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Al-Qaida-Linked Group Drives Back U.S.-Supported Fighters In Syria

Al-Qaida-Linked Group Drives Back U.S.-Supported Fighters In Syria

By Laura King and Nabih Bulos, Los Angeles Times

AMMAN, Jordan — Al-Qaida-linked fighters have overrun key northern bastions of U.S.-backed Syrian rebels, dealing a heavy blow to American hopes that moderate Syrian factions would provide significant aid in the battle against the militants of the Islamic State.

The onslaught by the Nusra Front in the northern province of Idlib routed the U.S.-equipped fighters, the group boasted in a statement Sunday that largely corroborated activists in the area Monday.

Internecine fighting among rebel factions had been going on for months in Idlib, but over the weekend the Nusra Front seized major positions of the U.S.-supported Syrian Revolutionaries Front, and members of another Western-backed faction, Haraket Hazm, then fled or surrendered, activists reported.

Dozens defected to the Nusra Front, according to the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based watchdog group. An undetermined amount of U.S.-provided weaponry also fell into the attackers’ hands, with Nusra Front supporters taking to social media to gloat.

Working with moderate Syrian rebels is a linchpin of the Western strategy against the Islamic State, with the U.S. and its allies staging airstrikes but not providing ground troops. The Syrian Revolutionaries Front and Haraket Hazm had been the first to receive heavy weaponry from the United States, such as TOW antitank missiles.

Israfil Yilmaz, the nom de guerre of a fighter claiming to be in Idlib, said on Twitter that tanks, antitank missiles and “much more equipment” had been seized from the Syrian Revolutionaries Front as the Nusra fighters advanced.

The Islamic State juggernaut has been concentrated in northern and eastern Syria, and large swaths of western Iraq. In Iraq’s Anbar province, Islamic State extremists have been reported by tribal figures to have executed several hundred members of the Ablu Nimr, a tribe that had tried to hold them off.

The Islamic State has also been besieging the northern Syrian town of Kobani for six weeks. Defenders, bolstered by a contingent of Iraqi Kurdish soldiers who arrived last week, have managed to hold them off, with the help of American airstrikes. But the Islamic State has bragged in propaganda videos that the town is about to fall.

The Islamic State, which has declared a “caliphate” in the territory it holds, enforces its rule with a reign of terror that has included beheadings, crucifixions and sexual slavery.

The Nusra Front, which is loyal to al-Qaida, is not as extremist as the Islamic State, but it has been designated a terrorist group by the United States, and has been targeted by U.S.-led airstrikes.

Rival groups have accused the Nusra Front of trying to carve out a “caliphate” of its own, at the expense of the fight to topple President Bashar Assad.

Jamal Maarouf, the Syrian Revolutionaries Front’s top commander, railed against the group in a video posted on YouTube. “We are defending Syria … you who have distorted Islam, you who have distorted religion, why do you fight us?” he shouts.

The Nusra Front said it was willing to observe a cease-fire, but demanded that Maarouf appear before an Islamic court.

AFP Photo/Karam al-Masri

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Renewed Fighting Flares Between Armenia, Azerbaijan

Renewed Fighting Flares Between Armenia, Azerbaijan

By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times

As the conflict between Ukraine and Russia flares into a sixth month, two other former Soviet republics are now engaged in renewed fighting over the remote, mountainous enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.

A six-year war between Armenian and Azerbaijani troops had been dormant since a truce was brokered by Russia 20 years ago — until clashes resumed in the South Caucasus region last week.

On Monday, the governments in Yerevan and Baku reported the worst bloodshed over the disputed territory in two decades had taken the lives of 13 Azerbaijanis and six Armenians.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the Itar-Tass news agency that he had asked the leaders of both countries to meet with Russian mediators in the Black Sea resort of Sochi on Friday to try to work out a plan to restore peace.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday expressed “deep concern” over the resurgence of fighting and urged the two countries to respect the long-agreed cease-fire conditions.

Russia, the United States, and France spearheaded peace efforts two decades ago, after more than 30,000 were killed in the bitter war for control of the territory that, like some of the disputed land in southeastern Ukraine, was carved up — irrespective of ethnic communities — by Soviet leaders decades before the 1991 collapse of the communist empire.

Nagorno-Karabakh, though largely populated by Armenians, was made part of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic under then-Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. But as anti-communist revolutions swept Eastern Europe in the late 1980s, Armenians in the enclave, backed by government forces from across the border, seized control, sending 700,000 Azerbaijanis fleeing for protection from Baku.

