Kurds struggle to halt ‘Islamic State’ advance in Kobani

October 6, 2014 By administrator

Kurdish fighters have been locked in street fighting with members of the “Islamic State.” This comes after the militant group pushed into the outskirts of the Syrian town of Kobani, just over the border from Turkey.

The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Monday that “Islamic State” (“IS”) fighters had taken control of three areas of the town.

“They have taken the industrial zone, Maqtala al-Jadida and Kani Arabane in eastern Kobani after violent combat with Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) fighters” who had far fewer men and arms, the Observatory told the AFP news agency.

Another group, the Local Coordination Committees, also said that “IS” fighters had advanced into the town.

However, the Reuters news agency quoted journalist Ismail Eskin, who said the Kurdish fighters were still keeping “IS” at bay.

“ISIL have only planted a flag on one building…they are not inside the city. Intense clashes are continuing,” said Eskin, referring to the group by another acronym.

Other reports earlier in the day suggested the group had hoisted its flag above at least two buildings in Kobani, which is also known as Kobane or Ayn al-Arab in Arabic.

The steady advance by “IS” fighters on the town has continued despite a campaign of airstrikes launched against them by warplanes from the US and some of its Gulf state allies.

Their advance has caused tens of thousands of civilians to flee across the border to Turkey, whose government has been watching the situation with growing concern. On Monday, the country’s military dispatched at least 14 tanks to defensive positions on a hilltop near the town, but on their side of the border (pictured above).

While Turkey’s parliament has authorized its army to join the US-led campaign against the “IS,” so far Ankara has appeared reluctant to get involved militarily.

Meanwhile, the head of NATO stressed that the Western military alliance would protect Turkey if it came under attack.

Kurdish demand more help

On Monday, around 100 Kurdish demonstrators forced their way into the Dutch parliament to protest against the “IS” and demand that the international community do more to combat the militants. “Stop the silence. Support Kobani,” read one banner

Another demonstration was held at the Bonn headquarters of Germany’s international broadcaster, DW. Around 60 Kurdish demonstrators, some of whom were members of Kurdish women’s organizations, forced their way into the lobby of the building before presenting DW with a resolution in which they called for “humanitarian aid for women and children forced to flee, as well as long-term projects to give women, girls and children a chance of survival.”

pfd/crh (Reuters, AP, AFP)

Algerian extremists behead French hostage

September 24, 2014 By administrator

PARIS (AP) — Algerian extremists allied with the Islamic State group have decapitated a French hostage after France carried out airstrikes in Iraq, according to a video that appeared online Wednesday.

French President Francois Hollande condemned the killing of Herve Gourdel and said France would continue its fight against the Islamic State group, which are Sunni militants that have taken over large swaths of Iraq and Syria.

“Herve Gourdel is dead because he is the representative of a people — ours — that defends human dignity against barbarity,” Hollande said, speaking along the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York. “My determination is total and this attack only reinforces it. We will continue to fight terrorism everywhere.”

A group calling itself Jund al-Khilafah, or Soldiers of the Caliphate, had said they would kill the French mountaineer after abducting him Sunday unless France ended its airstrikes against Islamic State fighters in Iraq within 24 hours.

France started airstrikes in Iraq on Friday, the first country to join the U.S. military campaign against Islamic State fighters there.

The killing of a hostage represents a departure for radical Islamic groups in Algeria, which in the past decade have made millions off ransoming hostages. France is also known for paying ransoms, though several hostages have died in the past at the hands of their captors.

In the video, masked gunmen from the newly formed group that split away from al-Qaida’s North Africa branch stood over a kneeling Gourdel. They pledged their allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and said they were fighting his enemies. They added they were following his instructions to attack the French.

The video showed the captive pushed to the ground and blindfolded before he was beheaded.

