The Daesh militant group has reportedly executed a dozen of its own members in Iraq’s embattled western province of Anbar on charges of fleeing the battlefield.

A local source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Daesh killed members of the extremist outfit by firing squad in the village of al-Hadar, situated 120 kilometers (74 miles) south of Mosul, on Saturday, Iraqi Media News Agency reported.

The source added that the slain militants were accused of escaping clashes with Iraqi government forces in the province.

On January 26, Jabbar al-Mamouri, a commander of the pro-government Popular Mobilization units, said Daesh militants had killed four militant commanders along with three other members of the group by firing squad in Hawijah district, located about 282 kilometers (175 miles) north of the capital, Baghdad.

The slain extremists were accused of fleeing the clashes with government forces in the predominantly Sunni village of Tal Kusaiba, situated some 35 kilometers (20 miles) east of Salahuddin’s provincial capital city of Tikrit.

The executions came only two days after Daesh killed three of its own commanders in Iraq’s northern province of Nineveh after the militants sought to break away from the extremist outfit and escape the city of Mosul, located some 400 kilometers (250 miles) north of Baghdad.

Last October, Daesh fighters killed 50 fellow extremists in the western city of Khan al-Baghdadi, situated about 180 kilometers (110 miles) northwest of Baghdad, after accusing them of espionage and passing confidential information to Iraqi security personnel.

Gruesome violence has plagued the northern and western parts of Iraq ever since Daesh militants launched an offensive in June 2014 and took control of portions of Iraqi territory.

The militants have been committing heinous crimes against all ethnic and religious communities in Iraq, including Shias, Sunnis, Kurds, Christians and others.

albawaba.com

Kurdish officials insist on holding a referendum in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq to let the people determine their future and decide on independence by their own choice.

In an analytical article recently published on the International Interests, Saro Qadir of the Institute for Research and Development in the Kurdistan Region has argued that the referendum is a way to show the public’s approval for the independence; but he stressed that with or without the referendum, Kurdistan has the right for an independence.

Qadir explained that Kurdistan Region President Massoud Barzani is firstly attempting to bring together the Kurdish political parties and collect them in one idea which is a referendum on Kurdish independence. In such an event, Barzani would have a stronger hand in dealing with Iraq and the international community, the Kurdish scholar added.

Qadir said that more than 40 countries, including Israel, Saudi Arabia and France, support the idea of independence for the Kurdistan Region. He expects to see a Kurdish independence in the current year.

He believes that if the Kurds remain inside Iraq, they will be undermined by Iran and the on-going Shi’ite-Sunni sectarian conflicts. “If we stay in Iraq we lose what we have, we will be a small government in Iraq which has ethnic-sectarian war and we will end up as [a] slave of Iran.”

Kamal Kirkuki, a former speaker of the Kurdistan Region parliament, member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) politburo and a Peshmerga commander near Kirkuk, has explained that “Self-determination is a right that the International Law, the UN charter and covenants, and Human rights laws all agree on—it is an international legitimate legal right for the people.”

He asserts that any independence would not violate the Iraqi constitution, an issue raised by Baghdad, because the constitution states the various components of the country have taken it upon themselves to “decide to unite by choice.” They can therefore separate by choice, Kirkuki stressed out.

basnews.com

Saudi warplanes arrived at the İncirlik Air Base in the southern province of Adana on Feb. 26 to help support the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), bringing the number of countries which have aircraft at the base as part of the ISIL fight to five.

Four F-15E Strike Eagle jets landed at the base one after another at around 1:30 p.m. in support of the U.S.-led coalition.

The F-15E jets resemble Russian SU-30 type aircraft that are currently deployed in Syria.

It has also been reported that Saudi warplanes would conduct patrol flights along the Turkey-Syria border in addition to the ISIL mission.

Speaking at a televised press conference, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s aide and spokesperson, İbrahim Kalın, said they had opened İncirlik airbase in southern Turkey to the members of the anti-ISIL coalition in order to support combat activities, adding that Saudi Arabian aircraft had begun to reach the country.

