Top rebel commander killed
The head of the Syrian group considered the strongest opponent to ISIS and the Assad government is killed at its headquarters in the northwestern town of Ram Hamdan in Idlib province. A suicide bomber infiltrates a meeting of leaders of Ahrar al-Sham (The Islamic Movement of Free Men of the Levant), killing its commander Hassan Aboud, also known as Abu Abdullah al-Hamwi. A statement from the group says 11 other leaders were killed. The Assad regime doesn’t typically conduct suicide bombings, but they are a common tactic among extremist rebel groups such as ISIS and Al-Nusra Front. Tweet from Islamic Front, the coalition led by Ahrar al-Sham:
They were martyred … in an explosion inside their meeting headquarters
Sources: Prepared for Syria strikes
Obama is prepared to expand airstrikes to Syria in order to combat ISIS and does not believe that he needs approval from Congress, people who participated in talks on the issue say. They say Obama discussed his plans at a White House dinner with a bipartisan group of foreign policy experts and said he has authorization that striking the group on both sides of the Iraqi border to protect U.S. national security. Center for a New American Security CEO and former undersecretary of defense Michèle Flournoy:
This is not an organization that respects international boundaries. You cannot leave them with a safe haven. . . . I expect him to be very candid.
…essentially operating in a virtual safe haven in Syria. That’s a dangerous situation.
Armed drones spotted over Syrian city
0 CommentsResidents of the northern city of Raqaa say they have spotted armed U.S. drones flying over the ISIS stronghold in an apparent effort to target al-Baghdadi, the group’s leader and self-styled caliph. The residents capture photos and video footage of U.S. Predators, which are used in airstrikes on terror suspects in Yemen and Pakistan. The U.S. operates armed drones in Iraqi airspace for force protection, has not publicly said that it is flying drones over Syria.
‘Uses U.S. weapons supplied by Saudi Arabia’
A report by the London-based Conflict Armament Research small-arms research organization says ISIS is using U.S. weapons supplied by Saudi Arabia to moderate Syrian groups. The study documented weapons seized by Kurdish forces from ISIS fighters in Iraq and Syria over a 10-day period in July. The organization says ISIS disposed of ‘significant quantities’ of U.S.-made small arms including M16 assault rifles. It includes photos of ‘Property of U.S. Govt’ markings on the weapons. It also finds that anti-tank rockets used by ISIS in Syria are ‘identical to M79 rockets transferred by Saudi Arabia to forces operating under the Free Syrian Army umbrella in 2013.’ The rockets were made in Yugoslavia in the 1980s.
Source: Journalists’ killer identified
U.S. and UK authorities have identified the ISIS militant believed to have carried out the executions of Sotloff and Foley, and are expected to announce the identity of the man referred to as ‘John’ within days. Investigators have also identified two of the other men that make up the group of four Syria-based British ISIS militants referred to by former captives as ‘The Beatles,’ and an FBI team working with Scotland Yard is closing in on 12 people suspected of forming John’s support network, including assisting him to travel to Syria. A source:
It has been a coordinated effort to track down the support network around the British Islamic State executioner. Our inquiries have given us leads across the country. We are 99.9% certain now as to who ‘John’ is but investigators have had to tread softly in charting and approaching his wider network in the UK.
The source says an announcement is imminent:
This approach has been successful in helping to collate evidence and possibly pinpoint the target’s location in Syria. Familiar names of what can only be described as hardened extremists with a jihadi background have cropped up in this investigation. I expect an official announcement disclosing the executioner’s identity will be made in the coming days and it is only a matter of time before we bring him in.
Airstrikes kill 53
Airstrikes by the Syrian military targeting ISIS in its stronghold city of Raqa kill at least 53 people. Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman:
We have documented the deaths of 31 civilians, among them five women and three children, in Raqa and its surroundings.
Another 15 militants are confirmed dead in a string of eight air strikes, as well as seven other unidentified people. Eight of the civilian victims are from one family.
‘Shariah police force’
British female recruits are believed to be running a Shariah police force in the ISIS stronghold city of Raqaa. The International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR), based in King’s College in London, says Glasgow native Aqsa Mahmood, 20, is believed to be a key figure in the all-female al-Khanssaa brigade. She is linked via internet postings under her username Umm Layth to several other British women, whose identities are unknown but who go by the social media usernames Umm Haritha, Umm Ubaydiah and Umm Waqqas. All are believed to be associated with the about al-Khanssaa brigade, which pays its members about 25,000 Syrian pounds a month, or around $162, to enforce Shariah dress codes and examine people wearing burkhas to make sure that they are women and not enemy fighters in disguise. Another four British women are said to have expressed interest in joining the brigade. ICSR researcher:
Al-Khanssaa is a sharia law police brigade. This is Isil’s female law enforcement. We think it’s a mixture of British and French women but its social media accounts are run by the British and they are written in English … The British women are some of the most zealous in imposing the IS laws in the region. I believe that’s why at least four of them have been chosen to join the women police force.