Islamic extremists have long singled out France as a special target for multiple reasons: the French military campaign against al-Qaida-linked militants in Mali, the French involvement in the NATO force in Afghanistan and French laws banning the Muslim face veil anywhere in public and banning Muslim headscarves in public buildings.

Nearly 1,000 French radicals have joined or are trying to join the Islamic State group in Syria and in Iraq — more than the number of fighters from any other Western country. French authorities are particularly concerned that they will return and stage attacks at home.

The video resembled those showing the beheadings of two American journalists and a British aid worker in recent weeks, but instead of starting with clips of President Barack Obama speaking, it showed Hollande.

The terrorism watchdog SITE Intelligence Group said the video had been posted on the social networking site Twitter. It was briefly available on YouTube before being taken down.

“Our values are at stake,” French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Wednesday after hearing about the video.

Gourdel — a 55-year-old mountaineering guide from Nice — was seized in the Djura Djura mountains of northern Algeria on Sunday during a hiking trip. His Algerian companions were released. On his Facebook page he had expressed his excitement about his camping trip and said he was looking forward to being shown around for a change, instead of being the guide.

The remote mountainous region, riddled with steep valleys and deep caves, however, is also one of the last strongholds of Islamist extremists in northern Algeria.

Algerian forces unleashed a massive search for Gourdel, sending in helicopters and special forces to comb the region.

According to a presidential aide, Hollande has spoken with his family. Gourdel’s hometown in southern France is planning a vigil Thursday at the mountaineering office where he worked.

The head of a leading French Muslim group, Dalil Boubakeur expressed horror at the “this barbaric crime,” condemning it “with the utmost energy.” The group has called for imams to denounce the Islamic State group’s practices.

Algeria has been fighting Islamic extremists since the 1990s. In recent years they had been largely confined to a few mountainous areas, where they have concentrated on attacking soldiers and police while leaving civilians alone.

______

Schemm reported from Rabat, Morocco. Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report.

Kurds call on ‘all Middle East’ to help defend stronghold from Isis

September 21, 2014 By administrator

Tens of thousands of Kurdish refugees have fled to Syria-Turkey border region of Kobani to escape onslaught of Islamist militantsKurdish fighters from Turkey and Iraq are scrambling to help defend a vital Kurdish safe haven in northern Syria, where tens of thousands of Kurds have fled after an offensive by Islamic State (Isis) militants.

The border region of Kobani, home to half a million people, has held out for months against an onslaught by Islamists seeking to consolidate their hold over swaths of northern Syria. But in recent days, Isis extremists have seized a series of settlements close to the town of Kobani itself, sending as many as 100,000 mostly Kurdish refugees streaming across the border into Turkey.

“I don’t think in the last three and a half years we have seen 100,000 cross in two days,” the representative for the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) in Turkey, Carol Batchelor, told Reuters. “So this is a bit of a measure of how this situation is unfolding, and the very deep fear people have about the circumstances inside Syria and, for that matter, Iraq.”

A Kurdish commander on the ground said Isis had advanced to within 9 miles (15km) of Kobani.

A Kurdish politician from Turkey who visited Kobani on Saturday said locals told him Isis fighters were beheading people as they went from village to village.

“Rather than a war this is a genocide operation … They are going into the villages and cutting the heads of one or two people and showing them to the villagers,” Ibrahim Binici, a deputy for Turkey’s pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic party (HDP), told Reuters.

“It is truly a shameful situation for humanity,” he said, calling for international intervention. Five of his fellow MPs planned a hunger strike outside UN offices in Geneva to press for action, he said.

The Kurdistan Workers party (PKK), a rebel group that has spent three decades fighting for autonomy for Turkey’s Kurds, renewed a call for the youth of Turkey’s mostly Kurdish south-east to rise up and rush to save Kobani.

“Supporting this heroic resistance is not just a debt of honour of the Kurds but all Middle East people. Just giving support is not enough, the criterion must be taking part in the resistance,” it said in a statement on its website. “[Isis] fascism must drown in the blood it spills … The youth of North Kurdistan [south-east Turkey] must flow in waves to Kobani,” it said.