Although organized fighting ended with the 1994 cease-fire, a permanent settlement of the conflict has been elusive and hostilities have continued to simmer between the two neighbors.

Russia and Ukraine have been locked in conflict since Moscow-allied Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich was ousted by a pro-European revolt in February and Russian President Vladimir Putin seized Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, which is the base of Russia’s Black Sea naval fleet.

Lavrov’s diplomatic intervention suggested that Moscow intends to take the lead in trying to tamp down the latest flare-up between ex-Soviet neighbors. But Russia’s former alliance with France and the United States in the Caucasus region’s peace talks likely has been complicated by the United States and European Union sanctions imposed on Russia for its role in the deadly Ukraine fighting.

Photo via WikiCommons

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Foreigners Urged To Leave Libya Amid Rising Violence

Foreigners Urged To Leave Libya Amid Rising Violence

By Imed Lamloum

Tripoli (AFP) — Egypt and several Western states urged their nationals to leave Libya amid spiraling violence after two weeks of fighting left 97 people dead and a warning by state-owned National Oil Corp of a major disaster after a fuel tank was hit.

Washington evacuated its embassy staff on Saturday, with Secretary of State John Kerry warning the mission had faced a “real risk” from fierce fighting between armed groups for control of Tripoli’s international airport.

Another 38 people, mostly soldiers, were killed in 24 hours of fighting between the army and Islamists in the eastern city of Benghazi, military, and medical officials said on Sunday, in a further sign of the chaos plaguing the North African nation.

The Tripoli clashes, the most violent since the overthrow of dictator Moamer Kadhafi in 2011, started with an assault on the airport by a coalition of groups, mainly Islamists, which has since been backed by fighters from third city Misrata.

The attackers are battling to flush out fellow former rebels from the hill town of Zintan, southwest of Tripoli, who have controlled the airport for the past three years.

The health ministry said on Sunday the violence had killed 97 people, a toll based on casualty reports from eight public hospitals in the capital city and its suburbs.

More than 400 people were wounded.

Fighting was still raging, with explosions heard from early morning as militiamen battled around the airport.

State-owned National Oil Corp late Sunday warned of a major environmental and humanitarian catastrophe in the capital after a tank containing six million liters of fuel was hit by rocket fire in southern Tripoli and caught fire.

The tanks on the road leading to the airport hold a total of more than 90 million liters of fuel.

“There is a risk of a huge explosion which would cause damages in an area of between three and five kilometers,” NOC spokesman Mohamed Al-Hrari told private Al-Nabaa television.

The gas and oil ministry asked residents in the area on Facebook to leave immediately for security reasons.

Egypt’s foreign ministry said a rocket hit a house in Tripoli on Saturday, killing 23 people, including several Egyptians.

“There are 23 people dead after a Grad rocket fell on a house in Tripoli. Some of them are Egyptians, but we don’t know how many,” ministry spokesman Badr Abdelatty told AFP.

– Foreigners leaving –

Cairo called on “all Egyptian nationals in Tripoli and Benghazi to immediately leave and save themselves from this chaotic internal fighting”.

The foreign ministry said they should seek “safer areas in Libya or head to the Libya-Tunisia border”.

There were an estimated 1.5 million Egyptians in Libya before Kadhafi’s ouster. About two-thirds left during the war but many returned in 2012.

Also on Sunday, a British embassy convoy was fired on in a suspected attempted carjacking in western Tripoli. There were no casualties, a spokesman for London’s mission in Libya said.

“Shots were fired at our vehicles but they managed to drive on and leave the area,” Bob Phillipson said.

The violence prompted Britain, France, Germany, and the Netherlands to join Washington in urging their citizens to leave as soon as possible, after the United States pulled out its diplomatic staff under air cover on Saturday.

Belgium, Malta, Spain, and Turkey previously urged their nationals to leave.

Libya’s health ministry warned that foreigners leaving could cause a shortage of health workers, particularly since the Philippines ordered the departure of its citizens, 3,000 of whom were doctors and nurses in Libya, Tripoli said.

The airport has been closed since July 13 because of the clashes.

Libya’s interim government has warned that the fighting between those vying for control of the strategic airport threatened to tear the country apart.

In second city Benghazi, another 38 people, mostly soldiers, were killed in 24 hours of intense clashes between the army and Islamists.

A military source said the fighting erupted on Saturday when Islamist groups launched an assault on the headquarters of a special forces unit near the city centre, causing casualties among forces defending their barracks.

