Amerli siege ‘broken’
Iraqi Shiite fighters say they have broken the ISIS siege of the town of Amerli, where 15,000 ethnic Shiite Turkmen are trapped with dwindling food and water and under threat of massacre. Lieutenant General Qassem Atta:
Our forces entered Amerli and broke the siege
Iraqi air and ground forces, Shiite militiamen and Kurdish peshmerga are supported by U.S. airstrikes on ISIS targets as well as international airdrops of weapons and humanitarian supplies, in what is described as the first major success for the federal government in the conflict.
Australia to airlift weapons
The Royal Australian Air Force will deliver weapons to Kurdish fighters battling ISIS. Abbott says the decision to join Canada, Italy, the U.S., France and Britain is made to address a worsening ‘humanitarian crisis.’
Australia will join international partners to help the [anti-IS] forces in Iraq
The RAAF will provide C-130J Hercules and C-17A Globemaster aircraft. It has previously limited its air operations to humanitarian drops.
Sells Yazidi women
ISIS has ‘distributed‘ as many as 300 Yazidi women to rank-and-file members in the past few weeks. The Syrian Observatory on Human Rights confirms at least 27 cases in which women have been sold for around $1,000 each to fighters in Aleppo and Raqqa suburbs and Al-Hassakah, while others have been given away. SOHR says the women were kidnapped in Iraq and transported to Syria and that some have converted to Islam so that ISIS fighters can marry them. ISIS views them as:
captives of the spoils of war with the infidels
Starts airstrikes, aid drops in northern town
The U.S. begins airstrikes and humanitarian drops in the northern town of Amerli, backing up a combined local force of Iraqi military, Shiite militia and Kurdish peshmerga fighters that is seeking to break the ISIS siege of the town and free 15,000 trapped Shiite Turkmen. Australia, France and the UK also participate in the aid drop. Rear Admiral John Kirby says operations will be limited in scope and duration, as required to protect civilians trapped in Amerli.
‘Death before capture’
Shiite Turkmen in Amerli town say they will choose death over capture by ISIS, which considers them apostates. A government employee named Mehdi:
In every three to four houses we have dug graves. If the Islamic State storms our town everyone will be killing their wives and children and they will bury them.
He says the minority’s wives agree to death rather than being used as spoils of war, as ISIS have done with Yazidi minority women:
They say ‘we don’t want to end up in the hands of the Islamic State, being enslaved like those in Sinjar mountain….We don’t want the Islamic State to lay their hands on us.’
Beauty salon owner Fatima Qassim, who has been airlifted to Baghdad:
All the women will kill themselves – either shoot themselves or use kerosene and burn themselves to death.
She says her brother is fighting to defend the town and has remained behind with his wife and six children.
He put eight bullets in his rifle and he said if ISIS enters the town then I will kill my children one by one and then I will kill my wife and myself.
‘Dead letter box’ system
British nationals use a sophisticated ‘dead letter’ email system to smuggle their way into Iraq and Syria to join ISIS, with terrorist handlers employing ‘silent’ email addresses that do not actually send messages, but contain instructions in the Draft folder. Militants are then moved secretly across Europe and smuggled across the Turkish border to training camps in Syria. As many as 20 British nationals are believed to be waiting in safe houses or hotels for the all-clear to cross the border.
Operation to free northern town
The Iraqi Army, Shiite militias and Kurdish peshmerga launch operations to free the northern town of Amerli, where 15,000 minority Shia Turkmen have been under siege by ISIS for two months. The combined forces are reported to be mounting an assault on two fronts in the Salahuddin Kurdish area, with peshmerga fighters said to be west of Tuz Khurmatu, just north of Amerli, and Iraqi army units and Shia militia are approaching Amerli from the south. The Iraqi Air Force is providing some cover on the southern approach. The operation is reported to have two objectives: to break the siege of Amerli and to reopen the main highway leading north from Baghdad.