Hundreds of people gathered in solidarity for a third day on the Turkish side of the barbed wire border fence near the town of Suruc, where many of the refugees have crossed. Security forces trying to maintain order fired teargas and water cannon and some protesters started throwing stones at them in frustration.

Even by the standards of Syria’s bitter war, the refugee numbers are alarming. Their numbers add to the 2.8 million Syrians who have become refugees in the past three years, and another 6.4 million who have been displaced within their own country – approaching half of Syria’s pre-war population of 23 million.

UNHCR and the Turkish authorities said they were preparing for the possibility of hundreds of thousands more refugees arriving in the coming days.

Kobani’s relative stability through much of Syria’s conflict meant 200,000 internally displaced people were sheltering there before Isis’s advance, UNHCR said.

“This massive influx shows how important it is to offer and preserve asylum space for Syrians as well as the need to mobilise international support to the neighbouring countries,” said Antonio Guterres, the UN high commissioner for refugees.

NY Times urges Turkish authorities to ensure safety of its reporter

September 19, 2014 By administrator

The New York Times responded to attacks on its Turkey reporter after it published a report focusing on the alleged recruitment of Turks by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in an Ankara neighborhood, calling on Turkish authorities to ensure her safety. report TodayZAMAN

Ceylan Yeğinsu came under attack by the pro-government media and on social media platforms after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan lashed out at a report she wrote for The New York Times that was published on Sept. 15. Erdoğan particularly was angered by the photo that was published along with the story, picturing him and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu leaving a mosque in the same Ankara neighborhood, Hacı Bayram. “This is shameless, ignoble and base,” Erdoğan said in a speech on Wednesday.

Later that same day, The New York Times removed the photo and issued a correction, saying the photo was published in error and clarifying that neither the mosque in the photo nor the president’s visit were related to the recruiting of ISIL fighters described in the article.

The New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet said that even though the correction had been issued, the reporter came under an “unacceptable” attack.

“Despite this published correction, some Turkish authorities and media outlets have mounted a coordinated campaign to intimidate and to impugn the motives of the reporter who wrote the story,” Baquet said in the statement released late on Thursday. “She has been sent thousands of messages that threaten her safety. It is unacceptable for one of our journalists to be targeted in this way.”

“We expect the Turkish authorities to work to ensure the safety of our journalists working legally in the country and we would ask these authorities to use well-established procedures for reaching either myself or other top editors of The New York Times should further communication regarding this matter be necessary,” he also said.

Yeğinsu has been targeted in pro-government newspapers and websites, which have published defamatory articles that feature her photo.

“Ceylan wrote that story,” read a front-page story in the Takvim daily on Thursday. Two other pro-government media outlets, Star newspaper and A Haber television, also ran stories on their websites “exposing” The New York Times reporter as a Turk. “A Turk turned out to be behind the New York Times’ perception operation,” read the headline of a story on the website of Star newspaper, again with a photo of Yeğinsu.

Takvim continued to target Yeğinsu on Friday, running another front-page story featuring her photo and titled: “Hear this, Ceylan.” The story offered a compilation of accounts from people it said were residents of Hacı Bayram, criticizing Yeğinsu for her report and dismissing the ISIL recruitment operation described in it.

Russia: We warned the Americans about Islamic State

September 18, 2014 By administrator

By Alexander Nekrassov to Al Jazeera
He is a former Kremlin and government adviser.

A joke making the rounds among Russian officials and hacks who take a keen interest in what is going on in the Middle East these days goes something like this: How will the Yanks deal with the Islamic State group? They will create “Islamic State 2”, a bigger and better armed group, and let it deal with the original Islamic State group. And what happens when “Islamic State 2” turns against them as it happened with the original Islamic State? They will create “Islamic State 3”, and so on.

