THE MYSTERY OF ISIS

NY REVIEW OF BOOKS

TOR, THE DARKNET

TERRY GROSS, FRESH AIR


There's a side to the Internet most people have never visited. Tor Hidden Services, or the Tor Network, is an encrypted, hidden network of about 50,000 websites that can't be accessed with a traditional browser like Chrome or Firefox. Its users include criminals, trolls and extremists.

Author Jamie Bartlett, who chronicles the secret corners of the Internet in his book The Dark Net, likens it to the "Wild West."

"You have anonymous users visiting sites that can't be censored. So anybody with something to hide, whether it's for good reasons or for ill, finds a very natural home there," Bartlett tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross.

Bartlett first became involved with the Tor Network, which some users refer to as "the darknet," when he was researching the online components of radical social and political movements. Gradually his investigation expanded to include different channels within the darknet. As part of the research for the book, he moderated a trolling group, purchased marijuana on a black market site and studied child pornography networks.

Bartlett says that infiltrating the encrypted world of the Internet wasn't as difficult as he expected: "I found overall that people that live in these darker parts of the net actually want to get their side of the story out, they want to be heard. So once you have their trust, you actually can't stop them from talking; they won't shut up."




Interview Highlights

On using Tor browsers to access the "darknet"

It's called a Tor browser [and] you download it from the net. ... It was originally invented by the U.S. naval intelligence who wanted a Web browser that would allow their intelligence officers to browse the net without giving themselves away. ... It essentially means that when you go online with it, you can go to any website; you can go to CNN.com with this browser, but it bounces your request to access a website via several different computers around the world encrypting and decrypting your request as it goes, which means by the time it gets to the CNN website nobody really knows where that request has come from.

This browser can be used be for anything and more and more people are using it because they care about their Internet privacy. But it's also your key, your way in, to this second, hidden, encrypted Internet which is technically called Tor Hidden Services, some people call it "the darknet."

On how darknet marketplaces work

When you go onto this site, you use your encrypted browser — the Tor browser — you have your Bitcoin, which is a cryptocurrency that allows you to transact with people; it's sort of a form of digital cash that keeps your identity secret. So you have this clever encryption system but it's so familiar when you arrive. You get online, you log onto the site, and you are presented with what essentially looks like an eBay for drugs — so thousands of products from hundreds of different vendors based all around the world, and all those trappings of an e-commerce site. You have your special offers. You have your product descriptions. You have your — crucially — your user reviews of each product that's on offer. ... You scroll through the different options available to you. You contact the vendor, if you so wish. You place an order. You pay with your cryptocurrency. You put your address in, and you wait for your product to arrive in the post. It really is that simple.



On the philosophy that the darknet exists because of individual freedom and privacy

There are certainly those who use the language of libertarianism to excuse themselves from being responsible for their actions. But beyond that, I think there is a very significant number of people who genuinely believe — and indeed this goes back to the '90s when we had a wave of interest in encryption and privacy and anonymity online — that the Internet in some ways was a great hope for libertarians, that it was a place where people could come together, communicate, transact, create communities and identities, entirely outside of the scope of this state. ...

The reality is, of course, with this sort of world view, you are always going to get an incredible explosion, expression, of freedom, ideas [and] activity that many of us would find quite unacceptable. Sometimes that's incredible innovative and interesting, and sometimes it's very dark.

So I guess it's a story about technology in general, really, which is that it extends human freedom, extends human power and people will use that for good and for ill.

On child pornography on the darknet

In this hidden Tor network, sites are very, very difficult indeed to close down because they're very hard to locate. You need to locate the server of a website to shut it down and with the encryption that this system uses, that's very difficult. But there's another side to this which isn't about clever encryption. It's not about distributed images. It's the way that these images are being produced. According to the Internet Watch Foundation, which is a U.K.-based organization that monitors this stuff, about a third of child pornography images are now being produced by young people themselves, people under the age of 18 who are taking photographs or images or videos of themselves and their partners and then sharing them amongst their friends or posting them online. So when you have so many young people that are producing the images themselves, there are pedophiles lurking, collecting those images and then adding them to this sort of warehouse, this distributed system or sharing and storing images. So those two things together make this an incredibly difficult problem to solve.




On how the self-proclaimed Islamic State uses social media

I've seen [ISIS] using what you might consider to be very traditional advertising techniques probably more associated with cool, young advertising and marketing types in Brooklyn than people fighting for Islamic State, but this is the thing: In a way, it's not surprising at all, because the people that are joining Islamic State or ISIS are typically Western men in their 20s and 30s. Is it any surprise that they might take to Facebook or to Twitter or to YouTube to produce glitzy videos, to try to make their content go viral? I've seen them produce videos of guns and cats and all the sorts of strange things you get with viral marketing. ... They'll often post pictures of themselves with guns and then they'll add a cat into it because images of cats tend to do very well on social media; people love cats.

On how hacking groups like Anonymous are taking down ISIS propaganda

My view is, with groups like Anonymous, these are exactly the types of people we need on our side to fight against groups like ISIS. Now, sometimes Anonymous will do things that I don't agree with. But frankly, when you're fighting against someone like ISIS, who are so good in the digital space, you need people who are just as good to try to counteract their influence. I think it's going to be groups like Anonymous that will be far better at doing that than governments.

On trolling

The word "troll" ... actually refers to a fishing technique of dragging a baited line across a surface of water to see what bites on it. That's where the term comes from, not the cave-dwelling ogre.

There are many people who consider that trolling is culture, it's an art form, it's one of the longest standing cultures on the net. And for these people it's, again, a bit libertarian, it's a statement of free expression. It's a statement that we have to be offensive to others if we want to keep peoples' skin thick. If we want to live in a society where we value free speech it almost demands that we be offensive to others. And they see their job as going around and offending other people, often in a very clever, sort of sophisticated way. They're really upset that the word "trolling" has now come to mean essentially anyone that bullies another individual online. They don't see that as trolling; theirs is an art form.


