Gazette 092214

Monday September 22nd 2014

Turkey clamps down on Syria border after Kurdish unrest

Turkey has begun to close some of its border crossings with Syria after about 130,000 Kurdish refugees entered the country over the weekend.

On Sunday Turkish security forces clashed with Kurds protesting in solidarity with the refugees. Some protesters were reportedly trying to go to Syria to fight Islamic State (IS).
Most refugees are from Kobane, a town threatened by the advancing militants.
IS has taken over large swathes of Iraq and Syria in recent months.
Before the latest influx, there were already more than one million Syrian refugees in Turkey. They have fled since the start of the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad three years ago.
Some of the new arrivals are being sheltered in overcrowded schools, as Turkey struggles to cope with the influx.
'Huge numbers' On Friday Turkey opened a 30km (19-mile) section of the border to Syrians fleeing the town of Kobane, also known as Ayn al-Arab.
But on Monday only two out of nine border posts in the area remained open, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said.

Iraqi Kurdish official says peshmerga fighters have started receiving training from allies

IRBIL, Iraq –  A top Iraqi Kurdish security official says his forces have begun receiving training from western allies including the United States as they seek to beef up their capabilities against the Islamic State militant group.
Helgurd Hikmet, general director of the ministry overseeing Kurdish military forces known as peshmerga, tells The Associated Press that France, Italy and Germany are also among countries providing training to help Kurdish forces use new machine guns, mortars, rockets and demining robots they have received.

The U.S. launched airstrikes and humanitarian missions in August to aid Iraqi and Kurdish security forces in northern Iraq. The French last week joined in the aerial campaign. A number of European countries have also committed to arming the Kurds and providing humanitarian support for more than a million displaced people.

UK special forces are in Iraq, but how will we know?

• SAS foreign operations, subjected to official blackout, are likely to be increasingly significant
• Blair's former top adviser says talk to Isis supporters

 

British special forces are trying to gather intelligence in Iraq, and possibly in Syria as well, on the commanders, and hostage-takers, of the Islamic State (Isis).
We don't know for sure because of the British government's refusal to comment on the activities of the SAS or the SBS, its naval equivalent.
"We never comment on the disposition of our special forces anywhere in the world and that will remain our policy", Philip Hammond, the foreign secretary, told the BBC last month.
This official censorship in practice may be honoured more in the breach than in the observance.
However, the government's attitude towards the reporting of Britain's role in military operations was reflected in Hammond's clampdown on the media and the military when he was defence secretary.
It is reinforced in a proposal whereby all members of the armed forces – and employees of private companies involved in military contracts – would be required to disclose to Ministry of Defence officials any contact they have had with journalists.
These attempts at censorship come at a time when special forces are playing, and are likely to continue to play, an increasingly important and significant role in conflicts.
Retired general Sir Graeme Lamb, a former director of British special forces, said on Monday the government should now say it is prepared to "rule in" ground forces in dealing with Isis, including sending advisers to assist the Iraqi army.
Lamb was intervening in the growing debate over how to combat Isis after the former prime minister, Tony Blair, said in a BBC interview: "Unless you're prepared to fight these people on the ground, you may contain them but you won't defeat them."

French security official says ISIS threatened attacks against civilians of coalition countries

PARIS –  France's top security official says militants from the Islamic State group have threatened to kill civilians in the coalition of countries arrayed against the extremists.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve says he is confident in the country's security.

Cazeneuve said Monday "this threat to kill civilians, added to the execution of hostages and to the massacres, is yet another demonstration of the barbarism of these terrorists, justifying our fight without truce or pause."
He added that "France is not afraid because it is prepared to respond to their threats."
The al Qaeda breakaway group, which wants to establish an Islamic state, or caliphate, rules by its harsh version of Islamic law in territory it captured straddling the Syria-Iraq border. France and the U.S. have conducted airstrikes in Iraq against the militants.

Palestinian Reconciliation Talks Begin In Egypt

Rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah on Monday began reconciliation talks in Cairo, one day ahead of negotiations with Israel on cementing the Aug. 26 truce that ended a 50-day war in Gaza, according to Egyptian security officials.

