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US, Russia edge close to military collaboration in Syria and Iraq

October 27, 2015

US, Russia edge close to military collaboration in Syria and Iraq, DEBKAfile, October 27, 2015

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Washington and Moscow appear close to agreeing to their armed forces teaming up for war operations in Syria and Iraq. Nothing definite has so far emerged about this potential collaboration, or even if it is to be conducted covertly and experimentally ad hoc or seriously and out in the open.

A comment suggesting that the Obama administration was ready for a new direction on Syria came from US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter Tuesday, Oct. 27. In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, he said, “we won’t hold back from supporting capable partners in opportunistic attacks against ISIL…or conducting such mission directly, whether by strikes from the air or direct action on the ground.”

According to Pentagon sources, the US intends to deploy small units of Special Operations forces in Syria and “special advisers” in Iraq, which too are believed to be special operations units under another name.

However, DEBKAfile’s military sources point out that small-scale military ventures in open-ended war situations tend to extend beyond the scale originally intended. Therefore, it is more than likely that both the US and Russia will find themselves committing increasing numbers of air and ground troops if the conflicts in the two countries continue.

The way matters are going now, the plan for Iraq is for US forces to join Iraqi and Iranian units in launching an offensive to recover Ramadi, capital of the Western province of Anbar, 110 km West of Baghdad, which ISIS captured in May.

In Syria, American troops plan to work with the northeastern Kurdish PYD-YPG militia for marching on Raqqa, the Islamic State’s headquarters in that country.

At the Senate hearing, Carter pointed to last week’s rescue operation in northern Syria. US Delta commandos and Syrian Kurdish special forces stormed a prison held by the Islamic State and freed dozens of Kurdish prisoners.

This operation was outside the bounds of normal US involvement in the Syrian conflict. After it was over, the US Defense Secretary said the military expects “more raids of this kind.”

This joint US-Kurdish raid brought forth a furious response from Turkey.The Turkish military twice directed machine gun fire at the Syrian Kurdish PYD force in the Syrian town of Tal Abyad Sunday, Oct. 25.

DEBKAfile’s military sources note that Tel Abyad is the closest point to Raqqa to have been reached by America’s Kurdish allies.

Ankara is vehemently opposed to the US partnership with the Kurds of Syria and Iraq, and puts its campaign against their separatist trends ahead of its commitment to the anti-ISIS coalition.

However, the Obama administration appears to have finally come down in favor of a combined operation with the Kurdish forces, even at the expense of its ties with Ankara, another pointer to the up-and-coming US ground operations in Syria.

Neither Washington nor Moscow has commented on their possible military cooperation for the fight to vanquish ISIS. But straws in the wind point in that direction.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeated: “I have no plans to put ground troops in Syria,” indicating that Moscow would confine itself to air strikes.

The US Defense Minister Tuesday explicitly mentioned “…direct action on the ground” as well as, ”supporting capable partners in opportunistic attacks against ISIL.”

DEBKAfile’s military sources find common elements in the American and Russian modes of action. Whereas the Americans plan to deploy ground troops for fighting with Kurdish forces, the Russians will stick to aerial attacks in conjunction with certain Syrian rebel groups.

Moscow’s plan unfolded on Monday, Oct. 26, when a delegation of the Free Syrian Army, which is backed by the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia, turned up in Moscow seeking to coordinate its military operations with the Russians.

It is hard to tell if US-Russian military cooperation in the Syrian and Iraqi wars actually ripens into a productive effort or proves ephemeral. Israel’s concerns and its responses to the fast-moving, explosive situation on its northern borders are scheduled to be thrashed out in the talks Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon is holding this week in Washington with Defense Secretary Carter.

Categories: Department of Defense, Foreign policy, Israel, Kurds, Obama - Middle East, Obama and Syria, Russia - Middle East, Russia - Syrian war, U.S. Military
Tags: Department of Defense, Foreign Policy, Israel, Obama and Syria, Russia - Middle East, Russia - Syrian war, U.S. Military. Kurds

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Kurds Ask for Peace, Turkey Attacks

October 18, 2015

Kurds Ask for Peace, Turkey Attacks, Gatestone Institute, Uzay Bulut, October 18, 2015

Just after the bombing attack in Ankara, Turkish authorities said that the Islamic State (ISIS) was responsible. But in response, Turkish jets did not bomb ISIS; they bombed the Kurdish PKK, who are fighting ISIS.
Where were the special forces and the police, so quick to shoot Kurds but not protect them? The police delayed medical help, and instead attacked with tear gas the people that were helping the wounded, in an effort to disperse them.
“The PKK ceasefire means nothing for us. The operations will continue without a break.” — Senior Turkish security official.
“Ankara is the capital of Turkey. If a bird flies here, the state knows about it. … There was a rally of 100,000 people but no security precautions were taken. Look at their own rallies: the security precautions start 10 streets away.” — Selahattin Demirtas, co-chairman of the Kurdish HDP Party.
Many massacres have been carried out against the Kurds. None of the perpetrators has ever been punished — in those massacres, the planners were the state authorities themselves.

On October 10, the Kurds in Turkey were exposed to yet another massacre – this time a double suicide bombing in Ankara, the capital of Turkey, in the center of town.

This time, two explosions ripped through a peaceful crowd that had gathered outside the entrance to Ankara’s central railway station to proclaim an end to violence in a “Labor, Peace and Democracy” rally.

Together with the Kurds were officials from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP); supporters of left-wing parties, and members of trade unions in Turkey — all calling for peace and democracy.[1]

At least 105 people were killed, according to the Turkish Medical Association, and more than 400 injured.[2]

One victim, Meryem Bulut, was a 70-year-old member of the “Saturday Mothers” group, who have protested about their missing sons and daughters since the 1990s. Her grandchild died last year fighting against ISIS in the Yazidi town of Sinjar, Iraq.

Nine-year old Veysel Atilgan participated in the rally with his father, Ibrahim Atilgan; both were killed in the blasts.

The aftermath of the explosion was almost as horrific. The police delayed medical help, and instead attacked with tear gas and pepper spray the people that were helping the wounded, in an effort to disperse them. The government, after attacking even the wounded, unleashed the military and police apparatus against Kurds who came to mourn their dead.

Orhan Antepli, the legal secretary of the Bursa branch of the Trade Union of Public Employees in Health and Social Services (SES), witnessed the explosion. The police used tear gas against the wounded, he said, and did not allow ambulances to enter the area:

“On the road, for two kilometers, we did not see a single police officer. I was facing where the second explosion took place. After it, there were about 100 pieces of flesh of 1cm each on the coat of the person beside me.”

Antepli said that he ran to help the wounded, but the police did not allow ambulances to enter the area: “While I was treating a wounded man, the police started using tear gas. They blocked the road. Two or three gas bombs were thrown at the people.”

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At least 105 people were killed and more than 400 wounded in the Oct. 10 Ankara suicide bombings. For a long time after the explosions, neither police nor ambulances came to the scene — victims were left to fend for themselves. When police arrived, they fired tear gas at the wounded and those helping them.

In the meantime, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said, incredibly,

“An utterly successful operation against terror was carried out. Similarly, due to our vigorous efforts since 23 July, the most important cadres of ISIS have been arrested or their contacts have been broken. … But when you step out of routine, this has a limit in a democratic state of law. You cannot arrest someone without a reason. There is even a list of people who might engage in suicide bombing in Turkey. You follow them, but when you do something before they carry out that act, you are exposed to another protest.”

So, Turkey keeps a list of potential suicide bombers, while Davutoglu is saying with a straight face that the government — which has attacked and even arrested many journalists simply for doing their job, and even high-school students for tweets critical of the government — should not arrest a potential suicide bomber “without a reason.” The AKP is the last government that should be talking about a “democratic state of law.”

Just after the blasts, some Turkish authorities said that the Islamic State (ISIS) had caused them. Yet in response, Turkish jets did not bomb ISIS; they bombed the Kurdish PKK, who are fighting ISIS. After the government rejected a new ceasefire announced by the PKK on Saturday, the Turkish air force attacked.

The PKK had declared in a written statement that “they reached the decision to stop military action against Turkish state forces as long as there were no attacks.”

The Turkish government, however, seems determined to continue killing Kurds no matter what. “The PKK ceasefire means nothing for us,” one senior Turkish security official told Reuters. “The operations will continue without a break.”

While the Turkish army is bombing the PKK headquarters (again), the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office has issued a gag order on the Ankara massacre investigation.

In addition, the state media watchdog, the Turkish Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTUK), imposed a ban on broadcasting images of the bombings. After the temporary ban, Twitter, Facebook, and several other social media sites were also inaccessible throughout Turkey. That is what a repressive state does to keep facts from coming out.

Later, when many people in Ankara, including Kurdish MPs and mayors, took to the streets to protest the massacre, police used water cannons and tear gas against them. Some protesters were wounded and taken to hospital; four were arrested.

Across Turkish Kurdistan, countless protesters were also exposed to police violence. The police in Diyarbakir used real bullets with the tear gas. An ambulance was reportedly prevented from entering the area where Ahmet Taruk, 63, was overcome by the tear gas; he lost his life on the way to the hospital. During a police crackdown in Izmir, 66 people were arrested.

Eventually, the Turkish media reported that both perpetrators of the Ankara suicide bombing attack had indeed been identified as members of ISIS. One of them, Omer Deniz Dundar, had gone to Syria in 2013 and came back to Turkey in 2014. Eight months later, he went back to Syria again. His father said in an interview that he had sought the help of the police many times to bring his son back home, but could do nothing.

