arpakola
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The Syrian Crisis
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Broccoli
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sorcerer
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Foreign jihadists flocking to Iraq and Syria on 'unprecedented scale' – UN
The United Nations has warned that foreign jihadists are swarming into the twin conflicts in Iraq and Syria on "an unprecedented scale" and from countries that had not previously contributed combatants to global terrorism.
A report by the UN security council, obtained by the Guardian, finds that 15,000 people have travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight alongside the Islamic State (Isis) and similar extremist groups. They come from more than 80 countries, the report states, "including a tail of countries that have not previously faced challenges relating to al-Qaida".
The UN said it was uncertain whether al-Qaida would benefit from the surge. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaida who booted Isis out of his organisation, "appears to be maneuvering for relevance", the report says.
The UN's numbers bolster recent estimates from US intelligence about the scope of the foreign fighter problem, which the UN report finds to have spread despite the Obama administration's aggressive counter-terrorism strikes and global surveillance dragnets.
"Numbers since 2010 are now many times the size of the cumulative numbers of foreign terrorist fighters between 1990 and 2010 – and are growing," says the report, produced by a security council committee that monitors al-Qaida.
The UN report did not list the 80-plus countries that it said were the source of fighters flowing fighters into Iraq and Syria. But in recent months, Isis supporters have appeared in places as unlikely as the Maldives, and its videos proudly display jihadists with Chilean-Norwegian and other diverse backgrounds.
"There are instances of foreign terrorist fighters from France, the Russian Federation and and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland operating together," it states. More than 500 British citizens are believed to have travelled to the region since 2011.
The UN report, an update on the spread of transnational terrorism and efforts to staunch it, validates the Obama administration's claim that "core al-Qaida remains weak". But it suggests that the decline of al-Qaida has yielded an explosion of jihadist enthusiasm for its even mightier successor organizations, chiefly Isis.
Those organisations are less interested in assaults outside their frontiers: "Truly cross-border attacks – or attacks against international targets – remain a minority," the report assesses. But the report indicates that more nations than ever will face the challenge of experienced fighters returning home from the Syria-Iraq conflict.
Wading into a debate with legal implications for Barack Obama's new war against Isis, the UN considers Isis "a splinter group" from al-Qaida. It considers an ideological congruence between the two groups sufficient to categorise them as part a broader movement, notwithstanding al-Qaida's formal excommunication of Isis last February.
"Al-Qaida core and Isil pursue similar strategic goals, albeit with tactical differences regarding sequencing and substantive differences about personal leadership," the UN writes, using a different acronym for Isis.
Leadership disputes between the organisations are reflected in the shape of their propaganda, the UN finds. A "cosmopolitan" embrace of social media platforms andinternet culture by Isis ("as when extremists post kitten photographs") has displaced the "long and turgid messaging" from al-Qaida. Zawahiri's most recent video lasted 55 minutes, while Isis members incessantly use Twitter, Snapchat, Kik, Ask.fm, a communications apparatus "unhindered by organisational structures".
A "lack of social media message discipline" in Isis points to a leadership "that recognizes the terror and recruitment value of multichannel, multi-language social and other media messaging," reflecting a younger and "more international" membership than al-Qaida's various affiliates.
With revenues just from its oil smuggling operations now estimated at $1m daily, Isis controls territory in Iraq and Syria home to between five and six million people, a population the size of Finland's. Bolstering Isis's treasury is up to $45m in money from kidnapping for ransom, the UN report finds. Family members of Isis victim James Foley, an American journalist, have questioned the policy of refusing to pay ransoms, which US officials argue would encourage more kidnappings.
Two months of outright US-led war against Isis has suffered from a lack of proxy ground forces to take territory from Isis, as Obama has formally ruled out direct US ground combat. On Thursday at the Pentagon, General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the US has yet to even begin vetting Syrian rebels for potential inclusion in an anti-Isis army it seeks to muster in Syria. Dempsey encouraged the Iraqi government to directly arm Sunni tribes to withstand Isis's advances through the western Anbar Province.
source: Foreign jihadists flocking to Iraq and Syria on 'unprecedented scale' –-UN | World news | The Guardian
The United Nations has warned that foreign jihadists are swarming into the twin conflicts in Iraq and Syria on "an unprecedented scale" and from countries that had not previously contributed combatants to global terrorism.
