confirmed reports that the United States has increased troop levels in Afghanistan — there are now about 10,000 American service members in the country — the United States military is carrying out airstrikes in support of Afghan government operations and secret American Special Operations missions.
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Pakistan has leverage over the Taliban because the group enjoys sanctuary in Pakistani territory, and many of its fighters receive medical treatment there.
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The forgotten faces of war | MSNBC - 0 views
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Approximately 150,000 Syrian refugees, mainly Kurds, fleeing threats from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and Monday’s U.S.-led airstrikes have crossed into southern Turkey
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tens of thousands of refugees, the majority of which are women, children and the elderly. They arrive exhausted and depleted after walking miles to safety on rough roads and carrying their belongings.
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had no doubt Syrians represented the largest refugee population in the world. In the three and a half years since the conflict began, 3.3 million Syrians have fled the country and 6.5 million have been internally displaced. As the war with ISIS intensifies, said Guterres, so too will the flood of refugees.
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Human rights advocates are urging world leaders to keep the focus on protecting civilians, even as the conversation shifts to U.S. airstrikes in Syria.
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U.S. should do more to assist in resettling Syrians. Global funding is also far short of what the United Nations says is necessary to meet the humanitarian needs of the refugee population.
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Dozens of civilians killed amid intensified Russian strikes north Syria - ARA News - 0 views
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Syrian and Russian warplanes conducted several airstrikes on the suburbs of Idlib province in northern Syria, amid fierce clashes between pro-Assad forces and rebel groups on the ground, local activists reported.
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“Syrian and Russian air forces targeted the town of Killi in Idlib, killing fifteen people, including three children,”
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Since the start of the Russian airstrikes in Syria in Sept. 30, some 350 people, including 120 civilians and 33 children, have been killed.
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'Bomb violence with mercy': anti-terror ad goes viral in Middle East | World news | The... - 0 views
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A Ramadan TV ad by a Middle Eastern telecommunications company in which victims of terrorism confront a suicide bomber and urge society to “bomb violence with mercy” has provoked a heated debate in the region, with some praising its attempt to tackle extremism and others criticising it for using victims of bombings and a simplistic portrayal of terrorists.
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As the suicide bomber travels to his destination, he is confronted by victims of terrorism, covered in blood and dirt, including a child actor playing the role of Omran Daqneesh, the child from Aleppo whose bloodied image after he survived an airstrike by the Syrian government was seen around the world.
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The Zain spot faced criticism from social media users even as some praised its tackling of a sensitive topic, with many Syrians condemning its use of an actor to play Omran, pointing out that the boy was wounded in an airstrike by the regime of Bashar al-Assad rather than in an attack by Muslim extremists.
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shared by carolinehayter on 08 Mar 21
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Ten grim lessons the world has learned from a decade of war in Syria | Syria | The Guar... - 0 views
www.theguardian.com/...-from-a-decade-of-war-in-syria
syria politics US international culture policy crisis history
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Syria is the world’s war. Here are 10 reasons why 10 years of unending misery and mayhem have harmed everyone:
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Estimates of civilian lives lost since March 2011 vary greatly, from about 117,000 to 226,000 – but the vast scale of this modern killing field is indisputable.
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Over half of Syria’s pre-war population of 22 million is displaced, about 6.6 million abroad. Many are trapped in Idlib, in north-west Syria, caught between opposing forces and prey to Islamist militias.
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President Bashar al-Assad and cronies stand accused of a wide range of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Civilians, rescuers, health workers and hospitals are routinely (and illegally) targeted. The International Criminal Court is stymied by Russian and Chinese vetoes
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Repeated regime use of banned chemical weapons in defiance of global treaties has grave international ramifications.
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Russia has repeatedly hindered investigations, while the US has ignored its own “red lines”. As a result, the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention is seriously weakened.
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A lasting beneficiary of the war is Islamic State (Isis), which overran territory in Syria and Iraq in 2014. While an international coalition eventually crushed the caliphate, Isis was behind many terrorist attacks in Europe in 2014-17.