The other suspect, Yunus Emre Alagoz, in his latest telephone conversation in May 2015, said, “This is the last time we are speaking.” The call was recorded by the police. They interrogated Alagoz as a “suspect” but then released him.

His brother, Yusuf Alagoz, said that Yunus Emre Alagoz had attended school in Afghanistan in 2009, followed by a religious education at a madrassah [Muslim theological school] in Iran.

Still another brother, Seyh Abdurrahman Alagoz, had carried out the deadly suicide bomb attack in Suruc on July 20, in which 33 people were killed.

But just imagine for a moment that it really was two terrorists who committed the massacre, without the knowledge of the Turkish government, and that the state institutions were completely innocent. Where, then, were the security forces to help people after the blast? Where were the medics to help with the wounded? Where were the ambulances? Where were the special forces and the police, so quick to shoot Kurds but not protect them?

The pro-government media in Turkey has been claiming that the PKK was the perpetrator and that the HDP party should be held responsible. They only criticize the public’s response to the attacks; never the attacks themselves.

In Turkey, at other gatherings, not even a mosquito can fly without the Turkish police interrupting it. Yet for this demonstration, there was no security; no medical personnel, no protection for the demonstrators. After the blasts, people were covering the dead with the banners they brought to the rally. People were trying to resuscitate the wounded and making splints for their broken bones by themselves.

Who knows how many people would have survived had it not been for the tear gas that prevented them from breathing? So severe were the wounds that people could not even leave the area; and police were firing tear gas.

After the massacre, Selahattin Demirtas, the co-chairman of the HDP party, said:

“They are trying to convey the message that ‘we can come and rip you to pieces in the middle of Ankara’. They are on the brink of saying ‘the HDP blew up its own rally.’ The prime minister spoke for half an hour; he spent 20 minutes insulting and threatening us. Did you hear him make a single statement condemning ISIS? No. He is still threatening us. Ankara is the capital of Turkey. If a bird flies here, the state knows about it. This is the city where the intelligence unit is the strongest. There was a rally of 100,000 people but no security precautions were taken. Look at their own rallies: the security precautions start 10 streets away. There were 100 corpses; 500 wounded. But they had also had to deal with the water cannons fired by police. Is that what your justice is?”

During the rule of the AKP government, similar massacres against Kurds in Roboski, Diyarbakir and Suruc have also taken place. Before that, since 1920s, there were many massacres against Kurds. None of the perpetrators has ever been punished: in those massacres, the planners and organizers were state authorities themselves.

On October 10, the Kurds and their friends tried to call for an end to war. The Kurds proclaimed peace and brotherhood — Turkey as usual, responded with murder.

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[1] The rally was organized by the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey (DISK), the Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects (TMMOB), the Turkish Medical Association (TTB) and the Confederation of Public Workers’ Unions (KESK). The Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) was one of the major participants.

[2] The Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) said in a written statement that the Ministry of Health does not share the data at hand about the dead and wounded and the chief physicians of hospitals have been given certain instructions not to share the data with the public.

Categories: Kurds, Turkey
Tags: Kurds, Turkey

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Obama arms Islamic terrorists who called for “slaughtering Americans like cattle”

October 12, 2015

Obama arms Islamic terrorists who called for “slaughtering Americans like cattle,” Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, October 12, 2015

(Surely Obama, with access to top military and intelligence officials, knows precisely what he’s doing. Not only that, it couldn’t be his mess. Somebody else has to be blamed. Right? — DM)

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The Syrian Civil War is a mess. Whether or not that disclaimer appears at the top of every article and post, you should assume that it does. There are factions and splinter groups that are constantly merging and reforming.

Which is why backing anyone in the war is hazardous. But here’s the latest phase of Obama’s “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing in Syria” strategy.

The U.S. military airdropped 50 tons of small arms ammo and grenades in northern Syria on Sunday, a senior defense official told Fox News, representing the Pentagon’s shift from training rebel fighters to equipping them.

Coming just two days after the Defense Department announced it was effectively ending its current training program, the airdrop delivery was made Sunday by four C-17 transport aircraft. The 112 pallets contained ammunition for M-16s and AK-47s.

This time, the official said Syrian Kurds were not recipients of the U.S. airdrop — only Syrian Arabs fighting ISIS. There is sensitivity in Washington over arming Syrian Kurds, whom Turkey sees as an enemy but the U.S. counts as a NATO ally.

Who is actually getting the weapons? Here’s whom the weapons are meant to be going to…

The alliance calling itself the Democratic Forces of Syria includes the Kurdish YPG militia and Syrian Arab groups, some of which fought alongside it in a campaign that drove Islamic State from wide areas of northern Syria earlier this year.

The Arab groups in the new alliance are operating under the name “The Syrian Arab Coalition” – a grouping which U.S. officials have said would receive support under a new U.S. strategy aimed at fighting Islamic State in Syria.

So Turkey has forced the US to deny weapons to the Kurdish part of the alliance. The Syriac Military Council is in the alliance too, but it’s unclear if they’re getting resupplied.

So that just leaves the Syrian Arab Coalition. And who is in the Syrian Arab Coalition?

“We met the Americans and this has been approved and we have been told these new arms … are on their way,” said Abu Muazz, a spokesman for the Raqqa Revolutionaries Front, a grouping of mainly Arab tribal insurgents who are mostly drawn from the Raqqa area.

Tribal insurgents. Sounds okay, right? Except that name doesn’t appear to be in use. This may be the Raqqa Revolutionaries’ Brigade whose Arabic name is Liwa Thuwwar al-Raqqa which was formerly allied with the Al Nusra Front… which is Al Qaeda. Since then Liwa claims to have split from Nusra and is fighting ISIS. But Nusra is also fighting ISIS.

Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi has a summary of the relationship that runs several paragraphs. (The Syrian Civil War is a mess. See above.)

The new alliance includes the YPG, various Arab groups including Jaysh al-Thuwwar (Army of Rebels) and the Arab tribal Jaysh al-Sanadeed, and an Assyrian Christian group, according to a statement announcing its establishment.

Except we’re apparently not arming the YPG. It’s unclear if we’re arming the Assyrians. But we are arming Jaysh al-Thuwwar, which is a coalition of a bunch of other groups formerly part of the FSA. The Sanadeed appear to actually be closely linked to the YPG.

But it gets messier from here.

Another faction in the new coalition, Jaysh al-Qasas, worked with IS in 2014. FSA commanders say its leader spends most of his time in Turkey and his fighters are most interested in looting.

Of course the FSA, which used to be US backed, has every reason to trash talk the current aid recipients.

“They are fighters who have moved from one militia to another,” says Abdul Rahman, a commander with the Army of Mujahideen , which is aligned with Jaish al Fata, or the Army of Conquest, the Islamist rebel alliance.“Most of them are rejects. They are not reliable — we don’t trust them,” he told VOA.

“I generally agree with the testimony of those rebels you have spoken to,” says Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, a fellow at U.S.-based think tank the Middle East Forum. He says that armed groups in one of the largest of the factions, the Dawn of Freedom, have “reputations for corruption.”

“The main groups of the coalition are splinters from larger rebel militias and in the case of Dawn of Freedom it is essentially a regrouping of militias that had reputations for criminality in North Aleppo, such as Ghuraba al-Sham,” he told VOA. Some of the factions were thrown out of an Islamist rebel alliance.

Al-Tamimi added: “The other components of the rebel allies with the YPG are small groups of locals who fled their homes in Deir ez-Zor and Jarabulus” after the Islamic State overran the towns. Some are members of the Shammar tribe in eastern Syria, which has suffered repeated IS reprisals and massacres.

Opportunists is about the nicest thing we could say about them. But it also means they’re likely to resell weapons or engage in fake battles. And when a lot of fighters move from one militia to another, we could very well end up directly arming ISIS or Al Qaeda groups.

But don’t worry, when this falls apart, Obama will blame Hillary Clinton or McCain and claim that he never wanted to do it in the first place. Because Obama never takes responsibility.

Oh by the way, here’s something on Ghuraba al-Sham.

Ghuraba al-Sham comprising mainly Turks and fighters from former Soviet bloc countries…

As Syrian preacher Dr. Mahmud al-Aghasi, known as Abu al-Qaqa, left an Aleppo mosque after Friday prayers on September 28, an assassin stepped out of a car and opened fire with an automatic weapon. The controversial preacher received mortal wounds to the head and body, while three others were wounded. Little information on the case has emerged from the normally secretive and tightly controlled Syrian state. Most of what is known comes from al-Qaqa’s own followers in Ghuraba al-Sham (Strangers of Greater Syria), some of whom chased the killer for two to three kilometers before apprehending him.

It gets worse. Much, much worse.

On the CDs, Abu al-Qaqa is shown speaking to worshipers under the banner of a then-unknown group, Guraba al-Sham (Strangers of Greater Syria). This became the umbrella under which he operated, and whose name was imprinted on all of his CDs. On camera, he tells his followers, who are assembled before him at a mosque: “We will teach our enemies a lesson they will never forget.” He then asks: “Are you ready?” Thundering chants respond affirmatively from his audience, who get worked up into tears as they listen, and he carries on: “Speak louder so [US President George W Bush] can hear you!” Their tears make him weep as well, as he gets impassioned with anti-Americanism and adds: “Guests have come to our land … slaughter them like cattle. Burn them! Yes, they are the Americans!”

So that’s who we’re arming. The pet militia of a guy who played a key role in funneling terrorists to kill Americans in Iraq.

