Category Archives: Foreign Affairs

Britain, Foreign Affairs, Government, Iran, Iraq, Islamic State, Middle East, Politics, United Nations, United States

The Iranian foe has suddenly become a crucial ally…

IRAN

Not since the Shah was replaced by Ayatollah Khomeini’s hardline Islamic theocracy in 1979 has a British prime minister met with an Iranian leader.

Truly, this week was an historic encounter as David Cameron made entreaties to the enemy and met Hassan Rouhani at the UN General Assembly in New York.

This, it should be remembered, is a country that has sponsored terrorism against the West on myriad occasions, has frequently declared that Israel should be wiped from the map , and was infamously labelled – along with Iraq under Saddam Hussein and North Korea – a member of the ‘Axis of Evil’ by George W Bush. Its nuclear ambitions so terrify Western leaders that they have imposed sanctions that have devastated Iran’s oil exports and revenues.

But times change, and now the West needs Iran, regarding it as a potential ally in the fight against Islamic State (IS).

Iran has reached out, too. Ever since Rouhani replaced his predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president in August 2013, he has been trying to bring Iran back in from the cold.

Ahmadinejad’s bellicose anti-Western rhetoric during the eight years of his rule ensured the country’s deepening isolation on the international stage.

And while Rouhani may be a plausible figure, the regime’s religious hardliners are still uniformly grim, imposing their moral puritanism on a young, vibrant and educated population which, behind the scenes, enjoys partying, illicit drinking and casual sex.

Last year Iran executed 624 people for various offences, some of them publicly strangled as they were hoisted aloft by large mechanical cranes. Torture is commonplace and stoning seen as just punishment.

Yet Cameron was clearly in the mood for conciliation and his diplomatic offensive throws up a number of questions. Why would Iran want to help the West in its fight against IS? And what kind of concessions would the Iranians demand in return for discreetly siding with the coalition of Western and Arab countries now launching air strikes on IS’s headquarters in the Syrian city of Raqqa?

There is no doubt that Iran wants to see the back of IS. Its Shia-led regime considers Iraq and Syria as allies – both are also governed by Shia Muslims. The brutal butchers of IS are all extreme Sunni Muslims, deadly rivals of the Shia, and Iran rightly believes them to be a dangerously destabilising force in the Middle East.

Officially Iran is not part of the efforts to degrade and destroy IS – America is still seen as the great evil by its hardliners and theocrats who will not countenance US troops back in Iraq.

Covertly, however, the country’s head of ‘subversive warfare’ – the 56-year-old General Qassem Suleimani, supremo of the elite Iranian Quds force – is already working alongside his US counterpart General Michael Bednarek in Baghdad’s Green Zone.

Members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard are also hidden among the sizeable Shia militias defending the holiest Shia shrines in Iraq such as Karbala and Najaf, while Iran has warned IS to stay away from its borders.

To consider whether Iran can help defeat IS, we have to examine the force they would be taking on.

Obama has made an analogy between IS and an insufferable disease that is spreading like a plaque. By 2010, Western and Iraqi special forces had eliminated all but 10 per cent of Al-Qaeda in Iraq as a result of capturing or assassinating their operatives.

But that 10 per cent metastasised into IS under their ruthless leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi who decided to exploit the civil war in Syria as a source of recruitment, funding and territory. Two thirds of its 30,000-strong army now lurks there.

Intelligence agencies have largely failed to detect how this army organised from its Syria base a systematic assassination campaign of Iraqi army and police chiefs, or a series of spectacular prison breaks, including one at the notorious Abu Ghraib jail where Iraqi prisoners were tortured by their Western captors.

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Few noticed how in January IS fought off an Iraqi army force of several divisions trying to recapture the Iraqi city of Fallujah. Long before they captured Mosul last month, IS was raking in some £5million a month through nightly extortion in this huge city.

The IS leadership consists of hardened Al-Qaeda veterans, but the tactical sophistication derives from a group of former generals who served under Saddam Hussein.

They have used Iraq’s modern road network to bring to bear their core spearhead of about 3,000 men, who soften up targets with vehicle-borne suicide bombers wiping out command and control centres. Social media bring fear and terror to a Shia-dominated Iraqi national army, whose corrupt officers have stolen their soldiers’ pay.