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The war has marked a clear shift in the Middle East balance of power from the US to Russia. After Barack Obama declined to intervene militarily, Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, filled the ensuing power vacuum in 2015 – and probably saved Assad’s regime. Joe Biden’s main concern is deterring pro-Iranian militia and jihadists – witness last month’s limited air strikes. The UN-led peace process collapsed in January – and Biden seems to think it’s too late to save Syria. It would be great to be proved wrong.
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Western states initially expressed sympathy for attempts to overthrow dictators and authoritarian regimes in Tunisia, Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria in 2010-12. But as events turned unpredictable and Islamists got involved, the west backed away. The window that briefly opened on peaceful reform in the Arab world slammed shut. The cause of global democracy was a big loser. Syria symbolises its defeat.
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Israel worries about the build-up of Iranian Revolutionary Guard and pro-Tehran armed forces in Syria and Lebanon. It has launched hundreds of air strikes on Iran-linked targets there, and has urged the US to do likewise
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The failure to end the war has done enormous damage to international institutions. The UN security council in particular has been severely discredited. So, too, have UN peacemaking efforts. Yet if the UNSC’s “big five” had really wanted to stop the conflict, there is little doubt that, acting together, they could have done so. That they did not even try is the Syrian war’s most shameful legacy.
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Opinion: Palestinians deserve the same security, equality and right to a homeland as th... - 0 views
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As of Sunday evening, 197 Palestinians had been killed, including eight children who died Saturday when an Israeli airstrike destroyed their home in a Gaza refugee camp. At least 10 Israelis, including a 5-year-old boy, have been killed by Hamas rockets.
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If history serves as a guide, however, after a ceasefire is reached, the conflict will slowly fade from the headlines, the world will go back to its business and the Palestinians will largely be forgotten -- yet again
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She is correct. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, there are more than 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank and 2.1 million in Gaza. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel says there are about 358,000 Palestinians in Jerusalem.
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez noted that while President Biden stated Israel has a right to defend itself, she asked, "But do Palestinians have a right to survive?" adding, "If so, we have a responsibility to that."
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For the decades that followed, few American elected officials on either side of the aisle prioritized Palestinian human rights. Thankfully, Sen. Bernie Sanders changed that during the 2016 presidential campaign when he declared, "We are going to have to treat the Palestinian people with respect and dignity." Sanders, while defending Israel's right to exist, called for the United States to stop being "one-sided" in the conflict.
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in Gaza, 95% of the residents don't have access to clean water and 80% of the population relies on international aid to survive. And Human Rights Watch recently released a 213-page report in which it accused the Israeli government of engaging in an "apartheid" system of polices that favor Israeli Jews over Palestinians in both Israel and the territories.
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Not forgetting about the Palestinians is more than pushing for peace -- it's the United States taking a stand for Palestinian human rights.
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Biden should declare he's willing to leverage the $3.8 billion in annual aid the United States provides to the Israeli government -- along with America's leadership role in the world -- to achieve that. This even-handed approach is step one in hopefully laying the foundation for a lasting, just peace deal.
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War Crimes Risk Grows for U.S. Over Saudi Strikes in Yemen - The New York Times - 0 views
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the White House ceremony will also serve as tacit recognition of Mr. Trump’s embrace of arms sales as a cornerstone of his foreign policy.
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The president sweetened the Middle East deal with a secret commitment to sell advanced fighter jets and lethal drones to the Emirates
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stemming from U.S. support for Saudi Arabia and the Emirates as they have waged a disastrous war in Yemen, using American equipment in attacks that have killed thousands of civilians
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the United States has provided material support over five years for actions that have caused the continuous killing of civilians.
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prosecutors in a foreign court could charge American officials based on them knowing of the pattern of indiscriminate killing
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chief prosecutor could open an investigation into the actions of American forces in the Afghanistan war — the first time the court has authorized a case against the United States. The Trump administration this month imposed sanctions on that prosecutor and another of the court’s lawyers, a sign of how seriously the administration takes the possibility of prosecution.