Today the Iraqi government aired the confession of Mohammed Hassan al Shemari, a Saudi al Qaeda member who claims to be the leader of the terror group’s forces in Diyala province. Sherari said Syrian intelligence, or the Mukhabarat, actively supports al Qaeda in Iraq. From Reuters:

Shemari said when he arrived in Syria from Saudi Arabia, he was met by a militant who took him to an al Qaeda training camp in Syria. The head of the camp was a Syrian intelligence agent called Abu al-Qaqaa, he said. “They taught us lessons in Islamic law and trained us to fight. The camp was well known to Syrian intelligence,” he said.

Once inside Iraq he undertook more training in its vast desert province of Anbar, bordering Syria, alongside 30 other foreign fighters. He then met a purported al Qaeda in Iraq leader, Omar al-Baghdadi, who he said appointed him head of al Qaeda in the violent Diyala province.

He launched gun attacks on police checkpoints in Diyala, kidnapping Iraqi officers and extorting money for their release or killed them with knives and set up suicide bombings, he said.

Assad at the time was collaborating with Al Qaeda in conducting attacks on Americans. Which is why all the Russian propaganda claiming that the US created ISIS and that Assad is the only bulwark against them is laughable. Assad was their former pal. Guraba al-Sham is a group of former Jihadists backed by Assad to kill Americans that turned against Assad.

And their dead leader really hated America.

“Our hearts are filled with joy when we hear about any resistance operations in Iraq against the American invaders. We ask people to keep praying to Allah to help achieve victory for Iraq against the US,” Sheikh Qaqa says.

Qaqa’s Islamic values go far beyond vocal – and popular – hostility toward US Mideast policy. For example, he openly calls for an Islamic state based on sharia law in Syria…

“Yes, I would like to see an Islamic state in Syria and that’s what we are working for,” Qaqa says. There are even indications that Qaqa’s support base is becoming organized. His followers hold meetings in a building that serves as an office and library. Several of his followers wear camouflage military trousers.

So we’re arming the Islamic State to fight the Islamic State. It’s a plan that can’t fail.

Sheikh Qaqa was also known as the godfather of Fatah al-Islam. Fatah al-Islam was officially classified as a terror group under Bush, but not under Obama. It was inspired by Al Qaeda and worked with Zarqawi, the leader of what would become ISIS.

It attempted to carry out terrorist attacks in Europe and it’s currently allied with ISIS.

Heck of a job, John Kerry. Heck of a job.

Categories: Assad, Kurds, Obama - Middle East, Obama's foreign failures, Russia - Syrian war, Syria war
Tags: Assad, Kurds, Obama's foreign failures, Russia - Syrian war, Syria war

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Germany’s Sharia Refugee Shelters – “Bulk of Migrants Cannot Be Integrated”

October 1, 2015

Germany’s Sharia Refugee Shelters – “Bulk of Migrants Cannot Be Integrated” Gatestone Institute, Soeren Kern, October 1, 2015

Christians, Kurds and Yazidis in the shelters are being attacked by Muslims with increasing frequency and ferocity.
“I fled from the Iranian secret service because I thought that in Germany I could finally live my faith without persecution. But in the refugee shelter, I cannot admit that I am a Christian, or I would face threats… They treat me like an animal. They threaten to kill me.” — An Iranian Christian in a German refugee shelter.
“We have to dispense with the illusion that all of those who are coming here are human rights activists. … We are getting reports of threats of aggression, including threats of beheading, by Sunnis against Shiites, but Yazidis and Christians are the most impacted. Those Christian converts who do not hide their faith stand a 100% probability of being attacked and mobbed.” — Max Klingberg, director of the Frankfurt-based International Society for Human Rights.
“We are observing that Salafists are appearing at the shelters disguised as volunteers and helpers, deliberately seeking contact with refugees to invite them to their mosques to recruit them to their cause.” — Hans-Georg Maaßen, head of German intelligence.
Police are urgently calling for migrants of different faiths to be housed in separate facilities. Some politicians counter that such segregation would go against Germany’s multicultural values.
“The bulk of the migrants who are arriving here cannot be integrated.” — Heinz Buschkowsky, former mayor of Berlin’s Neukölln district.

Muslim asylum seekers are enforcing Islamic Sharia law in German refugee shelters, according to police, who warn that Christians, Kurds and Yazidis in the shelters are being attacked by Muslims with increasing frequency and ferocity.

Muslim migrants from different sects, clans, ethnicities and nationalities are also attacking each other. Violent brawls — sometimes involving hundreds of migrants — are now a daily occurrence.

Police say the shelters, where thousands of migrants are housed together in cramped spaces for months at a time, are seething cauldrons ready to explode. The police are urgently calling for migrants of different faiths to be housed in separate facilities.

Some politicians counter that such segregation would go against Germany’s multicultural values, while others say that separating hundreds of thousands of migrants by religion and nationality would be a logistical impossibility.

As the consequences of unrestrained migration become apparent, the tide of public opinion is turning against the government’s open-door policy. Observers say that German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the so-called most powerful woman in the world, may have met her Waterloo.

A report published by the newspaper Die Welt on September 27 sheds light on the targeting of Christians by Muslims in German refugee shelters. The paper interviewed an Iranian convert to Christianity who said:

“In Iran, the Revolutionary Guards arrested my brother in a house church. I fled from the Iranian secret service because I thought that in Germany I could finally live my faith without persecution. But in the refugee shelter, I cannot admit that I am a Christian, or I would face threats.

“Muslims wake me before the crack of dawn during Ramadan and say that I should eat before sunrise. When I decline, they call me a kuffar, an unbeliever. They spit at me. They treat me like an animal. They threaten to kill me.”

At a refugee shelter in Hemer, a town in North Rhine-Westphalia, 10 Algerian asylum seekers attacked a Christian couple from Eritrea with glass bottles. The Muslims said they were angry that the man was wearing a cross. They ripped the cross from his neck and stole his money and cellphone.

Die Welt also interviewed an Iraqi Christian family from Mosul who were living at a refugee shelter in the Bavarian town of Freising. The father said that threats by Islamists were a daily fact of life. “They shouted at my wife and hit my child,” he said. “They say: ‘We will kill you and drink your blood.'” Life in the shelter, he said, was as if in a prison.

According to the director of the Munich-based Central Committee for Oriental Christians, Simon Jacob, these incidents are only “the tip of the iceberg.” “The actual number of attacks is very high,” he said. “We have to expect further conflict, which the migrants bring to Germany from their homelands. Between Christians and Muslims. Between Shiites and Sunnis. Between Kurds and extremists. Between Yazidis and extremists.”

Max Klingberg, the director of the Frankfurt-based International Society for Human Rights (Internationale Gesellschaft für Menschenrechte, IGFM), says that much of the aggression is being perpetrated by Afghans and Pakistanis, who are “even more Islamic than some Syrians and Iraqis.” He warns that conflict in the refugee shelters will only become worse:

“We have to dispense with the illusion that all of those who are coming here are human rights activists. Among those who are arriving here now, a substantial number are at least as religiously intense as the Muslim Brotherhood.

“We are getting reports of threats of aggression, including threats of beheading, by Sunnis against Shiites, but Yazidis and Christians are the most impacted. Those Christian converts who do not hide their faith stand a 100% probability of being attacked and mobbed.”

In a September 29 interview with the newspaper Passauer Neue Presse, the head of the German police union (Deutschen Polizeigewerkschaft, DPolG), Rainer Wendt, warned that “brutal criminal structures” have taken over the refugee shelters and that police are overwhelmed and unable to guarantee safety and security. He called for Christians and Muslims to be separated before someone gets killed:

“We have been witnessing this violence for weeks and months. Groups based on ethnicity, religion or clan structures go after each other with knives and homemade weapons. When these groups fight each other at night, all those German citizens who welcomed the migrants with open arms at the Munich train station are fast asleep, but the police remain awake and are left standing in the middle…

“We can only estimate the true extent of violence because women and children are often afraid to file a complaint. Since it is also about sexual abuse and rape…

“Sunnis are fighting Shiites, there are Salafists from competing groups. They are trying to impose their rules in the shelters. Christians are being massively oppressed and the Sharia is being enforced. Women are forced to cover up. Men are forced to pray. Islamists want to introduce their values and order at the shelters.

Wendt gave the interview days after 300 Albanian migrants clashed with 70 Pakistani migrants at a refugee shelter in Calden, a town in the state of Hesse, on September 27. More than a dozen people, including three police officers, were injured in the melee, which erupted after two migrants got into a fight while waiting in line at the canteen. It took 50 police officers several hours to restore order at the shelter, which is home to 1,500 migrants from 20 different countries.

More than 60 migrants, including ten children, were injured after Pakistanis and Syrians clashed at the same shelter on September 13. The fight broke out just after midnight, when someone sprayed mace into a tent filled with sleeping migrants. Police did not inform the public about the fight for more than a week, apparently to prevent fueling anti-immigrant sentiments.

Violent brawls are becoming commonplace at German refugee shelters across the country.

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In the past two months alone, dozens of violent brawls and riots between different groups of migrants have erupted in Germany’s refugee shelters.

On September 30, migrants went on a rampage at a refugee center in Braunschweig, a city in Lower Saxony. On September 29, Syrian migrants clashed at a refugee shelter in Gerolzhofen, a small town in Bavaria. Also on September 29, migrants from Algeria and Mali clashed at a refugee center in Engelskirchen, a town in North Rhine-Westphalia.

On September 28, more than 150 Syrians and Pakistanis clashed at a refugee shelter on Nöthnitzer Straße in Dresden. The migrants attacked each other with wooden planks and metal bars. Two dozen police officers were needed to restore order. More than 30 Syrians and Pakistanis clashed at the same shelter on August 10.