But seriously, the rise and spread of the Islamic State group is no laughing matter. Now that the US and its allies have finally woken up to the dangers of the spread of the extremist group, the worry in Moscow is that the hotheads in the Pentagon and at Nato headquarters in Brussels will decide to start hitting Islamic State positions in Syria along with “other targets” there as well – for instance, Syrian army positions.

US President Barack Obama has already announced his plan to deal with the group, promising to lead a “broad coalition” that will “roll back this terrorist threat”. In Moscow, the fear is that the US will seize this opportunity to intervene in Syria.

The Libyan scenario

According to Valeriy Fenenko from the Moscow Centre for International Security, the US can actually use the presence of the Islamic State group in Syria as a pretext to implement the “Libyan scenario”.

“The Americans are bound to try to compensate for their failure last fall,” he says. “At first, it will be air strikes against terrorists and then, in parallel, it may amount to helping the moderate opposition. The US may start a creeping interference, like it happened in Bosnia,” he said.
In any event, Russian diplomatic efforts are in full swing. According to one Russian source, Moscow is trying to prevent possible air strikes in Syria by the US, UK and others, in the same way it did last year when the danger of air strikes was growing by the day.

“Our people in Arab and European capitals were desperately trying to find some sort of solution last year,” he said. “The threat of a regional war that could escalate into a world war was taken very seriously by the Kremlin. And this scenario is in the cards again.”

The feeling in Moscow is that the recent Nato summit in Newport, Wales, missed out on a great opportunity to involve Russia in finding a solution to the spread of the Islamic State group and other militant groups associated with it across Iraq and the Middle East generally. Not to mention, the very real threat of these violent men entering European countries, and even reaching the US.

“The Russians have been warning the Americans ever since the civil war broke out in Syria that it was very dangerous to arm the opposition there,” one former Russian general who was in charge of anti-terrorist operation told me. “There was no chance that the arms destined for the so-called moderate opposition would not end up with the likes of the Islamic State. Not to mention that lots of it was coming as well from ‘liberated’ Libya.”

The same bandits

What worries Russian officials is the stubborn refusal of the Obama administration to talk to President Bashar al-Assad’s government about a possible joint effort in defeating the Islamic State group in Syria. As Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov said recently, it doesn’t make sense for the West to help the Iraqi government to fight the Islamic State group but deny cooperation to Assad who is fighting “the same bandits”.

Some Russian analysts are saying that the bigger problem of the current crisis is that the Islamic State group runs its recruitment campaigns not just in the Middle East but in Europe as well. Different figures are cited over the number of Europeans who have joined the ranks of the group in the past several months, but if you consider that the number of fighters has risen – according to Russian estimates, from about 6,000 in June to over 30,000 at present – it can be assumed that we are talking about thousands of young Muslims travelling from Europe to fight in what they believe is a holy war.

The senseless war in Gaza has probably indirectly boosted the Islamic State group’s recruitment campaign, making it easier to claim that the West and Israel are hellbent on wiping out the Muslims in the Middle East. It remains unclear as to why Israel’s armed forces attacked Gaza during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and conducted blanket air strikes that were bound to take a heavy toll on the civilian population.

In the opinion of Russian experts, this looked more like a smokescreen for US failures in Iraq and Libya rather than an attempt to wipe out Hamas’ arsenal and top commanders. From a military point of view, Benjamin Netanyahu’s war achieved absolutely nothing, except perhaps giving Hamas a boost in popularity.

The danger for Russia from the Islamic State group is that some of its members come from Chechnya and Dagestan, the two Muslim republics in the south of Russia, and there is a risk that the group can find sympathisers and supporters there and even start to build a network across the Caucasus. That is why Moscow is now calling on all parties to make a joint effort to destroy the Islamic State group before it becomes truly international.

However, as the president of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems Konstantin Sivkov points out, the military option is only part of the solution in tackling the Islamic State group. He says that air strikes would not be enough and that it’s crucial to also fight its ideology and cut off its finances that are now flowing through perfectly legal banking channels.