The talks were being held behind closed doors at the Egyptian intelligence headquarters in the capital, Cairo, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. There was no media access to the negotiations.
Blame-trading between the long-time rival Palestinian factions has become more frequent since the end of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza earlier this summer, a sign that an agreement on running the coastal territory — now under Hamas' control — is not within reach.

Before the war broke out, Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose Fatah group is in control of the West Bank, had worked out a tentative agreement with Hamas under which he would head a temporary unity government of experts in both the West Bank and Gaza until new elections are held. However, major issues were left unresolved under that deal, including the fate of 40,000 government employees hired by Hamas in the Gaza Strip as well as control over Gaza's Hamas-dominated security forces.

Yemen: Sanaa calm in wake of peace deal

Yemen's capital, Sanaa, is reported to be calm a day after the government and Shia Houthi rebels signed an agreement to end days of fighting.

But the Houthis remain in control of the ministries and government buildings that they seized over the weekend.
They have also reportedly occupied the house of an army general who led several campaigns against the group.
A deal was struck on Sunday, hours after the prime minister quit following clashes that killed dozens of people.
Under the UN-brokered deal, a new government will be formed and the Houthis and southern separatists will nominate a new prime minister within three days.
The Houthis, who are based in the mountainous north of Yemen, have been advancing on the capital in recent weeks and staging mass protests calling for greater rights.
Hundreds of people fled the violence between the rebels and pro-government forces.
'Fragile peace' Sunday's deal called on the Houthis to hand over all military and government buildings they had seized in the capital. However, reports suggest the rebels remain in control of the buildings, possibly in conjunction with the security forces.
Houthi officials had earlier suggested that the rebels were aligned with elements within the security forces.
The peace deal remains fragile, with the government's call for all groups to withdraw from Sanaa and disarm seeming like wishful thinking for now, according to the BBC Arab Affairs Editor Sebastian Usher. 
Related: ISIS Urges Followers To Attack U.S., French Citizens

Afghanistan's Election Body Names Ghani New President-Elect

KABUL, Sept 21 (Reuters) - Afghanistan's election commission declared former finance minister Ashraf Ghani as the war-ravaged country's president-elect on Sunday after an acrimonious dispute over fraud, but did not give the final vote tally after a U.N.-monitory audit.
The announcement came hours after Ghani and rival, Abdullah Abdullah, signed a power-sharing agreement to end two months of bitter wrangling over accusations of fraud that undermined confidence in the election and emboldened the Taliban insurgency at a crucial time as most foreign troops prepare to leave.
Independent Election Commission chairman Ahmad Yousuf Nuristani acknowledged grave flaws in the election process and said the U.N. audit could not detect all of it.
Nevertheless, he said that based on the official final tally of votes, the commission had a duty to declare a victor.
"The Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan declare Dr. Ashraf Ghani Ahmad as the president of Afghanistan," Nuristani said.
He did not give the final percentages and took no questions.

US quietly releases 14 Pakistani detainees from Afghanistan jail

Pakistani human rights group announces the transfer and says it is the largest number of Pakistanis US has released so far
The United States has quietly released 14 Pakistani citizens from military detention in Afghanistan, where the US holds its most secret cohort of detainees in its war on terrorism.
The US military transferred the 14 to Pakistani government custody on Saturday. It did not publicize the release, as is typical with releases from the detention center on the outskirts of Bagram Airfield which is known formally as the Detention Facility in Parwan.
A Pakistani human rights group instead announced the transfer and said it was the largest number of Pakistanis the US has thus far released.
None of the 14 Pakistanis was ever charged with a crime. The US has held them in wartime detention, though it has not picked up many – perhaps most – of the non-Afghan detainees it holds in Afghanistan in Afghanistan itself.
Unlike detainees at Guantánamo Bay, the Bagram non-Afghans – mostly Pakistanis, but also Yemenis, Tunisians, a Jordanian and a Russian – have no access to lawyers and judges, and have minimal ability to contest their detention. The US has never publicly named the non-Afghans it holds, let alone explained the circumstances of each man’s detention.
Saturday’s release was the latest in a series of recent transfers that have reduced the non-Afghan population held at Bagram. The Justice Project Pakistan, a human rights group that has pressed the Pentagon on a detention issue that remains obscure in the US, counted 39 Pakistanis released within the past 10 months, most recently with nine Pakistanis released last month. Two Yemenis detained at Bagram, Amin al-Bakri and Fadi al-Maqaleh, and a Kazakh, Farabi Ryskulov, were also released last month.
Army Lieutenant Colonel Myles Caggins, the Pentagon’s spokesman for detention issues, said the release was “not hasty” and was “part of our ongoing efforts to draw down all our facilities in Afghanistan”. Unless the next Afghan president signs a garrisoning agreement with the US, as President Obama and his Nato allies urge, all Nato militaries must withdraw from the country by the end of the year.