Also on September 28, between 100 and 150 migrants of different nationalities clashed at a refugee shelter in Donaueschingen, a town in the Black Forest. The trouble started over a dispute about who should be able to use the shower facilities first. On September 22, more than 400 migrants marched through town to protest conditions at the same facility. On September 15, a male migrant was attacked by another migrant for using a female bathroom at the shelter.

On September 24, around 100 Syrians and Afghans clashed at a refugee shelter in Leipzig, the largest city in Saxony. The fight broke out after a 17-year-old Afghan pulled a knife on an 11-year-old Syrian girl at the shelter, which houses 1,800 migrants. On September 23, migrants clashed at a refugee shelter for unaccompanied minors in Nuremberg.

On September 3, Syrian migrants attacked security guards at a refugee shelter in the Moabit district of Berlin. Also on September 3, Iraqi migrants attacked security guards at a refugee shelter in Heidelberg. A total of 21 squad cars were dispatched to restore order. On September 2, Algerian and Tunisian migrants clashed at the same shelter. A dozen police cars were deployed to restore order.

On September 3, migrants clashed at a refugee shelter in Hövelhof, a town in North Rhine-Westphalia. On September 2, migrants clashed at a refugee facility in Wolgast, a town in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Also on September 2, migrants clashed at a refugee center inGütersloh, a town in North Rhine-Westphalia.

On September 1, migrants clashed at a refugee shelter in Delitzsch, a town in Saxony. A 27-year-old Tunisian migrant was killed after being stabbed by a 27-year-old migrant from Morocco. Also on September 1, a 15-year-old Somali migrant stabbed a 15-year-old Egyptian migrant with a scissors at a refugee center in the Groß Borstel district of Hamburg.

On September 1, Somali, Syrian and Albanian migrants clashed at a refugee center inTegernsee, a small town in Bavaria. Also on September 1, migrants clashed at a refugee shelter in Heidelberg.

On August 31, Libyan and Tunisian migrants clashed at a refugee shelter in Hoyerswerda, a town in Saxony. Also on August 31, migrants clashed with each other and with security guards at a refugee shelter in Heidelberg. On August 30, a 25-year-old Sudanese migrant was arrested for going on a rampage at a refugee shelter in Jesteburg, a small town in Lower Saxony.

On August 29, a 17-year-old Algerian migrant was arrested for robbing the cellphones of other migrants at a refugee center in Elzach, a town in Baden-Württemberg. On August 25, 60 migrants went on a rampage at a refugee shelter in Karlsruhe.

On August 24, a migrant from Montenegro was stabbed by a migrant from Algeria at a refugee shelter in Seevetal, a town in Lower Saxony.

On August 22, Afghan migrants clashed at a refugee shelter in Rotenburg, a town in Hesse. Also on August 22, at least 20 migrants went on a rampage at a refugee center in Grafing, a town near Munich.

On August 21, migrants clashed at a refugee facility in Schwetzingen, also in Baden-Württemberg. Also on August 21, migrants clashed at a refugee center in the Marienthal district of Hamburg.

On August 16, 50 migrants attacked each other with broken tree branches, umbrellas and trash cans at a refugee center in Friedland, a town in Lower Saxony. The facility, which has a capacity of 700, is home to 2,400 migrants.

On August 19, at least 20 Syrian migrants staying at an overcrowded refugee shelter in the eastern German town of Suhl tried to lynch an Afghan migrant after he tore pages from a Koran and threw them in a toilet. More than 100 police officers intervened; they were attacked with stones and concrete blocks. Seventeen people were injured in the melee, including 11 refugees and six police officers. The Afghan is now under police protection. The president of the German state of Thuringia, Bodo Ramelow, said that to avoid similar violence in the future, Muslims of different nationalities must be separated.

On August 10, 40 migrants clashed at a refugee shelter on Bremer Straße in Dresden.

On August 1, 50 Syrians and Afghans clashed at the same shelter. More than 80 police officers were needed to restore order.

According to Jörg Radek, the vice chairman of Germany’s police union, (Gewerkschaft der Polizei, GdP), police have reached the “absolute breaking point,” and Christian and Muslim migrants should be housed separately. In a September 28 interview with the newspaper Die Welt, Radek said:

“Our officers are increasingly being called to respond to confrontations in refugee shelters. When there are 4,000 people in a shelter which only has space for 750, this leads to aggression where even something as insignificant as a walk to the restroom can lead to fisticuffs.

“We must do everything we can to prevent further outbreaks of violence. I think it makes perfect sense to separate migrants according to their religion.”

Not everyone agrees. In an interview with N24 television, the former mayor of the Neukölln district of Berlin, Heinz Buschkowsky, warned that if migrants are separated by religion and nationality, Germany risks the permanent establishment of parallel societies throughout the country.

Buschkowsky said the first lesson migrants must learn when they arrive in Western countries is tolerance, and if they refuse to accept people of other faiths, their asylum applications should be rejected. He expressed pessimism about the possibility of integrating the current wave of migrants into German society: “The bulk of the migrants who are arriving here cannot be integrated.”

Meanwhile, the head of German intelligence, Hans-Georg Maaßen, was warned that radical Muslims in Germany are canvassing the refugee shelters looking for new recruits. He said:

“Many of the asylum seekers have a Sunni religious background. In Germany there is a Salafist scene that sees this as a breeding ground. We are observing that Salafists are appearing at the shelters disguised as volunteers and helpers, deliberately seeking contact with refugees to invite them to their mosques to recruit them to their cause.”

The editor of the newspaper Neue Westfälische, Ansgar Mönter, reports that Salafists in Bielefeld, a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, have already infiltrated refugee centers in the area by bringing toys, fruits and vegetables for the migrants.

Mönter says “naïve” politicians are contributing to the radicalization of refugees by are asking Muslim umbrella groups in the country to reach out to the migrants.

Mönter points out that the main Muslim groups in Germany all adhere to fundamentalist interpretations of Islam and are anti-Western in outlook. Some groups have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood while others want to implement Sharia law in Germany. According to Mönter, politicians should not be encouraging these groups to establish contact with the new migrants.

Categories: Asylum seekers, Christians, Diversity, Europe, Free world, Freedom, Germany, Hijrah, Islamic culture, Islamic immigration, Islamic jihad, Islamic supremacy, Islamic war on Christians, Islamism, Islamophobia, Kurds, Multiculturalism, Political correctness, Progressives, Sharia law, Yazidis
Tags: Asylum seekers, Christians, DIversity, Europe, Free world, Freedom, Germany, Hijrah, Islamic culture, Islamic immigration, Islamic Jihad, Islamic supremacy, Islamic war on Christians, Islamism, Islamophobia, Kurds, Multiculturalism, Political correctness, Progressives, Sharia law, Yazidis

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Finally, A Plan To Defeat the Islamic State

September 28, 2015

Finally, A Plan To Defeat the Islamic State, Town Hall, Jim Hanson, September 28, 2015

(Obama would need the approvals of Putin, Xi, Rouhani, Assad, Erdogan and “our” other “peace partners” as well as his trained seals at the Department of Defense. Then, and only then, could General Bowie Bergdahl lead his march to victory. Or something. — DM)

Black flag

What if there was an actual strategy to defeat ISIS and stop their reign of terror? The state of affairs and the very existence of IS as a governing entity is intolerable so we developed a strategy called Cut Down the Black Flag – A Plan to Defeat the Islamic State, the second book in the Secure Freedom Strategy series.

President Obama has failed to articulate or implement anything resembling a strategy during his time in office. This fact is even more painful when considering the rise of the Islamic State (IS) occurred on his watch and was largely due to his shortsighted and foolish decision to cut and run from Iraq. He lost the peace after our troops won the war.

Unlike the President, we’re not interested in token gestures doomed to failure as IS kills, rapes, and tortures on ground won for freedom just a few short years ago. We will not stand on the sidelines as an Inter-Continental Caliphate calls for “Death to all Infidels.” We have a plan to win and cut down their blood-soaked, Black Flag of Jihad.

It will not be easy but it is an essential part of the war for the free world. If we do not make a full faith effort to destroy IS, we will have done a disservice to all who gave their lives and limbs to free Iraq from tyranny. We will also be leaving millions to suffer the chaos and killing fields created when the inevitable vacuum of our withdrawal was filled by IS and Iran.

This book details a strategy focused on victory, aimed for stability in the region with the possibility of actual peace. It recognizes this action must be part of a greater “long war” against the whole of the Global Jihad Movement (GJM). They are the collection of groups who, while not officially associated, share a belief in Islamic Supremacy and are working actively to achieve it.

The Violent Jihadists like the Islamic State, Al Qaeda and others are easily identifiable as our enemies. The Civilization Jihadists of the Muslim Brotherhood and the groups it has spawned such as Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) are less overt but perhaps even more dangerous. Our overall strategy to defeat the Global Jihad Movement with a whole of government and culture approach is detailed in the Secure Freedom Strategy.

Our plan to defeat the Islamic State is a complete departure from the dismal failures of the current Commander in Chief leading from behind. The military might and will to win of the United States are vital to any chance of success. This does not mean we propose rolling tanks in a thunder run from Baghdad to Damascus. But we must take the handcuffs off the forces we already have deployed by allowing them to participate in combat missions with the forces they have trained to provide command and control and direct fire support. We must remove the cumbersome and overly risk-averse process for airstrikes that leave most of our aircraft returning to base with all munitions unused.

