Monthly Archives: August 2014

Britain, Foreign Affairs, Government, Human Rights, Iraq, Islamic State, Politics, Society, Syria, United Nations, United States

The United States will need help from other countries in bombing jihadist positions…

ISLAMIC STATE AND NORTHERN IRAQ

America is hoping that Britain will support air strikes against jihadi positions in northern Iraq, and is poised in asking leaders of a string of other countries including Qatar, Jordan, Turkey and Australia about how they may be able to help.

Downing Street continues to insist, however, that no request from the Obama administration had yet been made, and that UK involvement in air strikes would need ‘a lot of discussion first’.

Parliament is expected to debate the issue when it returns on Monday. The Prime Minister has previously indicated that any military action would have to be approved by MPs.

Britain is already supplying intelligence, surveillance and support from Special Forces as well as providing refuelling facilities for US warplanes.

Taking part in air strikes, though, would mark a major escalation and departure from Britain’s original mission and aim.

The UK is currently preparing to join the US in resuming humanitarian air lifts to ferry aid to 12,000 members of the Turkmen community besieged for more than two months by Islamic State militants in the northern town of Amerli.

As the UK announced a further £10million worth of aid to Iraq, senior defence planners were asked to ‘scope’ how a mission to ease the plight of those stranded could be launched.

It would be likely to follow US air strikes on Islamic State (IS) positions and involve both elite forces and RAF Hercules transport aircraft operating out of Cyprus.

The UN special representative for Iraq, Nickolay Mladenov, has said the situation in Amerli ‘demands immediate action to prevent the possible massacre of its citizens’ while community leaders have warned of a ‘catastrophe.’

Any humanitarian aid drops would be similar to those flown by the RAF to members of the Yazidi community trapped two weeks ago on the Sinjar mountains. As the US prepares to launch a fresh wave of air strikes, new horrific details of IS atrocities have emerged.

A UN report said public executions, mock crucifixions, whippings and amputations are being regularly carried out as part of a chilling campaign of fear and intimidation by the militants.

The jihadists responsible for the murder of US photojournalist James Foley were also found to be forcing boys as young as ten to join up and using teenagers in suicide attacks while boys of 15 are being beaten publicly.

Investigators say that women have been publicly lashed for not following the group’s strict dress code and some stoned to death after allegations of infidelity.

The shocking chronicle of atrocities and torture are included in a report by the UN Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights which paints a disturbing and bleak picture of all sides in the Syrian civil war, accusing the regime of Bashar al-Assad of repeatedly using chemical weapons against civilians. It says that both the militants and the Assad regime are committing war crimes:

‘Executions in public spaces have become a common spectacle on Fridays’ in Raqqa, the Syrian city that has become IS’s stronghold and is now the focus of US spy planes.

Children have been present at the executions, which take the form of beheading or shooting in the head at close range … Bodies are placed on public display, often on crucifixes, for up to three days, serving as a warning to local residents.’

In the 45-page report, the panel described beheadings of boys aged 15, men flogged for smoking or accompanying an ‘improperly dressed’ female.

The report said: ‘Women have been lashed for not abiding by IS’s dress code. In Raqqa, children as young as ten are being recruited and trained at IS camps.’

As a result, UN officials have expressed caution over US air strikes against IS targets because of the number of young boys among them.

A UN spokesperson said: ‘Among the most disturbing findings in this report are accounts of large training camps where children, mostly boys from the age of 14, are recruited and trained to fight in the ranks of ISIS along with adults.’

The spokesperson continued: ‘We are aware of the presence of children in training camps, I think that this decision by the United States must respect the laws of war and we are concerned about the presence of these children.’

The report, compiled after six months of investigations, came as IS supporters tweeted pictures allegedly showing militants executing Syrian army soldiers after capturing the government Tabqa airbase near Raqqa in eastern Syria. The pictures have not been verified. The Commission was created three years ago by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate abuses committed in the war, in which 200,000 people in Syria are estimated to have died.

It will present to the council next month its latest report covering a litany of war crimes and crimes against humanity it says were carried out by the Syrian government, Islamic State and other opposition groups.

Many fighters from Syria’s weakened rebel battalions are defecting to Islamic State ‘owing to the latter’s superior financial and operating capabilities,’ it warns. Among the allegations of war crimes committed by the Syrian government was the use of suspected chlorine gas, a chemical agent, in eight separate incidents in April and May of this year.

The report also detailed the use of barrel bombs by the Syrian Air Force which were dropped on civilian neighbourhoods. Deaths in custody in Syrian jails are on the rise and forensic analysis of 26,948 photographs allegedly taken from 2011-2013 in government detention centres back its ‘longstanding findings of systematic torture and deaths of detainees’.

