The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant Megathread

[citizen k]

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/bodies-slain-serb-hostages-flown-back-home-libya-37143129

USAF...Bombing Serbs since 1998. 

[Archy]

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/bodies-slain-serb-hostages-flown-back-home-libya-37143129

USAF...Bombing Serbs since 1998. 

You act like that's a bad thing 
I wholeheartedly support the War on Tracksuits.

[Queequeg]

u suck.

[Valmy]

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/bodies-slain-serb-hostages-flown-back-home-libya-37143129

USAF...Bombing Serbs since 1998. 

Huh...was our bombing in the Bosnian War carried out by the US Army or something?

[citizen k]

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-03-01/how-the-us-lost-the-kurds?ref=yfp


How the U.S. Lost the Kurds
The Kurdish YPG, considered the strongest fighting force on the ground, has moved to a backer that can get it what it wants.

By Paul D. Shinkman
March 1, 2016, at 3:35 p.m.

America's most effective ally on the ground in Syria is defecting to its chief adversary in the war against the Islamic State group, risking the very foundation of the U.S.-led effort to defeat the extremist network.

At least some elements of the Kurdish YPG, the militant arm of the main Kurdish political body in Syria, are now operating with the Russian military in support of the regime of Bashar Assad and his Iranian backers.

Sen. John McCain, the powerful chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, says the Obama administration has mishandled the critical relationship with the YPG and now is paying the price.

"I'm confident it's not all the Kurds, but there is a segment that has aligned with the Russians because they want to win, and they see the Russians succeeding where we have failed," McCain  told a group of reporters last week. "Now we are faced with a dilemma ... because they think that's the best way of winning."

The Arizona Republican is one of a series of coalition officials, analysts or observers who believe America's self-imposed restrictions for the bloody conflict in Syria have forced the Kurdish fighters on the ground to look for other sources of international support to achieve their goals.

Losing the Kurds would hurt whatever hopes the U.S.-led coalition has of finding victory on the ground in Syria. Fighting units like the YPG have been among the most successful in a war to which Obama has refused to deploy large ground forces. Amid the failed U.S. effort to build an army in Syria of its own, the Kurds are now among the only groups left capable of making such gains.

This problem is magnified by the fact that the powers intervening in Syria have differing priorities. The U.S. wants to defeat the Islamic State group while keeping out of the ongoing Syrian civil war. Turkey, a NATO ally providing a critical base for American warplanes, wants to overthrow the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad, supported now by Russia and Iran and to keep the regional Kurdish population under control.

Meanwhile, the chief priority of the Kurds – an ethnic group of about 25 million to 30 million spread out across Syria, Turkey, Iran and Armenia and a semiautonomous region within Iraq – is securing a territory they can claim as their own when the fighting stops. And they largely don't care who helps them.

"They would have rather confirmed the U.S. to be their partners, but now Russia is there with robust bombardments and strikes," says Doga Eralp, a lecturer at the American University School of International Service who believes all warring parties are now jockeying for a position to determine who controls which areas in Syria after some form of cease-fire. "They know their eventual seat at the negotiating table would be secured if they start cooperating with the Russians on the ground. But they wouldn't openly say that."

The Kurds don't have to. Recent combat maneuvers indicate they're at least coordinating with forces loyal to the Assad regime, trained and supported by Russian special operators and protected by Russian airpower overhead. (Some reports even indicate Syrian opposition fighters have heard Kurdish radio chatter calling in Russian airstrikes directly – but those are unconfirmed and would align with previous false claims the opposition has made.)

For example, when the YPG liberated the Syrian town of Tell Rifaat in mid-February – less than 20 miles north of the opposition stronghold of Aleppo and roughly halfway from Aleppo to the Turkish border – regime forces simultaneously moved on the two villages of Ahras and Misqan to the south of the town, supported by Russian airstrikes.