We must also work with the Sunni tribes who helped us defeat the precursor to IS; and, arm the Kurds who are our best friend and truest ally in the region. Both of these groups were left to the mercy of a central Iraqi government when U.S. forces withdrew and Iranian influence became dominant. We must look to a future where they govern by self-determination rather than remain forced into artificial borders established nearly 100 years ago; and, that have been largely erased over the recent war-torn years.

Our strategy is ambitious, but it does not require large deployments of U.S. troops or the expectation we will be the sole guarantor of security going forward. We aim to cut off the head of the jihadist snake by empowering the indigenous people who have suffered the most from its actions and then let them govern themselves. This strategy vigorously executed can do what the current half-hearted efforts never will: Defeat the Islamic State.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=194&v=TCO36yZ7UDc

Categories: Air strikes, Arab nations, Department of Defense, Foreign policy, Iran scam, Iranian proxies, Iraq war, Islamic nations, Kurds, Middle East, Obama - Middle East, Obama's America, Syria war
Tags: Air strikes, Arab nations, Department of Defense, Foreign Policy, Iran Scam, Iranian proxies, Iraq war, Islamic nations, Islamic State, Kurds, Middle East, Obama's America, Syria war

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Germany segregating Christians as migrant violence escalates

September 28, 2015

Germany segregating Christians as migrant violence escalates, Breitbart, Liam Deacon, September 28, 2015

Screen-Shot-2015-09-28-at-12.58.45-640x480

Sean Gallup/Getty

(Video at link.– DM)

Christian migrants in German asylum centres are living under persistent threat, with many fearing for their lives as the hardline Sunni majority within the migrant population attempts to enforce Sharia law in their new host nation. The situation is so bad that Christians claim they live like “prisoners” in Germany, and some have even returned to Middle East.

In the German state of Thuringia, Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow, one of the multiculturalists driving and celebrating the migrant crisis, has been forced to initiate a policy of separating and segregating different cultures as soon as they arrive in Europe.

“In Iran, the Revolutionary Guards have arrested my brother in a house church. I fled the Iranian intelligence, because I thought in Germany I can finally live freely according to my religion,” says Said, a Christian who fled persecution in his native country.

“But I can not openly admit that I am a Christian in my home for asylum seekers. I will be threatened,” he told Germany language paper Die Welt.

This year Germany prepares to absorb a million people in just twelve months – one per cent of its entire population – from numerous, diverse and alien cultures.

“We must rid ourselves of the illusion that all those who arrive here are human rights activists,” says Max Klingberg of the International Society for Human Rights (ISHR), who has worked with refugees for 15 years. “Among the new arrivals is not a small amount of religious intensity, it is at least at the level of the Muslim Brotherhood,” he said.

Said is living in an asylum centre in southern Brandenburg, near the border with Saxony. “They wake me before dawn during Ramadan and say I should eat before the sun comes up. If I refuse, they say I’m a kuffar, an unbeliever. They spit at me… They treat me like an animal. And threaten to kill me.”

“… They are also all Muslims,” he adds.

Gottfried Martens, a pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church Trinity in Berlin-Steglitz, has around 600 Afghanis and Iranians in his church, most of whom he baptised himself. “Almost all have big problems in their homes,” says Martens. “Devout Muslims teach their view, that here [in Germany] there is the Sharia, and then there is our law.”

He told Die Welt that the Christian refugees are often stopped from using kitchens to prepare food in asylum centres, and are constantly bullied for not praying five times a day to Mecca. Martens continues:

“And [the Christians] ask the question: What happens when the devout Muslim refugees leave the refugee center, must we continue hiding ourselves as Christians in the future in this country?”

Said’s fear is not unfounded. On the 14^th of September German police in the town of Hemer revealed in a statement that an Eritrean Christian and his wife – who was eight months pregnant – had been hospitalised after being brutally attacked with a glass bottle by Algerian Muslims. The man had been wearing a wooden crucifix, which had “insulted” the Algerians.

In September, Syrian refugees rioted in the town of Suhl when an Afghan man tore a few pages out of the Koran. Last week during Ramadan, in Baden-Württemberg Ellwangen, there was a mass brawl between Christians, Yazidis and Muslims, and just this weekend migrant violence erupted as hundreds fought in the city of Kassel, leaving 14 injured.

A young Syrian from Erstaufnahmelager in Giessen, who has reported threats against him, said he is concerned that among the refugees are followers of the Islamic State (IS): “They shout Quranic verses. These are words that IS shouts before they cut off people’s heads. I cannot stay here. I am a Christian,” he said

Die Welt even reports a case of a Christian family from Iraq who was housed in a refugee camp in Bavarian Freising. The family lived like “prisoners” in Germany, they said, so returned to Mosul in Iraq. The father told a TV crew how Syrian Islamists had attacked them in Germany: “You have my wife yelled at and beaten. My child they say… We will kill you and drink your blood.”

Simon Jacob of the Central Council of the Eastern Christians said that stories like this no longer surprise him: “I know a lot of reports of Christian refugees who are under attack. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

“The number of unreported cases is high. We must expect further conflicts that bring the refugees from their homeland to Germany. Between Christians and Muslims. Between Shiites and Sunnis. Between Kurds and extremists. Between Yazidis and extremists,” he said.

Categories: Asylum seekers, Christians, Death to Europe, Europe, Free world, Germany, Human rights, Iraq war, Islam, Islam's war on Jews, Islamic immigration, Islamic jihad, Islamic perversions, Islamic slaughter, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamic war on Christians, Islamic war on women, Islamism, Islamophobia, Kurds, Middle East, Sharia law, Syria war, Yazidis
Tags: Asylum seekers, Christians, Death to Europe, Free world, Germany, human rights, Iraq war, Islam, Islam's war on Jews, Islamic immigration, Islamic Jihad, Islamic perversions, Islamic slaughter, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamic war on Christians, Islamic war on women, Islamophobia, Kurds, Middle East, Sharia law, Syria war, Yazidis

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Genocide, Islam and weaponized empathy

September 5, 2015

Genocide, Islam and weaponized empathy, The Declination, The study of a civilization in decline

(A powerful narrative. — DM)

But back to the central point, why, then, if America sheltered my family, must the West turn back the refugees of Syria, of Somalia, of Libya?

Because they bring the source of infection with them. Armenians had managed, through some strength I sometimes find difficult to fully grasp, to hang on to their European culture and Christian religion through millenia of conflict with Islam. They had stubbornly resisted assimilation into Islam and its ideals. These refugees, for all that my heart yearns to give them sanctuary and a place to escape to, nonetheless carry Islam with them.

Leftists, take your Weaponized Empathy elsewhere. We understand that the world is full of terrible things, of children dying, of women enslaved. But we have to find our resolve and protect our own.

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As some of my readers know, I am part Armenian by ancestry. It used to be a thing that didn’t enter into my daily thought process, for I am also partially of English descent and am fully American, in culture, language and appearance. Armenians can generally tell that I am of Armenian ancestry, but few others can. But as militant Islam made its presence felt, increasingly in recent years, that identity has resurfaced because of the connection my own family has to the affair.

Then I saw this photo of a drowned Syrian boy:

2464-300x180

Leftists would have you believe that us on the Right have no empathy. We wish to deny the endless migrations away from crisis areas in the Islamic world and that, they would tell us, is incompatible with human rights, dignity, empathy and so on.

My grandfather told me stories of Armenia (Armenians, then, lived throughout Anatolia), which he remembered only dimly. For he had been only a few years old when my family escaped, just ahead of the genocide in the dying Ottoman Empire. Mostly, he remembered it through the stories told in the Armenian exile community.

Entire villages were erased, all the inhabitants slaughtered, the buildings burnt to the ground, the movable wealth stolen and melted down. Nothing of them remained. In the days before the genocide, two dialects of the Armenian language existed, colloquially referred to as the Western, or Anatolian, dialect and the Eastern dialect. The Western dialect has mostly gone extinct, spoken only by a few elders in the diaspora. My grandfather could speak it, but my mother knew only a few words. Only the Eastern dialect survives. Half of Armenia ceased to exist.

These were hardy Christians who had survived on the edge of the Byzantine and Islamic worlds for centuries. They had fought alongside Greeks and Crusaders. They were among the earliest — perhaps the very first — nations to convert to Christianity. They spoke an ancient language, a variant of the Indo-European language set that appears distantly related to Greek, and unrelated to any other.

Islam nearly erased them.

Now that Christians in the Middle-East are approaching extinction, the new target is the insufficiently Muslim. The Yazidis with their syncretic half-Muslim religion, or the Kurds who elevate their own nationalism over their religion (a rarity in the Muslim world).

I feel for them. I really do. In fact, I cannot tell you how much it pains me to see these things. On my grandfather’s knee, I heard the stories of Armenian survivors. In particular, one woman stands out. She was a child when the Turks came for her family, but she was comely and pretty. Her parents and brothers were killed and she was sold as a slave for a wealthy Turk’s harem. Her story of survival and escape was terrifying to me as a child, and it instilled a sense of resolve where Islam was concerned that has not abated to this day.

Can you imagine this? Seeing your family slaughtered, and only surviving to be used as a sex slave by those who did the deed? Blacks in America lecture me about my White privilege, saying that their ancestors were slaves. Mine were slaves much more recently than theirs. Mine were slaughtered wholesale.

But back to the central point, why, then, if America sheltered my family, must the West turn back the refugees of Syria, of Somalia, of Libya?

Because they bring the source of infection with them. Armenians had managed, through some strength I sometimes find difficult to fully grasp, to hang on to their European culture and Christian religion through millenia of conflict with Islam. They had stubbornly resisted assimilation into Islam and its ideals. These refugees, for all that my heart yearns to give them sanctuary and a place to escape to, nonetheless carry Islam with them.