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Britain, Defence, Economic, European Union, Government, Military, National Security, NATO, Politics

Defence spending and the ‘peace dividend’…

DEFENCE SPENDING

Throughout history, defence spending has always gone up and down, and has responded largely to the perceived level of threat at the time.

Following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War expectations were high for a so-called ‘peace dividend’. This led to the British military, along with its NATO partners, assuming they would no longer have to maintain a massive defence capability in central Europe as a bulwark against the Russians. Tank squadrons, for example, on the German plain were drastically reduced as the threat from the Russian bear showing its claws no longer existed.

This, it was generally agreed, was a good thing. There was never any shortage of other priorities on which politicians could spend otherwise huge sums of money that had previously been spent on defence.

However, the question now, according to General Sir Richard Shirreff, who recently stepped down as NATO deputy supreme commander, is whether a new and heightened level of threat should now require an increase in defence capability, and therefore defence spending.

General Shirreff is eminently qualified to make such a judgment, of that few will doubt. He has said that the dismantling of the West’s presence in mainland Europe has gone too far, leaving us vulnerable and exposed in the face of a renewed Russian threat.

The facts tend to support his case. A recent defence analyst’s report, for instance, revealed that Britain now had fewer tanks than Switzerland.

And there can be little doubt that the threat level facing mainland Europe is now significantly different to what it was a decade ago. Russia has annexed Crimea and the Kremlin is making less pretence about the fact that it is at war with Ukraine.

NATO’s primary role is to defend its members from military threat and attack. Shirreff questions whether NATO is able to perform that key function, at current strength.

Highlighting ‘the reality’, Shirreff says that NATO would be very hard-pressed and they would find it very difficult to put into the field the means required, particularly on land, to counter any form of ‘Russian adventurism’.

Undoubtedly, the signal General Shirreff gives amounts to a stark warning, and one that deserves to be the start of a serious debate.

At a time of continuing financial and economic austerity, this will be the last thing that many European political leaders will want to hear. The ‘peace dividend’ has been taken for granted for a quarter of a century. Even in Britain, following recent bloody wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, have not led to a reversal in political thinking that says Britain needs fewer soldiers and fewer sophisticated weapons.

The focus of efforts in keeping the UK safe has moved away from hard power and more towards intelligence and security led measures in tackling jihadist terror groups – at home and abroad.

While this is bound to remain the key priority, the challenges being posed elsewhere by an expansionist President Putin can no longer be ignored. Putin’s threat to eastern Ukraine as well as to Western concerns over Russian interests in the Baltic States are proof enough that NATO requires and needs an adequate defence capability in dealing with challenges it could be called upon in dealing with. The security of the wider world surely depends on it.

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Foreign Affairs, Government, Islamic State, Military, NATO, Politics, United States

Downing Street insists there has been no US air strike request…

AIR CAMPAIGN AGAINST ISLAMIC STATE

Britain joining air strikes against jihadists has not been requested and is not currently under discussion, Downing Street has insisted, despite reports that Barack Obama is hoping to win agreement to bring allies into the air campaign by next week’s NATO summit.

The United States has launched scores of bombing attacks on Islamic State (IS) militants in northern Iraq in a bid to assist Kurdish and Iraqi forces in their fightback against the terrorists.

Reports in The Times said the Pentagon had been exploring whether western allies such as Britain and Australia, and allied Gulf states, would assist in a broader campaign in Syria against the group, which was formerly known as ISIL.

Britain joining air strikes against jihadists has not been requested and is not currently under discussion, Downing Street has insisted.

Britain joining air strikes against jihadists has not been requested and is not currently under discussion, Downing Street has insisted.

But a spokesperson for No 10, said: ‘There’s been no request for us to deliver air strikes and this is not something under discussion at the moment.

Our focus remains on supporting the Iraq government and Kurdish forces so that they can counter the threat posed by ISIL, for example with the visit of our security envoy to Iraq this week and the provision of supplies to Kurdish forces.’

The report suggested US president Barack Obama asked the Pentagon to carry out a ‘scoping exercise’ with allies to discover their approach to joining a campaign.

NATO members are due to gather at Celtic Manor, south Wales, on September 4 and 5, for a summit.

The Commons rejected British bombing in Syria in a historic vote almost exactly a year ago when Prime Minister David Cameron sought approval for military strikes in response to chemical attacks.

And The Times reported scepticism about whether domestic politics would allow Britain to become involved.

An unnamed Conservative minister told the Times: ‘David Cameron is simply not going to want to get involved this close to the election, even though it’s the right thing to do. The risks are too big.’

A Whitehall source also questioned the idea, saying: ‘The idea that we could somehow do military action in Syria without a parliamentary vote when there has already been a parliamentary vote disallowing it, it’s just not going to happen.’

Any action in Syria would go ahead without the permission of the Assad regime, raising the risks involved.

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