Benghazi’s main hospital said the bodies of 28 soldiers had been taken there in the past 24 hours, along with 50 wounded, while Al-Marj hospital, 60 miles to the east, spoke of two soldiers dead and 10 wounded.

A spokesman for the self-proclaimed Shura Council of Benghazi Revolutionaries, an alliance of Islamic and jihadist militia which has claimed a number of attacks on military bases in the area, said eight of its fighters were killed.

Near-daily clashes take place in Benghazi, parts of which have become strongholds for Islamist groups since Kadhafi’s overthrow.

AFP Photo/Mahmud Turkia

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Progress Reported In Ukraine-Russia Talks But Fighting Continues

Progress Reported In Ukraine-Russia Talks But Fighting Continues

By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times

Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry reported progress Monday after a second day of talks with a Moscow envoy aimed at ending the fighting between government forces and pro-Russia separatists in the east.

Violence continued, however, in the besieged, militant-occupied town of Slovyansk, demonstrating the virulence of the separatist movement, which appears to be spreading out of both Kiev’s and Moscow’s control.

Although details of the progress made in the peace talks were not released, Kiev media cited a Foreign Ministry statement that referred to a plan for bringing calm to the area.

“The sides reached a mutual understanding on key stages of the implementation of the plan and on a list of priorities which will contribute to a de-escalation of the situation in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine,” it said.

Newly inaugurated Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko sent a message to the negotiators and their mediator from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe that a halt to the armed clashes must be brought about right away.

“The situation where people die each day and Ukraine is paying such a high price is unacceptable,” Poroshenko said, the Interfax-Ukraine news agency reported.

The mediating role by OSCE veteran Heidi Tagliavini, a Swiss diplomat with experience negotiating security agreements in neighboring Georgia and Russia’s rebellious Chechnya republic, could boost the chances for success in the talks, as the 57-member alliance is the only security forum that includes Russia and Ukraine.

Russia is represented by its ambassador to Ukraine, Mikhail Zurabov, and Ukraine by its Berlin envoy, Pavlo Klimkin, the latter probably providing a window on the talks to the European Union.

It is the desire by western Ukrainians to orient their economy and diplomacy to the West that has angered Russian President Vladimir Putin and stirred up secessionist actions in Ukraine’s east, where Russian is widely spoken and much of the economy is intricately linked with that of Russia. Miners and laborers in the Donbass rust belt fear an economic association deal with the European Union would eventually shutter their obsolete industries and put them out of work.

Putin managed to lure Poroshenko’s predecessor, Viktor Yanukovich, away from signing the EU agreement last year, which provoked a massive rebellion that ousted the Kremlin ally in February. Yanukovich drew much of his support from the industrialized east, and he is accused by Kiev leaders — along with Putin — of fomenting the unrest in eastern Ukraine, which has taken about 200 lives since April.

Though the second day of meetings in Kiev reportedly made progress, clashes in the east spread to the town of Torez, about 45 miles east of the regional capital of Donetsk. The Kyiv Post reported at least two people were killed after insurgents attacked a military building in the town, citing a report by the online Ostrov regional news service.

Ukrainian military spokesman Vladyslav Selezniov told journalists in a radio call to Kiev from Donetsk that separatists had also tried to seize a military base in Artemivsk, about 50 miles north of Donetsk, but were repelled by government forces.

Government and separatist forces exchanged gunfire in Slovyansk, the town that has been at the center of the 2-month-old insurgency, The Associated Press reported. Dozens of cars carrying civilians were seen heading out of town to escape the fighting, the news agency said.

The pro-Moscow gunmen control key government facilities in more than a dozen towns and cities in the east and have proclaimed the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, where more than 6.5 million people live, to be independent of Ukraine.

Putin and Poroshenko met briefly in France last week when they attended ceremonies marking the 70th anniversary of D-Day. The two reportedly agreed it was essential to stop the conflict before it escalates into full-fledged civil war, but they apparently remain at odds over the Kremlin leader’s insistence that Ukraine cease operations aimed at recovering its seized territory.

In Moscow, the Russian Public Opinion Research Center published results of a survey of 1,600 Russians about their views of Poroshenko. The poll found 43 percent of respondents think the new Ukrainian president “represents the interests of the United States and the European Union.” Only 1 percent said they liked Poroshenko and 21 percent echoed Russia’s state-run media in describing him as the candidate of “fascists and nationalists,” the English-language daily Moscow Times reported.

©afp.com / Alexander Khudoteply