There are good Muslims in the world, and I want to make this clear. My own family lived only because an Ottoman official warned my great-grandfather that genocide was coming. This man, whose name I cannot remember — something that genuinely pains me, for my grandfather died when I was young and his stories are almost dream-like to me, now — paid for the ticket to America for my family, for English language lessons, and everything else needed to escape before it was too late.

I hope that I will meet this good and righteous man in the life to come. I hope God saw fit to accept him into His kingdom.

But Islam nonetheless is a contagion, even if some maintain a stubborn moral immunity to the infection. Where Islam goes, this violence will follow. You will never save all the little boys, you will never stop the slaughter. All you will do is bring it to your own shores.

And if there is something I know for certain, it is that my ancestors did not escape Islam only to see their descendants fight it again, once more in their own homes.

There were tears in my grandfather’s eyes, at times, as he recounted the things he knew. And I know what his reaction would be to this boy’s death. He would feel empathy and sadness, far more acutely than the moral busybodies of Progressive Leftism. But then he would turn off the TV and tell me the truth: that we could not help them without also dooming ourselves to the same.

So, Leftists, take your Weaponized Empathy elsewhere. We understand that the world is full of terrible things, of children dying, of women enslaved. But we have to find our resolve and protect our own.

For if we do not, it could be my son laying on that distant beach, and that I will not allow.

Categories: Armenians, Foreign policy, Immigration, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic supremacy, Islamic war on women, Islamism, Kurds, Ottoman Empire, Yazidis
Tags: Armenians, Foreign Policy, Immigration, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic supremacy, Islamic war on women, Islamism, Kurds, Ottoman Empire, Yazids

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Column One: Obama strikes again

July 31, 2015

Column One: Obama strikes again, Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick, July 30, 2015

ShowImage (5)

US President Barack Obama (L) and Vice President Joe Biden. (photo credit:OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE PHOTO BY PETE SOUZA)

Most of the antiquities that ISIS plunders in Iraq and Syria make their way to the world market through Turkey. So, too, most of the oil that ISIS produces in Syria and Iraq is smuggled out through Turkey. According to the US Treasury, ISIS has made $1 million-$4m. a day from oil revenue.

Instead of maintaining its current practice of balancing its support for Turkey with its support for the Kurds, under the agreement, the West ditches its support for the Kurds and transfers its support to Turkey exclusively.

************************

While Israel and much of oficial Washington remain focused on the deal President Barack Obama just cut with the ayatollahs that gives them $150 billion and a guaranteed nuclear arsenal within a decade, Obama has already moved on – to Syria.

Obama’s first hope was to reach a deal with his Iranian friends that would leave the Assad regime in place. But the Iranians blew him off.

They know they don’t need a deal with Obama to secure their interests. Obama will continue to help them to maintain their power base in Syria though Hezbollah and the remains of the Assad regime without a deal.

Iran’s cold shoulder didn’t stop Obama. He moved on to his Sunni friend Turkish President Recep Erdogan.

Like the Iranians, since the war broke out, Erdogan has played a central role in transforming what started out as a local uprising into a regional conflict between Sunni and Shiite jihadists.

With Obama’s full support, by late 2012 Erdogan had built an opposition dominated by his totalitarian allies in the Muslim Brotherhood.

By mid-2013, Erdogan’s Muslim Brotherhood- led coalition was eclipsed by al-Qaida spinoffs. They also enjoyed Turkish support.

And when last summer ISIS supplanted al-Qaida as the dominant Sunni jihadist force in Syria, it did so with Erdogan’s full backing. For the past 18 months, Turkey has been ISIS’s logistical, political and economic base.

According to Brett McGurk, the State Department’s point man on ISIS, about 25,000 foreign fighters have joined ISIS in Syria and Iraq. All of them transited through Turkey.

Most of the antiquities that ISIS plunders in Iraq and Syria make their way to the world market through Turkey. So, too, most of the oil that ISIS produces in Syria and Iraq is smuggled out through Turkey. According to the US Treasury, ISIS has made $1 million-$4m. a day from oil revenue.

In May, US commandos in Syria assassinated Abu Sayyaf, ISIS’s chief money manager, and arrested his wife and seized numerous computers and flash drives from his home. According to a report in The Guardian published last week, the drives provided hard evidence of official Turkish economic collusion with ISIS.

Due to Turkish support, ISIS has become a self-financing terrorist group. With its revenue stream it is able to maintain a welfare state regime, attracting recruits from abroad and securing the loyalty of local Sunni militias and former Ba’athist forces.

Some Western officials believed that after finding hard evidence of Turkish regime support for ISIS, NATO would finally change its relationship with Turkey. To a degree they were correct.

Last week, Obama cut a deal with Erdogan that changes the West’s relationship with Erdogan.

Instead of maintaining its current practice of balancing its support for Turkey with its support for the Kurds, under the agreement, the West ditches its support for the Kurds and transfers its support to Turkey exclusively.

The Kurdish peshmerga militias operating today in Iraq and Syria are the only military outfits making sustained progress in the war against ISIS. Since last October, the Kurds in Syria have liberated ISIS-controlled and -threatened areas along the Turkish border.

The YPG, the peshmerga militia in Syria, won its first major victory in January, when after a protracted, bloody battle, with US air support, it freed the Kurdish border town of Kobani from ISIS’s assault.

In June, the YPG scored a strategic victory against ISIS by taking control of Tal Abyad. Tal Abyad controls the road connecting ISIS’s capital of Raqqa with Turkey. By capturing Tal Abyad, the Kurds cut Raqqa’s supply lines.

Last month, Time magazine reported that the Turks reacted with hysteria to Tal Abyad’s capture.

Not only did the operation endanger Raqqa, it gave the Kurds territorial contiguity in Syria.

The YPG’s victories enhanced the Kurds’ standing among Western nations. Indeed, some British and American officials were quoted openly discussing the possibility of removing the PKK, the YPG’s Iraqi counterpart, from their official lists of terrorist organizations.

The YPG’s victories similarly enhanced the Kurds’ standing inside Turkey itself. In the June elections to the Turkish parliament, the Kurdish HDP party won 12 percent of the vote nationally, and so blocked Erdogan’s AKP party from winning a parliamentary majority.

Without that majority Erdogan’s plan of reforming the constitution to transform Turkey into a presidential republic and secure his dictatorship for the long run has been jeopardized.

As far as Erdogan was concerned, by the middle of July the Kurdish threat to his power had reached unacceptable levels.

Then two weeks ago the deck was miraculously reshuffled.

On July 20, young Kurdish activists convened in Suduc, a Kurdish town on the Turkish side of the border, 6 kilometers from Kobani. A suicide bomber walked up to them, and detonated, massacring 32 people.

Turkish officials claim that the bomber was a Turkish Kurd, and a member of ISIS. But the Kurds didn’t buy that line. Last week, HDP lawmakers accused the regime of complicity with the bomber. And two days after the attack, militants from the PKK killed two Turkish policemen in a neighboring village, claiming that they collaborated with ISIS.

At that point, Erdogan sprang into action.

After refusing for months to work with NATO forces in their anti-ISIS operations, Erdogan announced he was entering the fray. He would begin targeting “terrorists” and allow the US air force to use two Turkish air bases for its anti-ISIS operations. In exchange, the US agreed to set up a “safe zone” in Syria along the Turkish border.

Turkish officials were quick to explain that in targeting “terrorists,” the Turks would not distinguish between Kurdish terrorists and ISIS terrorists just because the former are fighting ISIS. Both, they insisted, are legitimate targets.

Erdogan closed his deal in a telephone call with Obama. And he immediately went into action.

Turkish forces began bombing terrorist targets and rounding up terrorist suspects. Although a few of the Turkish bombing runs have been directly against ISIS, the vast majority have targeted Kurdish forces in Iraq and Syria.

Moreover, for every suspected ISIS terrorist arrested by Turkish security forces, at least eight Kurds have been taken into custody.

Then, too, Erdogan has called on AKP lawmakers to begin criminalizing their counterparts from the HDP. Kurdish lawmakers, he urged them, must be stripped of their parliamentary immunity to enable their arrests.

As Erdogan apparently sees things, by going to war against the Kurds, he will be able to reestablish the AKP’s parliamentary majority. Within a few weeks, if the AKP fails to form a governing coalition – and it will – then new elections will be held. The nationalists, who abandoned the AKP in June, will return to the party to reward Erdogan for fighting the Kurds.

As for that “safe area” in northern Syria, as the Kurds see it, Erdogan will use it to destroy Kurdish autonomy. He will flood the zone with Syrian Arab refugees who fled to Turkey, to dilute the Kurdish majority. And he will secure coalition support for the Sunni Arab militias – including those still affiliated with al-Qaida – which will be permitted by NATO to operate openly in the safe area.

Already the Kurds are reporting that the US has stopped providing air support for their forces fighting ISIS in the border town of Jarablus. Those forces were bombed this week by Turkish F-16s.

For their part, despite Erdogan’s pledge to fight ISIS, his forces seem remarkable uninterested in rolling back ISIS achievements. The Turks have no plan for removing ISIS from its strongholds in Raqqa or Haskiyah.

The Obama administration is presenting the deal with Turkey as yet another great achievement.

In an interview with Charlie Rose on Tuesday, McGurk explained that the deal was a long time in the making. It began with a phone conversation between Obama and Erdogan last October and it ended with their phone call last week.