Thousands March In Moscow Against Ukraine Fighting

MOSCOW (AP) — Tens of thousands of people marched through central Moscow on Sunday to demonstrate against the fighting in Ukraine and Russia's alleged complicity in the conflict.

An Associated Press reporter estimated the crowd at about 20,000, although the city police department put the number at about 5,000.

The demonstrators chanted slogans including "No to war" and "The junta is in the Kremlin, not Kiev." The latter refers to Russia's contention that the ousting of Ukraine's former Russia-friendly president was a coup.

The fighting between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine that erupted after the ouster has killed more than 3,000 people. Ukraine and Western countries claim Russia is supplying troops and equipment to the rebels, which Moscow denies.

"Our country is acting as an aggressor, like Germany in the war," said demonstrator Konstantin Alexeyev, 35.

The Ukraine conflict has boosted nationalist sentiment among Russians, many of whom regard eastern Ukraine as rightfully a part of Russia, and coverage of the crisis on state-controlled television channels has skewed strongly against the Ukrainian authorities.

Ukraine crisis: Military to pull back artillery in east

Ukraine is preparing to withdraw heavy weaponry away from separatist rebel lines in the east, the military says.

The two sides agreed on Saturday to set up a buffer zone in eastern Ukraine, more than a fortnight after a shaky ceasefire came into force.
Although the truce is still in place, clashes have continued around the cities of Donetsk and Mariupol.
More than 3,000 people have died since fighting broke out in the two regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in April.
Ukraine's parliament passed a bill last week granting three-year "self-rule" to parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions - a decision condemned by some MPs as "capitulation".
'Foreign mercenaries' Under the terms of the nine-point deal agreed in Belarus, both the pro-Russian rebels and Ukrainian forces are to pull back their heavy artillery 15km (9.5 miles) from the line of engagement, creating a 30km buffer zone.
Ukrainian National Security and Defence Council spokesman Col Andriy Lysenko said pro-Russian rebels had for their part begun moving their heavy artillery, but it was "not as massive as we expected". 
-

US military searches for three Afghan soldiers missing from Cape Cod base

Three Afghanistan national army officers, do not pose a threat and ‘may be trying to defect’, state governor says
As police and US military officials c searched for three Afghanistan national army officers who went missing during a training exercise at a Cape Cod military base, Governor Deval Patrick said one of the possibilities being investigated is that they may be trying to find a way to stay in the United States.
Patrick said Monday that the military does not believe that the three soldiers pose a danger to the public.
“I don’t have a reason to believe that they pose a threat. They were vetted by the military, they were cleared by the military,” Patrick told reporters while he visited a preschool program in Quincy.
“There is a lot of speculation within the military that they may be trying to defect,” he said.
Lieutenant Colonel James Sahady of the Massachusetts National Guard said there were no details to report on the search Monday.
Military officials said the Afghan soldiers had been participating in a US Central Command regional cooperation training exercise at Joint Base Cape Cod. They arrived at Camp Edwards on 11 September and were last seen Saturday at the Cape Cod Mall in Hyannis during an off day for the program.
The soldiers were reported missing by base security personnel Saturday night. They were identified as Major Jan Mohammad Arash, Captain Mohammad Nasir Askarzada and Captain Noorullah Aminyar.
The regional cooperation training exercises have been held annually since 2004 to promote cooperation and interoperability among forces, build functional capacity, practice peacekeeping operations and enhance readiness.