Soldiers then become demoralised that simply flee or desert, or are murdered. IS are also formidable in defence. They blow up bridges and unleash controlled floods to hamper counter-attacking forces, while using improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to defend approaches in the way regular armies would use mines.

Worse still, IS anticipates their enemies. They knew Obama’s air-strikes on Raqqa were coming, and will have moved their command and control centres to outlying regions and villages. They thwart the West’s recruitment of moderate Sunni rebels. IS’s online multilingual magazine Dabiq (The Ark) suggests neutralising any attempts to turn the local Sunni tribes against them by co-opting them into their own administration – and it’s a tactic that has worked effectively.

Syria’s President Assad – with his sponsor Iran’s tacit approval – was notified in advance of the air strikes, and warned that his entire air defence system would be obliterated if he objected. But why should Assad object anyway, if his most deadly opponents are being eliminated?

Yet, as previous recent conflicts have shown, air strikes alone will not be enough. Ground troops will have to be involved. Which is why Obama, who can at least rely on the help of Kurdish Pesmerga forces and durable elements of the Iraqi army, is now pumping £300million into a new force of ‘moderate’ secular-minded Syrian tribes, 5,000 of whom will be rapidly trained in Saudi Arabia?

This throws up its own problems. The moderates have been fighting against IS alongside another extremist group Jabhat al-Nusra – which was itself targeted by US airstrikes this week because of fears they were accessories to planned terrorist attacks.

Throw in the Iranians, and the confusion over loyalties becomes even greater. Many of the Sunni moderates Obama is trying to woo consider Iran’s Shia regime a greater enemy than IS. This means it would be impossible for Iranian troops to engage overtly in Iraq or Syria – it would incite fury among the Sunni in those countries.

Cameron’s talks with Rouhani have been tantamount to a negotiator’s minefield. Cameron will want him to stop backing Assad but Rouhani will never concede to giving up on such a long-standing Shia ally.

Rouhani will want to persuade the West to relax sanctions in return for help against IS. Any movement, though, to accommodate Iran’s nuclear programme could infuriate Israel. And Israel, if provoked, could destroy the West/Arab coalition.

But despite the enormous geopolitical difficulties and complexities, Cameron is right to engage with Rouhani.

We cannot be in any doubt. IS presents an existential threat to the entire region and must be tackled and beaten. And Iran is such a major player that it is far better to try to enlist its help and keep its president onside than to continue to treat it as a pariah.

See also:

Supplementary

MD Twitter timeline – entries made 25 Sept 2014:

. For the first time the U.S. has used its precision based F-22 Raptor Stealth Fighter.

. The F-22 contains over 30 radar receivers which are able to warn of threats from 250 miles away.

. The armaments of the F-22 are stored internally. This provides its stealth capability, and helps greatly with its aerodynamics.

. The F-22 is armed with JDAM (The Joint Direct Attack Munition). This is a GPS guidance system with a range of up to *___ * miles.

. The F-22’s radar changes frequency more than 1,000 times per second. This confuses enemy tracking systems.

. Khorasan, a little-known Al-Qaeda affiliate, have become a prime target for U.S. air strikes in northern Syria.

. Other U.S. aircraft used in attacking ISIL positions include its B-1 bombers, F-15E attack warplanes, F-16 fighters, F/A-18 Super Hornets and two types of drone aircraft.

. The U.S. has also fired Tomahawk cruise missiles from destroyers in the Red Sea and the northern Persian Gulf. The ships involved are the USS Arleigh Burke and the USS Philippine.

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Britain, Foreign Affairs, Government, Iraq, Islamic State, Middle East, National Security, Society, Syria, United States

Britain’s terror threat…

BRITAIN AND THE THREAT OF TERRORISM FROM ISLAMIC MILITANTS

The words of the Prime Minister that the British people face a ‘greater and deeper threat to our security than we have known before’ are chilling. David Cameron has said that this could last for ‘years and probably decades’, sentiments which should trouble us enormously because ordinary members of the public are now threatened as political figureheads. Disturbing, because the public will only have a sketchy understanding of why the probability of a terrorist attack has now been assessed as ‘highly likely’ within these shores.

The threat of an outrage of murder and mayhem on our streets in the UK stems from the exponential rise in Syria and Iraq of the murderous Islamic State (IS) group, whose wholesale executions of men, women and children – for failing to support their extreme and distorted interpretation of Islam – has made them unparalleled in their savage and brutal desire for bloodlust.