A report by the UN security council, obtained by the Guardian, finds that 15,000 people have travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight alongside the Islamic State (Isis) and similar extremist groups. They come from more than 80 countries, the report states, "including a tail of countries that have not previously faced challenges relating to al-Qaida".
The UN said it was uncertain whether al-Qaida would benefit from the surge. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaida who booted Isis out of his organisation, "appears to be maneuvering for relevance", the report says.
The UN's numbers bolster recent estimates from US intelligence about the scope of the foreign fighter problem, which the UN report finds to have spread despite the Obama administration's aggressive counter-terrorism strikes and global surveillance dragnets.
"Numbers since 2010 are now many times the size of the cumulative numbers of foreign terrorist fighters between 1990 and 2010 – and are growing," says the report, produced by a security council committee that monitors al-Qaida.
The UN report did not list the 80-plus countries that it said were the source of fighters flowing fighters into Iraq and Syria. But in recent months, Isis supporters have appeared in places as unlikely as the Maldives, and its videos proudly display jihadists with Chilean-Norwegian and other diverse backgrounds.
"There are instances of foreign terrorist fighters from France, the Russian Federation and and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland operating together," it states. More than 500 British citizens are believed to have travelled to the region since 2011.
The UN report, an update on the spread of transnational terrorism and efforts to staunch it, validates the Obama administration's claim that "core al-Qaida remains weak". But it suggests that the decline of al-Qaida has yielded an explosion of jihadist enthusiasm for its even mightier successor organizations, chiefly Isis.
Those organisations are less interested in assaults outside their frontiers: "Truly cross-border attacks – or attacks against international targets – remain a minority," the report assesses. But the report indicates that more nations than ever will face the challenge of experienced fighters returning home from the Syria-Iraq conflict.
Wading into a debate with legal implications for Barack Obama's new war against Isis, the UN considers Isis "a splinter group" from al-Qaida. It considers an ideological congruence between the two groups sufficient to categorise them as part a broader movement, notwithstanding al-Qaida's formal excommunication of Isis last February.
"Al-Qaida core and Isil pursue similar strategic goals, albeit with tactical differences regarding sequencing and substantive differences about personal leadership," the UN writes, using a different acronym for Isis.
Leadership disputes between the organisations are reflected in the shape of their propaganda, the UN finds. A "cosmopolitan" embrace of social media platforms andinternet culture by Isis ("as when extremists post kitten photographs") has displaced the "long and turgid messaging" from al-Qaida. Zawahiri's most recent video lasted 55 minutes, while Isis members incessantly use Twitter, Snapchat, Kik, Ask.fm, a communications apparatus "unhindered by organisational structures".
A "lack of social media message discipline" in Isis points to a leadership "that recognizes the terror and recruitment value of multichannel, multi-language social and other media messaging," reflecting a younger and "more international" membership than al-Qaida's various affiliates.
With revenues just from its oil smuggling operations now estimated at $1m daily, Isis controls territory in Iraq and Syria home to between five and six million people, a population the size of Finland's. Bolstering Isis's treasury is up to $45m in money from kidnapping for ransom, the UN report finds. Family members of Isis victim James Foley, an American journalist, have questioned the policy of refusing to pay ransoms, which US officials argue would encourage more kidnappings.
Two months of outright US-led war against Isis has suffered from a lack of proxy ground forces to take territory from Isis, as Obama has formally ruled out direct US ground combat. On Thursday at the Pentagon, General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the US has yet to even begin vetting Syrian rebels for potential inclusion in an anti-Isis army it seeks to muster in Syria. Dempsey encouraged the Iraqi government to directly arm Sunni tribes to withstand Isis's advances through the western Anbar Province.
source: Foreign jihadists flocking to Iraq and Syria on 'unprecedented scale' –-UN | World news | The Guardian
pmaitra
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arpakola
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you mean from Pakistan or Saudi donators ?/
Broccoli
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From Sudan via Qatar. Probably same place where they did get HJ-8 ATGMs.
sorcerer
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Inside the CIA's Syrian 'Moderate' Rebels Vetting Machine
Inside the CIA’s Syrian ‘Moderate’ Rebels Vetting Machine | StratRisks
Nothing has come in for more mockery during the Obama administration's halting steps into the Syrian civil war than its employment of "moderate" to describe the kind of rebels it is willing to back. In one of the more widely cited japes, The New Yorker's resident humorist, Andy Borowitz, presented a "Moderate Syrian Application Form," in which applicants were asked to describe themselves as either "A) Moderate, B) Very moderate, C) Crazy moderate or D) Other."