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When an internal investigation this year revealed that the department had failed to address the legal risks of selling bombs to the Saudis and their partners, top agency officials found ways to hide this.
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it had put in place a strategy to lessen civilian casualties before the last major arms sale to the Saudi-led coalition, in May 2019.
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$8.1 billion in weapons and equipment in 22 batches, including $3.8 billion in precision-guided bombs and bomb parts made by Raytheon Company, to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
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“I have a very good relationship with them,” Mr. Trump said during an interview in February. “They buy billions and billions and billions of dollars of product from us. They buy tens of billions of dollars of military equipment.”
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That August, a coalition jet dropped an American-made bomb on a Yemeni school bus, killing 54 people, including 44 children, in an attack that Mr. Trump would later call “a horror show.”
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senior State Department political appointees were discussing a rarely invoked tactic to force through $8.1 billion in weapons sales without congressional approval: declaring an emergency over Iran.
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From that position, Mr. String tried to pressure Steve A. Linick, the inspector general, to drop his investigation, Mr. Linick, who was fired in May, said in congressional testimony in June. Mr. String’s office also handled the redacting of the report.
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About $800 million in orders is now pending, held up in the same congressional review process that had frustrated Mr. Pompeo and the White House.
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From July to early August this year, at least three airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition in northern Yemen killed civilians, including a total of nearly two dozen children, according to the United Nations, aid workers and Houthi rebels.
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'The machine did it coldly': Israel used AI to identify 37,000 Hamas targets | Israel-G... - 0 views
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All six said that Lavender had played a central role in the war, processing masses of data to rapidly identify potential “junior” operatives to target. Four of the sources said that, at one stage early in the war, Lavender listed as many as 37,000 Palestinian men who had been linked by the AI system to Hamas or PIJ.
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The health ministry in the Hamas-run territory says 32,000 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict in the past six months. UN data shows that in the first month of the war alone, 1,340 families suffered multiple losses, with 312 families losing more than 10 members.
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Several of the sources described how, for certain categories of targets, the IDF applied pre-authorised allowances for the estimated number of civilians who could be killed before a strike was authorised.
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Two sources said that during the early weeks of the war they were permitted to kill 15 or 20 civilians during airstrikes on low-ranking militants. Attacks on such targets were typically carried out using unguided munitions known as “dumb bombs”, the sources said, destroying entire homes and killing all their occupants.
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“You don’t want to waste expensive bombs on unimportant people – it’s very expensive for the country and there’s a shortage [of those bombs],” one intelligence officer said. Another said the principal question they were faced with was whether the “collateral damage” to civilians allowed for an attack.
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“Because we usually carried out the attacks with dumb bombs, and that meant literally dropping the whole house on its occupants. But even if an attack is averted, you don’t care – you immediately move on to the next target. Because of the system, the targets never end. You have another 36,000 waiting.”
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ccording to conflict experts, if Israel has been using dumb bombs to flatten the homes of thousands of Palestinians who were linked, with the assistance of AI, to militant groups in Gaza, that could help explain the shockingly high death toll in the war.
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Details about the specific kinds of data used to train Lavender’s algorithm, or how the programme reached its conclusions, are not included in the accounts published by +972 or Local Call. However, the sources said that during the first few weeks of the war, Unit 8200 refined Lavender’s algorithm and tweaked its search parameters.
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Responding to the publication of the testimonies in +972 and Local Call, the IDF said in a statement that its operations were carried out in accordance with the rules of proportionality under international law. It said dumb bombs are “standard weaponry” that are used by IDF pilots in a manner that ensures “a high level of precision”.
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“The IDF does not use an artificial intelligence system that identifies terrorist operatives or tries to predict whether a person is a terrorist,” it added. “Information systems are merely tools for analysts in the target identification process.”
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In earlier military operations conducted by the IDF, producing human targets was often a more labour-intensive process. Multiple sources who described target development in previous wars to the Guardian, said the decision to “incriminate” an individual, or identify them as a legitimate target, would be discussed and then signed off by a legal adviser.