Intelligence suggests that more than 500 radical British Muslims have travelled to the Middle East war zone and that many, if not most of them, have joined the ranks of IS and have become steeped in its methods and ideology. Of real concern to the Security and Intelligence Services (SIS) is that about half of these are believed to have returned to Britain and that a few could be intent on waging their ruthless campaign on these shores.

Cynics are likely to argue that there is another agenda here. Government and military heads from NATO countries will shortly be meeting at Celtic manor in south Wales; President Obama is canvassing support for American air strikes; and, David Cameron is thought to want parliamentary backing for the RAF to bomb IS.

Yet, this theory hardly stands up to scrutiny. Terror threat levels are assessed independently of government by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre. Such analysis may well have drawn upon the intelligence that came in from the intensive effort made by SIS to identify the British executioner of US photojournalist James Foley.

If defeating IS in the Middle East would cut off access to its training camps and weapons by new recruits and those intent on joining in the future, that would not deal with those returning to the UK nor the possibility of IS springing up again in another part of the Middle East. A region that is divisive and fractured will always be luring to militants intent on carrying out barbaric acts.

No part of the UK should see themselves as being on the periphery, or a spectator on the edge of trouble that could strike at any time. We should remember that one jihadist has already been identified as being from Aberdeen and the al-Qaeda inspired attack on Glasgow airport in 2007 should not be forgotten. Terror fuelled zealotry is no respecter of borders or boundaries.

The most obvious sign of what the raised terror threat means will be the increased visibility and intensity of armed police patrols at vulnerable locations. Further preventative measures will depend on unseen and diligent intelligence-gathering on likely perpetrators and intercepting IS fundamentalists as they attempt to enter the country. The maintenance of an uneasy calm should be allayed with the strenuous efforts being made by our security services in deterring IS attacks in the UK.

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  • 02 September, 2014

The Home Secretary, Theresa May, has said that groups in Iraq and Syria are planning attacks on the West and that, ‘some of these plots are likely to involve foreign fighters who have travelled there from the UK’. Whilst the intelligence services say that 500 British born nationals have travelled to the Middle East, with half of them returning, other sources indicated that up to 2000 radicalised British Muslims have travelled to the warzone with more than half of them returning. The British Government says that every effort must be made to thwart their twisted and illogical agenda.

Yesterday, the Prime Minister announced a series of new measures to combat this threat. That is wholly appropriate. New legislation will be drawn up to give the police the power to confiscate the passports of suspected terrorists at Britain’s borders. This is a sensible move given that young men can become truly battle-hardened before returning home and committing terrorist atrocities on our streets. It is all to the good if they can be prevented from travelling there in the first place. But Parliament should be concerned that any attempt by the courts to water down this power would be openly embraced by the extremists themselves. Human rights are an issue for all of us.

Plans were also announced to block suspected British terrorists from returning to the UK. This will be drawn up on a ‘cross-party’ basis. However, whilst promising, this is likely to be more problematic, especially where it concerns those who do not have dual citizenship with another country. It is against international law to render any individual stateless. None the less, the Prime Minister is surely right to say that ‘adhering to British values is not an option or a choice’, but a duty to those who want to reside here. Quite clearly, if a British extremist pledges their firm allegiance to a terrorist organisation in a foreign land, it makes sense that they be asked some searching questions before they are allowed to roam freely in the UK.

Together, the combined effect of these new measures will make life more difficult for Britons who subscribe to the poisonous ideology of Islamist extremism.

We should not forget that those who do travel to Iraq and Syria to fight will have been exposed to radical Islam here in the UK first – either online, or indoctrinated in their communities. Tragically, as many cases have shown, this has been happening at school or on the campuses of our universities. The Cantle Report on community cohesion, first published in 2001, is worth reflecting upon. It stated that such individuals will have often lived ‘parallel lives’ to their peers, with little or no experience of modern British values. Unless this root cause of extremism is dealt with and fixed, the UK (and others) will be dealing with the risk of terrorist threats for decades to come.

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  • 03 September, 2014

David Cameron has opened the door for Britain to join US air strikes against Islamic State forces in Iraq without Parliament’s prior approval.