After Sen. John McCain unwittingly posed with Syrians "on our side" who turned out to be kidnappers, Jon Stewart cracked, "Not everyone is going to be wearing their, 'HELLO I'M A TERRORIST' name badge."
Behind the jokes, however, is the deadly serious responsibility of the CIA and Defense Department to vet Syrians before they receive covert American training, aid and arms. But according to U.S. counterterrorism veterans, a system that worked pretty well during four decades of the Cold War has been no match for the linguistic, cultural, tribal and political complexities of the Middle East, especially now in Syria. "We're completely out of our league," one former CIA vetting expert declared on condition of anonymity, reflecting the consensus of intelligence professionals with firsthand knowledge of the Syrian situation. "To be really honest, very few people know how to vet well. It's a very specialized skill. It's extremely difficult to do well" in the best of circumstances, the former operative said. And in Syria it has proved impossible.
Daunted by the task of fielding a 5,000-strong force virtually overnight, the Defense Department and CIA field operatives, known as case officers, have largely fallen back on the system used in Afghanistan, first during the covert campaign to rout the Soviet Red Army in the 1980s, and then again after the 2001 U.S. invasion to expel Al-Qaeda: Pick a tribal leader who in turn recruits a fighting force. But these warlords have had their own agendas, including drug-running, and shifting alliances, sometimes collaborating with terrorist enemies of the United States, sometimes not.
"Vetting is a word we throw a lot around a lot, but actually very few people know what it really means," said the former CIA operative, who had several postings in the Middle East for a decade after the 9/11 attacks. "It's not like you've got a booth set up at a camp somewhere. What normally happens is that a case officer will identify a source who is a leader in one of the Free Syrian Army groups. And he'll say, 'Hey"¦ can you come up with 200 [guys] you can trust?' And of course they say yes—they always say yes. So Ahmed brings you a list and the details you need to do the traces," the CIA's word for background checks. "So you're taking that guy's word on the people he's recruited. So we rely on a source whom we've done traces on to do the recruiting. Does that make sense?"
No, says former CIA operative Patrick Skinner, who still travels the region for the Soufan Group, a private intelligence organization headed by FBI, CIA and MI6 veterans. "Syria is a vetting nightmare," he told Newsweek, "with no way to discern the loyalties of not only those being vetted, but also of those bringing the people to our attention."
A particularly vivid example was provided recently by Peter Theo Curtis, an American held hostage in Syria for two years. A U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army unit that briefly held him hostage casually revealed how it collaborated with Al-Qaeda's al-Nusra front, even after being "vetted" and trained by the CIA in Jordan, he wrote in The New York Times Magazine.
"About this business of fighting Jabhat al-Nusra?" Curtis said he asked his FSA captors.
"Oh, that," one said. "We lied to the Americans about that."
Concerns about the CIA's vetting system arose long before the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011, several CIA veterans told Newsweek. In Baghdad, one said, agency operatives had such thin faith in the system that they often had sweaty palms as they awaited a meeting with a newly recruited Iraqi spy—even though he had been cleared by CIA vetters—because they knew he might show up with a suicide vest under his jacket. That happened in Afghanistan on December 30, 2009, when a Jordanian physician recruited by the CIA on his claim to have access to Osama Bin Laden turned out to be working for Al-Qaeda. He blew himself up at a CIA base, taking out seven agency operatives as well.
That double agent had been served up by Jordan's General Intelligence Directorate, a longtime partner of the CIA in clandestine operations. Relying on close liaisons to vet spies might've worked well enough during the Cold War, when the CIA's name files were meticulously updated by its small corps of Ivy-educated spies, but in the swirling chaos of the post-9/11 Middle East or South Asia, where Arabic (or Urdu, Farsi or Pashtun) names can be transliterated to English and back in endless varieties and where political allegiances are as blurry as the centuries-old colonial boundaries drawn up by bureaucrats in London and Paris, the CIA's vetters are just not up to the task, say spy agency veterans with long experience in the region.
