A senior Iranian commander has confirmed that a special unit of the ground forces of Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) is involved in clashes against “extremists” in Iraq and Syria.

“Saberin unit and other units of the ground forces were dispatched to the region to prevent [extremists] from invading the shrines of Zaynab [a daughter of first Shia Imam Ali in Syria] and the Ahl al-Bayt [a term that refers to the Islamic prophet Muhammad’s family in Shia Islam and Alevism] in Iraq,” Fars news agency quoted Brigadier General Mohammad Pakpour, the commander of the IRGC Ground Forces, as saying Feb. 18.

The Saberin is a special unit of the IRGC, established in 2000. It has been involved in military operations against several armed opposition groups in Iran’s north-western and south-eastern borders.

Pakpour further said the IRGC is in Syria and Iraq to prevent “the enemy” from reaching Iranian borders.

“If we don’t fight the enemy there [Syria and Iraq], we will have to confront them along our southern and western borders, as well as in Kermanshah [province],” he added.

Over the past few years and since the crisis broke out in Syria and Iraq, several members of the elite forces of Iran have been reportedly killed in clashes with “terrorists”, which suggested Iran’s military presence in both countries.

However, Iranian officials have constantly denied that their servicemen have boots on the ground in Syria and Iraq, saying the officers of the Islamic Republic are in Syria and Iraq as advisers at official request from both countries’ governments.

trend.az

Major powers trying to forge a Syrian peace plan have made almost no progress on overcoming one of the main obstacles to ending the war: deciding who is a terrorist – and therefore a legitimate target – and who is not.

Everyone involved in the diplomatic process agrees with the United Nations’ designation that Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra, a group linked to al-Qaeda, are terrorists and therefore barred from the negotiating table.

Thereafter the consensus has broken down on the array of other factions fighting the five-year civil war. Rival powers are pushing for groups they dislike to go on a draft blacklist – Iran at one point suggested incorporating the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency – and to keep those they support off it.

This is more than simply a hitch for the peace process, under which talks began in Geneva last month only to be suspended almost immediately. Without an agreed list, any warring faction can say its opponents are terrorists and that it is therefore free to keep fighting them.

“This list hasn’t been touched since December,” said a senior European diplomat. “The difficulty we have is that there are hundreds of different groups on the ground, and groups can change names and affiliations every day.”

The U.N. Security Council unanimously approved a resolution in December endorsing an international plan to end the war which has killed 250,000 people and driven 11 million from their homes. This called for the listing of groups in Syria that should or should not be labelled a terrorist organisation.

This issue has gained prominence since Feb. 12 when powers committed to securing a cessation of hostilities amid intense Russian air strikes in support of forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Diplomats from Western, Gulf Arab nations and Turkey say Russia is trying to strong arm the peace process by crushing the rebels they back and push a military solution. They argue that compiling such a list was a distraction initiated by Moscow, which says its bombing targets only terrorists, while Assad considers all opposition armed groups as fair game.

“The whole exercise appears to have been a plan by Russia to sidetrack the discussions to focus on largely irrelevant matters,” a Western diplomat said. “It worked for a while.”

The International Syria Support Group (ISSG), a club of global and regional powers backing the U.N.-led peace effort, tasked Jordan with collecting proposals from members with a view to creating a final consensual list.

A draft dating from before the Dec. 18 Security Council meeting, obtained by Reuters, shows a messy jumble of dissenting opinions. It lists 163 factions, including many active in Iraq as well as Syria, and indicates which country regards which group as terrorists, and where they want further discussion.

For copy of draft list click on: reut.rs/1WgcfUr

NO CONSISTENCY

The draft suggests there is no consistent approach. Egypt, Lebanon and Qatar, for example, name scores of groups. The U.S. list is aligned with Jordan’s own proposal but nobody else’s. China names only three groups, and there is no information from Oman, Iran or Britain.