In October, Obama convinced Erdogan not to oppose US air support for the Kurds in Kobani and to enable the US to resupply YPG fighters in Kobani through Turkey. In the second, Obama agreed not to oppose Erdogan’s offensive against the Kurds.

Two years ago, in August 2013, the world held its breath awaiting US action in Syria. That month, after prolonged equivocation amidst mountains of evidence, the Obama administration was forced to acknowledge that Iran’s Syrian puppet Bashar Assad had crossed Obama’s self-declared redline and used chemical weapons against regime opponents, including civilians.

US forces assembled for battle. Everything looked ready to go, until just hours before US jets were scheduled to begin bombing regime targets, Obama canceled the operation. In so doing, he lost all deterrent power against Iran. He also lost all strategic credibility among America’s regional allies.

To save face, Obama agreed to a Russian proposal to have international monitors remove Syria’s chemical weapons from the country.

Last summer, the administration proudly announced that the mission had been completed.

UN chemical weapons monitors had removed Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal from the country, they proclaimed. It didn’t matter to either Obama or Secretary of State John Kerry that by that point Assad had resumed chemical assaults with chlorine-based bombs. Chlorine bombs weren’t chemical weapons, the Americans idiotically proclaimed.

Then last week, the lie fell apart. The Wall Street Journal reported that according to US intelligence agencies, Assad not surrendered his chemical arsenal.

Rather, he hid much of his chemical weaponry from the UN inspectors. He had even managed to retain the capacity to make chemical weapons – like chlorine-based bombs – after agreeing to part with his chemical arsenal.

Assad was able to cheat, because just as the administration’s nuclear deal with the Iranians gives Iran control over which nuclear sites will be open to UN inspectors, and which will be off limits, so the chemical deal gave Assad control over what the inspectors would and would not be allowed to see. So, they saw only what he showed them.

Obama has gone full circle in concluding his deal with Erdogan. Since entering office, Obama has sought to cut deals with both the Sunni jihadists of the Muslim Brotherhood ilk and the Shi’ite jihadists of the Iranian ilk.

His chemical deal with Assad and his nuclear deal with the ayatollahs accomplished the latter goal, and did so at the expense of America’s Sunni Arab allies and Israel.

His deal last week with Erdogan accomplishes the former goal, to the benefit of ISIS, and on the backs of America’s Kurdish allies.

So that takes care of the Middle East. With 17 months left to go till Obama leave office, the time has apparently come for the British to begin to worry.

Categories: Assad, Erdogan, Foreign policy, Hezbollah, IAEA, Iran - Syria war, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Islamic State, Israel, Kerry, Kurdish fighters, Kurdish refugees, Kurds, Middle East, Obama, Obama's America, P5+1, Peshmerga, Rogue nations, Shiite, Sunni, Syria - chemical weapons, Terrorists, Turkey
Tags: Assad, Erdogan, Foreign Policy, Hezbollah, IAEA, Iran - Syria war, Iran nuke inspections, Iran Scam, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Islamic State, Israel, Kurdish fighters, Kurdish refugees, Kurds, Middle East, Obama, Obama's America, P5+1, Peshmerga, Rogue nations, Shiite, Sunni, Syria - chemical weapons, Terrorists, Turkey, YPG

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To gratify Tehran and Moscow, new US-Turkish anti-ISIS war campaign in Syria skirts Assad’s forces

July 26, 2015

To gratify Tehran and Moscow, new US-Turkish anti-ISIS war campaign in Syria skirts Assad’s forces, DEBKAfile, July 25, 2015

Tanks_face_IS_at_Syria_25.7.15

Not exactly by chance, the security zone bisects Kurdish territory and holds back Kurdish forces in their assaults on ISIS.

DEBKAfile’s military sources report that a glance at the map betrays an all-out US-Turkish effort not put up backs in Tehran by interfering with Syrian, Hizballah and pro-Iranian militia operations in critical northern Syrian war zones such as Aleppo or give the Syrian rebels a helping hand in the Idlib province.

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After the second successive night of Turkish cross-border bombing attacks on the Islamic State in northern Syria, Ankara and Washington agreed Saturday, July 25, to name the “security zone” covered by a “partial no fly zone” they had declared in northern Syria the “Islamic State free zone.” Click HERE for full-size map!

This name represents a significant US-Turkish concession to Iran of immunity for its allies, Syrian President Bashar Assad and Hizballah, in order to gain Tehran’s cooperation in the campaign Turkey launched against ISIS Friday. Integral to the deal is also a promise to abstain from using the campaign to grant anti-Assad rebel groups any advantages.

This immunity did not extend to the Kurdish Workers Movement (PKK), which were targeted in the course of Turkish air and ground action in and over the new “security zone.” Those warplanes also flew missions Friday night over the PKK bases and logistical facilities in the Qandil Mountains of northern Iraq. The PKK responded Saturday with an announcement that their armistice with Ankara was over. Turkey may consequently expect a recurrence of Kurdish terrorist violence in its cities,DEBKAfile notes.

High-placed sources in Ankara disclosed details of the US-Turkish deal with Iran. US warplanes will have the use of Turkish air bases, and not just the big Incirlik facility, for staging air strikes against ISIS, so long as Syrian targets are avoided. Washington agreed to Ankara using its air and ground operations against ISIS in Syria to drive into the new “security zone” and push toward the east to continue those attacks – eve if they run up against Kurdish forces which are also fighting ISIS.

The security zone’s area covered by a no-fly zone is 90 km wide and 40km deep, running between Mere, a small town 25 km north o Aleppo in the west, to the northwestern town of Jarabulus, which is situated on the west bank of the Euphrates.

Not exactly by chance, the security zone bisects Kurdish territory and holds back Kurdish forces in their assaults on ISIS.

DEBKAfile’s military sources report that a glance at the map betrays an all-out US-Turkish effort not put up backs in Tehran by interfering with Syrian, Hizballah and pro-Iranian militia operations in critical northern Syrian war zones such as Aleppo or give the Syrian rebels a helping hand in the Idlib province.

The combined US-Turkish action moreover greatly supports the Assad-Hizballah war against ISIS gains in Syria and enhances Iranian and Russian influence in Damascus.

US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, in Irbil Friday, July 24, assured leaders of the semiautonomous Kurdish Republic of Iraq. “We are trying to build a force through the territory of Iraq, and someday in Syria, that can do what the peshmerga have achieved.”

At the same time, in Syria, the Kurds and their national aspirations look like losing out dramatically in the fallout from the complex US-Turkish partnership for beating ISIS back.

Categories: Assad, Combat troops, Department of Defense, Foreign policy, Hezbollah, Iran scam, Iranian proxies, Islamic State, Israel, Kurdish fighters, Kurds, No fly zone, Obama, Obama's America, P5+1, Syria war, Turkey, U.S. allies, U.S. Military
Tags: Assad, Combat troops, Department of Defense, Foreign Policy, Hezbollah, Iran Scam, Iranian proxies, Islamic State, Israel, Kurdish fighters, Kurds, No fly zone, Obama, Obama's America, P5+1, Syria war, Turkey, U.S. Allies, U.S. military

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Turkey Uses ISIS as Excuse to Attack Kurds

July 26, 2015

Turkey Uses ISIS as Excuse to Attack Kurds, Gatestone Institute, Uzay Bulut, July 26, 2015

(Please see also, Will Anyone Help the Kurds? — DM)

It appears as if the Turkish government is using ISIS as a pretext to attack the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party).
Turkey just announced that its air base at Incirlik will soon be open to coalition forces, presumably to fight ISIS. But the moment Turkey started bombing, it targeted Kurdish positions in Iraq, in addition to targeting ISIS positions in Syria.
In Turkey, millions of indigenous Kurds are continually terrorized and murdered, but ISIS terrorists can freely travel and use official border crossings to go to Syria and return to Turkey; they are even treated at Turkish hospitals.
If this is how the states that rule over Kurds treat them, why is there even any question as to whether the Kurds should have their own self-government?

Turkey’s government seems to be waging a new war against the Kurds, now struggling to get an internationally recognized political status in Syrian Kurdistan.

On July 24, Turkish media sources reported that Turkish jet fighters bombed Kurdish PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) bases in Qandil, in Iraqi Kurdistan, as well as the Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria.

Turkey is evidently unsettled by the rapprochement the PKK seems to be establishing with the U.S. and Europe. Possibly alarmed by the PKK’s victories against ISIS, as well as its strengthening international standing, Ankara, in addition to targeting ISIS positions in Syria, has been bombing the PKK positions in the Qandil mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, where the PKK headquarters are located.

There is no ISIS in Qandil.

As expected, many Turkish media outlets were more enthusiastic about the Turkish air force’s bombing the Kurdish militia than about bombing ISIS. “The camps of the PKK,” they excitedly reported, “have been covered with fire.”

It appears as if Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is using ISIS as a pretext to attack the PKK. Ankara just announced that its air base at Incirlik will soon be open to coalition forces, presumably to fight ISIS, but the moment Turkey started bombing, it targeted Kurdish positions. Those attacks not only open a new era of death and destruction, but also bring an end to all possibilities of resolving Turkey’s Kurdish issue non-violently.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu announced that

“a second wave operation against Daesh [ISIS] in Syria was started. Just after that, a very comprehensive operation was carried out against the camps of the terrorist organization PKK in northern Iraq. I am glad that the targets were hit with great success. We have given instructions to start a third wave operation in Syria and a second wave operation in Iraq.”

The “great success” of the Turkish military has brought much damage and injury to even Kurdish civilians — including children. The Kurdish newspaper Rudaw reported that two Kurdish villagers in Duhok’s Berwari region were carried to hospital in the aftermath of a Turkish artillery bombardment in the Amediye region. One of the victims was 12 years old. The second victim lost a leg in an airstrike. Four members of the PKK were killed and several others were injured.

