Russia to help fight Islamists in the Middle East

PARIS — The United States and Russia will share intelligence on Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq and work together to combat the threat of terrorism that hangs over the region, U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry said Tuesday after meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

After three hours of talks in Paris, Kerry said Russia has agreed to “explore” whether to provide more weapons to Iraqi security forces fighting Islamist extremists, as well as to train and advise them.
The two top diplomats also discussed how to keep Iran’s nuclear program from being converted to military use.

Car bomb kills at least 10 in central Syria

BEIRUT: A car bomb struck a pro-government neighborhood in the central Syrian city of Homs on Sunday, killing at least 10 people, setting cars on fire and sending thick plumes of black smoke into the sky, activists and a government official said.

The blast in the Zahra district, sent tremors through Homs, where rebels and the government have struck two cease-fire deals this month that have restored at least a semblance of peace to the shattered city.

The provincial governor, Talal Barazi, said the attack targeted such reconciliation efforts.

An official in the Homs governor´s office said 10 people were killed in Sunday´s explosion and more than 40 were wounded.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.

The director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights activist group, Rami Abdurrahman, put the death toll at 12. He also said more than 40 were wounded.

Casualty figures frequently vary in the immediate aftermath of attacks in Syria. (AP)

Syria clashes kill 21 rebels in Aleppo province

BEIRUT: Fierce fighting around Syria´s contested northern province of Aleppo killed at least 21 rebels on Monday as rockets slammed into a government-held district in the provincial capital, killing nine people.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that along with the 21 rebels, at least 30 soldiers were killed or wounded in Monday´s clashes in the province.

President Bashar Assad´s forces, backed by Lebanese Hezbollah and pro-government militias, have been trying to wrest as much territory in Aleppo from the opposition ahead of the June 3 presidential elections.

In the city of Aleppo, Syria´s largest and the provincial capital, government forces have been relentlessly shelling opposition districts with aircraft and artillery in recent months.

Aleppo has been divided between government- and opposition-held areas since rebels launched an offensive there in mid-2012, capturing whole neighborhoods and large sections of territory outside the city and along the border with Turkey. (AP)

Jordan destroys 'camouflaged' vehicles crossing from Syria

AMMAN: Jordanian warplanes destroyed "camouflaged" vehicles on Wednesday as they tried to cross into the kingdom from war-ravaged Syria, in the first such strikes since the conflict erupted three years ago.

A Syrian military source, cited by state television in Damascus, said the vehicles struck did not belong to Syria's armed forces, while Amman said an initial probe showed they were being used by arms dealers.

Damascus has accused Amman of backing the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad by training and arming rebels, a charge denied by Jordan, which says it has tightened border controls and jailed dozens trying to cross illegally.

Wednesday's air strikes were the first time Jordan has used fighter jets against such infiltrations.

"Royal air force jets fighters today at 10:30 am (0730 GMT) destroyed a number of vehicles that attempted to cross into Jordan from Syria," the Jordanian army said.

"The camouflaged vehicles tried to enter from an area with rugged terrain," it said in a statement.

"The fighter jets fired warning shots, but they were ignored, prompting them to destroy the vehicles. The army will not tolerate such actions."

A military official told AFP in Amman that "Three wheeled vehicles tried to enter the kingdom" near Ruwaished in northern Jordan.

In Damascus, a military source said the vehicles did not belong to the Syrian army.

"No military or armoured vehicles belonging to the Syrian army moved towards the Jordanian border, and so what was targeted by the Jordanian air force does not belong to the Syrian army," it said.

Jordanian Information Minister Mohammad Momani said the vehicles apparently belonged to arms traders.

"Initial probe shows that those who were inside the vehicles were infiltrators who tried to smuggle weapons and other things," Momani, who is also government spokesman, told AFP.

"They were all killed," he said without specifying their number.

Amman says arms smuggling across the border with Syria has risen by 300 percent in the past year.