Beyond Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra, Turkey named only the Kurdish groups YPG, PKK and KCK. Ankara considers it an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought a three-decade insurgency for Kurdish autonomy in southeast Turkey. Only Qatar also listed the YPG as a terrorist group.

Another group on the list, Jund al-Aqsa, is named as a terrorist organisation by the United States, Saudi Arabia and others, but not by Russia, Egypt or Lebanon.

Washington suggested more discussion should be had on Ahrar al-Sham and Jaysh al-Islam, two groups backed by Saudi Arabia, and which Riyadh wants included in future peace talks. France did not mark either group as terrorist.

The matter has been characterised by closed-door bickering.

Egypt’s nominations included the Quds Force – the external wing of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps which is actively supporting Assad, a pick that is said to have infuriated Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

“Zarif suggested that Iran might propose including the CIA as well,” a Western diplomat said.

A senior Gulf Arab official said eight to 10 core factions are fighting on the ground. On top of that are 50-150 “semi-significant” groups and as many as 1,200 small groups whose objectives are purely survival.

“They are like atoms floating around and then the biggest 10 groups are like black holes that suck up the atoms based on their needs,” the official said. Foreign fighting groups such as the Quds Force and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia should be listed if they did not leave the battlefield immediately, the official added.

ONE MAN’S TERRORIST …

Assad said on Feb. 15 that many questions including defining who is a terrorist had to be answered before a ceasefire could happen. As far as the Syrian state was concerned, anyone who carried a weapon against it was a terrorist.

“Who will talk to the terrorists? If a terrorist group rejects the ceasefire, who will hold it to account?” he said.

The confused battle lines and jumble of groups – many of which cooperate in fighting others – often makes it hard to counter such arguments, said another senior Western diplomat.

“It’s the debate we have with the opposition all the time: clarify the links with Jubhat al-Nusra. But their response is the same. On the ground alliances are based purely on local preoccupations and needs. Groups change from one day to the next and will change affiliation depending on what they need.”

Moscow wants the list firmed up and approved by the Security Council, but Western diplomats say the project has effectively been kicked into the long grass and there is no sign of Jordan ever producing a definitive list.

“It will be impossible. Everyone has understood that it is illusory. There will be no terrorism list. It opens up too many divisions. The Russians will perhaps talk about it, offer a lot of rhetoric, but I challenge them to create a list that satisfies everybody.

“It’s the usual debate that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. This will be impossible.”

reuters.com

Iraq is searching for “highly dangerous” radioactive material stolen last year, according to an environment ministry document and seven security, environmental and provincial officials who fear it could be used as a weapon if acquired by Isis.

The material, stored in a protective case the size of a laptop computer, went missing in November from a storage facility near the southern city of Basra belonging to US oilfield services company Weatherford, the document obtained by Reuters showed and officials confirmed.

A spokesman for Iraq’s environment ministry said he could not discuss the issue, citing national security concerns. A Weatherford spokesman in Iraq declined to comment, and the company’s Houston headquarters did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

The material, which uses gamma rays to test flaws in materials used for oil and gas pipelines in a process called industrial gamma radiography, is owned by Istanbul-based SGS Turkey, according to the document and officials.

An SGS official in Iraq declined to comment and referred Reuters to its Turkish headquarters, which did not respond to phone calls.

The document, dated 30 November and addressed to the ministry’s Centre for Prevention of Radiation, describes “the theft of a highly dangerous radioactive source of Ir-192 with highly radioactive activity belonging to SGS from a depot belonging to Weatherford in the Rafidhia area of Basra province”.

A senior environment ministry official based in Basra, who declined to be named as he is not authorised to speak publicly, told Reuters the device contained up to 10 grams (0.35 ounces) of Ir-192 “capsules”, a radioactive isotope of iridium also used to treat cancer.

The material is classed as a Category 2 radioactive source by the International Atomic Energy Agency, meaning if not managed properly it could cause permanent injury to a person in close proximity to it for minutes or hours, and could be fatal to someone exposed for a period of hours to days.