Arab League statement
The 22-member Arab League says that it will join the fight against ISIS, taking all necessary security measures and cooperating with international and regional efforts to combat the group. Secretary-general Nabil el-Araby:
What is needed is a clear decision for a comprehensive confrontation, militarily and politically.
He says the plan includes accepting international intervention:
While some Arab states object to allowing the Arab League to intervene in their internal crises, the floodgates are opened to foreign intervention, including militarily.
He also calls for the activation of an Arab defence treaty to allow for military action when needed, suggesting that military action could take place under the umbrella of an Arab League joint defense pact.
Strikes on taxi stand kill 12
Syrian air force helicopters are reported to drop barrel bombs on a taxi stand in the city of Aleppo, killing at least 12 civilians including a child. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights:
Twelve civilians, among them a child, were killed, and five others seriously wounded after helicopters launched two explosive-laden barrels against the Haidariyeh district.
A resident of the area:
I saw the bodies. They were workers, people who were simply trying to find a way to put bread on the table… You can see the human remains.
A man who had volunteered to help rescue survivors:
Taxi drivers gather here to transport workers and goods… There were no rebels here.
‘Airstrikes in Syria won’t work’
Schiff, a Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, says airstrikes in Syria won’t address the primary threat to the U.S. and could increase the risk factor:
The most significant threat we face from ISIS will be the return of foreign fighters to our shores, something an aerial campaign over Syria will do little to address. And in the absence of an immediate threat to our homeland from ISIS planners in Syria … the most profound consequence of U.S. airstrikes may be to give us greater ownership of Syria’s brutal civil war.
The U.S. leveraged potential military strikes and assistance to get Iraqis to jettison Nouri Al-Maliki and form an inclusive government, but the U.S. cannot work with the regime in Damascus:
Bashar al-Assad has gassed and dropped barrel bombs on his own people and teaming up with him would only further drive Sunnis into the arms of ISIS.
Instead the U.S. should take advantage of growing discontent among Assad’s backers – Iran and the Alawite tribe – to lessen the regime’s support.
If we discover an imminent threat to the United States emanating from Syria—and that day may come—the president would be right to attack it and he will enjoy Congress’ full support and authorization. But airstrikes now would only serve to harass, not defeat, ISIS. Let’s use the promise of American military assistance to replace, not reinforce, Assad, so that we may begin to see the outlines of an end to the Syrian civil war and with it, ISIS.
‘Over 5,000 tortured to death’
A report compiled by the Syrian Network for Human Rights says the Assad regime has tortured 5,281 people to death since the start of the uprising in 2011. It says the tortured include 94 children and 32 women, who died as a result of being tortured in jail. In August alone, the regime tortured 243 people to death, it says.
Chemical weapons fears
The U.S. and UN remain concerned that the Assad regime still has stocks of chemical weapons. U.S. envoy to the UN Security Council Samantha Powers, after a briefing on U.S. ship Cape Ray’s completed destruction of Syria’s most dangerous declared chemicals and discussed plans to destroy the remaining chemical weapons production facilities:
I want to stress that much more work still needs to be done on Syria’s chemical-weapons program. We must ensure that the Syrian government destroys its remaining facilities for producing chemical weapons within the mandated time frames and without the repeated delays by the Assad regime that plagued earlier removal efforts.
Sigrid Kaag, UN special coordinator on the joint mission to eliminate Syria’s declared chemical-weapons program, says that all of the country’s primary chemical weapons have been destroyed but 12 weapons production facilities have yet to be decommissioned, and there are questions over the regime’s original declaration:
There are still some discrepancies or questions that are being asked. It’s a discussion that’s continuing in Damascus as well as the Hague.
British militants ‘disillusioned’
The International Centre for Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR) at King’s College London says it has talked to British militants fighting with ISIS who are growing disillusioned with the group’s aims and its infighting with rival opposition factions. One jihadist claiming to represent 30 British fighters with a group linked to ISIS says they would be willing to undergo deradicalisation and submit to surveillance if they were assured of avoiding jail terms on their return. He tells ICSR:
We came to fight the regime and instead we are involved in gang warfare. It’s not what we came for but if we go back [to Britain] we will go to jail. Right now we are being forced to fight – what option do we have?
ICSR director Peter Neumann believes up to a fifth of British jihadists could be looking for a way to disengage from the fighting in Syria:
The people we have been talking to… want to quit but feel trapped because all the government is talking about is locking them up for 30 years.