"They were arms smugglers, who also seek to smuggle drugs sometimes," a military official said.

Jordan says it has foiled hundreds of trafficking attempts, while the military state security court is examining several related cases.

Border guards have in past clashed with and arrested several people as they tried to cross from Syria into the kingdom.

- Tough message -

"By using the air force, Jordan wants to send a message to terrorists and groups that seek to exploit the Syrian situation that it will respond in a very tough way against any threat to national security," said analyst Oraib Rantawi, head of Amman's Al-Quds Center for Political Studies.

"Jordan also wants to ... respond to accusations that Amman is involved in facilitating the entry of jihadists into Syria who are considered a threat to the kingdom itself."

The country has struggled to cope with hosting more than 500,000 Syrian refugees uprooted by the conflict.

It has repeatedly expressed fears that the bloodshed could spread and concern over the regional impact of anti-Assad jihadist fighters.

The United States also fears a possible spillover of violence to Syria's southern neighbour Jordan, a key US ally and one of only two Arab states to have signed a peace treaty with Israel.

King Abdullah II has vowed to protect Jordan from the Syrian war, while the United States kept F-16 fighters and Patriot missile interceptors in the kingdom after joint military exercises last year.

More than 150,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict broke out in March 2011, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor.

Syria army launches assault in besieged Homs

DAMASCUS: Syrian troops and pro-regime militiamen fought their way into rebel-held neighbourhoods of the central city of Homs on Tuesday after besieging them for nearly two years.

Meanwhile, rebels elsewhere in the country have received for the first time at least 20 US-made TOW anti-tank missiles from a "Western source", a rebel official said.

The assault on Homs comes a day after the army recaptured the Christian town of Maalula in the strategic Qalamun region and as state media reported the country would soon move into election mode.

It follows a UN operation to evacuate some 1,400 people trapped inside army-besieged neighbourhoods of Homs in February.

Around 1,300 people, mostly fighters, remained behind.

France will table a proposal before the United Nations Security Council authorising the International Criminal Court to investigate crimes against humanity in Syria, French ambassador to the UN Gerard Araud said Tuesday.

Araud told reporters that France hoped to introduce the resolution in the next few weeks, following a presentation to council members of a gruesome dossier containing thousands of photos showing detainees who had been starved or tortured in prisons run by the Syrian regime.

Any resolution introduced by France is almost certain to be vetoed by Syria´s ally Russia as well as China. Western diplomats, however, say even in the event of a Russian veto, the measure would continue to pile pressure on Damascus while accentuating Russia´s isolation on the council.

Syrian state television reported that the army and the pro-regime militia National Defence Forces (NDF) "have achieved key successes in the Old City of Homs".

Troops were advancing in several neighbourhoods and had "killed a number of terrorists", it said, using the regime´s term for rebels.

Local activists and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed the operation.

A trapped activist, Abu Fehmi, said the army was "bombing very, very intensely".

Britain-based Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said regime forces began the advance a day earlier after NDF forces were deployed to strengthen the regime troops´ presence.

Homs is Syria´s third city and activists have long referred to it as the "capital of the revolution" because of the huge pro-democracy protests held there when the uprising began in March 2011.Most of the central city is now under regime control. Rebel-held pockets have been under a siege for nearly two years, leading to dwindling food and medical supplies.

Pakistan’s Syria policy neutral, claims Sartaj

 

LONDON: Adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs and National Security Sartaj Aziz has said Pakistan wants to strike a balance between Saudi Arabia and Iran to ease tensions between the two countries.
In an interview with BBC’s Urdu Service, Sartaj said Pakistan was following a neutral policy on Syria in line with UN resolutions. He said that sectarian divisions were very harmful for the Islamic world. In reply to a question, the adviser said the $1.5 billion aid provided by Saudi Arabia was direly needed by the country.