Neither set of forces engaged one another, which would have been a common outcome if they fought on opposing sides. This serves as enough evidence for Chris Kozak, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, to believe that the two sides are at least passively aligned.

"They aimed at different military targets, but in a coordinated way," Kozak says.

For the Syrian regime and its international allies, this works well. They wish to create a buffer between themselves and the opposition in the north as well as the Turks. The regime doesn't need to push toward the border and engage Turkey – possibly provoking other NATO allies in the process – if it can get the Kurds to do that for them.

Regime support also helps Kurdish positions squeeze both sides of the Islamic State group's sole remaining corridor to the Turkish border north of Aleppo, through which it smuggles fighters, money and supplies to its so-called caliphate. The extremists' access to the border is abuted by opposition-controled territory also accessible to Turkey, through which it can receive weapons and supplies from Ankara.

Further complicating the process is America's sticky relationship with the YPG and its parent political organization, the PYD.  The U.S. needs Turkish support, not in the least to keep warplanes at Incirlik air base as one of the only nearby hubs for its air war against the Islamic State group.

But the Turkish government fervently believes the YPG is aligned with another Kurdish group within Turkey, the PKK, which both the U.S. and Turkey consider a terrorist organization.  Turkey acted on these fears after it finally succumbed to U.S. pressure to join the multi-nation coalition it's built by immediately attacking Kurdish positions – not the Islamic State group. With Kurdish troops now moving toward the Turkish border, Obama is left in the impossible position of having to support two groups he needs as proxies but who oppose one another.

"We believe the YPG is not affiliated with the PKK," State Department spokesman Mark Toner repeated last week when pressed on the issue. He added a caveat indicative of how the administration has tried to avoid taking sides: "However, we recognize Turkey's concerns over PKK and terrorism on the ground and its right to defend itself, but we have urged it to stop shelling over the border."

Toner said the U.S. has called on the YPG to stop "taking actions on the ground in and around Aleppo" that he called "counterproductive."

This straddling policy leads to awkward diplomatic incidents, such as when the U.S. denied a visa to PYD emissary Saleh Muslim last year.

But the PYD has since expanded its diplomatic options. Earlier this month, it announced it had opened a delegation office in Moscow.

"Our aim is to strengthen and develop relations with the Russian side, including its civil organizations, political parties, academics," its chief delegate, Abd Salam Muhammad Ali, told Russian state-sponsored news agency RT. An envoy for the Syrian Kurds told Bloomberg that Russia had committed to protect Kurdish fighters from Turkey, a pledge it may have to fulfill following reports at the end of February Turkey shelled a Kurdish town near the border. 

The delicate balance the U.S. is trying to strike between the Turks and the Kurds has left a perfect gap for Russia to further harass the U.S. and to exact revenge on Ankara amid heightened tensions between the two countries, which nearly devolved into all-out war when Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet that briefly crossed over into its territory. Moscow, Tehran and Damascus also can now offer the Kurds something Washington can't: a contiguous region across Syria's north that would connect Kurdish-liberated areas from Afrin in the northwest, to Kobani, to al Hasakah province in the northeast.

"We've over-relied on the Kurds," says Kozak. "In over-relying on the Kurds, we've put our eggs in one basket, and that is a basket that's limited our opportunities."

Kozak worries about what happens if the Kurds miscalculate and, as the Russians found out when they flew a plane too close to the border, incur a stronger military response from the Turkish government and President Recep Erdogan.

McCain agrees.

"I'm not a big fan of his, but if I were him, I could see why it's logical the way they are behaving."

[PJL]

A perfect case of my enemy's enemy is my friend, with both the Syrian Kurds & Assad hostile to Turkey and ISIS. This could also have repercussions in Iraq as well, especially if they move further into Iran's sphere. Certainly makes sense for the Kurds in both regions to curry favour with Russia. Can't blame them for doing so either.

For once geography may have given a Kurds a better hand than of late by creating a potential buffer state between Turkey and Syria.