The Independent commentary
Miliband writes in The Independent that a multilateral approach is needed to tackle ISIS, including convening an international summit under the auspices of the United Nations, with the UK taking a leading role in engaging international partners on the issue, including more stable regimes such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran, which he says are under threat from ISIS’s plans to expand its self-declared caliphate:
This multilateral strategy should have a number of objectives: to tackle the root causes of support for ISIS from within Iraq; to starve them of backing from outside; to bring regional powers together for a lasting political settlement and greater stability; and to provide humanitarian help to those facing the horrific consequences of this conflict.
He says that Britain faces risks at home including the threat of returning radicalized militants and should reform a Home Office program aimed at dealing with such threats, including potentially strengthening policy on control orders – now known as Terrorism Protection and Investigation Measures, or TPIMs – that allow the government to act against suspects who cannot be charged or deported. While there is some role for the U.S. military, neither it or the UK should put boots on the ground – and the UK should avoid unilateralism at all costs:
The events of this summer have underlined how turning our back on the complexities and instability of the Middle East is not an option. But we must also show Britain has learnt the lessons of our recent history with an approach based on a genuine multilateralism, working with others to build alliances across continents against Isis and their ideology.
More than 3 million refugees
The UNHCR reports that more than three million Syrians are now registered as refugees. It says that with almost half of all Syrians displaced from their homes, the war is…
… the biggest humanitarian emergency of our era.
One in every eight Syrians has fled across the border into Lebanon, and a further 6.5 million are displaced within Syria. More than half of those displaced are children. The number of registered Syrian refugees has increased from two million just under a year ago.
Acquires anti-aircraft weapons
ISIS has acquired an arsenal that includes state-of-the-art anti-aircraft guns that can shoot down modern warplanes and poses a significant threat to civilian flights. Prior to the group’s weekend capture of the Taqba airport, it had already seized a large amount of weapons from the Assad regime and fleeing Iraqi forces that includes top-shelf mortars, APCs and even several M1A1 Abrams main battlefield tanks, but its surface-to-air capability was limited to ageing, subpar equipment. However, more recent propaganda photos show militants holding standard-issue carbines and Russian-made Kalashnikov AK-47 replicas, a staple of Middle Eastern armed groups for decades, alongside Russian SA-24 Grinch manpads (man-portable air defence system) captured from the airfield. An American diplomat involved in monitoring Islamist groups:
There is a need to assess the air-defence capabilities of ISIS and also the capabilities of President Assad’s forces. But, I would like to stress that no decision has yet been made on whether to extend the operations in Iraq to Syria
The group is known to have Soviet, Polish and Bulgarian ZU23-2 and ZU23-4 anti-aircraft guns and American low altitude FIM92 Stinger manpads, and has used GSHK heavy-machine guns against the Assad regime’s attack helicopters to great effect, although they are not much use against high-flying fast jets. These are now thought to be augmented by Chinese FN-6 manpads that can hit targets at 11,000 feet and SA-16 Gimlet manpads, with effective range of 16,000 feet which were supplied in large quantities to the regime.
IS fighters have captured SA-16 MANPADS, AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles & MiG-21B jets in #Tabaqa Airbase, #Raqqa. #Syria pic.twitter.com/c33TB56XdL
— Charles Lister (@Charles_Lister) August 24, 2014
Raises terror threat level
The UK raises its terror threat level to Severe from Substantial, meaning that an attack is ‘highly likely’ although may not be imminent. Home secretary Theresa May:
[The decision is] related to developments in Syria and Iraq, where terrorist groups are planning attacks against the west
Severe is the fourth level in a five-tier system, one below Critical, which would indicate that an attack is imminent. This is the first time the level has been raised to Severe since July 11, 2011.
Iraq costs top $7.5 million a day
The Pentagon says operations in Iraq are now costing the U.S. more than $7.5 million a day as the military steps up airstrikes and advisory operations against ISIS. Rear Admiral John Kirby:
So as you might imagine, it didn’t start out at $7.5 million per day. It’s been—as our [operational tempo] and as our activities have intensified, so too has the cost.