The war against the Islamic State group is fraught with dangers. It might get out of control and drag the whole region into a much wider conflict.

Alexander Nekrassov is a former Kremlin and government adviser.

Iraq forces clear Islamic State after US strikes

September 8, 2014 By administrator

Iraqi forces say they have cleared Islamic State (IS) militants from a wide area around the strategic Haditha dam, helped by US air strikes, according to BBC News.

The jihadists have repeatedly tried to capture the dam in western Anbar province from government troops and their Sunni militia allies.

The action marked a widening of US air strikes which have previously been in support of Kurdish forces in the north.

US President Barack Obama is to reveal a strategy on Wednesday to defeat IS.

The leader of a pro-Iraqi government paramilitary force in western Iraq said the air strikes wiped out an IS patrol trying to attack the dam.

“They (the air strikes) were very accurate. There was no collateral damage. If Islamic State had gained control of the dam, many areas of Iraq would have been seriously threatened, even (the capital) Baghdad,” Sheik Ahmed Abu Risha told Reuters.
Iraqi forces then launched a drive against militants in the Haditha area and regained ground.

“Joint forces backed by air support and tribesmen launched a wide attack to clear the areas surrounding the Haditha district,” security spokesman Lt Gen Qassem Atta told AFP news agency.

Iraq Islamic State’ leaves Yazidi running scared

August 29, 2014 By administrator

After their persecution by the “Islamic State,” many of Kurdistan’s 600,000 or so Yazidi are looking to leave Iraq, threatening to further diminish the community that has been native to the region for thousands of years. report DW.com

The Yazidi temple of Lalish in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq lies a few miles outside the town of Shekhan. Tucked into the hillside, the pointed roofs distinctive of Yazidi monuments rise up from between the treetops as visitors make their way along the unpaved road that leads to the entrance of the temple.

Kurdistan’s small Yazidi community usually gathers at Lalish for its annual religious festivals in spring, summer and fall. But this month, they are there for protection, running in fear of their lives from “Islamic State” (IS) militants, who have killed and captured thousands of Yazidi since the beginning of August.

The Yazidi’s persecution at the hands of Islamic extremists goes back centuries, to the first Muslim incursion into the Kurdistan region. A pre-Islamic, pagan religion, with its roots in Zoroastrianism, the Yazidi are considered devil worshippers by many Muslims, and extremist militants such as IS consider it their religious duty to either convert or kill them.

Most of the 450 families now living in the temple are from the western district of Sinjar that lies between Mosul and the Syrian border, and they all have terrible stories to tell of their experience at the hands of the IS militants.

“We were the last family to leave [the city of] Sinjar,” says 24-year-old Khalida Burkat, sitting in the shade of a concrete security barrier at the entrance to the temple, her three-week-old daughter sleeping in a plastic storage crate beside her. Having given birth just two days before the militants overran the city, Burkat and her husband waited until the last minute to move their tiny new baby and three other daughters, all under the age of six.

As they fled the city for the nearby Sinjar Mountain, where tens of thousands of Yazidi sought refuge, Burkat says she saw IS snipers shoot and kill three men in front of her, as they rounded a bend on the zigzag path that leads to the summit. Once at the top, the family spent eight days without food and with almost no water, under siege from the IS militants. “What could we do?” she says, “We just asked God to help us.”

Burkat’s family was eventually rescued by the members of the rebel Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK. Along with the Kurdish Peshmerga forces, the PKK established a secure corridor into Syria and escorted thousands of Yazidi to safety.

At IS’s mercy

Not everyone survived the ordeal on the mountain. Basee Elias lost her 50-year-old sister, Kamo. “She had a heart attack,” Elias says. “She died of fear.”

Elias is from the village of Siba Sheikh Khdr, which was attacked by the IS early on the morning of August 3. Her uncle-in-law, Khider Elias, was in the village as the militants entered.