[jimmy olsen]

Christ this is awful

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/1-5-million-may-die-if-mosul-dam-fails-iraq-n530861

1.5 Million May Die if Mosul Dam Fails: Iraq Expert

by F. Brinley Bruton 

Almost 1.5 million Iraqis are in danger of being killed by a wall of water if the dismally maintained Mosul dam collapses, a former senior government engineer who was once in charge of the country's dam system warned on Thursday.

While the government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has sought to downplay the risk of a collapse of the country's largest dam, earlier this week it advised many residents of the heavily populated Tigris River valley to move at least 3.5 miles away from its riverbanks.


The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad said a collapse of the dam in the north of country would be "serious and unprecedented." Some 500,000 and 1.47 million Iraqis would "probably would not survive" the wave, while water could reach depths of 45 feet in the nearby city of Mosul, it said in a statement.

Cities downstream on the Tigris River such as Tikrit, Samarra and the Iraqi capital Baghdad could be inundated with smaller, but still significant levels in the event of a breach, U.S. officials warned on Sunday.

Mosul was conquered by ISIS around two years ago and is the militant group's major Iraqi stronghold.

On Wednesday, the Iraqi government signed a 18-month contract worth around $296 million with Italian engineering company Trevi for the upkeep of the facility. Mahdi Rasheed, the general director of the Iraqi Dams Company, told NBC News that Trevi would start sending workers and equipment within days but it would take between two and three months for the repairs to start.

Nasrat Adamo, who was the chief engineer at Iraq's Irrigation Ministry which oversaw the building and upkeep of the country's dams, told NBC News he was afraid Trevi's work would not come soon enough.

"All the figures quote between 500,000 to 1.5 million people in the path" of a collapse, "but at least a few hundred thousand people will be killed immediately," he said in a telephone interview from Sweden.

"The flood wave is so fast that it would arrive to [the city of] Mosul in two hours and the city would be under 25 meters [82 feet] of water," Adamo said, citing the findings of a 1984 study conducted by the Iraqi government.

From the day it the dam was inaugurated in the early 1980s it has required intensive maintenance with crews having pour cement under its foundation continuously in what is known as "grouting."

In 2006, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers report called it "the most dangerous dam in the world,."

Fears for the dam's safety worsened as fighting between ISIS, which has conquered swathes of the north of Iraq, and Iraqi forces, intensified in the past years.

In August 2014, Iraqi and Kurdish forces recaptured the dam from ISIS after militants briefly held it.

[jimmy olsen]

That's a lot of people in one hit, I wonder if that's the biggest one since Obama became President. Maybe there was one bigger in the Libyan intervention? 

http://www.post-gazette.com/news/world/2016/03/08/US-drone-strike-kills-more-than-150-at-Somalia-terrorist-camp-military-says/stories/201603080102

U.S. drone strike kills more than 150 at Somalia terrorist camp, military says

Really bad news. Tunisia's been the one success story of the Arab Spring.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/08/world/africa/attack-tunisia-libya-border.html

Tunisian Clash Spreads Fear That Libyan War Is Spilling Over

[jimmy olsen]

This is just a harbinger of the conflict and destablizing effect that climate change will bring to the world.

https://news.vice.com/article/the-drought-that-preceded-syrias-civil-war-was-likely-the-worst-in-900-years

The Drought That Preceded Syria's Civil War Was Likely the Worst in 900 Years
By Elaisha Stokes

March 4, 2016 | 1:05 am

VICE News is closely tracking global environmental change. Check out the Tipping Point blog here.

Syria's civil war has left 250,000 people dead, according to the latest UN count, and millions more are either displaced within the country's borders or have sought refuge abroad. And, while the proximate causes were largely political — primarily grievances with President Bashar al Assad, new scientific research adds support to the argument that climate change helped to trigger Syria's descent into violence.

