Syria’s government told a U.N. envoy on Saturday it was ready to take part in Geneva peace talks scheduled for Jan. 25 but said it wanted to know which opposition figures would participate.

Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem, who met U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura in Damascus, also demanded a list of groups that would be classified as terrorist, Syrian state media reported.

The Geneva talks are part of an international bid to end the five-year conflict that has killed an estimated 250,000 people. The plan for a hoped-for ceasefire envisages defining “terrorist groups” in Syria, one of the toughest issues facing diplomats.

The Syrian government views all the groups fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad as terrorists, including rebels represented in a recently formed opposition council tasked with overseeing the negotiations.

Syrian rebels and opposition politicians have expressed doubts over whether the peace talks will begin as planned. Earlier this week, they told de Mistura that first the Syrian government must stop bombing civilian areas, release detainees and lift blockades imposed on opposition-held areas.

The outlook for the talks has been further clouded by increased tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which back opposing sides in the conflict. Tensions have risen since Saudi Arabia executed Shi’ite cleric Nimr al-Nimr.

Moualem told de Mistura “Syria is ready to take part in the Geneva meetings at the proposed time, confirming the necessity of obtaining the list of terrorist organisations and the list of names of the Syrian opposition groups that will take part”, state media reported.

Opposition leaders are voicing misgivings over the new effort endorsed by the U.N. Security Council, not least because it does not address Assad’s future, a point of contention between states on either side of the war.

Syrian rebels said on Friday there was global pressure on the opposition to make concessions that would prolong the war, adding to their doubts about the U.N.-led drive.

One opposition official said the negotiating team would not be named before the Syrian government did so. Monzer Mahkous, representative of the opposition in Paris, said it was not certain the talks would go ahead as planned due to numerous unresolved issues.

trust.org

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed his concerns about the intensified Coalition airstrikes and ground fighting and shelling in Yemen, despite repeated calls for a renewed cessation of hostilities, said a UN spokesman at Friday’s daily briefing.

Ban is particularly concerned about reports of intense airstrikes in residential areas and on civilian buildings in Sana’a, including the Chamber of Commerce, a wedding hall and a center for the blind, said UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

Ban also has received troubling reports of the use of cluster munitions in attacks on several locations in Sana’a Wednesday. The use of cluster munitions in populated areas may amount to a war crime due to their indiscriminate nature, said Dujarric.

Moreover, Ban reminded all parties of the utmost necessity to respect their obligations under international human rights law and international humanitarian law, which prohibit attacks directed against civilians and civilian infrastructure, said Dujarric.

Secretary-General Ban called on all parties to the conflict in Yemen to engage in good faith with his Special Envoy for Yemen in order to convene a new round of peace talks as soon as possible, said Dujarric.

The UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Yemen, Ismail Ould Chiekh Ahmed, arrived in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Friday, where he will meet Vice President and Prime Minister of Yemen Khaled Bahah and the Government of Yemen delegation to talks, leaders of Yemeni political parties, as well as senior officials of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, according to a note given by the Office of the Spokesperson for the Secretary-General.

xinhuanet.com

Saudi Arabia silenced Ayatollah al-Nimr by executing him. He was an open critic of the Saudi royal dynasty and the cruelty against the Shia, while a longtime advocate for democratic elections. The Saudis lumped Nimr in with 46 al-Qaeda members who were charged with terrorism in order to ruin his reputation.

You are immediately labeled “pro-Iran” if you dare to speak about the tragic fate of the Shia minority in eastern Saudi Arabia. The Saudis do their best to avoid foreign criticism by calling Shia leaders like Nimr “tools of Iran.” Yet oppression against the Shia did not start with the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Tehran, which regimes like Riyadh saw as an expansionary threat.

Iran’s own record of executions does not excuse what the Saudis are doing to their Shia citizens. The Shia on the Arabian Peninsula have been living under a religious “apartheid regime” since the Wahhabis became allies with the Saudi dynasty in the 19th century, which ultimately led to the foundation of Saudi Arabia in 1932.

The Saudi-Wahhabi alliance showed its destructive manner in 1802 by carrying out a mass slaughter at Karbala and destroying and pillaging the tomb of Hussein ibn Ali. They called this carnage “the big jihad.” The Wahhabi practice of targeting Shia clerics’ tombs and destroying Shia mosques was repeated in 1903 in Al-Ahsa, in 1926 when four tombs of imams were destroyed in Medina, and when Imam al-Sadiq’s tomb was targeted in 1975.