“They came in about 24 vehicles,” he says, “They raised their flag and were shouting ‘Allahu Akbar.’ There were five or six families left in the village, and I saw the IS just shoot and kill three men.”

Other residents were abducted by the IS and no one knows what has happened to them. It’s likely that some were taken to Mosul or Tal Afar, where hundreds of Yazidi women and girls are being held hostage, while many others have been sold in markets in Mosul and Raqqa, like slaves.

“We wish the US would bomb those places,” says Hamat Khalaf, whose family is from Sinjar. “Those girls are raped, sometimes by 10 or 20 men. It’s better for them that they die.”

After everything that they have been through, many people say they don’t want to return to their homes, even if the militants are driven out. “We’ve lost everything,” says Khider Elias. “If we work for another 30 years to rebuild, in one hour it could all be gone again. There’s no reason to go back.”

Hope for a safe haven

The Yazidi feel particularly vulnerable because many of their villages in Sinjar are surrounded by Muslim settlements whose residents, the Yazidi say, collaborated with the militants against their Yazidi neighbors. “We would never sleep,” Elias says, “we would never feel safe.”

The villagers have also accused the Kurdish Peshmerga forces of failing to protect them.

“Before this happened, the Peshmerga took our weapons and said, ‘Don’t worry, we’re Peshmerga – we’ll fight,'” says Hamat Khalaf. “But they did nothing; they abandoned us. Only God knows why the Peshmerga didn’t help us. It’s shameful, shameful.”

Many of the refugees at Lalish are now saying they want to leave Iraq and join the Yazidi diaspora in the West.

“Europe, America, Australia – I want to go anywhere where there are no Muslims, no Islam,” says Khider Elias.

The Yazidi’s religious leaders are doing their best to keep their congregation in Iraq but accept that they need to be better protected. Yazidi monk Baba Chawish, who lives in Lalish, is one fo them.

“Kurdistan is our home: Our temple is here, our life is here; this is where the Yazidi were first created. When the Yazidi leave their homes, it’s bad for them and bad for our religion,” he says. “[But] if there’s no security, how can we tell them to stay?”

He’s pinning his hopes on the international community to provide protection in addition to local forces.

“We need America to help the Yazidi,” Baba Chawish says, “America, the Peshmerga, the Kurdistan government. I think there will be a positive outcome. Everyone is helping the Yazidi today.”

Luqman Suleiman, a schoolteacher and volunteer guide at Lalish, is also optimistic. “The future of Kurdistan will be good for the Yazidi. For the first time we’ve heard Obama say the word ‘Yazidi,’ Ban Ki-moon is talking about the Yazidi, John Kerry is talking about the Yazidi,” he says. “The whole world knows about us now.”

And he, for one, isn’t going anywhere. “Where should I go? Germany? No, let the Germans come and visit us here. You can’t just leave every time there’s a problem. If we do that, how can we make a life?”

‘Islamic State executed 700 people from Syrian tribe’

August 18, 2014 By administrator

REUTERS / AMMAN

The Islamic State militant group has executed 700 members of a tribe it has been battling in eastern Syria during the past two weeks, the majority of them civilians, a human rights monitoring group and activists said on Saturday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has tracked violence on all sides of the three-year-old conflict, said reliable sources reported beheadings were used to execute many of the al-Sheitaat tribe, which is from Deir al-Zor province.

The conflict between Islamic State and the al-Sheitaat tribe, who number about 70,000, flared after the militants took over two oil fields in July.

“Those who were executed are all al-Sheitaat,” Observatory director Rami Abdelrahman said by telephone from Britain. “Some were arrested, judged and killed.”

Reuters cannot independently verify reports from Syria due to security conditions and reporting restrictions.

