War News

AP: Taliban say no peace with ‘occupation,’ want US talks

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The leader of the Taliban said Saturday there will be no peace in Afghanistan as long as the foreign “occupation” continues, reiterating the group’s position that the 17-year war can only be brought to an end through direct talks with the United States.

In a message released in honor of the Eid al-Adha holiday, Maulvi Haibatullah Akhunzadah said the group remains committed to “Islamic goals,” the sovereignty of Afghanistan and ending the war.

The Taliban have had a major resurgence in recent years, seizing districts across the country and regularly carrying out large-scale attacks.

Earlier this month, the Taliban launched a major assault on the city of Ghazni, just 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the capital, Kabul. Afghan security forces battled the militants inside the city for five days, as the U.S. carried out airstrikes and send advisers to help ground forces.

The battle for Ghazni killed at least 100 members of the Afghan security forces and 35 civilians, according to Afghan officials.

A year ago, President Donald Trump announced that he would send additional U.S. forces to confront the Taliban. But since then the insurgents’ profile has risen, both on the battlefield and in the diplomatic sphere.

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BBC: Yemen war: Boys dig friends’ graves after air strike Video

The McGlynn Note, Source Wikipedia: In March 2015, President Barack Obama declared that he had authorized U.S. forces to provide logistical and intelligence support to the Saudis in their military intervention in Yemen, establishing a “Joint Planning Cell” with Saudi Arabia.^[398] This includes aerial refueling permitting coalition aircraft more loitering time over Yemen, and permitting some coalition members to home base aircraft rather than relocate them to Saudi Arabia.^[128]

US supported the intervention by “providing intelligence sharing, targeting assistance, advisory and logistical support to the military intervention”, according to the state department.^[399] In April 2015, the US expanded its intelligence-sharing with the coalition.^[400] Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken said: “As part of that effort, we have expedited weapons deliveries, we have increased our intelligence sharing, and we have established a joint coordination planning cell in the Saudi operation centre.”^[401] Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that evidence shows that SA had been using U.S.-supplied cluster bombs outlawed in much of the world.^[402] According to Anthony Cordesman, the US government does not want “the strategic Bab-el-Mandeb strait” to be threatened.^[403]

According to press reporting, many in US SOCOM reportedly favor Houthis, as they have been effective at combating al-Qaeda and recently ISIL, “something that hundreds of U.S. drone strikes and large numbers of advisers to Yemen’s military had failed to accomplish”.^[404] According to a senior CENTCOM commander, “the reason the Saudis didn’t inform us of their plans is because they knew we would have told them exactly what we think – that it was a bad idea.” As Yemen expert Michael Horton puts it, the US had been “Iran’s air force in Iraq“, and “al-Qaeda’s air force in Yemen”. According to an Al Jazeera report, one reason for US support may be the diplomatic logic of tamping down SA’s opposition to the Iranian nuclear deal by backing them. Another is the view among some US military commanders that countering Iran took strategic priority over combating Al-Qaeda and ISIL.^[404]

Senator John McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, praised the intervention, saying, “The prospect of radical groups like Iranian-backed Houthi militants” was “more than [U.S. Arab allies] could withstand.”^[404]

An attack that shocked the world – at least 33 children killed in rebel-held northern Yemen when an air strike by the Saudi-led coalition hit their school bus.

The coalition intervened in 2015 to support the internationally recognised government against Houthi rebels, who are allied with Iran.

Many civilian deaths in Yemen go unreported but with rare footage from the ground, Orla Guerin tells the story of a school trip that ended in disaster, and the children and families still reeling in the aftermath.

ALJ: Yemen war: A devastating toll for children Video

As the conflict in Yemen continues unabated, the situation worsens, causing the list of malnourished children to increase daily.

Aid agencies are scrambling to prevent two humanitarian crises in the middle of the war in Yemen.

One and a half million kids are suffering from malnutrition.

Health workers fear it could worsen a cholera outbreak.

AP: Al-Qaida bomb master killed in US strike, officials say

CAIRO (AP) — Al-Qaida’s chief bomb maker, Ibrahim al-Asiri, who was behind the 2009 Christmas Day plot to down an airliner over Detroit and other foiled aviation-related terror attacks, was killed in a U.S. drone strike, Yemeni officials and a tribal leader said Friday.

The killing of al-Asiri deals a heavy blow to the group’s capabilities in striking western targets and piles pressure on the group that already lost some of its top cadres over the past years in similar drone strikes.

A Yemeni security official said that al-Asiri is dead; a tribal leader and an al-Qaida-linked source also said that he was killed in a U.S. drone strike in the eastern Yemeni governorate of Marib.

The tribal leader said that al-Asiri was struck, along with two or four of his associates, as he stood beside his car. He added that al-Asiri’s wife, who hails from the well-known al-Awaleq tribe in the southern governorate of Shabwa, was briefly held months ago by the UAE-backed forces and later released.

Al-Qaida itself has remained silent about its top bomb maker. Instead of the typical “eulogies” on militant websites, the Yemeni source said the group is trying to hunt down suspected “spies” who might have tipped off the U.S. on his whereabouts leading up to the strike.

The security official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to brief reporters. The tribal leader and al-Qaida-linked source requested anonymity fearing for their safety.

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REU: U.S. raises $300 million from allies for Syria stabilization

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States said on Friday it had secured $300 million from coalition partners to help stabilize parts of Syria retaken from Islamic State, after President Donald Trump demanded that allies help carry the costs of the war.

FILE PHOTO: People walk through debris in the center of Afrin, Syria March 24, 2018. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi/File Photo

The State Department said it would redirect $230 million in frozen funding for Syria to other unspecified foreign policy priorities, while emphasizing that the move did not signal a retreat by Washington from the Syrian conflict.

Trump froze the $230 million in March, threatening to withdraw United States forces from Syria, subject to a review to reassess Washington’s role in the brutal seven-year-old conflict.

Whether or not the coalition money will convince him to stay is unclear.

The State Department named veteran U.S. diplomat and former ambassador to Iraq, Jim Jeffrey, as U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s adviser for Syria, a role that will include overseeing the U.S. role in talks aimed at a political transition in Syria.

While Washington has long insisted that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad should go, the Trump administration appears to have accepted that Assad could remain until the end of his current seven-year presidential term in 2021.

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GUARD: Syria: US preparing for final stage of anti-Isis push despite $200m funding cut

Iraq A Deadly Deception – War Documentary 2018

WAR DOCUMENTARY: IRAQ A DEADLY DECEPTION ALJAZEERA DOCUMENTARIES 

On the evening of 9/11, George W Bush made a vow to the American public – that he would defeat terrorism.
Unknown to those listening in shock to the presidential address, the president and his advisers had already begun planning their trajectory into an invasion of Iraq. It was packaged as “holding responsible the states who support terrorism” by Richard Perle, a Pentagon adviser between 2001 and 2003.

“I believe it represented a recognition that we would never succeed against the terrorists if we went after them one at a time and as long as governments were facilitating the organisation, training, equipping of, financing of terrorist organisations, we were never going to get it under control,” says Perle.
After 100 days spent fighting those who had become publicly accepted as the culprits – Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan – the US set the ball rolling for war against Iraq.

On the evening of 9/11 the president is saying: well, maybe we’ll be going after Iraq now and somebody said, well, that would be against international law. The president responded: I don’t care, we’re going to kick some ass.