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n the weeks and months after 7 October, this model for approving strikes on human targets was dramatically accelerated, according to the sources. As the IDF’s bombardment of Gaza intensified, they said, commanders demanded a continuous pipeline of targets.
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“We were constantly being pressured: ‘Bring us more targets.’ They really shouted at us,” said one intelligence officer. “We were told: now we have to fuck up Hamas, no matter what the cost. Whatever you can, you bomb.”
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Lavender was developed by the Israel Defense Forces’ elite intelligence division, Unit 8200, which is comparable to the US’s National Security Agency or GCHQ in the UK.
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After randomly sampling and cross-checking its predictions, the unit concluded Lavender had achieved a 90% accuracy rate, the sources said, leading the IDF to approve its sweeping use as a target recommendation tool.
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Lavender created a database of tens of thousands of individuals who were marked as predominantly low-ranking members of Hamas’s military wing, they added. This was used alongside another AI-based decision support system, called the Gospel, which recommended buildings and structures as targets rather than individuals.
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The accounts include first-hand testimony of how intelligence officers worked with Lavender and how the reach of its dragnet could be adjusted. “At its peak, the system managed to generate 37,000 people as potential human targets,” one of the sources said. “But the numbers changed all the time, because it depends on where you set the bar of what a Hamas operative is.”
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broadly, and then the machine started bringing us all kinds of civil defence personnel, police officers, on whom it would be a shame to waste bombs. They help the Hamas government, but they don’t really endanger soldiers.”
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Before the war, US and Israeli estimated membership of Hamas’s military wing at approximately 25-30,000 people.
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there was a decision to treat Palestinian men linked to Hamas’s military wing as potential targets, regardless of their rank or importance.
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According to +972 and Local Call, the IDF judged it permissible to kill more than 100 civilians in attacks on a top-ranking Hamas officials. “We had a calculation for how many [civilians could be killed] for the brigade commander, how many [civilians] for a battalion commander, and so on,” one source said.
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Another source, who justified the use of Lavender to help identify low-ranking targets, said that “when it comes to a junior militant, you don’t want to invest manpower and time in it”. They said that in wartime there was insufficient time to carefully “incriminate every target”
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So you’re willing to take the margin of error of using artificial intelligence, risking collateral damage and civilians dying, and risking attacking by mistake, and to live with it,” they added.
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When it came to targeting low-ranking Hamas and PIJ suspects, they said, the preference was to attack when they were believed to be at home. “We were not interested in killing [Hamas] operatives only when they were in a military building or engaged in a military activity,” one said. “It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations.”
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Such a strategy risked higher numbers of civilian casualties, and the sources said the IDF imposed pre-authorised limits on the number of civilians it deemed acceptable to kill in a strike aimed at a single Hamas militant. The ratio was said to have changed over time, and varied according to the seniority of the target.
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The IDF’s targeting processes in the most intensive phase of the bombardment were also relaxed, they said. “There was a completely permissive policy regarding the casualties of [bombing] operations,” one source said. “A policy so permissive that in my opinion it had an element of revenge.”
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“There were regulations, but they were just very lenient,” another added. “We’ve killed people with collateral damage in the high double digits, if not low triple digits. These are things that haven’t happened before.” There appears to have been significant fluctuations in the figure that military commanders would tolerate at different stages of the war
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One source said that the limit on permitted civilian casualties “went up and down” over time, and at one point was as low as five. During the first week of the conflict, the source said, permission was given to kill 15 non-combatants to take out junior militants in Gaza
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at one stage earlier in the war they were authorised to kill up to “20 uninvolved civilians” for a single operative, regardless of their rank, military importance, or age.
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“It’s not just that you can kill any person who is a Hamas soldier, which is clearly permitted and legitimate in terms of international law,” they said. “But they directly tell you: ‘You are allowed to kill them along with many civilians.’ … In practice, the proportionality criterion did not exist.”
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Experts in international humanitarian law who spoke to the Guardian expressed alarm at accounts of the IDF accepting and pre-authorising collateral damage ratios as high as 20 civilians, particularly for lower-ranking militants. They said militaries must assess proportionality for each individual strike.