He said Pakistan had released Afghan Taliban to take forward the reconciliation process in Afghanistan. Pakistan wanted the Afghan Taliban to take part in the election process and join the mainstream, but they are no more in our control. He regretted that soon after the start of the election campaign in Afghanistan, negative statements had been increased against Pakistan by Afghan leaders.

Sartaj said no request had been made for getting additional US arms and ammunition in Afghanistan and if Pakistan would need them, it would be acquired from other US bases in other parts of the world.

The adviser said without resolving the issues with the neighbouring country, the Pakistan military had reservations over friendship and trade with India. He said the environment will have to be improved to resolve the Kashmir issue.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will visit Iran in May or June to discuss bilateral relations and world issues. When he was asked if Pakistan was sending arms to Syria, he said there was no specific agreement about Syria in the present circumstances.

He said Islamabad was making efforts to sell small arms and fighter aircraft to Saudi Arabia. He said it was strange that objections were being raised about it, though all world nations wanted to sell their weapons to other countries. He said there was no difficulty for Saudi Arabia to purchase weapons from any other country. There was no need for creating any doubts on the issue, he added.

He said the Pakistan-Iran gas pipeline project was intact, but due to sanctions the time limit for its implementation would have to be reset.

Al-Qaeda shifting from Pakistan to Syria: NYT

WASHINGTON: Dozens of seasoned militant fighters, including mid-level planners, have travelled to Syria from Pakistan in recent months in what US intelligence and counterterrorism officials fear is an effort to lay the foundation for future strikes against Europe and the United States, reports the New York Times.

“We are concerned about the use of Syrian territory by the al-Qaeda organisation to recruit individuals and develop the capability to be able not just to carry out attacks inside of Syria but also to use Syria as a launching pad,” CIA Director John Brennan told a House panel recently.

The extremists who concern Brennan are part of a group of al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan that has been severely depleted by a decade of US drone strikes. But the fighters still bring a wide range of skills to the battlefield, such as bomb-building, small-arms tactics, logistics, religious indoctrination and planning, though they are not believed to have experience in launching attacks in the West.

Syria is an appealing base for these operatives because it offers them the relative sanctuary of extremist-held havens — away from drone strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan — as well as ready access to about 1,200 American and European Muslims who have gone there to fight and could be potential recruits to carry out attacks when they return home.

New classified intelligence assessments based on information from electronic intercepts, informers and social media posts conclude that al Qaeda’s senior leadership in Pakistan, including Ayman al Zawahri, is developing a much more systematic, long-term plan than was previously known to create specific cells in Syria that would identify, recruit and train these Westerners.

Most of the operatives identified by intelligence officials are now focused on attacking Syrian government troops and occasionally rival rebel factions. But the fact that such operatives are showing up in Syria indicates that al Zawahri is also playing a long game — counting on easy access to Iraq and al Qaeda support networks there, as well as on the United States’ reluctance to carry out drone strikes or other military operations against targets in Syria.

The new assessment is not likely to change US policy toward Syria anytime soon, but it puts pressure on the Obama administration and its allies because it raises the possibility that Syria could become the next Afghanistan.

There are perhaps “a few dozen” al-Qaeda veterans of fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan in Syria, two top counterterrorism officials said.In his first speech as secretary of homeland security in February, Jeh Johnson put it bluntly. “Syria has become a matter of homeland security,” he said.

The al-Qaeda veterans have multiple motivations, counterterrorism officials say. Like thousands of other foreign fighters, many have been drawn to Syria to fight the government of President Bashar Assad.

Others, like Abu Khalid al Suri, a Syrian-born veteran of al-Qaeda, were sent by the terrorist group’s central command in Pakistan first to fight Assad but also to begin laying the groundwork to use enclaves in Syria to launch attacks against the West, the US officials said.

Al Suri, who is believed to have been close to Osama bin Laden and to have fought against US forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, was sent to mediate conflicts between al-Qaeda’s main affiliate in Syria, the Nusra Front, and another extremist faction, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which al-Qaeda has disavowed. He was killed in a suicide attack in February by the rival group.

