The U.S. condemned a deadly rocket attack on a former American base near Baghdad’s airport that hosts Iranian exiles.

Several rockets fired into Camp Hurriya, also known as Camp Liberty, killed three Iraqi soldiers, according to Iraqi officials.

Twenty members of the People’s Mojahedin of Iran, or Mojahedin-e-Khalq, an Iranian opposition movement in exile that advocates the overthrow Iran’s governemnt were also killed, said the group.

The U.S. urged Iraqi officials to find and hold those accountable for the attack, while registering its commitment to help the UN High Commissioner for Refugees relocate the camp’s refugees to locations outside Iraq.

“We call on more countries to assist in responding to this urgent humanitarian situation by welcoming camp residents for relocation and by contributing to the fund established by the United Nations to support their resettlement,” the State Department said in a statement.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

aa.com.tr

The Turkish military has recently admitted firing on Kurdish positions in Syria. The reason for this was given as a warning not to move west of the Euphrates River. The fear in Turkey is that the Syrian Kurds will be able to declare an autonomous zone, similar to that in Iraq, by connecting the Kobane Canton with the Afrin Canton and giving the Kurds a contiguous area bordering Turkey. The ruling AK Party is also facing a second election on Sunday 1 November that could either give them full control of the government or indicate that the Turkish people have decided a change is in order. The main threat to the AKP’s position is the Kurdish HDP which showed unusual strength in the last election.

While the AKP initially attacked PKK positions in Iraq, a unilateral cease fire on the part of the PKK has helped offset some influence that military action may have in swinging voter sentiment. The Syrian Kurds on the other hand present a different target set while still allowing Turkey to declare war on terrorism claiming the PYD is part of the PKK. The Turks have also declared the region between Kobane and Afrin to be an area that will be designated a safe haven in Syria. Neither the Turks nor the US have actually moved to make the area a no-fly zone or safe haven.

The PYD’s military, the YPG, has proven itself the most capable fighting force against ISIS. ISIS is the declared first priority of the US. The YPG has aligned itself with rebel factions in Syria, such as the Free Syrian Army, to battle ISIS. While there have been some breakdowns, the YPG maintains a tacit agreement with the Syrian army not to engage one another. The Syrian rebels, while fighting ISIS out of necessity, have a first priority of removing the Assad regime. Since Russian military assistance arrived in the region the relationship between the US and Turkey has become more complicated.

Supporting YPG has become increasingly more important to US policy since the failure of a US program to train and arm a Syrian force dedicated to fighting ISIS. Most Syrians recruited for this force only wanted to fight Assad and only a handful were ever successfully trained. In Syria this then leaves the YPG. The US must now find a way to continue supporting the YPG while at the same time controlling Turkey and stopping the attacks on a US ally.

United States policy has historically been that international boundaries not be changed. While Russia would argue that this was not the case in the breakup of the old Soviet Union, the facts are that old borders were reestablished. The problem with holding to this does not take into account the change in US leverage in the region. Should the PYD be assured a contiguous and autonomous region in Syria by Damascus, protected by the Russians, the US will need to decide how to react. Russian Iranian support to Assad will most likely be sufficient to keep the regime in place in the short term or maybe longer. Should a deal be stuck to redesign Syria into different areas, Alawite, Sunni, and Kurd the present administration will likely accept it leaving relations with Turkey hanging. While a member of NATO should Turkey decide to attack Syria while Russian forces are there would the US support or stay to the side.

The West needs to make some very fast decision at this point. Should Russia support the Kurds our strongest ally in Syria would have been coopted and it would strengthen Assad’s hold on power. Should the West accept the de facto situation on the ground it would be required to abandon Turkey and feed its fear of a Kurdish state springing up on its border which may include the Iraqi Kurdish region. This last would however go far in reestablishing US leverage and blunting increasing Russian and Iranian hegemonic desires.

ISIS is the current top priority enemy of the West as well as the Middle East and Russia. Turkey will have to be told that its control must end at its border. Support for the Syrian Kurds must be given even if it means protecting them from Turkey.

rudaw.net

A German rapper who joined the Islamic State militant group and publicly threatened US president Barack Obama was killed in a US air strike in Syria, a defence official says.

Denis Cuspert, also known by his artist name Deso Dogg, used to rap in Berlin and was one of the most famous Western fighters for the IS extremist group.

“I can confirm that an October 16 strike near Raqqa killed Denis Cuspert,” US defence department spokeswoman Elissa Smith said.

Cuspert joined IS in 2012 and went on to appear in numerous videos from the militant group, including one in November last year “in which he appears holding a severed head he claims belongs to a man executed for opposing [IS]”, the State Department previously said.

Cuspert had pledged an oath of loyalty to IS group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and was a chief recruiter of German fighters.

According to Ms Smith, Cuspert threatened Mr Obama and US and German citizens, and had also encouraged Western Muslims to carry out IS-inspired attacks.