Researchers from NASA and the University of Arizona studied tree rings — a reliable proxy for measuring precipitation — going back several centuries and found that the recent Syrian drought was likely the worst in at least the past 900 years and almost definitely the worst in 500 years.

"We wanted to know how the current drought compared to past droughts," said Benjamin Cook, a climate scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the lead author of the study. The current drought, which has lasted about 15 years "really is the worst, far outside of natural climate cycles."

Cook and his colleagues found that mega-droughts — those that last thirty years or longer — were absent from the tree ring record. The last major drought began in 1807 and lasted fourteen years.

"We are starting to push the [climate] system outside of what it would normally do," said Cook. "That really points to climate change playing a role. The big uncertainty is how we will deal with the amplified stresses.

Related: Osama bin Laden Wanted Americans to Help Obama Save Humanity from Climate Change



The drought caused 75 percent of Syria's farms to fail and 85 percent of livestock to die between 2006 and 2011, according to the United Nations. The collapse in crop yields forced as many as 1.5 million Syrians to migrate to urban centers, like Homs and Damascus.

The drought had displaced Syrians long before the conflict began," said Francesco Femia, president of the Center for Climate Security. "And what is frightening is that analysts who study the region completely missed it."

More hungry and homeless families in Syria's big cities created stress, said Femia. "There are only so many resources to go around."

Abeer Etefa, a communications officer with the United Nation's World Food Program, said the agency was concerned about the country prior to the outbreak of war.

"The situation was already bad," he said. "We had an operation in 2010 for farmers that were suffering from the drought."

The World Food Program is currently providing food aid to over 300,000 Syrians in the country's northeast, which is the epicenter of agricultural production. Grain yields last year were half of what they were in 2011.

The Pentagon has long identified climate change as a "threat magnifier," a factor that can aggravate already existing political fault lines. And the G7 issued a report in June warning that climate change "will aggravate already fragile situations and may contribute to social upheaval and even violent conflict."

In this way the Syrian civil war and the hundreds of thousands of displaced, who are seeking refuge in Turkey and Europe, could be seen as a foreshadowing of a much more alarming humanitarian situation should nation's fail to keep global temperature rise under control.

Christian Parenti, author of Tropic of Chaos, a book that examines the links between climate change and violence around the world, said that nations need to address climate change, but improved energy and environmental policies, however important for avoiding future conflicts, won't help Syria's growing ranks of displaced and undernourished.

"By emphasizing regime change, US foreign policy has helped to produce this disaster," he said. " From the Iraq invasions, to the Libyan war, to aiding Salafist rebels in Syria, US-sponsored violence has made it harder for people to adapt to a warmer, drier Middle East. But, without a peace settlement in Syria, there will only be more refugees headed to Europe."

[citizen k]

This is just a harbinger of the conflict and destablizing effect that climate change will bring to the world.

And tinpot dictators.

[Admiral Yi]

Christian Parenti, author of Tropic of Chaos, a book that examines the links between climate change and violence around the world, said that nations need to address climate change, but improved energy and environmental policies, however important for avoiding future conflicts, won't help Syria's growing ranks of displaced and undernourished.

"By emphasizing regime change, US foreign policy has helped to produce this disaster," he said. " From the Iraq invasions, to the Libyan war, to aiding Salafist rebels in Syria, US-sponsored violence has made it harder for people to adapt to a warmer, drier Middle East. But, without a peace settlement in Syria, there will only be more refugees headed to Europe."

Fucking emphasizers. 

[Razgovory]

Is there really more violence in the world then say 50 years ago?

[LaCroix]

Is there really more violence in the world then say 50 years ago?

more violence then. argument is that we'd have even less violence but for climate change

[Ancient Demon]

Rapid population growth has a much bigger impact than climate change, especially in the Middle East. Most people don't want to acknowledge that though, as if any given spot on the earth should support basically an infinite number of people.

[Valmy]

My God. Bush said the phrase 'regime change' once 13 years ago and therefore caused every single war since. Thanks Bushitler.