“As part of this combat, Saudi Arabian aircraft started to arrive at İncirlik air base as of yesterday [Feb. 25] to strike Daesh [ISIL] targets by taking off from İncirlik air base and the rest will finalize in a few days,” said Kalın on Feb. 26.

“This is one of the bold statements of our support to the international coalition in combatting Daesh and its presence there,” he added.

Advance guards arrived at the base on Feb. 25.

Speaking at a televised press conference, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s aide and spokesperson, İbrahim Kalın, said they had opened İncirlik airbase in southern Turkey to the members of the anti-ISIL coalition in order to support combat activities, adding that Saudi Arabian aircraft had begun to reach the country.

“As part of this combat, Saudi Arabian aircraft started to arrive at İncirlik air base as of yesterday [Feb. 25] to strike Daesh [ISIL] targets by taking off from İncirlik air base and the rest will finalize in a few days,” said Kalın on Feb. 26.

“This is one of the bold statements of our support to the international coalition in combatting Daesh and its presence there,” he added.

Saudi Defense Ministry Undersecretary Ahmed al-Asiri confirmed the landing, state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

Al-Asiri said Saudi Arabia and Turkey would not act alone but as part of a wider coalition against the terrorist group.

The Saudi government said earlier this month that it was willing to contribute to the fight against ISIL with troops on the ground, under the umbrella of the U.S.-led coalition.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu also said on Feb. 25 that the aircraft were expected to arrive at the base soon.

“Now, entries have been made for supplies and personnel. Inspections have been made. The aircraft are expected to come soon,” Çavuşoğlu said.

Saudi Defense Ministry Undersecretary Ahmed al-Asiri confirmed the landing, state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

Al-Asiri said Saudi Arabia and Turkey would not act alone but as part of a wider coalition against the terrorist group.

The Saudi government said earlier this month that it was willing to contribute to the fight against ISIL with troops on the ground, under the umbrella of the U.S.-led coalition.

Saudi Arabia, together with Israel, is the country with the second most F-15 fighter jets in the world, after the U.S.

The other four countries that have aircraft at the base are Britain, the U.S., Germany and Qatar.

hurriyetdailynews.com

Daesh fighters attacked on Saturday the town of Tal Abyad, controlled by the Kurdish YPG militia, near the Turkish border, as well as the nearby town of Suluk, Reuters reported.

Redur Xelil, a YPG spokesperson told Reuters that the YPG and Syrian Kurdish security forces were able to “crush the attack and encircle the attackers.” Xelil said the fighters had been “eliminated” but gave no casualty figures.

Tal Abyad was captured by the YPG from Daesh control last year during an offensive backed by US-coalition airstrikes.

Xelil said some of the Daesh attackers had infiltrated Tal Abyad from the Turkish border to the north, underscoring allegations that Turkey has supported the group in order to weaken the Kurdish militias. Turkey has consistently denied those accusations.

albawaba.com

Russia and the Arab League support the creation of a broad coalition against terrorism under the auspice of the United Nations, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said here on Friday.

The remarks were made after the Russian-Arab Cooperation Forum in Moscow as the two sides issued a joint statement declaring support for Russian President Vladimir Putin‘s initiative on forming an anti-terrorist front on the universal international legal basis.

Lavrov noted it is their common position to launch an “uncompromising” campaign against “this absolute evil” by military means, and to combat the spread of the extremist ideology.

He also confirmed Moscow’s readiness to promote normalization of relations between the Arab League and Iran.

In the statement, the Arab League said it welcomes the Russia-U.S. agreement on ceasefire in Syria which is expected to take effect from 12:00 Damascus time (1000 GMT) on Saturday.

The Arab League is a regional organization comprising 22 states of the Middle East and Northern Africa which is aimed at promoting the interests of the Arab world.

The Russian-Arab Cooperation Forum was set up in 2009 to promote regional and global peace and security. Two previous meetings of the forum were held in Moscow and Qatar, respectively.

xinhuanet.com

More than 1,000 soldiers are engaged in covert ground war with the Islamic State near their stronghold of Mosul, against Iraq’s

telegraph.co.uk

Companies from 20 countries are involved in the supply chain of components that end up in ISIS explosives, a study found on Thursday.