“Cuspert was a foreign terrorist fighter and operative for [IS] who used social media to take advantage of disaffected youth and potential Western recruits,” she said, using an alternative name for the IS group.

IS prohibits music, but singing is allowed, and some of the jihadists’ grisly videos are set to a vocal sound track.

Earlier in the day, a defence official speaking on condition of anonymity said that Cuspert “was not considered a high-value target [and] we were not specifically targeting him”.

He also noted that other IS jihadists may have been hit.

Jihadist sources in April 2014 said Cuspert had been killed in Syria but they later retracted the claim.

Cuspert, who later went by Abu Talha al-Almani, was listed as an Al Qaeda supporter by the United Nations.

The General Coordination of Rojava Cantons in Syrian Kurdistan has released a statement about the continued attacks of the Turkish state against the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) positions in Kobani and Gire Spi.

The statement pointed to a remarkable increase of the inhuman practices by the AKP government ignoring the international law and the threats uttered by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the ruling AKP party against Syrian Kurdistan, ahead of November 1 election.

Threatening continued assaults on the Kurdish militia in Syrian Kurdistan, the Turkish president has warned he will not request anyone’s permission to do whatever is necessary to prevent the spread of support for Kurdish autonomy, even if it requires bombing US-allied rebels.

In a clear message to dissuade Kurds from supporting the self-declared autonomous town of Gire Spi (Tel Abyad) near the Turkish border, President Tayyip Erdogan said that he will “do what is necessary,” including using force, to eradicate the potential source of separatism along its borders.

The General Coordination of Syrian Kurdistan Cantons stated that; “Putting the decisions of the AKP and Erdogan into practice instantly, the Turkish military pushes aside the neighbourhood law and respect to a neighboring land by conducting a barbarian bombardment with jets and heavy weapons against the civilian people and YPG positions. The YPG forces that are being targeted by Turkish state’s attacks have proved themselves to be the greatest defender of humanity and democracy values by waging a successful fight against the Islamic State (IS) militants.”

“YPG have also announced everyone that it struggles for a united federal and democratic Syria. Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s remarks confirming the attacks against YPG positions in Rojava territory has been an official confession of their support to IS gangs and their preference of terror instead of democracy.” the statement added.

Describing these attempts by the Turkish state as a “provocation”, the General Coordination of Rojava Cantons urged the international coalition forces to make their stance against this situation clear and put pressure on the Turkish state to end its inhuman attacks.

The Coordination called upon the pro-democracy peoples of Turkey to punish such practices by the Turkish government, remarking that the peoples of Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava) should also give the most meaningful answer to the Turkish state’s attacks by standing by the YPG in a stronger way.

Last week, a local council led by the Democratic Union Party (PYD) declared it part of the system of autonomous self-government established by the Kurds. Since the conflict in Syria broke out in 2011, Syrian Kurds have declared three autonomous zones, called “cantons,” across Syrian Kurdistan (northern Syria), but deny that they are aiming to establish their own state.

The YPG model in Syria is now the Pentagon’s new strategy to defeat IS. Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter, announced earlier in October a new plan to strengthen cooperation with the Syrian Kurds by providing them arms, and new equipment.

Russian president Vladimir Putin in September said “We should finally acknowledge that no one but President Assad’s armed forces and Kurdish YPG militia are truly fighting the Islamic State and other terrorist organizations in Syria”.

ekurd.net

A Syrian rebel group which is part of a new U.S.-backed alliance that also includes the Kurdish YPG militia announced on Thursday plans for an imminent offensive against Islamic State militants in Raqqa province, the jihadists’ stronghold in Syria.

U.S. Defence Secretary Ashton Carter said earlier this week the U.S.-led coalition would support local forces as they put pressure on Islamic State in Raqqa and in neighbouring Iraq.

Washington has announced a shake-up of its support to the rebels battling the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, ending a programme to train fighters outside Syria and instead providing weapons to groups under U.S.-vetted commanders. It has already dropped ammunition to rebels in the north, but has not specified which groups the aid was bound for.

The Raqqa Revolutionaries Front, which made the announcement in an online video statement, is one of several rebel groups that recently formed the alliance. The group said earlier this month U.S. weapons were on their way.

“We will soon announce zero hour for the beginning of the battle of liberation from oppression and persecution,” leader Abu Issa said in the video, which was posted on Youtube by an activist group called Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently.

“It will be an historic battle, for Raqqa first and Syria second,” Abu Issa said, appealing to the local population.

“Today we declare Raqqa province in its entirety a military zone. For this reason its people must not go near areas where there are Daesh elements” for their own safety, he said, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

He did not mention U.S. military aid, nor the name of the wider alliance formed earlier this month, the Democratic Forces of Syria.

The alliance includes the Kurdish YPG militia and a number of Syrian Arab rebel groups such as the Raqqa Revolutionaries Front, which consists mainly of Arab tribal insurgents drawn from the area.