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An international law expert at the US state department said they had “never remotely heard of a one to 15 ratio being deemed acceptable, especially for lower-level combatants. There’s a lot of leeway, but that strikes me as extreme”.
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Sarah Harrison, a former lawyer at the US Department of Defense, now an analyst at Crisis Group, said: “While there may be certain occasions where 15 collateral civilian deaths could be proportionate, there are other times where it definitely wouldn’t be. You can’t just set a tolerable number for a category of targets and say that it’ll be lawfully proportionate in each case.”
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Whatever the legal or moral justification for Israel’s bombing strategy, some of its intelligence officers appear now to be questioning the approach set by their commanders. “No one thought about what to do afterward, when the war is over, or how it will be possible to live in Gaza,” one said.
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Another said that after the 7 October attacks by Hamas, the atmosphere in the IDF was “painful and vindictive”. “There was a dissonance: on the one hand, people here were frustrated that we were not attacking enough. On the other hand, you see at the end of the day that another thousand Gazans have died, most of them civilians.”
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France launches 'tough' ground offensive against Mali's Islamist rebels - World News - 0 views
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French troops launched their first ground operation against Islamist rebels in Mali on Wednesday in a crucial action to dislodge al-Qaida-linked fighters who have resisted six days of airstrikes.
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France called for international support against Islamist insurgents it says are a threat to Africa and the West
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revenge for France's dramatic intervention, an al-Qaida-linked group claimed responsibility for a raid on a gas field in Algeria in a number of foreign workers were believed to have been kidnapped.
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French armored vehicles moved into position on Tuesday at the town of Niono, 190 miles from the capital Bamako
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Guillaud said French military strikes were being hampered because militants were using the civilian population as a shield.
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Israel Bombs Syria as the U.S. Weighs Its Own Options - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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It was the second time in four months that Israel had carried out an attack in foreign territory intended to disrupt the pipeline of weapons from Iran to Hezbollah,
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“The Israelis are saying, ‘O.K., whichever way the civil war is going, we are going to keep our red lines, which are different from Obama’s,’ ”
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A Pentagon official said in 2010 that Hezbollah was believed to already have a small supply of Fateh-110s. Additional missiles could increase Iran’s ability to threaten Israel through its Lebanese proxy if Israel ever mounted airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear installations.
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Israeli officials have declined to publicly discuss the operation. But Israel has repeatedly said it is prepared to take military action
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In carrying out the raid, Israeli warplanes did not fly over the Damascus airport. Instead, they fired air-to-ground weapons, apparently using the airspace of neighboring Lebanon.
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Russian armada enters Mediterranean ahead of beefed-up Syria blitz, US officials say | ... - 0 views
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Since launching airstrikes in Syria in support of embattled President Bashar al-Assad, the Russians and Syrian army have been accused of killing tens of thousands of civilians inside Syria.
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Russia will likely have to launch their jets without a full complement of bombs and fuel in order to get their planes over the “ski jump” which makes up the bow of the ship. The Russians do have steam catapults to launch fully loaded jets like their American counterparts in the U.S. Navy.
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Spain urged not to allow refuelling of Russian warships - BBC News - 0 views
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The Spanish government is now reviewing the permit for refuelling at its enclave of Ceuta in north Africa.
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Nato expressed concern that the ships could be used to help bomb civilians in Aleppo, but said the final decision on resupply rested with Spain.
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Nato's Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg warned that warships could be used to target civilians in Syria.
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"The concern is that the Kuznetsov carrier group can be used as a platform for increased airstrikes against civilians in Aleppo."
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"for each nation to decide whether these ships can get supplies and fuelling and be fuelled in different harbours along the route towards the eastern Mediterranean."
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The British Defence Secretary, Michael Fallon, said: "We'd be extremely concerned that any Nato member should consider assisting a Russian carrier group that might end up bombing Syrian civilians."