The study showed that 51 companies from these countries produced, sold or received the more than 700 components used by ISIS to build improvised explosive devices (IEDs), according to Conflict Armament Research (CAR), which undertook the 20-month study.

The IED components were recovered during major battles around the Iraqi towns of al Rabia, Kirkuk, Mosul, and Tikrit, and the Syrian town of Kobani, reported Gazeta.runews site of Russia.

It was found out that Turkey is the main source in the supply chain of these components. A total of 13 Turkish firms were found to be involved in the supply chain, the most in any one country. That was followed by India with eight.

Companies from the UAE, Iraq, Japan, China, US, Russia, Iran, Brazil, Romania, Belgium, the Netherlands, Lebanon, Austria, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Finland, Yemen, and Vietnam were also involved, the report found.

news.am/

King Abdullah II of Jordan is meeting with President Barack Obama at the White House on Wednesday, for working talks that the Jordanian Embassy describes as covering “the strategic partnership” between the two countries. In addition to discussing the flood of Syrian refugees into Jordan — there are now 750,000 of them — the Embassy also says that the two will “tackle global efforts to combat terrorism and extremism across the Middle East, Africa, and the world.” The White House mentions the talks in the president’s daily schedule, noting the two will discuss “efforts to counter ISIL (and) resolve the Syrian conflict,” using the US government’s favorite acronym for the Islamic State group.

But that’s a very reductive description of what the monarch and the president are likely to talk about. There’s a major war going on across the Hashemite Kingdom’s northern and eastern border, and much about Jordan’s military role in that war won’t likely be the subject of press releases. But the border is undoubtedly somewhere buried in the briefing books. The Obama administration is spending close to a half a billion dollars to build a sophisticated electronic fence along Jordan’s northern and eastern borders, a wall which US strategic planners hope will stem the flow of refugees and also wall off the increasingly important American base from the disintegration of Syria and Iraq.

The wall, which began as a $20 million project in 2008 to erect a set of surveillance towers along a 30-mile (50 km) stretch of the border with Syria, has since expanded into a program costing half a billion dollars, according to defense officials who spoke to VICE News. Called the Jordan Border Security Program or JBSP, the wall is ostensibly meant to stop weapons of mass destruction from getting out, but since 2013 has refocused on detecting Islamic State fighters and arms smuggling, as well as refugees, on both sides of the border.

When completed later this decade, the border wall will have a camera-studded high-security fence, plus a network of ground sensors and a set of fixed and mobile surveillance towers that will be able to see and detect activity five miles away on either side of the fence. The entire system funnels into a joint US-Jordanian command center, where the United States also shares additional intelligence with Jordan about external threats to the kingdom.

The first phase of the JBSP, the erection of the towers, was completed in September 2009. Phase 1B, the beginning of the fence, was completed in March 2014. Phases 2 and 3, the building of a fully integrated and networked fence running along a 275-mile(442 km) stretch of Jordan’s borders with Syria and Iraq and costing some $300 million, are scheduled to be fully operational this year. Further phases will extend the fence along the entire border and improve surveillance and detection gear. Mobile surveillance stations and quick reaction forces will be stationed at vulnerable points or emerging hot spots.

It’s all paid for by the United States taxpayer. The JBSP is loosely part of a wall-building program to stop weapons of mass destruction sponsored by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, focused not just on Jordan but also on the borders of Turkey, Iraq, and Lebanon. Raytheon Intelligence, Information and Services of Tucson, Arizona, a division of the Raytheon Company — one of the largest US defence companies — is the prime contractor.

Kenneth A. Myers III, who heads the United States Center for Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction, told Congress last year that “the system is designed to detect a person from five miles away and provides the Jordanians with a capability to safely detect, inspect, and apprehend someone suspected of smuggling WMD,” he said.