Proclaiming a ‘caliphate’ straddling parts of Iraq and Syria, Islamic State has swept across northern Iraq in recent weeks, pushing back Kurdish regional forces and driving tens of thousands of Muslims, Christians and members of the Yazidi religious minority from their homes, prompting the first U.S. air strikes in Iraq since the withdrawal of American troops in 2011.

The insurgents are also tightening their grip in Syria, of which they now control roughly a third, mostly rural areas in the north and east.

An activist in Deir al-Zor who spoke on condition of anonymity told Reuters that 300 men were executed in one day in the town of Ghraneij, one of the three main towns of the al-Sheitaat tribal heartland, when Islamic State stormed the town earlier this week.

Another opposition activist from Deir al-Zor said residents of al-Sheitaat towns had been given three days to leave.

“Those who were executed during the storming of the al-Sheitaat area are around 300. The rest were killed in the course of the battles,” he told Reuters on condition of anonymity to protect his identity.

Civilians fleeing al-Sheitaat towns had either taken sanctuary in other villages or travelled to Iraq, he said.

More than 170,000 people have been killed in Syria’s civil war, which pits overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim rebels against President Bashar al-Assad, a member of the Shi’ite-derived Alawite minority, backed by Shi’ite militias from Iraq and Lebanon.

The insurgency is split between competing factions in Syria, with Islamic State emerging as the most powerful.

Tribal powers in Syria and Iraq have had to make the choice between fighting Islamic State or pledging allegiance.

On Friday, a video posted on YouTube showed men who said they were from the al-Sheitaat towns of Kishkeih and Abu Hammam pledging full support for Islamic State.

“We say that what Islamic State stands for is justice,” a tribal member sitting in a room with dozens of other men said in a statement that was read out.

The head of the al-Sheitaat tribe, Sheikh Rafaa Aakla al-Raju, called in a video message for other tribes to join them in the fight against the militants.

“We appeal to the other tribes to stand by us because it will be their turn next … If (Islamic State) are done with us the other tribes will be targeted after al-Sheitaat. They are the next target,” he said in the video, posted on YouTube.

Islamic State was condemned on Friday in a UN Security Council resolution for “gross, systematic and widespread abuses of human rights and violations of international humanitarian law.”

Iraq: the jihadists want to conquer new territories held by the Kurds

August 6, 2014 By administrator

Jihadists of the Islamic state (EI) expressed their resolve in a statement Monday to extend their grip on the territories held by the Kurds in northern Iraq, after several setbacks inflicted on peshmerga the last 48 hours.

“Brigades of the Islamic state have now reached the triangle between Turkey, Syria and Iraq. God allowed his mujahideen to liberate the entire region, “the group said in a statement.

He then recalled his most important recorded victories this weekend, the country’s progress since the beginning of its offensive on June 9, which allowed him to win in a few days, large swathes of territory in the north, whose second largest city Mosul in Nineveh province.

Sunday, the IU grabbed Sinjar and two other cities in the same area, near the Syrian border. The day before, he had taken control of Zumar, still in the province of Nineveh, and now threatens the Mosul Dam, the largest in the country.

“The mujahedeen have won several controlled by gangs and militias Kurdish areas,” said the statement, issued by the branch of EI in the province of Nineveh.

“Apostates enemies were humiliated, dozens were killed and injured and hundreds more have fled,” it adds.

The government of the autonomous region of Kurdistan, which includes the provinces of Dohuk, Erbil and Sulaymaniyah, did not provide for bankruptcy victims or commented on reports of the capture of the peshmerga, the Kurdish fighters.

Up to 200,000 people have fled Sinjar, had said Sunday the UN, its envoy in Iraq, Nickolay Mladenov, speaking of a “humanitarian tragedy.”

Areas taken this weekend by the AEs were areas where the peshmerga had taken place, after the rout of the forces of the federal government before the explosive offensive of IE and other Sunni insurgents.

The latest advances in the IE allow the group to move more easily between Mosul and the Syrian border, beyond which it also controls many areas.