"For two years I managed a lot of those folks," said one person not authorized to discuss the inner workings of the system. "A lot of them are contractors just coming out of college and don't have a lot of experience under their belts—not in the Middle East, or the region or in Arabic."¦ "
(The CIA declined comment on the vetting process. Navy commander Elissa Smith, speaking for the Defense Department, said in a statement that, "the U.S. military has decades of experience screening foreign military forces for training. We also know the Syrian opposition better now than we did two years ago. While we cannot disclose the details of our sources and methods, we will screen thoroughly and conduct continuous monitoring.")
Inside the CIA’s Syrian ‘Moderate’ Rebels Vetting Machine | StratRisks
Nothing has come in for more mockery during the Obama administration's halting steps into the Syrian civil war than its employment of "moderate" to describe the kind of rebels it is willing to back. In one of the more widely cited japes, The New Yorker's resident humorist, Andy Borowitz, presented a "Moderate Syrian Application Form," in which applicants were asked to describe themselves as either "A) Moderate, B) Very moderate, C) Crazy moderate or D) Other."
After Sen. John McCain unwittingly posed with Syrians "on our side" who turned out to be kidnappers, Jon Stewart cracked, "Not everyone is going to be wearing their, 'HELLO I'M A TERRORIST' name badge."
Behind the jokes, however, is the deadly serious responsibility of the CIA and Defense Department to vet Syrians before they receive covert American training, aid and arms. But according to U.S. counterterrorism veterans, a system that worked pretty well during four decades of the Cold War has been no match for the linguistic, cultural, tribal and political complexities of the Middle East, especially now in Syria. "We're completely out of our league," one former CIA vetting expert declared on condition of anonymity, reflecting the consensus of intelligence professionals with firsthand knowledge of the Syrian situation. "To be really honest, very few people know how to vet well. It's a very specialized skill. It's extremely difficult to do well" in the best of circumstances, the former operative said. And in Syria it has proved impossible.
Daunted by the task of fielding a 5,000-strong force virtually overnight, the Defense Department and CIA field operatives, known as case officers, have largely fallen back on the system used in Afghanistan, first during the covert campaign to rout the Soviet Red Army in the 1980s, and then again after the 2001 U.S. invasion to expel Al-Qaeda: Pick a tribal leader who in turn recruits a fighting force. But these warlords have had their own agendas, including drug-running, and shifting alliances, sometimes collaborating with terrorist enemies of the United States, sometimes not.
"Vetting is a word we throw a lot around a lot, but actually very few people know what it really means," said the former CIA operative, who had several postings in the Middle East for a decade after the 9/11 attacks. "It's not like you've got a booth set up at a camp somewhere. What normally happens is that a case officer will identify a source who is a leader in one of the Free Syrian Army groups. And he'll say, 'Hey"¦ can you come up with 200 [guys] you can trust?' And of course they say yes—they always say yes. So Ahmed brings you a list and the details you need to do the traces," the CIA's word for background checks. "So you're taking that guy's word on the people he's recruited. So we rely on a source whom we've done traces on to do the recruiting. Does that make sense?"
No, says former CIA operative Patrick Skinner, who still travels the region for the Soufan Group, a private intelligence organization headed by FBI, CIA and MI6 veterans. "Syria is a vetting nightmare," he told Newsweek, "with no way to discern the loyalties of not only those being vetted, but also of those bringing the people to our attention."
A particularly vivid example was provided recently by Peter Theo Curtis, an American held hostage in Syria for two years. A U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army unit that briefly held him hostage casually revealed how it collaborated with Al-Qaeda's al-Nusra front, even after being "vetted" and trained by the CIA in Jordan, he wrote in The New York Times Magazine.
"About this business of fighting Jabhat al-Nusra?" Curtis said he asked his FSA captors.
"Oh, that," one said. "We lied to the Americans about that."
Concerns about the CIA's vetting system arose long before the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011, several CIA veterans told Newsweek. In Baghdad, one said, agency operatives had such thin faith in the system that they often had sweaty palms as they awaited a meeting with a newly recruited Iraqi spy—even though he had been cleared by CIA vetters—because they knew he might show up with a suicide vest under his jacket. That happened in Afghanistan on December 30, 2009, when a Jordanian physician recruited by the CIA on his claim to have access to Osama Bin Laden turned out to be working for Al-Qaeda. He blew himself up at a CIA base, taking out seven agency operatives as well.