Lerner breaks silence, says 'not sorry' over role in IRS scandal

Former IRS official Lois Lerner, the central figure in a scandal involving the federal agency, is breaking her silence, saying she's not sorry and maintaining she “didn’t do anything wrong” -- despite widely documented evidence that her division targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny.
The former head of the tax-exempt unit, speaking with Politico, gave her first media interview since the scandal broke 16 months ago. She has twice refused to answer questions before Congress, but used the interview to publicly assert her innocence. 

"I know I did the best I could under the circumstances and am not sorry for anything I did," Lerner said. 
Lerner, who resigned amid the scandal, spoke at length with Politico, which also spoke to about 20 co-workers and friends in a comprehensive, 3,837-word story on Lerner and the events around the scandal. The profile-style piece at times paints her in a sympathetic light, including personal anecdotes ranging from how she baked brownies for staff to how she put her babysitter's son through college. 
However, Lerner, who was joined in the interview by her corporate lawyer husband, Michael Miles, and two personal lawyers, is not quoted extensively in the piece. Her on-the-record comments mainly address her claims that she simply was doing her job and has no regrets.
“I’m proud of my career and the job I did for this country,” the 63-year-old Lerner, who also is a lawyer, said in the roughly two-hour interview.

Democrats Sink Controversial Obama Nominee Michael Boggs

WASHINGTON -- Progressives appear to have won their fight to sink President Barack Obama's controversial judicial nominee Michael Boggs.
The New York Times reported Monday that Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in an interview that Boggs lacks the support to pass the committee and should withdraw his nomination.
“He doesn’t have the votes," Leahy told the paper.

Boggs, who is up for a lifetime post on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, has been under attack all year from progressive groups and Democratic lawmakers over his socially conservative track record as a former Georgia state legislator. Among other things, he voted to ban same-sex marriage, to keep the Confederate insignia on the Georgia flag and to require doctors to post online their personal information and the annual number of abortions they performed.
NARAL Pro-Choice America has been one of Boggs' biggest critics, launching an entire campaign aimed at sinking his nomination.

White House security stepped up after intrusions

The US Secret Service says it has stepped up security at the White House and launched a "comprehensive review" of procedures there after two attempted breaches in 24 hours.

The more serious incident saw a man wielding a knife enter the building on Friday, prompting a partial evacuation.
President Obama was not present at the time of the incident.
The following day, another man drove up to a security gate. Both men have since been arrested.
President Obama said he still had "full confidence" in the Secret Service, which is tasked with protecting senior American officials and visiting leaders.
'Not acceptable' The man involved in Friday's incident, Omar Gonzalez, was only stopped after entering the North Portico doors, the Secret Service said.
Video footage showed the intruder running across a White House lawn after scaling a fence. He was later found to be carrying a 9 cm (3.5 inch) folding knife.

Panetta says US paying the price for not arming Syrian rebels

Former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said Sunday that he believes the Islamic State terror group was able to flourish in part because the U.S. entered the conflict in Syria too late, saying the Obama administration should have armed the country’s moderate rebels earlier.
Panetta, who served in the Obama administration from July 2011 to February 2013, said in an interview on CBS News’ “60 Minutes” that he was in support of arming the moderate Syrian rebels in 2012, along with several other members of the administration.  

“I think that would've helped,” Panetta said. “And I think in part, we pay the price for not doing that in what we see happening with ISIS.”
According to CBS News, Panetta writes in his new book “Worthy Fights” that he, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the director of the CIA and the joint chiefs chairman all urged Obama to arm the rebels at a 2012 meeting.
“The real key was how can we develop a leadership group among the opposition that would be able to take control,” Panetta said. “And my view was to have leverage to do that; we would have to provide the weapons and the training in order for them to really be willing to work with us in that effort.”
However, Obama decided against it.
-