Revolutionary fears

If you consider the Wahhabi approach to law and order, takfir practices and views on women, Saudi Arabia is really just another version of ISIS but as a nation-state recognized by the United Nations — and the number one ally of the U.S. in the Gulf. Following the execution of Nimr, many people compared the two: the “white ISIS” and the “black ISIS.” Maybe “gray ISIS” is the term that fits best.

Wahhabism is the official sect of Saudi Arabia and it considers the Shia as being “more dangerous perverts than the Christians and the Jews.” The state policy and the shared mentality are shaped according to this. Animals slaughtered by the Shia can’t be eaten because they are dirty; Shia women are not to be married because they are not Muslims; the Shia cannot testify in court because they would lie, and so on.

Since 1979, driven by the fear that the Iranian revolution would spread, the eastern Saudi city of Qatif is treated as “the traitors’ zone” where the war against the dynasty will be fought. A carrot-and-stick policy has been practiced since 1990 as harsh countermeasures were balanced with increased social services. Shia leaders were released from prison in 1993, and some exiles were allowed to return. But could they become equal citizens? No.

Calls for violence against the Shia by Saudi scholars and the official religious authority have continued. The fatwas are always the same: “Either pick the correct path of belief or be killed or exiled.” Official comments labeling the Shia as “the greatest enemy of the Muslims,” “perverts,” or “deviants,” are still common.

Two German Tornado aircraft are expected to perform one flight a day. Later on, the frequency of the flights may be increased, a Bundeswehr spokesman said.

Two German Tornado surveillance jets stationed at the Incirlik base in Turkey have started flights over Syria as a part the anti-terrorist mission, a Bundeswehr representative said, as quoted by the TV Channel N-tv.

According to the official, the two aircraft will carry out one flight a day. Subsequent flights over the country may become more frequent.

Berlin sent two Tornado aircraft to Turkey in mid-December following parliament’s approval for a military campaign against the Daesh jihadist group in Syria.

It was recently reported that Berlin is also deploying four additional Tornado surveillance aircraft as part of the anti-terror operation in Syria.

On December 4, the Bundestag approved the German government’s proposals to join the US-led coalition against Daesh. Germany has allocated €134 million on the operation, which has a mandate until the end of 2016.

Turkey says it has repelled an attack by the so-called Islamic State on its troops in Bashiqa in northern Iraq, killing 17 militants.

There were no reported injuries or deaths on the Turkish side.

Turkey deployed at least 150 troops into northern Iraq last year, but it has been the subject of dispute between Turkey and the Iraqi government.

Turkey says its troops are only there to train Iraqi forces, but Iraq says Turkey is violating its sovereignty.

Turkey later acknowledged that there had been a “miscommunication” over the troop deployment.

The Bashiqa camp lies near Mosul, a city controlled by Islamic State (IS) since June 2014.

Turkey is part of the US-led coalition against IS, which has taken control of large parts of Syria and Iraq.

bbc.com

Saudi Arabia appears to have renewed an earlier bid for wider defence collaboration with Pakistan as the desert kingdom remains locked in a military campaign against the Houthi militia in Yemen, Pakistani government officials and Western diplomats have told IHS Jane’s .

Speculation over a fresh Saudi bid for expanded defence co-operation with Pakistan increased on 31 December when Muhammad bin Abdullah Al-Ayish, Saudi Arabia’s assistant defence minister for military affairs, met General Raheel Sharif, the Pakistan Army’s chief of staff, at the army’s general headquarters in Rawalpindi.

A statement from the Pakistan Army later said, “Matters related to regional security and bilateral defence collaboration, including training exchanges, came under discussion.” Further details were not given.

janes.com

Relations between Riyadh and Tehran have been tense ever since the Islamic Republic of Iran was established in the revolution of 1979.

Ever since Saudi Arabia executed Shia Cleric Nimr al-Nimr for terrorist offences, tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia have been escalating by the day. After the execution, the Saudi embassy was stormed by protesters in Tehran. Riyadh has now severed diplomatic relations with Tehran – and the UAE, Bahrain and Sudan, staunch Saudi allies, have followed suit, spurred on by Iran’s portentous prediction of “divine vengeance” for the execution.

Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, condemned those who stormed the embassy, but was also critical of the Saudis’ behaviour, suggesting that “the Saudi government has damaged its image, more than before, among the countries in the world, in particular [among] Islamic countries, by this un-Islamic act”.

The concerns that led to Sheikh Nimr’s execution – that he was an agent of “foreign meddling” in the kingdom – are not new. A Shia cleric who spent time in Iran and Syria, Nimr was an outspoken critic of the house of Saud and played a prominent role in the 2011 uprisings in the Shia-dominated Eastern Province.