Read more at TERRY GROSS, FRESH AIR

CASUALTY OF WAR: Hagel Resigns Under Pressure

Yuri Gripas / Reuters

N.Y. TIMES

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel handed in his resignation under pressure on Monday, the first cabinet-level casualty of the collapse of President Obama’s Democratic majority in the Senate and the struggles of his national security team to respond to an onslaught of global crises.

Mr. Hagel’s aides had maintained in recent weeks that he expected to serve the full four years as defense secretary. His removal appears to be an effort by the White House to show that it is sensitive to critics who have pointed to stumbles in the government’s early response to several national security issues, including the Ebola crisis and the threat posed by the Islamic State.

 Mr. Hagel, who often struggled to articulate a clear viewpoint, was widely viewed as a passive defense secretary.

 

Mr. Hagel, a respected former senator who struck a friendship with Mr. Obama when they were both critics of the Iraq war from positions on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has nonetheless had trouble penetrating the tight team of former campaign aides and advisers who form Mr. Obama’s closely knit set of loyalists. Senior administration officials have characterized him as quiet during cabinet meetings; Mr. Hagel’s defenders said that he waited until he was alone with the president before sharing his views, the better to avoid leaks.

 

Whatever the case, Mr. Hagel struggled to fit in with Mr. Obama’s close circle and was viewed as never gaining traction in the administration after a bruising confirmation fight among his old Senate colleagues, during which he was criticized for seeming tentative in his responses to sharp questions.

He never really shed that pall after arriving at the Pentagon, and in the past few months he has largely ceded the stage to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, who officials said initially won the confidence of Mr. Obama with his recommendation of military action against the Islamic State.

 

In Mr. Hagel’s less than two years on the job, his detractors said he struggled to inspire confidence at the Pentagon in the manner of his predecessors, especially Robert M. Gates. But several of Mr. Obama’s top advisers over the past few months have also acknowledged privately that the president did not want another high-profile defense secretary in the mold of Mr. Gates, who went on to write a memoir of his years with Mr. Obama in which he sharply criticized the president. Mr. Hagel, they said, in many ways was exactly the kind of defense secretary whom the president, after battling the military during his first term, wanted.

 

Mr. Hagel, for his part, spent his time on the job largely carrying out Mr. Obama’s stated wishes on matters like bringing back American troops from Afghanistan and trimming the Pentagon budget, with little pushback. He did manage to inspire loyalty among enlisted soldiers and often seemed at his most confident when talking to troops or sharing wartime experiences as a Vietnam veteran.

But Mr. Hagel has often had problems articulating his thoughts — or administration policy — in an effective manner, and has sometimes left reporters struggling to describe what he has said in news conferences. In his side-by-side appearances with both General Dempsey and Secretary of State John Kerry, Mr. Hagel, a decorated Vietnam veteran and the first former enlisted combat soldier to be defense secretary, has often been upstaged.

He raised the ire of the White House in August as the administration was ramping up its strategy to fight the Islamic State, directly contradicting the president, who months before had likened the Sunni militant group to a junior varsity basketball squad. Mr. Hagel, facing reporters in his now-familiar role next to General Dempsey, called the Islamic State an “imminent threat to every interest we have,” adding, “This is beyond anything that we’ve seen.” White House officials later said they viewed those comments as unhelpful, although the administration still appears to be struggling to define just how large is the threat posed by the Islamic State.

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Kristoffer Tripplaar/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images

ELIZABETH DREW, N.Y. REVIEW OF BOOKS

Though Hagel and Obama thought quite alike and respected each other, Hagel was probably not cut out for the Obama administration, or for what it’s evolved into. Though Hagel had, and used, a direct line to Obama—calling in frustration after a larger meeting where he felt he hadn’t been listened to, and over time largely wasn’t, Obama wasn’t as welcoming of diverse voices as he’d first indicated he would be. Hagel was never one to blend quietly into the tapestry. He prided himself in being his own man, and he liked to talk about his opinions—to the press and the public as well as on the Senate floor. Hagel wasn’t destined to be a docile member of an administration over which the White House exercises the tightest control in memory—especially one in which policy was made by a small group in the White House headed by a remote president who doesn’t care for turbulence and who is capable of changing policy on a dime. In particular, defense policy has time and again lurched head-snappingly from firm decision to its reverse. Bit by bit, Hagel saw policy in the Middle East move in the opposite direction of what he’d understood was his assignment and on which he and the president had once agreed.

Susan Rice

Hagel particularly chafed at the White House’s governing style on national security policy. He believed—and in this he was far from alone within and outside the administration—that national security adviser Susan Rice is in over her head. And Rice’s admittedly abrasive style put off a large number of people. But she’s been close to the president from the days of the 2008 campaign, and that appears to be what matters most to him. Initiatives, and not just in security policy, would get clogged up at the White House in task forces to study them. The NSC, which was originally a modest-sized organization set up to coordinate among the relevant cabinet departments, has metastasized into a staff of about four hundred people and under the Obama administration actually makes foreign and defense policy. A cabinet office has traditionally been an august position (if somewhat faded)—being called “Mr. Secretary” or “Madame Secretary” counts for a lot in Washington, and defense is one of the top ones. The Obama White House’s famous “micro-management” of the Departments—treating Cabinet officers as junior assistants, sometimes the last to know of a change in policy, would particularly trouble a person of pride, not to mention one who has held elective office. Hagel made no secret of his frustration. .....[A] senior adviser said to me Monday evening: “If Hagel had agreed with the White House he wouldn’t have been fired.”