Witness: Haines kidnapped by ‘professionals’
A Syrian translator for the charity that David Haines was working with says he was taken in March 2013 by ‘professional gunmen’ who targeted the vehicle in the hopes of gaining Western victims. Haines was in the final hours of a three-day tour to assess locations for new refugee camps in the north of Syria for the Paris-based Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development (ACTED) when he was abducted with the organisation’s Italian coordinator, Federico Motka. Details of the abduction have previously been kept secret until ISIS threatened Haines this week in a video containing the execution by beheading of U.S. journalist Steven Sotloff.
‘Send Syrian refugees home’
Lebanese Labor Minister Sejaan Azzi proposes dividing refugees from the Syrian conflict by political alliance and deporting them:
What is at stake now is the proposal that refugees who trust the regime return to the areas under regime control, and those who have faith in Nusra Front and ISIS go to the regions under their control.
Azzi says the option of setting up camps for the refugees similar to the ones existing in Jordan and Turkey is no longer relevant. The remarks come after protests by the families of security personnel kidnapped by ISIS and Al-Nusra Front, the Syrian arm of Al Qaeda.
‘A dozen American fighters’
A Pentagon spokesman says that around 100 American fighters are ‘operating inside Syria,’ and the U.S. government believes that several of them have joined ISIS. Col. Steven Warren:
We believe there are maybe a dozen that are with ISIL
‘We will secure international coalition’
Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes says the U.S. is sure of securing international support in the fight against ISIS from European nations concerned that radicalized jihadis who have traveled to the Middle East could return home and create a domestic terror threat. In an interview with CNN:
I absolutely do believe that there will be a coalition of countries from the international community, from here in NATO, also from the region where many of the neighbors have stepped up and said they want to be a part of that type of effort
While the U.S. has yet to commit to airstrikes in Syria there are many other ways partners could contribute:
Intelligence. Law enforcement. Lots of ways for nations to step up to the plate and be a part of this coalition
Top ISIS officials killed
The Iraqi military confirms that al-Baghdadi’s top aide, Abu Hajar al-Souri, has been killed in an airstrike in Mosul. It says that the head of ISIS’s military council in the city of Tal Afar, Abu Alaa al-Iraqi, has also been killed in air operations in Mosul.
The Times commentary
Obama and Cameron write in a commentary for The Times that global security is under threat from Russia’s unilateral actions in the Crimea and Ukraine and the ability of groups like ISIS to develop state-like powers:
The growth of technology and globalisation, for all its great benefits and opportunities, has put power once reserved for States in the hands of the individual, raising the capacity of terrorists to do harm. The utterly despicable murders of two American journalists by ISIL are but the latest evidence of a brutal and poisonous extremism that murders indiscriminately and risks exporting terrorism abroa.
Isolationism has no place in the global era:
Of course there are some who say that we shouldn’t get involved in addressing these threats, that in Britain and America we have done our bit for the world and we should leave today’s problems for others to sort out. … First, those who believe in stepping back and adopting an isolationist approach misunderstand the nature of security in the 21st century. Developments in other parts of the world, particularly in Iraq and Syria threaten our security at home.
They say NATO can adapt to the new global security environment, and renew calls for a rapid response force to tackle the Russian aggression and for member nations to commit to spending 2% of GDP on defense. Military, economic and political force must all be utilized:
We know that terrorist organisations thrive where there is political instability and weak or dysfunctional political institutions. So we must invest in the building blocks of free and open societies, including the creation of a new genuinely inclusive Government in Iraq that can unite all Iraqis, including Sunni, Shia, Kurdish, Christian and other minority populations. When the threats to our security increasingly emanate from outside the borders of our Alliance, we must do more to build partnerships with others around the globe who share our values and want to build a safe, tolerant and peaceful world – that includes supporting the partners who are taking the fight to ISIL on the ground, as we have done by stepping up support for Kurdish and Iraqi Security Forces. And we should use our expertise to provide training and mentoring to forces elsewhere, whether in Georgia or the Middle East, strengthening the capacity of forces there to tackle local threats.
The U.S. and UK will continue to lead the alliance:
… It is only by supporting peace, democracy and human rights around the globe that we will keep British and American families safe today.
Could launch airstrikes without Assad’s support
Cameron says the UK could take action including launching airstrikes without approval from the Assad government as the regime has no legitimacy under international law:
President Assad is part of the problem, not part of the solution. Assad’s brutality gave credence to IS [Islamic State]
He says problems with governance in Iraq also led to the group’s rise there:
… There was an Iraqi government that was standing up for the Shias and not the Sunnis and the Kurds that again left a space for this poisonous organisation to fill
Asked whether a pragmatic deal with Assad is needed in the face of the greater ISIS threat:
In the past just simply saying ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ has led to all sorts of moral quagmires and difficulties. Assad has been part of the creation of Islamic State rather than being part of its answer.