How harmful exposure can be is determined by a number of factors such as the material’s strength and age, which Reuters could not immediately determine. The ministry document said it posed a risk of bodily and environmental harm as well as a national security threat.

Dirty bomb

Large quantities of Ir-192 have gone missing before in the United States, Britain and other countries, stoking fears among security officials that it could be used to make a dirty bomb.

A dirty bomb combines nuclear material with conventional explosives to contaminate an area with radiation, in contrast to a nuclear weapon, which uses nuclear fission to trigger a vastly more powerful blast.

“We are afraid the radioactive element will fall into the hands of Daesh,” said a senior security official with knowledge of the theft, using an Arabic acronym for Isis.

“They could simply attach it to explosives to make a dirty bomb,” said the official, who works at the interior ministry and spoke on condition of anonymity as he is also not authorised to speak publicly.

There was no indication the material had come into the possession of Isis, which seized territory in Iraq and Syria in 2014 but does not control areas near Basra.

The security official, based in Baghdad, told Reuters there were no immediate suspects for the theft. But the official said the initial investigation suggested the perpetrators had specific knowledge of the material and the facility: “No broken locks, no smashed doors and no evidence of forced entry,” he said.

An operations manager for Iraqi security firm Taiz, which was contracted to protect the facility, declined to comment, citing instructions from Iraqi security authorities.

A spokesman for Basra operations command, responsible for security in Basra province, said army, police and intelligence forces were working “day and night” to locate the material.

The army and police have responsibility for security in the country’s south, where Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias and criminal gangs also operate.

Pollution risk

Iraqi forces are battling Isis in the country’s north and west, backed by a U.S.-led coalition. The militant group has been accused of using chemical weapons on more than one occasion over the past few years.

The closest area fully controlled by Isis is more than 500 km (300 miles) north of Basra in the western province of Anbar. The Sunni militants control no territory in the predominantly Shi’ite southern provinces but have claimed bomb attacks there, including one that killed 10 people in October in the district where the Weatherford facility is located.

Besides the risk of a dirty bomb, the radioactive material could cause harm simply by being left exposed in a public place for several days, said David Albright, a physicist and president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security.

“If they left it in some crowded place, that would be more of the risk. If they kept it together but without shielding,” he said. “Certainly it’s not insignificant. You could cause some panic with this. They would want to get this back.”

The senior environmental official said authorities were worried that whoever stole the material would mishandle it, leading to radioactive pollution of “catastrophic proportions”.

A second senior environment ministry official, also based in Basra, said counter-radiation teams had begun inspecting oil sites, scrapyards and border crossings to locate the device after an emergency task force raised the alarm on Nov. 13.

Two Basra provincial government officials said they were directed on Nov. 25 to coordinate with local hospitals. “We instructed hospitals in Basra to be alert to any burn cases caused by radioactivity and inform security forces immediately,” said one.

independent.co.uk

Daesh militants have reportedly killed a boy from the Iraqi city of Mosul after accusing him of having songs and pictures on his mobile phone.

Kurdish Ara news agency quoted Iraq’s Nineveh Journalists Network on Tuesday as saying that Daesh militants had used a knife to execute an Iraqi child called Ayham, thought to be 14 or 15 years of age. His body was handed to his family.

The boy was arrested 20 days ago in Nabi Yunis market on charges of possessing illicit songs and pictures on his mobile phone.

middleeastmonitor.com

todayszaman.com

Tests carried out by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) confirmed that Islamic State (ISIS) attacked Kurdish Peshmerga forces with mustard gas last year.

The results of the laboratory tests have yet to be officially announced, however a source from within the OPCW have confirmed that the samples tested came back positive for sulfar mustard.

35 Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers became ill after being exposed to the gas while fighting ISIS southwest of Erbil last August. The OPCW also confirmed last October that mustard gas had also been used in neighbouring Syria.