The Prime Minister has given his strongest hint yet that he is considering supporting Washington’s attempts to build a coalition to expand air assaults on the jihadists.

Previously, he told MPs Britain would ‘look very favourably’ on a request for help from Kurdish forces fighting extremists in Iraq, so they are ‘properly armed and equipped’.

Downing Street has been wary about joining military strikes following Mr Cameron’s humiliating Commons defeat last year when he sought support for air strikes in Syria.

But, in a noticeable change of attitude, the Prime Minister has suggested he could order action against jihadists without MPs’ approval in advance.

He said: ‘If there was a direct threat to British national interests, or if … we had to act very rapidly to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe, the British Government must reserve the right to act immediately and inform the House of Commons afterwards.’

Officials insist no decisions have yet been made, but Mr Cameron said this week’s summit of NATO leaders in Wales will include a ‘review of the effectiveness of the international response so far’ and a discussion of ‘what more we should do to help the region’.

‘Britain will continue to consider what further role is in our national interests, including any further diplomatic, humanitarian or indeed military measures we might take.’

‘We support American air strikes. I do not think that we should rule anything out. We should act … to promote the British national interest and to help keep our people safe. We should consider everything.’

While at least 500 people have travelled from the UK to fight in the region, it is also believed that 700 from France, 400 from Germany and hundreds of others from countries including the US, Canada, Austria, Denmark, Spain, Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands and Australia have embarked for the warzone.

Mr Cameron told MPs the world was ‘shocked and sickened by the barbarism’ seen in Iraq this summer, including the slaughter of Muslims by Muslims, persecution of religious minorities, enslavement and rape of women, and the beheading of US journalist James Foley by an apparently British terrorist.

The prime minister’s message came as British forces flew more than nine tons of assault rifle ammunition to Kurdish forces in Iraq. Two RAF planes landed in Irbil, the capital of the Kurdish region of Iraq, to deliver the ammunition as well as body armour, helmets and sleeping bags.

US President Barack Obama said last month that America was seeking to build a coalition to ‘take the fight to these barbaric terrorists’. However, according to a recent ComRes survey, only 35 per cent of people believe the UK should join air strikes.

Former defence minister Sir Gerald Howarth said IS was a ‘substantial threat to the continued integrity of Iraq’ and that US air strikes have been ‘successful in halting its further advance’. He added: ‘Would it not be better for the RAF to join in that measure?’

Conservative MP Colonel Bob Stewart, said: ‘Tragically, the only way to defeat people who are determined to carry out appalling acts, despite reason, politics, economic sanctions or whatever, is to defeat them on the battlefield.’

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  • 04 September, 2014

Video verifications are hard to come by. But another sickening video released by Islamic State militants would appear to show the brutal beheading and execution of another US journalist. The family of Steven Sotloff had feared the worst following the receipt of ransom demands from the terrorists and the staged execution of James Foley two weeks ago. Their worst fears have been confirmed with an almost identical brutal killing.

Following the death of Mr Foley, the end of the video which captured his decapitation was a gruesomely efficient PR stunt. Many of those recruited to IS are known to be well versed in the power of social media and film production. The videos are troubling and deeply graphic and one wonders how in the name of religion these acts of grave depravity are attracting others to a cause that appears to have no bounds. IS had warned that Mr Sotloff would face a similar fate if President Barack Obama did not call off US airstrikes on IS positions in Syria and Iraq.

Mr Obama was never likely to accede to these demands. To do so would have simply allowed IS greater freedom to continue its violent and murderous progress towards establishing a regional caliphate, mercilessly slaughtering those who did not fit with its strictures on who that caliphate should encompass.

Mr Obama had no choice but to press on with his military operation, knowing full well that IS would, in all likelihood, carry out its threats of beheading Western hostages. The surety and knowledge of these events happening will have been hard for the U.S. to carry. IS poses enormous challenges for the West, and one where it shows little sign of how it might rise to the task.

This is not a group, either, that reserves its brutality for Westerners with high propaganda value, who can be presented and perceived as the representatives of a free democratic culture these jihadists so abhor. Its mentality is more hardwired than that, meting out violence just as mercilessly to fellow Muslims and fellow Arabs, often with no compunction.

The West is faced with a difficult challenge that requires a sophisticated response. It must now be a high priority in dealing with the threats posed by Islamic State.

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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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