Shortly after military operations against the PKK started, access to the websites of pro-Kurdish newspapers and news agencies was denied “by decree of court.” These websites — including Fırat News Agency (ANF), Dicle News Agency (DIHA), Hawar News Agency (ANHA), Ozgur Gundem newspaper, Yuksekova News, Rudaw and BasNews — are still blocked in Turkey.

ISIS, meanwhile, has not so far made any statement regarding Turkey’s so-called bombings of ISIS in any of its media outlets.

Had Turkish military attacked the PKK alone, and not in addition to attacking ISIS, it would probably have received widespread international condemnation. So to add “legitimacy” to its attacks against the Kurdish PKK — whose affiliate Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Syria and its armed wing, the Kurdish People’s Defense Units (YPG) have been resisting ISIS and other Islamist terrorist groups since 2013 — Turkey declared that it will also attack ISIS. This would give it cover for its attacks against Kurdish fighters.

In 2014, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan described the plan he wanted to carry out in Syria and Iraq: “The problem in Syria should be taken into account. Iraq too should be considered similarly. Moreover, there needs to be a solution that will also deal with the Syrian wing [PYD] of the separatist terrorist organization [PKK].”

The AKP government, dissatisfied with the results of last month’s parliamentary elections, also seems to want to hold new elections, to push the mainly Kurdish HDP Party below the required 10% threshold, and thus force them out of parliament. Perhaps the government thinks that bombing the PKK will generate Turkish nationalist enthusiasm that will work in the AKP’s favor to help it regain a majority in early elections.

Apparently, Turkey does not need Kurdish deputies in its parliament. Apparently, the state prefers to slaughter or arrest the Kurds — as it has done for decades. Why hold talks and reach a democratic resolution when you have the power to murder people wholesale?[1]

Sadly, Turkey has preferred not to form a “Turkish-Kurdish alliance” to destroy ISIS. First, Turkey has opened its borders to ISIS, enabling the growth of the terrorist group. And now, at the first opportunity, it is bombing the Kurds again. According to this strategy, “peace” will be possible only when Kurds submit to Turkish supremacism and abandon their goal of being an equal nation.

In the meantime, Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkish minister of foreign affairs, said that the Incirlik air base in Turkey has not yet been opened for use by the U.S. and other coalition forces, but that it will be opened in the upcoming period.

Kurdish forces, therefore, are the only forces that are truly resisting the Islamic State.

They have been repressed by Baghdad and murdered by Turkey and Iran.

If this is how the states that rule over Kurds treat them, why is there even any question as to whether the Kurds should have their own self-government?

As a result of the ISIS attacks in the region, the Kurdish PKK — as well as its Syrian Kurdish affiliate, Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed wing, Kurdish People’s Defense Units (YPG) — have emerged as the America’s most effective battlefield partners against ISIS. Ever since ISIS became a major force in Syria, the U.S. has apparently relied heavily on YPG to stop ISIS from advancing. According to Henri Barkey, a former State Department specialist on Turkey, “The U.S. has become the YPG’s air force and the YPG has become the U.S.’s ground force in Syria.”

* * *

Attacks on the Kurds were already under way last week. On July 20, a bomb attack in the Kurdish town of Suruc (Pirsus) in Turkey killed 32 people during a meeting of young humanitarian activists, who were discussing the reconstruction of the neighboring Kurdish town of Kobane.

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The scene of the suicide bombing in Suruc, Turkey. An ISIS suicide bomber murdered 32 people and wounded more than 100 others in a July 20 attack on Kurdish humanitarian activists. (Image source: VOA video screenshot)

The blast took place while the activists were making a statement to the press in the garden of a cultural center. At least 100 others, mostly university students, were wounded. (Graphic video of the explosion)

The suicide bomber was identified through DNA testing, according to reports in the Turkish news media. Seyh Abdurrahman Alagoz was reportedly a 20-year-old Turkish university student, recently returned from Syria, and believed to have had ties to ISIS.

Alagoz targeted a meeting 300 secular activists, members of the Federation of Socialist Youth Associations (SGDF), who gathered at a cultural center in the province of Urfa, opposite the Kurdish town of Kobane in Syrian Kurdistan. As part of an effort to rebuild Kobane, they were preparing to provide aid, give toys to the children there and build a hospital, school, nursery, children’s park, library and a memorial forest for those who had lost their lives in Kobane.

“Work on the building of hospitals and schools needs to be done,” Oguz Yuzgec, the co-president of the federation, said before the explosion. “One of the things we will do is to build a children’s park in Kobane. We will name it after Emre Aslan, who died fighting in Kobane. We are collecting toys. We will participate in the construction of the nursery that the canton of Kobane is planning to build. We have the responsibility of helping the nursery function. We need everybody who knows how to draw and can teach children.”

Mazlum Demirtas, a survivor of the attack, said: “The main one responsible for this incident is the state of Turkey, the AKP fascism, the AKP dictatorship. … It attacked us with its gunmen and gangs. Since yesterday, parents have been collecting the dismembered body parts of their children. They are trying to identify the dismembered bodies. This is called fascism, inhumanity and barbarity.”

Pinar Gayip, another survivor of the attack, said in a telephone interview on the pro-government Haberturk TV that, “Instead of helping the wounded, the murderer-police of the murderer-AKP threw tear gas at the vehicles with which we carried the wounded.” She was taken off the air.

All across Turkish Kurdistan, there were protests condemning the massacre and the government’s alleged involvement in it. Police in Istanbul used plastic bullets and water cannonsagainst people who gathered to remember those murdered in Suruc.

The Turkish authorities briefly blocked access to Twitter last Wednesday to prevent the people from viewing photos of the bombing in Suruc. Officials admitted that Turkey had asked Twitter to remove 107 URLs (web addresses) with images related to the bombing; before the ban, Twitter had already removed 50.

Selahattin Demirtas, the co-chair of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Party (HDP), said that state surveillance activities were intensive in Suruc, and that the intelligence service was recording the identity of everyone traveling to and from Suruc.

As Demirtas’s own convoy had recently not been permitted to enter Suruc, he emphasized the extent of state surveillance in the town, and said that nobody could argue that someone could have managed to infiltrate the crowd and carry out the suicide attack without state support.

“Today, we have witnessed in Suruc yet again what an army of barbarity and rape, an army that has lost human dignity, can do,” Demirtas said. “Those who have been silent in the face of ISIS, who have not dared even raise their voice to it, as well as the officials in Ankara who threaten even the HDP every day but caress the head of ISIS, are the accomplices of this barbarity.”

In the meantime, Mehmet Gormez, the head of the Turkish Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), announced on its Twitter account that the perpetrators of the Suruc attack do not have religion.

However, three days before the massacre in Suruc, about 100 Islamists — alleged to be ISIS sympathizers — had performed mass Islamic Eid prayers in Istanbul. They demanded Islamic sharia law instead of democracy. ISIS sympathizers had performed the same Eid prayers at the same place the year before, as well.

Over the border in Syrian Kurdistan, shortly after the blast in Suruc, a suicide bomber detonated a car bomb at a checkpoint in Kobane. Two Kurdish fighters were killed in the explosion, according to Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Last month, a deadly blast hit the Kurdish province of Diyarbakir in Turkey, during an election rally of the pro-Kurdish HDP that was attended by tens of thousands of people. Just before the HDP co-chair Selahattin Demirtas was going to speak, two bombs exploded at different places. Four people were killed, and more than 100 people are estimated to have been wounded. One of the wounded, Lisa Calan, 28, a Kurdish art director from Diyarbakir, lost both legs in the explosion.

As the wounded were being carried to hospitals, police used tear gas against people trying to run from the area in panic

The bomber was reported to be a member of ISIS.

* * *

In Turkey, millions of indigenous Kurds are continually terrorized and murdered, while ISIS terrorists can freely travel and use official border crossings to go to Syria and return to Turkey; they are even treated at Turkish hospitals. Emrah Cakan, for instance, a Turkish-born ISIS commander wounded in Syria, got medical treatment at the university hospital in Turkey’s Denizli province in March.

The Denizli governor’s office issued a written statement on 5 March:

“The treatment of Emrah C. at the Denizli hospital was started upon his own application. The procedural acts concerning his injury were conducted by our border city during his entry to our country and they still continue. And his treatment procedures continue as a part of his right to benefit from health services just like all our other citizens have.”

The “compassion” and hospitality that many Turkish institutions have for ISIS members is not even hidden. The silence of the West is mystifying and disappointing.

The U.S. government cooperates with oppressive regimes — including the terrorist regime of Iran, under which Kurds are forced to live — to the detriment of the Kurds, to the detriment other persecuted peoples, and to the detriment of the future of the West.

Many Middle Eastern regimes are ruled by Islamist, often genocidal governments — so there is not much to expect from them in terms of human rights and liberties.

The Kurds need real support, real arms and real recognition. Otherwise, there does not seem to be much difference between the dictatorial, genocidal Middle Eastern regimes and the West, which used to represent democracy and freedom.
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[1] The so-called “peace process” was reportedly started in 2012 and through it, Kurds and the Turkish government were to resolve the Kurdish issue through negotiations.)

Categories: Airstrikes, Combat troops, Islamic State, Kurdish fighters, Kurdish refugees, Kurds, Turkey, U.S. Military
Tags: Airstrikes, Combat troops, Islamic State, Kurdish fighters, Kurdish refugees, Kurds, Turkey, U.S. military

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