It isn’t yet clear if ISIS had looted some Iraqi or Syrian stockpile of mustard gas or had developed the agents themselves.

rudaw.net

Islamic State said its suicide bomber had blown up a car in Russia’s volatile Dagestan that killed two policemen on Monday, the deadliest attack in the southern republic since 2013.

RIA news agency quoted a Dagestani security source as saying earlier that the suicide bomber had come from “the southern terrorist group”, but gave no further detail.

“…[O]ne of the Caliphate’s soldiers advanced with a car bomb towards a barrier set up by the apostate Dagestani police … and blew it up in the midst of their gathering leading to the death or injury of all the elements stationed at the barrier thanks be to God,” the Caucasus “province” of Islamic State said in a statement carried by Twitter accounts loyal to IS.

Photographs sent by a local cameraman showed several burnt-out cars and a separate engine – believed to be what was left of the suicide bomber’s car – near the village of Jemikent in southeastern Dagestan. A body covered with white cloth was lying near one of the cars.

Dagestan borders Chechnya, where Moscow fought two wars against Islamist separatists before regaining control of the region. A patchwork of ethnicities and languages, it has become a hub of militant Islam in the North Caucasus, and some militant groups have sworn allegiance to Islamic State [nL8N12O04X].

Dagestan, where Kremlin critics say widespread poverty and corruption help feed religious extremism, last saw similar attacks on police by suicide bombers in 2013.

Monday’s attack, which came about 0900 (0600 GMT), was equivalent to 30 kg of TNT, the Interfax news agency cited police experts as saying. The number of injured reached 17, Russian news agencies said, citing health ministry officials.

reuters.com

breitbart.com

Saudi Arabia is sending planes to the İncirlik Air Base in the southern Turkish province of Adana, where jets from the U.S.-led anti-ISIL coalition are already based, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu has stated, amid reports on Feb. 14 that the jets have already arrived.

“The Saudi kingdom now has a presence at the İncirlik base in Turkey,” Brigadier General Ahmed al-Assiri was quoted as saying by the Al-Arabiya TV station late on Feb. 13.

“Saudi warplanes are present with their crews to intensify aerial operations along with missions launched from bases in Saudi Arabia,” al-Assiri said, without going into further details.

However, Turkish military sources denied the arrival of Saudi warplanes.

Military sources told daily Hürriyet that Saudi warplanes had not arrived at İncirlik, adding that the timeframe of the Saudi jets’ arrival would extend to two or three weeks.

Cavuşoğlu said on Feb. 13 that Saudi jets would be deployed at Incirlik and the two countries could participate in ground operations against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria.

“They [Saudi officials] came and did a reconnaissance of the base. At the moment it is not clear how many planes will come,” he said, adding that they do not yet have a certain plan for a land operation.

Turkey and Saudi Arabia have long advocated in favor of a ground operation in Syria but no concrete decision has been taken for such an operation, Çavuşoğlu said.

“This is not an issue for Turkey or Saudi Arabia alone, we have been saying that the coalition should be doing this,” Çavuşoğlu said when asked about reports of a possible ground operation against ISIL by Turkey and Saudi Arabia in Syria.

“But there is no solid decision on this yet, no concrete strategy. This is not a new idea, but as of today there is no final decision regarding a ground operation,” he added.

Riyadh and Ankara are both opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose foreign minister last week warned that any ground intervention would “amount to aggression that must be resisted.”

Al-Assiri said the decision to deploy an unspecified number of jets to Turkey followed a meeting in Brussels of U.S.-led anti-ISIL coalition members, who decided step up their fight against jihadists in Syria and Iraq. He stressed that Saudi Arabia made its decision in coordination with the coalition and a ground operation was being planned.

“There is a consensus among coalition forces on the need for ground operations and the Kingdom is committed to that,” al-Assiri said.