But the tension goes deeper than that. Relations between Riyadh and Tehran have been tense ever since the Islamic Republic of Iran was established in the revolution of 1979, adding religious competition to a burgeoning geopolitical rivalry.

Since the revolution, the Gulf’s Sunni governments have long been concerned that Iran would seek to manipulate Shia populations across the Middle East, whom are often viewed as “fifth columns”. This suspicion was perhaps best articulated by King Abdullah of Jordan, who in 2004 referred to a “Shia Crescent”, an Iranian sphere of influence stretching from Iran to Lebanon.

This was furthered by Iranian complicity in a number of subversive acts, including an attempted coup d’etat in Bahrain in 1981, an attempted assassination of the Emir of Kuwait in 1985 and the establishment of a Hezbollah franchise in Hejaz, in western Saudi Arabia, two years later.

As a consequence of this fear, in recent years, Saudi Arabia and Iran have become embroiled in a number of proxy conflicts, as collapses in political order elsewhere opened up new chances to compete for influence.

My enemy’s enemy

After Saddam Hussein was overthrown in Iraq, a Shia government was established. Under prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, Sunni Iraqis were marginalised and persecuted – a sectarian crackdown now credited with fuelling the rise of Islamic State, many of whose commanders and fighters are Sunnis purged from the US-trained Iraqi army. This has not only left a legacy of mutual hatred and suspicion, but has also allowed Iran to gain a serious foothold in Iraq – much to the Saudis’ chagrin.

On the archipelago of Bahrain, a Sunni minority led by the al-Khalifa monarchy rules over a Shia majority. Ties between the Saudis and al-Khalifa run deep, and given Bahrain’s close proximity to Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, joined by the 25km King Fahd Causeway, Riyadh pays close attention to Bahrain’s stability.

As in Iraq and elsewhere, Shia gains in Bahrain are seen to be Iranian gains, and Saudi Arabia has set clear red lines to limit any concessions to the religious majority. In 2011, when pro-democracy protesters took to the streets of Manama, a Saudi-led GCC Peninsula Shield Force helped quash the protests.

Deep trouble

In Yemen, meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has spent the best part of a year leading a multinational coalition of Arab states in an air campaign to crush a rebellion by Shia Houthi separatists, who have driven the country’s leaders into exile – and whom the Saudis are convinced receive support from Iran.

And then there’s the most severe Saudi-Iranian proxy conflict: the war in Syria, which sees Riyadh and Tehran supporting different sides in a seemingly intractable civil conflict that has killed around 250,000-300,000 people and displaced around 11m.

While Iran has long supported Bashar al-Assad’s embattled regime, the explosion of protest movements across the region in 2011 offered Saudi Arabia a chance to bring Syria back into what it deems “the Arab fold” by supporting a range of groups opposing the government – many of whom remain locked in combat with it today.

But Iran’s involvement, coupled with the support from Hezbollah – another Iranian ally – has strengthened Assad’s position.

So for all that the post-execution flare-up is an alarming development, it springs from decades of mutual suspicion and violent conflict by proxy. And while the bilious rhetoric between the two countries sours by the day, it is still the people caught in the crosshairs of proxy conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, Iraq and Lebanon who are paying the heaviest price.

alternet.org

On Thursday, a security source in Salahuddin Province announced, that 30 ISIS elements including Arabs and foreigners were killed in an aerial bombardment on their hideout in Sharqat District north of Tikrit (170 km north of Baghdad).

The source said in a statement followed by IraqiNews.com, “The Iraqi Air Force has shelled, at noon today, a hideout for the ISIS organization inside the building of Sharqat Courthouse (120 km north of Tikrit), killing 30 elements of the organization including Arabs and foreigners and destructing the entire building.”

The source added, “The bombardment was carried out based on accurate intelligence information on the presence of some ISIS leaders inside the court’s headquarters.

iraqinews.com

An official in the Abducted Yazidis Bureau, Hussein Qaiada, announced on Thursday, that more than 800 children held by ISIS are training in camps belonging to the ISIS organization, noting that the total number of Yazidi detainees held by ISIS amounts to three thousand detainees.

Qaiada said in a statement obtained by IraqiNews.com, “More than three thousand Yazidis are still being held by the ISIS,” noting that, “During last year, 2331 people were freed from the grip of ISIS with the help of the Kurdistan Regional Government, including 316 men, 867 women and 1148 children.”

Qaiada added, “More than 800 Yazidi children did not exceed the age of 15 years are training in ISIS camps,” pointing out that, “These children in the grip of ISIS would be a major threat to the future.”

He continued, “The Iraqi government did not provide assistance so far to save the Yazidi detainees,” urging the international community to “intervene to save what remains of the Yazidis.”

iraqinews.com