OBAMA'S QUAGMIRE: limited war is rarely successful. And Arming Rebels Rarely Works.

Turkish Kurds stand on a hilltop on the outskirts of Suruc, at the Turkey-Syria border, as they watch smoke from a fire caused by the US-led coalition aircrafts in Kobani, Syria. (Lefteris Pitarakis/AP)

DAVID IGNATIOUS, WASHINGTON POST

What happens when an American plan for limited war against the Islamic State meets the savage reality of combat, as happened this week when the extremists pounded Kurdish fighters just inside Syria’s border with Turkey ? The cry rose in Washington and abroad for more American military involvement. This is how conflicts that start off contained begin to escalate.

Here’s President Obama’s dilemma in a nutshell: He has proposed a strategy for dealing with the Islamic State that is, in the words of Harvard professor Graham Allison, “limited, patient, local and flexible.” This calibrated approach makes sense to Allison, one of America’s most experienced strategists, because it limits U.S. exposure in fighting an adversary that doesn’t immediately threaten the United States.

The problem is that military history, since the days of the Romans, tells us that limited war is rarely successful. Policymakers, when faced with a choice between going “all in” or doing nothing, usually choose a middle option of partial intervention. But that leads to stalemates and eventual retreats that drive our generals crazy. The warrior ethos says, “If you’re in it, win it.” The politician rounds the edges.

Allison argued recently in the National Interest that other nations should bear the brunt of this war: “If our friends and allies . . . to whom ISIS [the Islamic State] poses an imminent or even existential threat are unwilling to fight themselves, to kill and to die for their own interests and values, Americans should ask: Why should we?” 

The United States’ problem since World War II is that it has chosen to fight limited wars that had ambiguous outcomes, at best. This was the case in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Only in 1991’s Operation Desert Storm did the United States win a decisive victory, but it had limited objectives and faced a weak adversary. As Henry Kissinger recently observed, the fight against the Islamic State comes when the American public is already demoralized by this chain of non-success.
Frustration with no-win conflicts led Gen. Colin Powell to declare what came to be known as the “Powell Doctrine” — that America should go to war only when vital national security is threatened, the public is supportive, allies are on board and there’s a clear exit strategy. Obama, too, hoped to avoid frustrating, unpopular wars in Syria and Iraq.

Rebel fighters in Nicaragua in 1987. Credit John Hopper/Associated Press

N.Y. TIMES

 C.I.A. Study of Covert Aid Fueled Skepticism About Helping Syrian Rebels.

WASHINGTON — The Central Intelligence Agency has run guns to insurgencies across the world during its 67-year history — from Angola to Nicaragua to Cuba. The continuing C.I.A. effort to train Syrian rebels is just the latest example of an American president becoming enticed by the prospect of using the spy agency to covertly arm and train rebel groups.

An internal C.I.A. study has found that it rarely works.

The still-classified review, one of several C.I.A. studies commissioned in 2012 and 2013 in the midst of the Obama administration’s protracted debate about whether to wade into the Syrian civil war, concluded that many past attempts by the agency to arm foreign forces covertly had a minimal impact on the long-term outcome of a conflict. They were even less effective, the report found, when the militias fought without any direct American support on the ground.

 The findings of the study, described in recent weeks by current and former American government officials, were presented in the White House Situation Room and led to deep skepticism among some senior Obama administration officials about the wisdom of arming and training members of a fractured Syrian opposition.

Although Mr. Obama originally intended the C.I.A. to arm and train the rebels to fight the Syrian military, the focus of the American programs has shifted to training the rebel forces to fight the Islamic State, an enemy of Mr. Assad.

The C.I.A. review, according to several former American officials familiar with its conclusions, found that the agency’s aid to insurgencies had generally failed in instances when no Americans worked on the ground with the foreign forces in the conflict zones, as is the administration’s plan for training Syrian rebels.

One exception, the report found, was when the C.I.A. helped arm and train mujahedeen rebels fighting Soviet troops in Afghanistan during the 1980s, an operation that slowly bled the Soviet war effort and led to a full military withdrawal in 1989. That covert war was successful without C.I.A. officers in Afghanistan, the report found, largely because there were Pakistani intelligence officers working with the rebels in Afghanistan.

But the Afghan-Soviet war was also seen as a cautionary tale. Some of the battle-hardened mujahedeen fighters later formed the core of Al Qaeda and used Afghanistan as a base to plan the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. This only fed concerns that no matter how much care was taken to give arms only to so-called moderate rebels in Syria, the weapons could ultimately end up with groups linked to Al Qaeda, like the Nusra Front.

“What came afterwards was impossible to eliminate from anyone’s imagination,” said the former senior official, recalling the administration debate about whether to arm the Syrian rebels.

Last month, Mr. Obama said he would redouble American efforts by having the Pentagon participate in arming and training rebel forces. That program has yet to begin.

Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said last week that it would be months of “spade work” before the military had determined how to structure the program and how to recruit and vet the rebels.

“This is going to be a long-term effort,” he said.

Airstrikes Effect Limited As U.S. Focus on ISIS Frees Syria to Battle Rebels

THE GUARDIAN

Turkish soldiers on the border with Syria, with Kobani visible beyond as smoke from a shell rises. Photograph: Lefteris Pitarakis/AP

US-led air strikes in northern Syria have failed to interrupt the advance of Islamic State (Isis) fighters closing in on a key city on the Turkish border, raising questions about the western strategy for defeating the jihadi movement.
Almost two weeks after the Pentagon extended its aerial campaign from Iraq to neighbouring Syria in an attempt to take on Isis militants in their desert strongholds, Kurdish fighters said the bombing campaign was having little impact in driving them back.
Isis units have edged to within two kilometres of the centre of Kobani, according to Kurds fighting a rearguard action inside the city. The jihadis, who this weekend generated further outrage with the murder of the British hostage Alan Henning, are simply too numerous to be cowed by the air assault by US fighter jets, the Kurds say.
“Air strikes alone are really not enough to defeat Isis in Kobani,” said Idris Nassan, a senior spokesman for the Kurdish fighters desperately trying to defend the important strategic redoubt from the advancing militants. “They are besieging the city on three sides, and fighter jets simply cannot hit each and every Isis fighter on the ground.”
He said Isis had adapted its tactics to military strikes from the air. “Each time a jet approaches, they leave their open positions, they scatter and hide. What we really need is ground support. We need heavy weapons and ammunition in order to fend them off and defeat them.”