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Led by Russia's only aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, the naval group includes a nuclear-powered battle cruiser, two anti-submarine warships and four support vessels, probably escorted by submarines. The battle group carries do
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Some 2,700 people have been killed or injured since the Russian-backed Syrian offensive started last month, according to activists.
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The war against the Islamic State hits hurdles just as the U.S. military gears up - The... - 0 views
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hen President Obama first ordered U.S. warplanes into action against the extremists sweeping through Iraq and Syria in 2014, U.S. officials put a three- to five-year timeline on a battle they predicted would be hard. After a rocky start, officials say they are gratified by the progress made, especially over the past six months.
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“So far in terms of what we had hoped to do, we are pretty much on track,” said a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss sensitive subjects. “We’re actually a little bit ahead of where we wanted to be.”
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The Islamic State will have occupied those cities for well over two years before the offensives begin, far longer than any of those it has lost so far. The battle for Mosul, long a Pentagon priority, has already been delayed by at least a year
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The extra resources are an acknowledgment, U.S. officials say, that the war can’t be won without a greater level of American involvement.
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intense Islamic State fire from the small but strategically important village of Al-Nasr, about 40 miles to the south. It was a reminder, said Col. Steve Warren, a U.S. military spokesman, that “we’ve got a foot on his neck but he’s still got some fight in him."
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U.S. officials say they have seen no fallout yet from the fracas in Baghdad, but don’t rule out that there could be one if the political instability continues.
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One major effort for which the United States needs Turkish engagement is a faltering offensive against the Islamic State in the northern Syrian countryside of Aleppo province, bordering Turkey.
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Cutting the Islamic State’s vital supply route to Turkey is considered an essential prerequisite for any eventual offensive to retake Raqqa.
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The recent resumption of fighting around the nearby city of Aleppo has come as a fresh reminder that the war in Syria will continue to draw resources away from the Islamic State fight. Peace talks in Geneva aimed at ending the conflict have deadlocked, eroding hopes that a political solution is in sight.
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It was repelled, however, only with the help of intense U.S. airstrikes, underscoring the vital role the United States plays in securing recaptured territory.
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But were you to remove that air power and the capabilities the Americans bring, I could imagine them making gains again on the ground.”
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U.N. Suspends Convoys to Syria After Attack on Aid Trucks - The New York Times - 0 views
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The United Nations suspended all aid convoys in Syria on Tuesday, the day after a deadly airstrike on trucks loaded with crucial supplies of food and medicine.
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called for an independent investigation, adding that “the perpetrators should know that they will one day be held accountable for violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.”
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Repeated strikes by aircraft destroyed 18 of 31 trucks that the United Nations said had been clearly marked as a humanitarian convoy.
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he United States would reassess the prospects for cooperation with Russia in light of this “egregious violation” of the week-old cessation of hostilities.
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Trump Criticizes NATO and Hopes for 'Good Deals' With Russia - The New York Times - 0 views
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Mr. Trump has made similar comments before. But the fact that he made them in a joint interview with two European publications — The Times of London and Bild, a German newspaper — and did so days before assuming the presidency alarmed European diplomats.
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Mr. Trump was critical of Russia’s military intervention in Syria, including airstrikes in Aleppo that American officials say have hit hospitals and killed civilians, saying it had led to a “terrible humanitarian situation.”
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“I have had discussions with him on this issue,” General Mattis said. “He has shown himself open, even to the point of asking more questions, going deeper into the issue.”
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The diplomats said they had heard him sound off during the campaign. But with the inauguration less than a week away, there is a growing realization in European capitals that Mr. Trump’s acerbic criticism of NATO and the European Union was not just an attempt to win votes.
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Syrian Army Presses Aleppo Advance as Attacks Kill Civilians - The New York Times - 0 views
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they were civilians — mostly women and children — fleeing shelling and air strikes on other parts of the city.
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Observatory chief Rami Abdurrahman said he predicts death tolls will spiral in east Aleppo as the internal displacement creates more residential density
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more than 50,000 out of an estimated quarter-million inhabitants have been displaced by attacks on rebel-held eastern Aleppo