Syria and Pakistan

In the wake of recent visit of Saudi Crown Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz Pakistan's policy position on Syria keeps coming up for public debate, as much for the initial obfuscation on the part of government on the outcome of visit as for the spanner thrown in the works by a news agency report. In fact it was the report which set off the debate by claiming that Pakistan agreed to sell anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles to the Kingdom for onward supply to anti-government Syrian rebel forces. And this, the report suggested, was in furtherance of the Pak-Saudi agreement inked by the two sides during the visit to help set up a 'transitional government' in Syria. To the public mind, and rightly so, such a policy shift at a time when most of the challenges to our national security stemming from the growing menace of sectarianism are already on our hands, would add to our woes. All that the government had been saying up till then about the Syrian civil war that Pakistan is greatly concerned over gross violation of human rights and would like the two sides in the civil war to hammer out a peaceful solution. Never ever there was any suggestion made by Islamabad in support of a 'transitional government' in Damascus, which simply stated means the ouster of the Assad regime. That the Kingdom's number two had come, on the heels of a high-profile long-awaited visit by the Saudi foreign minister, at the time their erstwhile guest Nawaz Sharif is in power in Pakistan - perceptibly there was this rich concoction that tended to strengthen the impression that Pakistan was going to join the Syrian opposition. In fact there are even rumours of volunteers being enlisted. So there are now the PM Advisor Sartaj Aziz and Foreign Office spokesperson on job to inform the nation of the truth in the matter. There is nothing new in the Pak-Saudi joint statement, he told the National Assembly, adding 'it was in keeping with the declared position on Syria...the UN-backed Action Group in its Geneva meeting on June 30, 2012 had proposed setting up transitional government including members of government and opposition with executive powers'. And as for the much talked about sale-purchase of arms the Prince Salman travelled on to New Delhi from Islamabad and there too he signed 'defence pact aimed to help defence personnel of the two sides to work closely and learn from each other's experiences'. As for the arms sold to Saudi Arabia making way to Syria the Foreign Office spokesman insists it is not possible given that defence deals invariably carry end-users certificate which ensures that our arms are not resold or provided to a third country. So far so good; but one would have beef with the spokesperson when she rejects public criticism saying ill-informed people are liable to misunderstand the outcome of the Saudi visit, and added that "Bottom line is that foreign policy represents your national interests'. She is right but only to the extent of generality of her remark.

A large majority in Pakistan looks at the Syrian imbroglio in its wider context, both for its regional complexity and its negative impact on the unity of Muslim world. Given that civil war in Syria is increasingly becoming a direct clash between the Iran-supported Assad regime and Saudi-backed opposition it tends to suck in volunteers from the Shia-Sunni divide. Already, as poignantly pointed out by Prince Karim Aga Khan in his speech to a joint sitting of Canadian parliament, the tensions between the two denominations "have increased massively in scope and intensity recently and have been exacerbated by external interventions". "In Pakistan, Malaysia, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain, Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan it is becoming a disaster". He aptly compared the Shia-Sunni divide with the situation in Ireland with Catholics and Protestants pitted against each other, and warned against being oblivious to this reality. Not that we think Pakistan is being led to the battlefields blindfold, but do detect the shift in our foreign policy on civil war in Syria. That Geneva-I backed the idea of transitional government and therefore this understanding with Saudi Arabia - two years on we find the argument a little hollow. And we want a transitional government in Syria because it would serve our 'national interests' - we need to redefine as to what constitutes a national interest. Only at the risk of being dubbed as grossly obstinate and irrelevant one would refuse to admit that to our blood-soaked sectarian showdown is as much a national creation as the 'kindness' of our foreign friends. No wonder then when Foreign Office justifies shift in policy on Syria in line with national interests the people look around and wonder.