An American-led airstrike on Wednesday in Kobani, Syria, on the Turkish border. A Turkish official said the bombs did not stop the militants’ advance into town. Credit Sedat Suna/European Pressphoto Agency        

 N.Y. TIMES

The United States’ focus on the Islamic State has given cover to Syrian forces, they say. That has freed Mr. Assad’s military from worrying about checking the militant group’s advances and allowed them to continue to focus attacks on the greater political threat — less extreme Syrian-based insurgent groups bent on ousting Mr. Assad and the communities where they hold sway.

The Syrian government had long focused its attacks on insurgents other than the Islamic State, a group that had seemed more interested in establishing Islamic rule in its territories than in ousting Mr. Assad. But after the group overran parts of Iraq and carried out a series of lightning routs of Syrian Army bases, terrifying many government supporters, Syrian warplanes began attacking it with more intensity in its eastern strongholds.

 

That dynamic is at the heart of Washington’s impasse with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, who is demanding that President Obama increase efforts to oust Mr. Assad before Turkey takes tougher action against the Islamic State.

The attacks by the Syrian government are creating other political problems for the United States. With both air forces in the sky, attacks by the Syrian government can be mistaken for American ones, including raids that kill civilians.

 

Mistrust of the United States is deepening among Syrian opponents of the government, including insurgents whom Mr. Obama hopes to train as a ground force against Islamic State militants.

 Some Syrians go further, saying that the simultaneous bombings are evidence that the United States is covertly coordinating with the Syrian government. Mr. Obama has publicly ruled out such coordination, saying Mr. Assad lost his legitimacy after using force against peaceful protesters and carrying out indiscriminate bombings.

 

Syrians feel abandoned by the world, and see Washington’s decision to prioritize the battle against the Islamic State as a victory for Mr. Assad’s strategy of eliminating moderate opposition and presenting his international opponents with a choice between him and extremists.

Since the American-led campaign began about two weeks ago, however, the need for Syrian forces to check the Islamic State has ebbed, and some insurgents who oppose the militant group say the government attacks on them have intensified.

 

A United States official said there were indications that since the American campaign started, Syrian fighter jets and helicopters had increased strikes somewhat in the core territories of non-Islamic State insurgents, such as Idlib, Aleppo and the Damascus suburbs.

“It would be silly for them not to take advantage of the U.S. doing airstrikes,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential intelligence reports. “They’ve focused in the west and left off the east, where we are operating. Essentially, we’ve allowed them to perform an economy of force. They don’t have to be focused all over the country, just on those who threaten their population centers.” 

MID-EAST MUSLIMS IN CRISIS

Syrians check a damaged house, reportedly hit by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes in western Aleppo province on Sept. 23. Sami Ali/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

TOM FRIEDMAN, N.Y. TIMES

The rise of the Islamic State, also known and ISIS, is triggering some long overdue, brutally honest, soul-searching by Arabs and Muslims about how such a large, murderous Sunni death cult could have emerged in their midst. Look at a few samples, starting with “The Barbarians Within Our Gates,” written in Politico last week by Hisham Melhem, the Washington bureau chief of Al-Arabiya, the Arabic satellite channel.

“With his decision to use force against the violent extremists of the Islamic State, President Obama ... is stepping once again — and with understandably great reluctance — into the chaos of an entire civilization that has broken down. Arab civilization, such as we knew it, is all but gone. The Arab world today is more violent, unstable, fragmented and driven by extremism — the extremism of the rulers and those in opposition — than at any time since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire a century ago.

“Every hope of modern Arab history has been betrayed,” Melhem added. “The promise of political empowerment, the return of politics, the restoration of human dignity heralded by the season of Arab uprisings in their early heydays — all has given way to civil wars, ethnic, sectarian and regional divisions and the reassertion of absolutism, both in its military and atavistic forms. ... The jihadists of the Islamic State, in other words, did not emerge from nowhere. They climbed out of a rotting, empty hulk — what was left of a broken-down civilization.”

 

The liberal Saudi analyst Turki al-Hamad responded in the London-based Al-Arab newspaper to King Abdullah’s call for Saudi religious leaders to confront ISIS ideology: How can they? al-Hamad asked. They all embrace the same anti-pluralistic, puritanical Wahhabi Sunni ideology that Saudi Arabia diffused, at home and abroad, to the mosques that nurtured ISIS.

“They are unable to face the groups of violence, extremism and beheadings, not out of laziness or procrastination, but because all of them share in that same ideology,” al-Hamad wrote. “How can they confront an ideology that they themselves carry within them and within their mind-set?”

 

Nurturing this soul-searching is a vital — and smart — part of the Obama strategy. In committing America to an air-campaign-only against ISIS targets in Syria and Iraq, Obama has declared that the ground war will have to be fought by Arabs and Muslims, not just because this is their war and they should take the brunt of the casualties, but because the very act of their organizing themselves across Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish lines — the very act of overcoming their debilitating sectarian and political differences that would be required to defeat ISIS on the ground — is the necessary ingredient for creating any kind of decent, consensual government that could replace ISIS in any self-sustaining way.