“Military experts will meet in the coming days to finalize the details, the task force and the role to be played by each country,” he added.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir also told reporters on Feb. 14 that his country was ready to send special forces to Syria to take part in ground operations against ISIL, without giving further details.

hurriyetdailynews.com

People are leaving Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan en masse. The reasons range from the rise of the “Islamic State” to issues as relatively mundane as the economy. Birgit Svensson reports from Irbil.

Desperation has slowly taken hold in Kurdish Iraq. Gone are the prosperous times when new buildings were built practically overnight. The autonomous region’s economy is just getting worse.

After the end of the second Iraq war, thousands of Kurds in exile in Europe returned home. Up to 2011, there was a veritable boom in returnees from Germany, where an estimated half a million Kurds from Iraq made up the largest Kurdish diaspora community. Cash incentives and a free flight to Irbil for Kurds who voluntarily returned made the trip even more enticing. Many have come to deeply regret this move and are now trying to return to Europe. According to estimates, 350,000 Kurds have left Iraq for Europe just in the past six months, and there are no signs of the exodus letting up. Even Irbil Mayor Nihad Latif Qoja is going back to Bonn, Germany, after 10 years in office.

Last week, the Kurdish television channel ANN reported the deaths of 30 refugees who had drowned in the Aegean Sea during a boat crossing. All of them had left Sulaimaniya, the second largest city in Iraq’s Kurdish region.

Opposed to mismanagement

Sulaimaniya – near the border with Iran and about 200 kilometers (120 miles) from territory controlled by the “Islamic State” – is one of the safest cities in Iraq and the cultural and educational center of Kurdistan. The city’s 1.6 million inhabitants were spared from IS’s attacks on Kurdish territory in August 2014; they only found out about them from friends and relatives in Irbil or through media reports. Only two camps for displaced people on the outskirts of Sulaimaniya reflect reality in the rest of Iraq. Yet resistance to the prevailing conditions in Kurdistan began in Sulaimaniya, and from there it is spreading to the rest of the territory.

Young Kurds especially have lamented the lack of prospects in the region. Five people were killed when the government violently put down their 2011 Arab Spring-inspired uprising against mismanagement and corruption in the Kurdish regional authority and demands for increased democracy and a parliamentary system. Kurdish president Masoud Barzani said the Sulaimaniya-based opposition party Gorran was responsible for the events. But the government, which had been voted in in 2009, refused to cede power.

Barzani’s term has officially been over since last summer. The constitution stipulates the election of a new president by the representatives of the people, but there is no talk of a vote these days. Iraqi Kurds, who once saw themselves as pioneers of democracy, are now regressing to archaic authoritarian structures, and widespread economic malaise does not make matters easier. Over 70 percent of Kurds in the provinces of Irbil, Dohuk and Sulaimaniya are government employees, and state salaries haven’t been paid in five months. The consequences can be seen in empty shops, restaurants and hotels.

The lavish shopping centers also lack customers. Power outages are commonplace, infrastructure projects have been put on hold, and foreign oil companies have left the region because they no longer receive their pay. Transfer payments from the central government in Baghdad to the Kurdish regional government have been halted over a dispute. But the Kurdish region needs the money from Iraq as it cannot finance itself, especially because the budget has been strained by the battle against IS and care for refugees from affected areas.

Returnees to Kurdistan have had a hard time reintegrating. Many of them feel unwanted by longer-term locals, who view them as competition for the region’s dwindling resources. “You had a good life in Europe,” their compatriots say by way of welcome. “We fought against Saddam, and now that you’ve returned you want to take part in decision-making.”

Even schoolchildren are confronted with such misgivings. Two cliques have formed over the years: the long-term locals and the more recent returnees. Many of the schoolchildren who were raised in Europe have discovered that what they had considered normal is taboo in Kurdistan. The girls no longer swim, ride bicycles or wear makeup; they’ve learned not be seen together with boys. Two entirely different worldviews are colliding in the Kurdish region.

dw.com