The Arab groups in the new alliance are operating under the name “The Syrian Arab Coalition”.

Carter told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday the U.S. military would intensify air strikes and might carry out more ground attacks against Islamic State.

He said the United States was now supporting Syrian Arab forces already inside the country fighting IS rather than trying to train completely new moderate Syrian fighters outside the country, an effort that cost millions of dollars and produced few trained troops.

Isis is believed to have ordered the closure of all women’s clinics supervised by male doctors in its Syrian heartlands, in the latest assault on the health and rights of women in the territories controlled by the militant group.

A culture of rape, forced marriages for child brides, the persecution of doctors and the exclusive use of medicines for militants have resulted in a crisis for women’s health under Isis’s brutal regime.

According to activists, Isis has drastically restricted the work of male gynaecologists in accordance with its leaders’ belief that men and women should be kept apart at all costs.

Sources told the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights that all women’s clinics in Raqqa state overseen by men had been shut down. Gynaecologists working in the province’s larger hospitals had their involvement in operations “confined”.

The Observatory, a London-based network of activists, said it had previously reported on the closure of women’s clinics in smaller provinces held by Isis.

“People expressed their resentment over these steps taken by [Isis] regarding health and medical staff in the city, which already suffers from the lack of female medical staff engaged in these tasks,” it said in a statement.

Another activist network, Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently, also reported threats and harassment towards doctors in the city on Wednesday night.

“A lot of doctors have [already] left, especially gynaecologists who were barred from practising their work and [threatened] with death,” said Abu Mohammed, the group’s founder.

Earlier this year, doctors in Isis’s Libyan territories reported a dramatic increase in cases of miscarriages and STDs among young women, as girls are forced into unions with fighters.

One gynaecologist told The Times in May that girls taken in to clinics were often so young they had no real sense of what was happening to them. “We see girls who are bleeding heavily from their genital area. Some of them don’t know what sex is — they come into the clinic playing with their dolls.”

The demand on women’s clinics continues to grow in Isis-held Syria and Iraq, as women are tasked primarily with producing the next generation of fighters.

A “manifesto” for the role of “Women in the Islamic State”, unearthed in February by the Quilliam counter-extremism think-tank, revealed a “sedentary” lifestyle as mothers and homemakers.

“It is considered legitimate,” the document says, “for a girl to be married at the age of nine.”

independent.co.uk/

Russia has bombed targets in southern Syria for the first time in a dramatic expansion of its aerial campaign to a hotly-contested region near Israel’s Golan.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported Thursday morning that “what appeared to Russian jets” conducted a series of strikes on the villages of Tal al-Hara, Tal al-Antar, Kafar Nasij and Tal Aqraba, all of which are located approximately 15 kilometers east of the Golan demarcation line.

The SOHR report comes after a number of pro-rebel outlets had claimed starting Tuesday that Russian strikes had targeted positions in southern Syria, while Iran’s semi-official Fars News said the strikes took place in the Quneitra province bordering Israel as well as Daraa.

Meanwhile, the pro-Damascus daily Al-Akhbar touted the start of Russia’s aerial campaign in southern Syria, which comes two weeks after Syrian regime forces backed by a sizeable Hezbollah-contingent reversed a rebel offensive in northern Quneitra and gained ground near Israel.

“Yesterday the Russian air force began striking the bases of armed groups in the south of the country to help the army recapture a large number of areas in the Daraa, Suweida and Quneitra provinces,” the newspaper reported Thursday morning.

The newspaper, which closely supports Hezbollah, said the Russian step comes as a rejection of “analyses and predictions” that Russia would not strike southern Syria because “it is a primary theater for Free Syrian Army groups and because Moscow had agreed with Israel not to approach its airspace.”

“The Russian strikes on [Tuesday] and Wednesday evening have confirmed that the quadripartite coalition [sees] everyone bearing arms [against pro-Assad troops as] an enemy of the Syrian state,” the report added in a rejection of Russia’s original claim that it was intervening in Syria to fight ISIS, which has a meager presence in southern Syria.

Al-Akhbar cited a source a source in the FSA-affiliated Southern Front as saying that the Russian raids had “hit their targets with high precision.”

The newspaper, meanwhile, quoted a regime source as saying that the Syrian army is expected “in the very near future to [activate] a number of fronts in the south.”

The Southern Front’s offensives against the regime in the Daraa province ground down in the summer after its “Southern Storm” campaign failed to seize the provincial capital.

The Southern Front launched the offensive on Daraa in late June following a series of stunning successes in the southern Syrian province in the spring.

The coalition had seized the Nasib border crossing with Jordan in early April and the regime’s 52^nd Brigade base northeast of Daraa on June 9.

The regime, for its part, had failed in its bid in early 2015 to seize territory in Quneitra and northern Daraa after an offensive backed by Hezbollah and Iran was turned back by rebels.

mmedia.me/lb