 

The tension arises because ISIS is a killing machine, and it will take another killing machine to search it out and destroy it on the ground. There is no way the “moderate” Syrians we’re training can alone fight ISIS and the Syrian regime at the same time. Iraqis, Turkey and the nearby Arab states will have to also field troops.

After all, this is a civil war for the future of both Sunni Islam and the Arab world. We can degrade ISIS from the air — I’m glad we have hit these ISIS psychopaths in Syria — but only Arabs and Turks can destroy ISIS on the ground. Right now, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, stands for authoritarianism, press intimidation, crony capitalism and quiet support for Islamists, including ISIS. He won’t even let us use our base in Turkey to degrade ISIS from the air. What’s in his soul? What’s in the soul of the Arab regimes who are ready to join us in bombing ISIS in Syria, but rule out ground troops?

This is a civilization in distress, and unless it faces the pathologies that have given birth to an ISIS monster its belly — any victory we achieve from the air or ground will be temporary.

Obama, at U.N., Urges Allies to Join Fight Against ISIS. Bombings Continue As ISIS Beheads French Tourist..

                                          Image CreditDamon Winter/The New York Times

N.Y. TIMES

President Obama laid out a forceful new blueprint on Wednesday for deeper American engagement in the Middle East, telling the United Nations General Assembly that the Islamic State understood only “the language of force” and that the United States would “work with a broad coalition to dismantle this network of death...Those who have joined ISIL should leave the battlefield while they can,” Mr. Obama said in a blunt declaration of his intentions.

In a much-anticipated address two days after he expanded the American-led military campaign against the group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, into Syria, Mr. Obama said, “Today, I ask the world to join in this effort,” declaring, “We will not succumb to threats, and we will demonstrate that the future belongs to those who build, not those who destroy.”

 

 

Toward that end the Security Council unanimously approved a resolution Wednesday calling on all countries to adopt laws making it a serious crime for their citizens to join a militant group like the Islamic State or the Nusra Front.

Mr. Obama’s efforts to forge a strong coaltion to fight the Islamic State received another lift Wednesday from Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, who recalled Parliament to meet on Friday and vote on whether to join U.S.-led airstrikes against Islamic State militants in Iraq after Baghdad requested help, the British government said. France has already taken part.

 

The military campaign against the Islamic State, Mr. Obama said, is only the most urgent of a raft of global challenges in which the United States has had no choice but to play a leadership role. These include resisting Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, coordinating a response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, from brokering a new unity government in Afghanistan, and marshaling a new push to confront climate change.

Mr. Obama delivered a searing critique of Russia’s incursions into Ukraine and promised to impose a rising cost on the government of President Vladimir V. Putin for what he called its aggression. He was particularly critical in describing the downing of a Malaysian commercial airliner over eastern Ukraine in July by what the United States and its allies have said was a Russian-made missile system, and he denounced the subsequent efforts to block recovery teams to investigate. All 298 people aboard were killed.

“This is a vision of the world in which might makes right,” he said, “a world in which one nation’s borders can be redrawn by another, and civilized people are not allowed to recover the remains of their loved ones because of the truth that might be revealed.”

 On the Syrian civil war and Iran — issues that Mr. Obama identified last year as two of his top priorities — he struck a markedly different tone. He mentioned Iran only in a cursory fashion, asking its leaders not to let the opportunity for a nuclear agreement slip by. American officials have privately expressed deep skepticism about the likelihood of reaching a deal with Tehran, and Mr. Obama’s remarks suggested that he shared that pessimism.

The president also did not single out the Syrian president for criticism, as he did last year, over the use of chemical weapons, though he spoke of the brutality of the civil war. Mr. Assad has voiced support for the American-led strikes in Syria, and his air force has not interfered with American war planes entering Syrian air space.

 

In Mr. Obama’s substance and tone, he conveyed a starkly different president than the one who addressed skeptical world leaders at the General Assembly last year...[instead] He spoke with the urgency of a wartime president, seeking to rally allies. Still, it remained unclear whether Mr. Obama’s speech represented a fundamental reconsideration of his policy or a reluctant response to the threat posed by the Islamic State, which took on emotional resonance for the American public after the militants posted videos of American hostages who were beheaded.

 

Mr. Obama made clear that the United States would act only if surrounded by a broad coalition. He dwelled on his success in signing up five Arab nations to take part in the airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Syria, casting it as a historic moment in which the Sunni Arab world was united to fight the scourge of Sunni extremism.

 

To some extent, Mr. Obama’s remarks seemed designed to get past months in which the president appeared openly conflicted about the proper use of American military force in the Middle East — an ambivalence that opened him to criticisms of being irresolute.

 

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Hervé Gourdel is seen with his captors moments before his execution in the video distributed by SITE Intelligence Group

 

In a sign of the growing influence of the extremist group known as the Islamic State, fighters aligned with the organization beheaded a French tourist in Algeria and released a video on Wednesday documenting the brutal killing, according to the SITE Intelligence Group.

The Frenchman — Hervé Gourdel, a 55-year-old mountaineering guide from Nice — was kidnapped over the weekend, soon after the Islamic State called on its supporters around the world to harm Europeans in retaliation for the recent airstrikes in Iraq and Syria.

The Algerian fighters swiftly responded to the Islamic State’s call by posting a video of Mr. Gourdel in captivity, appearing disoriented and still carrying his camera slung around his neck.

In addition, a militant group in the Philippines also announced that it was holding European captives: two Germans whom it threatened to kill unless Germany pays ransom or stops supporting the American-led campaign against the Islamic State.

 

Policy makers have debated for months whether the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, is able to strike directly at the West. Its capacity for large-scale terrorist attacks beyond its home in the Middle East remains in dispute. But the beheading of Mr. Gourdel and the threat to kill the two Germans demonstrate that smaller groups around the world aligned with the Islamic State are capable of kidnapping Westerners and using them for grisly propaganda purposes in sympathy with the organization.