If you’ve never heard about the Jordan wall, it is because — despite its position at the physical center of the US war with the Islamic State group — the official position of the Jordanian government is that there are no US troops in the country, much less US military bases.

Yet since the low point of 1991, when then-King Hussein opposed the first Gulf War, US-Jordanian military and intelligence relations have flourished. That cooperation grew in the 1990s as the Iraqi population and Iraqi commerce grew in Jordan, which enjoyed normal relations with the neighboring Baghdad government.

During the more than a decade of low-level American war against Saddam Hussein until the invasion of 2003, Iraqi refugees, businessmen and defectors who set up shop in Amman were exploited and recruited by the US, and the capital Amman became a hub for operations against the Iraqi regime.

After the 9/11 attacks, the United States increased funding and technical support for Jordan’s General Intelligence Directorate. The US established signals intelligence monitoring stations in Jordan, listening in on Iraq, and then in the run-up to the Second Gulf War sent warplanes to bases in Jordan and deployed a special operations team to attack Iraq from the west. King Hussein’s son, Abdullah II, himself a former commander of Jordan’s special operations force, has been instrumental in making these military and intelligence ties ever closer; in exchange, the US has provided funding for the creation of the King Abdullah Special Operations Training Center, a multinational hub supporting the fight against Islamic State.

Jordan was also directly instrumental in much of the post-9/11 hunt for high level al Qaeda targets, especially Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, and there have been consistent and reliable reports that Jordanian secret services and intelligence personnel have done “dirty work” for their American counterparts, including interrogations, targeted killings, and even torture of suspects. Jordan has been a hub for extraordinary “renditions” of high value terrorist suspects. In April 2002, it sent a special forces unit to Yemen to work with the United States in training and assisting the Yemeni military to fight al Qaeda.

The ultimate reward for this effort came in 2008, when the US and Jordan signed a memorandum of understanding to provide assistance to Jordan over a 5-year period. In 2013 and 2014, the US provided Jordan $2.25 billion in loan guarantees, allowing the government access to affordable financing from international capital markets. And in February 2014, President Obama announced that the United States would renew the memorandum.

According to the Defense Manpower Data Center, the United States has 56 personnel in Jordan — 42 military, three civilians, and 11 dependents, a number whose modesty pleases a host country that would like it a secret for internal reasons. But a true accounting is closer to 12,000, a number that demands that one drill far down into a byzantine secret structure to sort it all out. According to US military documents, there are 3,300 openly deployed “Title 10” military forces in the country — that is, those who are there to provide training. The Embassy itself and the foreign military sales apparatus that supports American equipment owned by the Jordanian armed forces (the air force, for example, flies American-made F-16 fighters in its airstrikes against the Islamic State) include almost 1,000 soldiers, spies, administrators and contractors. Another 1,000 contractors paid by Washington are working on the wall and other construction projects in the country. None of these obviously identified Americans are accounted as being in the country because they aren’t officially “based” in Jordan, just “deployed.”

As for the war against the Islamic State (IS), known as Operation Inherent Resolve, both countries are silent on the combat deployments. Multiple headquarters have been set up inside Jordan for US and coalition forces, including US Central Command Forward – Jordan, an entity known as CFJ which links together the 40-country planning team. Another command is the Combined Joint Operations Command Jordan or CJOC-J, which oversees the “Title 10” forces. The Army’s 513th Military Intelligence Brigade sits alongside Jordanian counterparts monitoring and exchanging intelligence at the King Abdullah Special Operations Training Center. In addition to the latter, there is also a Joint Training Center – Jordan, with US Army and Marine mentors. The Ground Intelligence Center in Amman is the central hub of the war-related intelligence exchanges.

Inside Jordan, Special Operation Command Central operates its own task forces and remote bases, as do the “black” forces of Joint Special Operations Command and the CIA. Naval special warfare personnel work with their Jordanian counterparts on Operation Gallant Phoenix to secure the southern ports and waters. US naval intelligence is supporting the Kingdom of Jordan Maritime Surveillance System, a sea-based protection system to the south.

