FROM THE BBC:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-29166372
Ten Arab countries have agreed to help the US in its fight against the jihadist group, Islamic State (IS).
On Thursday, ministers representing Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates offered their support.
After talks with US Secretary of State John Kerry in Jeddah, they pledged to provide military support and humanitarian aid, and to halt the flow of funds and foreign fighters to IS.
Mr Kerry told the BBC they were "full-throatedly ready" to combat the group.
However, Russia warned the US against expanding its campaign of air strikes from Iraq into neighbouring Syria.
The Russian foreign ministry said any such action, without the backing of the UN Security Council, would be "an act of aggression" and a "gross violation" of international law.
A joint communique declared a "shared commitment to stand united against the threat posed by all terrorism".
It added that participants had "discussed a strategy to destroy Isil wherever it is, including in both Iraq and Syria".
"The region recognises the danger that has been unleashed and they are full-throatedly ready to deal with that and that is why they committed today to take the actions they have committed to," Mr Kerry told the BBC.
Nato member Turkey was also at the Jeddah meeting, but did not sign the communique. Mr Kerry downplayed the move, saying the important US ally was dealing with some "sensitive issues" but remained "very engaged and has been very involved".
WELL, TURKEY WOULDN'T SIGN, IT WANTS THE OTHERS DESTROYED, NOT ISIL, RIGHT?AND ISRAEL WITH THEM!
NO SURPRISE HERE!
Turkey has reportedly been reluctant to take a prominent role in the coalition, partly out of concern for the 49 Turkish citizens being held hostage by IS.
I CALL BS! THOSE HOSTAGES WERE RELEASED!
TURKEY SEEMS QUITE COZY WITH ISIL INDEED!
OTHER HOSTAGES WERE BEHEADED ON LIVE TV AFTER ALL, REMEMBER!
In Iraq, the US has carried out more than 150 air strikes against IS.
On Thursday, aircraft attacked jihadist positions near the strategically important Mosul Dam in support of Iraqi security forces. The Pentagon said two machine-gun emplacements and a bunker were destroyed.
The US has also sent hundreds of military advisers to assist Iraqi government and Kurdish forces, but has ruled out sending ground troops.
FROM ALJAZEERA:
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/09/france-urges-global-fight-against-201491584827778481.html
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/09/france-urges-global-fight-against-201491584827778481.html
Thirty countries have pledged to help Iraq in the fight the al-Qaeda breakaway group ISIL "by any means necessary", as leaders gathered to discuss their strategy.
French president Francois Hollande called for a global response to counter ISIL on Monday, as he opened a conference on Iraq, bringing together members of a US-led coalition.
"[The threat] is global so the response must be global," the French leader said, at a Paris conference aimed at coordinating a strategy against the group, which controls parts of northern Iraq and Syria.
Foreign ministers from the main European states, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, Iraq's neighbours and Gulf Arab states Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE, are in Paris to discuss broad political, security and humanitarian aspects of tackling ISIL.
In holding this conference, the countries meeting today are showing their solidarity and the will to protect themselves against terrorism," Hollande added in a joint news conference with Iraqi president Fouad Massoum.
Massoum said ISIL fighters were responsible for some of the worst atrocities committed in Iraq's history.
"We should spend more efforts, and therefore we ask to continue the air strikes against the terrorist positions. We will not give them any safe haven," Massoum added.
Al Jazeera's Nadim Baba, reporting from Paris, said that the statements released by the two leaders were not specific in terms of military action.
"What is really crucial is not who is going to carry out the air strikes but who will provide financial and military assistance."
The conference convened as Tehran claimed it had rejected a US request to cooperate against ISIL, citing Washington's "evil intentions", despite the US insisting it would not coordinate militarily with Iran.
"The United States asked through its ambassador in Iraq whether we could cooperate against [ISIL]... I said no, because they have dirty hands," said Iran's leading religious and political figure, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
French officials say the coalition against ISIL must go beyond military and humanitarian action, arguing there must also be a political plan for once ISIL has been weakened in Iraq.