Group with alleged links to Islamic State gathers in Istanbul

July 31, 2014 By administrator

There has been much speculation over the past three years about Turkey’s supporting radical Islamist groups in an attempt to end Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government, however, has categorically denied these allegations.

By Tulin Daloglu
Yet the release of a video, allegedly showing a “jihadist” crowd gathering in Istanbul on July 28 for the prayers marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan, has sparked controversy. The recording was released by takvahaber.net, described by Turkish media as an online portal close to the Islamic State (IS).

This website was the only source that reported the assembling of this crowd in Omerli, on the Anatolian side of Istanbul. The 26-minute recording includes a long preaching segment. “Let God make us fight the just war of jihad,” the preacher says. “May God help jihadists and those who are patient for victory. May God help their shots hit the mark.”

Although the Turkish parliament was in summer recess, Sezgin Tanrikulu, a main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) deputy, submitted a written query through the speaker’s office, asking that it be answered by Interior Minister Efkan Ala. Asking the security establishment to confirm first whether this gathering took place in Istanbul and whether this was really a crowd affiliated with IS, Tanrikulu asked whether there were any IS camps within Turkey’s borders.

“Are the allegations true that the IS militants also use this open field for militant training?” Tanrikulu asked. “Have these people asked for any official permission to gather this crowd to mark the end of Ramadan? If so, who gave them this permission? What were the Istanbul security director and the head of gendarmerie in the Istanbul area doing when these people were calling for jihad there?”

He added, “Is it true that both the police department and the gendarmerie units were ordered not to interfere when the group, the extension of a terrorist organization, was calling for jihad in Istanbul? Who gave these orders?”

No Turkish government official has yet said a word about the affair. Speaking to Al-Monitor, Turkish authorities said they were so far dependent on this website’s allegation that this event took place in Istanbul. “Although we cannot provide you any official confirmation that this event took place in Istanbul, it seems quite likely that it was recorded where they claim it was,” one official who asked to remain anonymous told Al-Monitor.

These authorities also note various challenges they face. Although Turkey designates al-Qaeda as a terrorist organization, there is a big question mark whether IS militants are also categorized as “terrorists.” Once the state depicts a group as a terror organization, it activates all its tools to fight against its members. “It is not really clear whether there is any such order here,” this official told Al-Monitor. “What makes everything more complicated is that IS kidnapped Turkey’s Mosul Consulate members, and there are rumors about a tough ransom negotiation to rescue them.” The rumor is that Turkey will pay about $300 million to get its diplomats back.

IS stormed the Turkish Consulate in Mosul on June 11, taking hostage all 49 members of its staff hostage, including Consul General Ozturk Yilmaz.

The same authorities Al-Monitor talked to suggested that IS has actually shown its muscle to the Erdogan government by releasing this video. “The government has already put a gag order on the media not to report anything that could offend the IS. And they release this video footage — all in Turkish, shot in Istanbul, and there is no word from the government yet. They have taken the government hostage as well with this video,” this official told Al-Monitor. “If they don’t act today for the sake of saving these 49 diplomats, it is not clear what they can do next. It is a very delicate and tough decision for the government, but one has to draw the line before it gets too late.”

Put simply, whether the Erdogan government helped the radical Islamic groups fight against the Assad regime could be irrelevant, as these groups already openly operate in Turkish territory. What is relevant today is that these groups are posing a threat to Turkey in terms of potentially recruiting and radicalizing its own population. If IS is not really considered a terrorist organization, the security establishment is quite restricted in how it may act against these militants. Therefore, only the government can determine when it is time to call them one. The media, however, remain restricted in talking about this group until the Turkish diplomats’ fates become clear.

Tulin Daloglu

Columnist

Tulin Daloglu is a columnist for Al-Monitor’s Turkey Pulse. She has also written extensively for various Turkish and American publications, including The New York Times, International Herald Tribune, The Middle East Times, Foreign