 

Small jihadist groups elsewhere in North Africa — like Libya and Tunisia — as well as in the Caucasus and in Southeast Asia have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, and many of them operate in areas where Westerners frequently travel, including tourists, journalists and aid workers.

The public oaths of allegiance indicate that the smaller groups have placed themselves under the command of the Islamic State’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Analysts have questioned how close these relationships are, but the sequence of events over the weekend suggested that at least the Algerian cell was directly following the larger group’s orders.

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The vast majority of airstrikes launched against Sunni militant targets in Syria have been carried out by American war planes and ship-based Tomahawk cruise missiles, military officials said Tuesday, in what they described as the successful beginning of a long campaign to degrade and destroy the Islamic State.

In disclosing the identities of the five Sunni Arab nations that joined or supported the attacks in Syria — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Jordan and Qatar — the Obama administration sought to paint a picture of an international coalition resolute in its determination to take on the Sunni militant group.

 

Turkey had been reluctant to play a prominent role in the American-led coalition while the militants held 49 Turkish hostages. But now that they have been released, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signaled Tuesday that Turkey would assist the effort in some way.

But Mr. Erdogan, who is in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, did not provide details.

 

 

6 Weeks of U.S. Strikes Fail to Dislodge ISIS in Iraq

A photo posted on a militant website last week shows fighters from the Islamic State group in front of a police station in Nineveh Province, Iraq. Credit via Associated Press        

N.Y. TIMES


After six weeks of American airstrikes, the Iraqi government’s forces have scarcely budged Sunni extremists of the Islamic State from their hold on more than a quarter of the country, in part because many critical Sunni tribes remain on the sidelines.

Although the airstrikes appear to have stopped the extremists’ march toward Baghdad, the Islamic State is still dealing humiliating blows to the Iraq government forces. On Monday, the government acknowledged that it had lost control of the small town of Sichar and lost contact with several hundred of its soldiers who had been besieged for nearly a week at a camp north of the Islamic State stronghold of Falluja, in Anbar Province.

 

The foundation of the Obama administration’s plan to defeat the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, is the installation of a new prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, who has pledged to build a more responsive government and rebuild Sunni support. But, though at least some Sunni Arabs are fighting alongside the army in places like Haditha, influential Sunni sheikhs who helped lead the Awakening say they remain unconvinced.

Sunni Iraqi men, who took up arms alongside security forces to defend the town of Dhuluiyah from the Islamic State militant group, held a position last week. Credit Ahmad Al-Rubaye/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images        

 

Sunni tribal leaders said they were already disappointed by Mr. Abadi, who has been hailed by President Obama as the face of a more inclusive government. They said that the military had not lived up to a pledge by the prime minister to discontinue shelling civilian areas in the battle against the Islamic State — an accusation that could not be confirmed. They also complained that the government had done nothing to reform abusive security forces, and that it continued to give a free hand to Iranian-backed Shiite militias whom Sunnis and human rights groups accuse of arbitrary killings.“Hundreds of poor people are in prison without being convicted, and today we have the militias as well killing our people, while the military is bombing our cities with barrel bombs and random missiles,” Sheikh Bajjari said. “If we ever put down our weapons, the militias would come over and kill us all.”

 

Islamic State, for its part, has kept up a public attitude of extreme confidence. Photographs and videos emerging from the cities it controls, including Falluja and Mosul, show its officials opening the school year with a puritanical Islamic curriculum, establishing Shariah courts, or even patrolling the streets in newly painted police cars labeled “the Islamic Police of the Islamic State of Iraq.

 

The army and some local Sunni tribal fighters captured the town of Barwana and much of Haditha, near a vital dam in the west. Shiite militias and American airstrikes helped the army take the towns of Amerli and Yusufia, as well as Adam, on an important road to the north. And American airstrikes helped Kurdish fighters recapture the critical Mosul dam just days after it fell to Islamic State, at the start of the campaign.

But even with the backing of Western air power, the broad battle lines have remained roughly static.

 

House Votes to Authorize Aid to Syrian Rebels in ISIS Fight. No International Legal Justification for Airstrikes in Syria?

 

An unusual but overwhelming coalition in the House voted Wednesday to authorize the training and arming of Syrian rebels to confront the militant Islamic State, backing President Obama after he personally pleaded for support.

The 273-156 vote was over a narrow military measure with no money attached, but it took on outsize importance and was infused in drama, reflecting the tension and ambiguity of members wary of the ultimate path to which any war vote could lead.
 

There was rare unity between House Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio and Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the minority leader, who strongly backed the training legislation and sought to portray it as a modest measure. And the opposition included the equally unlikely pairings of antiwar Democrats and hawkish Republicans.

The Senate passed the legislation the following day.

 

The American forces that have been deployed to Iraq do not and will not have a combat mission,” President Obama pledged to troops at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida as the House debated his request. “I will not commit you and the rest of our armed forces to fighting another ground war in Iraq.”

Gen. Martin E. Dempsey

Mr. Obama’s reassurance came a day after his top military adviser, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate that he would recommend deploying troops to serve as ground forces providing tactical and targeting advice if the current airstrikes were not sufficient to vanquish the militant group, the Islamic State.

 

White House officials insisted that General Dempsey’s remarks did not conflict with the president’s policy of ruling out combat troops. They said the general’s comments were in line with a narrow definition of combat in which American advisers already in Iraq could be deployed close to the front lines — calling in American airstrikes, for example, without being considered to be in a combat role.

 

Mr. Kerry, appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, echoed the president’s message and added that “From the last decade, we know that a sustainable strategy is not U.S. ground forces....It is enabling local forces to do what they must for themselves and their country.”