They argue that the 2003 US-led intervention in Iraq, in which Paris did not participate, ultimately contributed to the current crisis..(DO THEY MEAN FRANCE, NOT PARIS?)
WHO SUPPORTS ISIL?
WELL, OPENLY OR COVERTLY?
WHO FUNDS THEM?
Many Gulf states have been accused of funding Islamic State (IS) extremists in Iraq and Syria.
But as Michael Stephens, director of the Royal United Services Institute in Qatar, explains, not all is clear-cut in war.
Much has been written about the support Islamic State (IS) has received from donors and sympathisers, particularly in the wealthy Gulf States.
Indeed the accusation I hear most from those fighting IS in Iraq and Syria is that Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are solely responsible for the group's existence.
(HMMMMM! MANY PEOPLE HAVE SAID THIS, SO MAYBE IT'S TRUE?)
It is true that some wealthy individuals from the Gulf have funded extremist groups in Syria, many taking bags of cash to Turkey and simply handing over millions of dollars at a time.
This was an extremely common practice in 2012 and 2013 but has since diminished and is at most only a tiny percentage of the total income that flows into Islamic State coffers in 2014.
It is also true that Saudi Arabia and Qatar, believing that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would soon fall and that Sunni political Islam was a true vehicle for their political goals, funded groups that had strongly Islamist credentials.
Liwa al-Tawhid, Ahrar al-Sham, Jaish al-Islam were just such groups, all holding tenuous links to the "bad guy" of the time - the al-Nusra Front, al-Qaeda's wing in Syria.
Gulf funds have flowed to opposition groups since the early days of the uprising against Bashar al-Assad
Qatar especially attracted criticism for its cloudy links to the group.
Turkey for its part operated a highly questionable policy of border enforcement in which weapons and money flooded into Syria, with Qatari and Saudi backing.
All had thought that this would facilitate the end of Mr Assad's regime and the reordering of Syria into a Sunni power, breaking Shia Iran's link to the Mediterranean.
Yet as IS began its seemingly unstoppable rise in 2013, these groups were either swept away by it, or deciding it was better to join the winning team, simply defected bringing their weapons and money with them.
Only al-Nusra has really held firm, managing a tenuous alliance with its more radical cousin, but even so it is estimated that at least 3,000 fighters from al-Nusra swapped their allegiance during this time.
So has Qatar funded Islamic State? Directly, the answer is no. Indirectly, a combination of shoddy policy and naivety has led to Qatar-funded weapons and money making their way into the hands of IS.
Saudi Arabia likewise is innocent of a direct state policy to fund the group, but as with Qatar its determination to remove Mr Assad has led to serious mistakes in its choice of allies.
Both countries must undertake some soul searching at this point, although it is doubtful that any such introspection will be admitted in public.
Light years ahead
But there are deeper issues here; religious ties and sympathy for a group that both acts explicitly against Shia Iran's interests in the region and has the tacit support of more people in the Gulf than many would care to admit.
The horrific acts committed by IS are difficult for anybody to support, but its goal of establishing a caliphate is certainly attractive in some corners of Islamic thought.
Many of those who supported the goal have already found their way to Syria and have fought and died for Islamic State and other groups. Others express support more passively and will continue to do so for many years.
The pull of IS, a group that has outperformed all others in combat and put into place a slick media campaign in dozens of languages to attract young men and women to its cause, has proven highly successful.
In every activity - from fighting, to organisation and hierarchy, to media messaging - IS is light years ahead of the assorted motley crew of opposition factions operating in the region.
'War economy'
Islamic State has put in place what appear to be the beginnings of quasi-state structures - ministries, law courts and even a rudimentary taxation system, which incidentally asks for far less than what was paid by citizens of Mr Assad's Syria.
IS has displayed a consistent pattern since it first began to take territory in early 2013.
Upon taking control of a town it quickly secures the water, flour and hydrocarbon resources of the area, centralising distribution and thereby making the local population dependent on it for survival.
Dependency and support are not the same thing, and it is impossible to quantify how many of Islamic State's "citizens" are willing partners in its project or simply acquiescing to its rule out of a need for stability or fear of punishment.