That double agent had been served up by Jordan's General Intelligence Directorate, a longtime partner of the CIA in clandestine operations. Relying on close liaisons to vet spies might've worked well enough during the Cold War, when the CIA's name files were meticulously updated by its small corps of Ivy-educated spies, but in the swirling chaos of the post-9/11 Middle East or South Asia, where Arabic (or Urdu, Farsi or Pashtun) names can be transliterated to English and back in endless varieties and where political allegiances are as blurry as the centuries-old colonial boundaries drawn up by bureaucrats in London and Paris, the CIA's vetters are just not up to the task, say spy agency veterans with long experience in the region.
"For two years I managed a lot of those folks," said one person not authorized to discuss the inner workings of the system. "A lot of them are contractors just coming out of college and don't have a lot of experience under their belts—not in the Middle East, or the region or in Arabic."¦ "
(The CIA declined comment on the vetting process. Navy commander Elissa Smith, speaking for the Defense Department, said in a statement that, "the U.S. military has decades of experience screening foreign military forces for training. We also know the Syrian opposition better now than we did two years ago. While we cannot disclose the details of our sources and methods, we will screen thoroughly and conduct continuous monitoring.")
ALERT: UN suspend WFP for Syrian refugees
More than 1.7 million to face hunger in the middle of the winter
"The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) says it has suspended providing food vouchers for more than 1.7 million Syrian refugees due to lack of funds."
"The UN agency said in a statement on Monday that it has cut the program which provides Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt with electronic vouchers to buy food in local shops."
"'The suspension of WFP food assistance will be disastrous for many already suffering families,' said WFP Executive Director Ertharin Cousin."
"The WFP added that it needs 64 million dollars to support the Syrian refugees in December only."
PressTV, fe
More than 1.7 million to face hunger in the middle of the winter
"The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) says it has suspended providing food vouchers for more than 1.7 million Syrian refugees due to lack of funds."
"The UN agency said in a statement on Monday that it has cut the program which provides Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt with electronic vouchers to buy food in local shops."
"'The suspension of WFP food assistance will be disastrous for many already suffering families,' said WFP Executive Director Ertharin Cousin."
"The WFP added that it needs 64 million dollars to support the Syrian refugees in December only."
PressTV, fe
Kshatriya87
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MOSCOW, December 7 (Sputnik) — Israeli Air Force has conducted several airstrikes on Syria's Damascus International Airport, targeting an arms depot, a source in Syrian army's Joint Staff told RIA Novosti on Sunday. "The Israeli Air Force has conducted airstrikes on an arms depot, which caused huge blasts near the [Damascus] International Airport," the source said. He added that the Joint Staff will release a statement on the attack soon.
Israel Conducts Airstrikes on Damascus Int'l Airport: Source / Sputnik International
Israel Conducts Airstrikes on Damascus Int'l Airport: Source / Sputnik International
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Israel sure loves the ISIS
nrupatunga
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Folks, what happened to bashar al-assad?? There's no news of him at all in the recent past. Looks like he just vanished in thin air.
amoy
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How? An interview of him lately on foreignpolicy.com probably in which he accused US and Turkey of patroning terrorists (the opposition) and called for political solutions.Folks, what happened to bashar al-assad?? There's no news of him at all in the recent past. Looks like he just vanished in thin air.
~~War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength. ~~from my MiPad using tapatalk
Indian media is terrible they will spend 2 hours on people screaming at each other in a studio but will not be bothere to spend a minute of airtime on the going ons in the world . If I did not have the internet I would be completely clueless.
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Kobane is the city to watch. The Kurds are pushing hard after the air strikes
Notably they have expanded from deep yellow to light yellow areas . Taking the Hills will be difficult and bloody , but a major advantage.
Anyway assad is losing ground to the rebels in Aleppo Overall a stalemate for Assad.
Notably they have expanded from deep yellow to light yellow areas . Taking the Hills will be difficult and bloody , but a major advantage.
Anyway assad is losing ground to the rebels in Aleppo Overall a stalemate for Assad.
apple
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It's the same with media everywhere. Al- Assad is an arrogant SOB. ISIS is sharpening (or probably bluntening) it's knives to take off his head and he's bitching about the US. Arabs are awesome...
Lebanese84
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I am new to the forum so take it easy on me.
The syrian crisis is a huge one. Losses of more than 140 billion to the economy and cities and villages wiped off the map. For years and years to come.
The syrian crisis is a huge one. Losses of more than 140 billion to the economy and cities and villages wiped off the map. For years and years to come.