 

Mr. Obama and his allies pleaded with lawmakers not to undercut him as he tries to assemble an international coalition to confront the terrorist group.

“Obama is our commander-in-chief. You don’t weaken the commander-in-chief when we’re in a serious crisis,” said Representative Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

Opponents in both parties framed the vote as a step toward a wider conflict in a region where American troops have been fighting for more than a decade.

 

Ultimately, 159 Republicans and 114 Democrats supported it; 71 Republicans and 85 Democrats voted against it.

 

Representative Duncan D. Hunter, a California Republican who fought with the Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan, joined others in questioning how the military could be sure the rebels of the Free Syrian Army could be trusted with United States arms and how suspect Saudis could host the training.

Saudi Arabia has already pledged to host the training of Syrian rebels, and the Obama administration promises to vet the fighters for reliability.

 

But the unusual left-right coalition in opposition loudly voiced grave doubts that the training mission will work.

“It is more complex than just an up-or-down vote on arming and training members of the Free Syrian Army,” said Representative Barbara Lee of California, a veteran antiwar Democrat. “The consequences of this vote, whether it’s written in the amendment or not, will be a further expansion of a war currently taking place and our further involvement in a sectarian war.”

 

Our past experience, after 13 years, everything that we have tried to do has not proven to be beneficial, “not proven at all,” said Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia and an opponent of the measure. “So what makes you think it’s going to be different this time? What makes you think we can ask a group of Islamists to agree with Americans to fight another group of Islamists, as barbaric as they may be?”

 

Still, senators said, with Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, backing it, there is little chance it will fail. Even as he kept up his fierce criticism of the president’s strategy, Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said he would support it.

 

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In Talbiseh and across Syria, insurgent fighters who oppose both the government of President Bashar al-Assad and the foreign-led militants of the extremist group called the Islamic State are being pummeled by a new wave of attacks and assassination attempts. The assaults are coming at a crucial moment, as President Obama tries to intensify efforts to defeat the Islamic State extremists.

 

Insurgents of all stripes, except for the Islamic State group, say the Syrian government appears to be stepping up its attacks on them ahead of the threatened American air campaign. Both pro-government and antigovernment analysts say Mr. Assad has an interest in eliminating the more moderate rebels, to make sure his forces are the only ones left to benefit on the ground from any weakening of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.

 

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White House Could Have No International Legal Justification for Airstrikes in Syria

Hamad I Mohammed/Reuters

 

 Airstrikes on Iraq were a fairly easy sell. The government in Baghdad asked for help in combating the Islamic State, and the United States answered its request.

That is perfectly legal under international law, diplomats agreed, and it helped to get dozens of European and Middle Eastern allies on board. The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, applauded the airstrikes as a “decisive” move. Secretary of State John Kerry is now scheduled to preside over a Security Council meeting on Friday, at which more than 40 foreign leaders from as far afield as Germany and Qatar are expected to articulate their support for the American-led effort against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, in Iraq.

But airstrikes on the group in Syria? That is another matter altogether.

 

The White House has articulated no rationale for airstrikes on Syrian territory, nor has it sought a Security Council resolution to authorize going to war. Syria has not consented to strikes within its territory, and Mr. Ban has demurred on the question of whether a Security Council resolution authorizing them is necessary, saying only that he expects the 15-member body to take it up — and not without disagreement.

 

The Russian Foreign Ministry has already said that without a Security Council resolution, any strike against Syria would constitute an act of aggression.

American allies have by and large been silent on the question of military action against Islamic State targets in Syria. Western diplomats here privately say that they confront a difficult dilemma over how to support American military action against the group’s strongholds in Syria, while also obeying the law.

 

The diplomatic challenge in Syria has become increasingly evident among American allies. France on Monday hosted a conference of Western and regional Middle Eastern countries to pledge support for the new Iraqi government’s fight against the Islamic State. The statement produced at the conference made no mention of Syria. Germany said it would provide arms and training to the Iraqi Kurdish forces fighting the insurgents. Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain offered military assistance to the Kurds as well, though his government has not said anything about what it is willing to do in Syria.

 

"The focus of ...is ISIS and combating terrorism,” said one diplomat from a Middle Eastern country who declined to be identified because diplomatic discussions were underway. “What about the root cause of the problem — which is the Syrian regime?”

 

In principle, the Security Council could authorize military action, though the chances of that seem slim at the moment. Russia, which has veto power, has staunchly backed the Assad government.

======================================



William J. Bratton

 

 The police in New York stepped up security on Wednesday in response to the possible threat of a terrorist attack in Times Square, even as officials cautioned that they had no information about specific plans against the city.

Officers expanded their presence in Times Square and at mass transit sites after an online post, purportedly from the Islamic State, encouraged “lone wolves” to attack tourist attractions in New York and elsewhere. Police Commissioner William J. Bratton said that with tensions escalating between the militant group and the United States, the group’s ability to recruit attackers online constituted “a current threat.” But, he added, “There is no direct actionable intelligence in our possession that indicates an attack in the Times Square area or anywhere else in the city for that matter.”

 

   

Obama’s strategy to fight Isis cedes too much control

THE GUARDIAN

By addressing the political and presentational aspects of the use of force in advance of military operations, President Obama has signalled a shift in American foreign policy culture, at least in the design of his strategy. In terms of delivery too he has indicated a greater emphasis on CIA-led counterterrorism operations compared with US military-led counterinsurgency operations. But almost every element is fraught with risk and, because he has subcontracted more to other nations than previous US presidents, he has less control over outcomes.