To understand how the Islamic State economy functions is to delve into a murky world of middlemen and shady business dealings, in which "loyal ideologues" on differing sides spot business opportunities and pounce upon them.
IS exports about 9,000 barrels of oil per day at prices ranging from about $25-$45 (£15-£27).
Some of this goes to Kurdish middlemen up towards Turkey, some goes for domestic IS consumption and some goes to the Assad regime, which in turn sells weapons back to the group.
"It is a traditional war economy," notes Jamestown analyst Wladimir van Wilgenburg.
Indeed, the dodgy dealings and strange alliances are beginning to look very similar to events that occurred during the Lebanese civil war, when feuding war lords would similarly fight and do business with each other.
The point is that Islamic State is essentially self-financing; it cannot be isolated and cut off from the world because it is intimately tied into regional stability in a way that benefits not only itself, but also the people it fights.
The larger question of course is whether such an integral pillar of the region (albeit shockingly violent and extreme) can be defeated.
Without Western military intervention it is unlikely. Although Sunni tribes in Iraq ponder their allegiances to the group, they do not have the firepower or finances necessary to topple IS and neither does the Iraqi army nor its Syrian counterpart.
SO THERE WE HAVE IT...
AND TO THE FRANTIC FEMALE READER WHO SO WANTED ME TO SAY THE PHOTOS FROM MY PREVIOUS BLOGS WERE FAKES, THAT ISIS DOESN'T BEHEAD WOMEN AND CHILDREN, THAT ISIS IS MISUNDERSTOOD, AND WHO DEFENDED ISIS/ISIL, MAY I JUST SAY...FEEL FREE TO GO TO HELL..
.ISIS POSTED THOSE AND THEY ARE INDEED REAL. SUCK IT UP!
THERE ARE WORSE PHOTOS...
An Arab-Israeli member of ISIS has claimed that the terror group takes pleasure in “drinking blood” of its enemies. Rabie Shehada, otherwise known as “the Palestinian slayer”, spoke openly in a new video of the Islamic group’s love of death.
“I swear we are a people who love death for the sake of God just as you love to live,” says Shehada. “I swear we are a people who love drinking blood. We came to slaughter you,” he adds. “We love dying for God as much as you love life.”
AND IF YOU LOVE ISIS, GO BE A "BRIDE" TO THEM! THEY ARE ASKING FOR WOMEN AND WILL TAKE EVEN WHITE CHRISTIANS, FOR A DAY OR SO...THEN, OFF WITH YOUR HEAD!
MAYBE WE'LL SEE YOU ON THEIR VIDEOS?
MAYBE THIS ONE WOULD GO WITH YOU?
FOR FURTHER READING ON PRIME TARGETS OF ISIL:
ADD KUWAIT TO ISIS SUPPORTERS///IMAGINE THAT!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/14/america-s-allies-are-funding-isis.html
“Everybody knows the money is going through Kuwait and that it’s coming from the Arab Gulf,” said Andrew Tabler, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “Kuwait’s banking system and its money changers have long been a huge problem because they are a major conduit for money to extremist groups in Syria and now Iraq.”
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been publicly accusing Saudi Arabia and Qatar of funding ISIS for months.
ADD TURKEY TO THOSE WHO FUND ISIS/ISIL...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/07/30/ISIS-Fighter-Claims-Turkey-Funds-the-Jihadist-Group
"Turkey paved the way for us. Had Turkey not shown such understanding for us, the Islamic State would not be in its current place. It [Turkey] showed us affection. Large [numbers] of our mujahedeen received medical treatment in Turkey,” said the man, who was not identified. “We do not have the support of Saudi Arabia, but many Saudi families who believe in jihad do assist us. But anyhow, we will no longer need it, soon,” he said.
http://global-security-news.com/2012/12/29/syria-un-envoy-brahimi-nations-supporting-dialogue-and-enemies-funding-terrorism/
http://global-security-news.com/2013/03/07/un-peacekeepers-kidnapped-in-syria-by-terrorists-supported-by-despotic-gulf-states/