He says the Pentagon continues to believe it will be able to fund the operations through the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 using its existing resources.
‘Oilfields earn millions a day’
Luay al-Khateeb, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Doha Center in Qatar, estimates ISIS is earning $2 million a day in oil revenues in Iraq and much more in Syria. The Iraqi fields are only producing half of the 80,000 barrels a day they are rated at, black-market crude is selling at $25-$60 a barrel:
From Syria they could be making double or even triple that.
Estimating the Syrian revenues is difficult since most of the oil is sold to the Bashar al-Assad government, which doesn’t disclose oil use figures, but the regime’s struggle means consumption is likely very high:
It’s a war of survival for the Syrian regime and they have no choice but to buy the oil — even though they know the money is going into ISIS hands.
Second American ISIS fighter may be dead
U.S. authorities are investigating a claim by a coalition of Syrian opposition groups that they have killed an American national during fighting with kharijites, or extremists. The statement is an apparent reference to fighting several days earlier between ISIS and the coalition, which is made up of fighters from the Free Syrian Army, Syrian Al Qaeda branch al-Nusra Front, as well as smaller militant factions. If true, the unnamed militant would be the second American ISIS fighter confirmed killed in battle, after the U.S. government said that Florida native Douglas MacArthur McCain also died in the fighting over the weekend.
American ISIS fighter killed
American national Douglas McArthur McCain is killed fighting for ISIS against the al-Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s Syrian wing, in the suburbs of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city. He is believed to be the first U.S. citizen killed while fighting for the group, also known as Islamic State.
Military options focus on Iraq
Obama says that while he has asked Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Martin Dempsey for ‘a range of options’ for confronting ISIS, military plans are currently limited to protecting U.S. personnel in Iraq and do not extend to action in Syria. To reporters:
Our core priority right now is just to make sure our folks are safe
‘Iraqis responsible for their own security’
Obama says that any security gains made by the U.S. against groups like ISIS will be temporary, and that lasting improvements to the situation will need to be domestic:
The idea that the United States or any outside power would perpetually defeat Isis, I think, is unrealistic. We can rout Isis on the ground and keep a lid on things temporarily, but then as soon as we leave, the same problems come back again. We’ve got to make sure Iraqis understand that in the end they are responsible for their own security.
‘We don’t have a strategy yet’
Obama says that his administration hasn’t yet developed a strategy to combat ISIS, as speculation mounts that the U.S. will bomb ISIS in Syria. To reporters:
I don’t want to put the cart before the horse. We don’t have a strategy yet. I think what I’ve seen in some of the news reports suggests that folks are getting a little further ahead of where we’re at than we currently are.
15 Australian militants dead
Australia’s intelligence chief says at least 15 Australian fighters have been killed in Iraq and Syria, including two suicide bombers:
The draw of foreign fighters to Syria and Iraq is significant and includes more Australians than any other previous extremist conflicts put together
The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) believes the number of citizens posing a potential security threat has increased substantially:
ASIO believes there are about 60 or so Australians fighting with the two principal extremist Al-Qaeda derivatives, Jahabat-al-Nusra and the Islamic State in Syria or Iraq.
Foreign women perform ‘sexual jihad’
Malaysian, Australian and British women are traveling to the Middle East to perform jihad al-nikah to boost the morale of ISIS fighters. Unnamed Malaysian intelligence official:
These women are believed to have offered themselves in sexual comfort roles to ISIS fighters who are attempting to establish Islamic rule in the Middle East. This concept may seem controversial but it has arisen as certain Muslim women here are showing sympathy for the ISIS struggle.
The official says a Malaysian woman in her 30s went to Turkey in December and met up with middlemen to complete the journey to Syria via land routes, while a Malaysian woman in her 40s linked up with the militants in April. Intelligence exchanged with other countries revealed that Sunni Muslim women from Australia and the United Kingdom have also joined up with ISIS.