The timing of the speech, just two days after the announcement of a new Iraqi government, is no coincidence. It is evidence of intense behind-the-scenes diplomatic activity to ensure that the Maliki regime’s parochial Shia domination does not recreate the conditions that led to the crisis. There is, however, no indication that the new government will be able to unite a country whose identity faultlines are now fractured beyond repair. If that government fails then in a decade or so, the grievances that led to the rise of Islamic State (Isis) may breed another virulent rebellion.
The decision to involve regional, mostly Arab, countries in the conflict represents the most immature and risky part of the US strategy. Middle Eastern countries have spent billions on their defence capability but have shown a remarkable reluctance to deploy it beyond quelling mostly unarmed civilian rebellions. A history of petty squabbling and so little experience of political cooperation or joint military operations further reduces their potential impact. If the anti-Iranian attitude of the Saudis and other Gulf states is not checked before any troops from those countries arrive in Iraq then there is a danger of sparks flying if they come into contact with the Iranian military “advisers”, who appear to be advising very close to the frontline.
Increasing efforts to remove President Assad from power in Syria is probably the greatest strategic flaw. Identification and maintenance of a single clear aim is a maxim of strategic success. If defeating Isis is the main aim of this strategy then why complicate an already difficult task by simultaneously engineering regime change in Syria? It seems that US foreign policy has still to evolve through a realisation that the only thing worse than the tyranny of dictators is the anarchy that succeeds them, as illustrated by the removal of Saddam and Gaddafi.
In terms of delivery, too, the strategy has risks. Integration of air and land forces is a highly skilled task that even western forces struggle with. As the British discovered in Afghanistan, delivering air support to ground troops under fire in a timely and accurate fashion is not always possible, prompting one British army major to describe his air force as “utterly, utterly useless”. If the Iraqi, Iranian and Arab forces on the ground do not understand these difficulties then any delays or failures in US air support may be interpreted as a western ploy to permit losses to those forces.
President Obama’s primary objective of “degrading and destroying” Isis is to be achieved through counterterrorism operations where the CIA has a lead. This is the one element of strategy where the US has full control and a formidable track record of success. However, it is also one that is most full of pitfalls. It is no accident that Obama only mentioned Somalia and Yemen as examples where that strategy has been employed with success against al-Qaida instead of the Afghanistan and Pakistan tribal belt where its leadership and operational capability were mostly destroyed. A considerable number of civilian deaths occurred from the drone strikes there, resulting in a huge political backlash in the region with continuing insecurity and the emergence of a militant anti-western movement. Unless there is an improvement in intelligence and greater restraint in the use of drones, there is a danger that each successful attack on Isis could generate new recruits radicalised by the deaths of innocents.

'No credible information that Isis planning to attack the US'



THE GUARDIAN

Hours before Barack Obama is to announce an expanded military campaign against Islamic State (Isis) militants, his senior homeland security official assessed that the organization poses no imminent danger to America at home.
“At present, we have no credible information that [Isis] is planning to attack the homeland of the United States,” Homeland Security secretary Jeh Johnson told a Manhattan audience on Wednesday.
Johnson is the latest in a string of top US officials to concede that the jihadist army currently in control of much of eastern Syria and northern and central Iraq is not targeting the US at present, despite beheading two captured American journalists.

Similarly, when the leaders of US intelligence agencies provided their annual threat assessments to congressional oversight committees in January and February, they stressed a domestic threat emanating from a rival jihadist group. The Nusra Front, al-Qaida’s preferred Syrian affiliate, “does have aspirations for attacks on the homeland,” director of national intelligence James Clapper said, weeks after Isis invaded the Iraqi city of Fallujah. He and his colleagues gave relatively scant focus to Isis, which has now upended the Obama administration’s foreign policy.
The discrepancy between Isis’s assessed threat to the US and the buildup of US military action – thus far standing at 154 air strikes in Iraq and over 1,100 ostensibly noncombat troops deployed – has sparked accusations of fearmongering.

Despite the assessed lack of imminent threat, Johnson portrayed Obama’s forthcoming anti-Isis strategy as a responsible approach against the “serious threat” posed by a “depraved” adversary.
 Johnson signaled that one of his main tasks in the coming months will be preventing Isis fighters from entering the United States.

Air strikes, drones and advisers: the new template for America's counter-terror fight



Yemenis surround a truck believed to have been hit by a US drone strike, killing 14 people, including 12 al-Qaida suspects, in the central province of Bayda. Photograph: Stringer/EPA

GUARDIAN


When children in Yemen try to ignore their bedtimes, their parents have a new warning to scare them into obedience: a drone will come for them.
Farea al-Muslimi, a young Yemeni activist and journalist whose hometown was subjected to a drone strike, shared that anecdote with a Senate panel last year. He meant to impress upon US politicians what he called the “psychological fear and terror” Yemenis feel from a campaign the Obama administration is now citing as a model for its unfolding war against Islamic State (Isis).
The other counter-terrorism effort cited by the administration for the anti-Isis war is across the Gulf of Aden, in Somalia. In both countries, the US uses drone strikes, special operations raids, the occasional cruise missile and support for proxy militaries and governments to combat al-Qaida’s regional affiliates.


Yet despite years of strikes and billions spent on shoring up local forces, no end is in sight against either al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen or al-Shabaab in Somalia – an ominous indicator for a war against the far more capable and financially flush Isis.
One apparent exception to the Yemen-Somalia model of Obama’s emerging anti-Isis strategy is an explicit forswearing of US ground combat forces in Iraq and Syria, although Obama has sent significant numbers of special operations “advisers” to Iraq.
But in both Yemen and Somalia, al-Qaida’s affiliates have proven durable

 While AQAP has surely lost significant leaders, it survives. Nearly five years after its attempted Christmas Day bombing, it is “still active in its efforts to attack the homeland,” Homeland Security secretary Jeh Johnson said on Wednesday. The deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center testified on Wednesday that AQAP remains the single greatest terrorist threat to the US domestically.