The American presence, though obviously known to Jordanian residents and local spies, goes on in the shadows. But this is not the case when it comes to military cooperation that predates the IS war. The Jordanian air force units flying F-16s carry out public exchanges with the 162nd Fighter Wing in Tucson, Arizona. The US and Jordan have an active — and mostly public — program of joint exercises that has been going on since 1993, taking place every year, and American ships pay regular visits to the Red Sea port of Aqaba, Jordan’s only outlet to the sea.

The new anti-IS wall and its guardians, in short, are nothing new in Jordan, whatever the official Jordanian statements say.

The presence of American and allied troops turned into a flood as the 2003 Iraq war neared, with US, British and Australian special operations forces and intelligence operatives coming into the country. By the eve of the war, Florida national guardsmen were protecting US bases and supporting special operations efforts at the Iraqi border; the Rhode Island air national guard deployed to Jordan to enlarge the infrastructure; five US Patriot missile units set up around Amman to protect the capital from Iraqi attack; and Army intelligence surveillance planes were flying along the Iraqi border. And by the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, more than 5,000 US and coalition troops were stationed in the country, operating as Joint Task Force-West under a two-star general, Jonathan S. Gration.

vice.com

Thousands of Saudi troops have been deployed along these desiccated hills, struggling to halt cross-border attacks by Yemeni rebels who fire rockets and carry out lethal ground incursions.

The Yemeni fighters have killed and captured hundreds of Saudi soldiers in a conflict that presents Saudi Arabia with the biggest challenge to its territory in years. Thousands of mortars and crude rockets have slammed into schools, mosques and homes in Najran, a city of several hundred thousand people only a few miles from the mountains of northern Yemen.

The border assaults have come in response to a devastating air and ground war that a Saudi-led military coalition launched in Yemen last year. That conflict has in turn spilled across the border with devastating consequences, said Maj. Gen. Saad Olyan, who commands more than 20,000 Saudi forces along the 1,100-mile southern border.

“Just last week, 10 of my men were killed by these militiamen on the border,” he said. His forces are battling increasingly sophisticated ambushes by the Yemeni rebels, known as Houthis, and units from Yemen’s splintered military.

“Some of them were killed in an ambush, shot in cold blood” by the rebels, Olyan said during an interview at his Najran headquarters, which has been struck by rocket fire.

Najran residents try to go about life normally, but the scars left by the Yemeni attacks reflect how brutal the fighting has become. Dents in the streets that appear to be potholes were actually made by exploded mortars. Many schools — some of which have been hit by Katyusha and Grad rockets — have been closed. Thousands of residents living in border communities have been moved to safer ground, and Najran’s airport has been closed to civilian air traffic because of the fighting.

“The attacks come suddenly, and you can’t do anything about them,” said Abdullah al-Nasser, 41, an administrator at a nursery school in Najran that was hit by a rocket several months ago. Fortunately, he said as he walked through the school’s destroyed auditorium, there were no casualties.

The Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen — which includes mostly fellow Sunni Muslim nations — has killed thousands of civilians and exacerbated a humanitarian crisis in the desperately poor country. Saudi Arabia intervened to stop assaults by the Houthis, followers of the Zaydi sect of Shiite Islam who toppled Yemen’s Saudi-backed government last year. Saudi officials accuse the Houthis of acting as proxies of Iran, a Shiite-led powerhouse and the kingdom’s foremost regional competitor.

In turn, the rebels and allied military units loyal to former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh have sought to inflict pain on Saudi Arabia by launching intense cross-border attacks. Houthi-affiliated media outlets regularly report that the rebels have stormed deep inside southern parts of the kingdom, including near Najran.

The city sprawls with drab, low-slung apartment buildings and lacks the hustle and bustle of Riyadh, the capital, about 500 miles to the north. The old downtown, which dates back hundreds of years, features quaint shops that sell ornamental knives, traditional desert clothing and spices.

The place would feel like a sleepy village were it not for the raging conflict.

The fighting comes amid a wave of attacks in the kingdom claimed by the Islamic State, including a suicide bombing in October that killed one worshiper at a mosque in Najran. Saudi officials, moreover, have been forced to mobilize a massive number of troops along the Yemen border at a time of financial hardship from slumping oil prices and expensive outlays that include propping up Egypt’s increasingly authoritarian leadership and backing rebels in Syria’s civil war.

“The Houthi-Saleh threat to southern Saudi is off the charts,” said Theodore Karasik, a Dubai-based analyst who specializes in Persian Gulf security issues.

Although part of Saudi territory, areas in the south historically have been claimed by Yemen. Residents of Najran and surrounding territory have strong family and cultural connections to communities in Yemen.

Furthermore, the majority of residents in Najran are Ismailis, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. They have long complained of discrimination by Saudi authorities, who officially practice a particularly conservative form of Sunni Islam whose followers regularly condemn Shiites as apostates.

“The Ismailis are seen as heretics by the conservative Saudi elite,” said Karasik, who noted that the Yemeni rebels appear to be attacking the area to test the loyalties of Ismailis.

But some Ismaili residents of Najran say that the Yemen war actually has improved relations with Saudi authorities. Abdullah Sedran said that the military and government officials have attempted to reach out to the local Ismaili population during the crisis.

“There is a sense that the discrimination has decreased, and you feel that the government has done a lot to restrict the extremists who call us infidels,” said Sedran, 52, an Ismaili who lives in Najran.

Fahad Nazer, a former political analyst at Saudi Arabia’s embassy in Washington, said military forces and local tribesman have rallied around the Saudi cause.

“A number of videos have circulated on social media showing tribal leaders in Najran and Jizan reciting poetry and expressing gratitude to the troops stationed there,” he said, referring to another Saudi area attacked by Yemeni rebels.

Col. Yaser al-Qahtani said he has noticed a sense of solidarity during the conflict. He heads the air defenses around Najran, including Patriot missile batteries that defend the area from Yemeni-fired Scud missiles, which are longer-range projectiles capable delivering a large payload.

On a recent day, he displayed the U.S.-made missile defense system to a visiting journalist when he spoke about the suffering experienced by civilians and soldiers.

“I was at work when a missile destroyed my home here,” said Qahtani, 43, a Najran resident and father of four. “Luckily, my family wasn’t there, or they all would have been killed.”

He added, “We are all together in this war.”

washingtonpost.com

A Swedish teenager rescued by Kurdish special forces from Islamic State militants in Iraq has said life in the so-called caliphate was “really hard” and that she was duped into going there by her boyfriend.

In her first interview since Kurdish special forces recovered her in northern Iraq, the 16-year old told a Kurdish TV channel she had met her boyfriend in mid-2014 after dropping out of school in Sweden.

“First we were good but then he started to look at ISIS videos and speak about them and stuff like that,” she told Kurdistan 24 in a brief interview, using another name for the Islamic State group.

“Then he said he wanted to go to ISIS and I said ok, no problem, because I didn’t know what ISIS means, what Islam is — nothing,” said the girl.

The couple set off from Sweden in late May 2015 and made their way across Europe by bus and train until reaching the Turkish border province of Gaziantep, from which they crossed into Syria.

From there, Islamic State militants ferried them by bus with other men and women to the city of Mosul in neighbouring Iraq and provided them with a house. There was no electricity or running water.

“I didn’t have any money either – it was a really hard life,” she said, looking relaxed and healthy. “When I had a phone I started to contact my mum and I said ‘I want to go home’.”

The teenager, who was rescued on Feb. 17, is currently in Iraq’s Kurdistan region and will be handed over to Swedish authorities.

Security services estimate that hundreds of Western men and women have left home to join Islamic State since the group overran large parts of Iraq and Syria in June 2014.

A mother who took her 14-month-old son to Syria to join Islamic State fighters was jailed for six years by a British court earlier this month.

Smiling occasionally, the girl compared life under Islamic State to that in Europe: “In Sweden we have everything, and when I was there, we didn’t have anything”.

ekurd.net/