US defence official says it is ‘noteworthy that Putin believes he needs foreign fighters’
Russia has been trying to recruit Syrians to fight in Ukraine to bolster Moscow’s flagging invasion, according to the Pentagon.
A senior US defence official said it is unclear how many Syrians Vladimir Putin is seeking to recruit, but said “we find it noteworthy that he believes he needs to rely on foreign fighters”.
Continue reading...In 1857, the English poet and Chartist leader Ernest Jones wrote a series of articles in the People’s Paper about the “Indian Mutiny” of that year. It was, he observed, no “mutiny” but a “national insurrection” that Britons should support as much as they had supported similar struggles in Europe. Britons were “on the side of Poland” when it “struggled for its freedom against Russia”. If Poland was “right”, Jones insisted, then “so is Hindostan”.
I was reminded of his argument as I read and listened to some of the commentary about Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion. The invasion is brutal and unacceptable, an assault on democracy and sovereignty. We should oppose it just as we should oppose the Saudi assault on Yemen. We should support the people of Ukraine just as we should the people of Syria.
Continue reading...Bombed and menaced by an unchecked Putin since 2015, Syrians hope the tide might be finally turning
When a Russian air raid in north-western Syria killed 34 Turkish troops, Ankara’s revenge quickly followed. But, instead of targeting the forces of Vladimir Putin, whose jets had caused the carnage, Turkey sent armed drones towards the Syrian army, pulverising hundreds of pieces of weaponry and killing scores of troops – all as Russia watched on blithely.
In the years since Putin intervened in Syria in 2015 to save the regime of Bashar al-Assad there had been countless examples of Russian attacks on civilian sites – schools, bakeries and hospitals – all of which had met meek responses from global leaders and drawn scant attention from war crimes prosecutors.
Continue reading...It’s time for the US and its allies to show their steel in the face of Putin’s aggression. We have learned that nothing else will work
The Syria crisis continues unnoticed. It holds key lessons for the west about Putin yet it has gone virtually unnoticed by the rest of the world. War crimes and crimes against humanity continue in the Russian-sponsored dictatorship, even as some misguided leaders want to usher Bashar al-Assad, the architect of these crimes, back into acceptable society.
We can rest assured that the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, unlike Assad, is not welcoming Putin with open arms. But in responding to the Ukraine emergency, there are lessons the west can and should learn from the situation in Syria.
Hamish de Bretton-Gordon is a chemical weapons expert, fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge and an adviser to the Union of Syrian Medical Charities
Continue reading...A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Myanmar to Mexico
Continue reading...Attempt to target Iranian and Syrian officials includes evidence from civilians forced to flee to Jordan
A groundbreaking attempt to make Iranian and Syrian military officials answerable for war crimes they may have committed in Syria is being launched, as part of an effort to have the cases brought before the international criminal court.
The request includes evidence of Syrian victims forced to flee into Jordan due to attacks and intimidation by the Syrian government and Iran-backed militia groups. It is being brought by the US-based Iran Human Rights Documentation Center in conjunction with Haydee Dijkstal, a UK barrister.
Continue reading...Marie Gracie helps families arriving from Afghanistan. The Guardian angel sends a party entertainer to help the children adjust to their first English winter
Marie Gracie never met the boy, but his fate changed her life. On 2 September 2015, three-year-old Alan Kurdi washed up, drowned, on a Turkish beach. His family were Syrian refugees, trying to reach Europe. Journalist Nilüfer Demir took a photo. Alan lies face down, in a T-shirt and shorts. His feet are so tiny. His hands are upturned, facing the sky.
“I’m a mother,” says Gracie, an artist from Milton Keynes. “Can you imagine anything worse than your child being in the news like that?” She reached out to her local chapter of Refugees Welcome, set up in the wake of the Syrian war.
Continue reading...Marat Gabidullin has written memoir about fighting for Wagner because Russians should know ‘mercenaries exist’
Sitting in a cafe in an upmarket Moscow suburb, the former mercenary Marat Gabidullin looked a long way from the battlefields of Syria where he fought half a decade ago.
Gripping his recently finished memoir, In the Same River Twice, the first published account of fighting for the secretive Russian mercenary outfit Wagner, Gabidullin said: “I wrote this because I realised it’s time for our country to face the truth: mercenaries exist.”
Continue reading...Parliamentary report finds ‘compelling evidence’ of trafficking and highlights missed opportunities to protect vulnerable people later stripped of citizenship
There is “compelling evidence” that British women and children currently detained in camps in north-east Syria were trafficked to the country against their will, according to a new parliamentary report.
After a six-month inquiry by the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on trafficked Britons in Syria, the report published on Thursday highlights how systemic failures by UK public bodies enabled Islamic State (IS) trafficking of vulnerable women and children as young as 12.
Continue reading...A tender moment captured by Mehmet Aslan of Munzir al-Nazzal and his son, both survivors of the Syrian war, prompted Italian organisations to act. A year on, they are settling into life in Tuscany
In January last year, while working on the Turkish-Syrian border, photojournalist Mehmet Aslan photographed a Syrian man, Munzir al-Nazzal, who had lost a leg in a bomb attack. Munzir was playing with Mustafa, his 5-year-old son, who was born without limbs, and the shot portrayed the father, propped up on a crutch, raising his smiling child into the air.
Aslan entitled his photograph Hardship of Life.
Continue reading...US says Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi killed himself when he detonated explosives in home in Atme
Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi took over as leader of Islamic State in 2019 following the deaths in quick succession of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Baghdadi’s nominated successor Abu Hassan al-Muhajjir.
The US operation to try to kill him had been in the planning stages since early December, when officials became convinced that he was living in a nondescript three-storey building on the outskirts of Atme in Syria’s Idlib province, close to the Turkish border.
Continue reading...Analysis: Qurayshi’s killing by the US has to be set against January’s raid on a Syria prison, IS’s biggest attack for years
Being an Islamic State leader is not what it used to be. The death of the latest IS supremo, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, far from the heartland of the terror group’s rise in Iraq in a frugal home in the back blocks of Syria, is another painful blow to an organisation that only five years ago held significant territory in both countries and cast a shadow across an entire region.
Its slide ever since has been dramatic. Unable to hold land, its old guard wiped out, its finances shredded and rank and file depleted, IS looks – at face value – like a group that has had its day. And yet it still lurks amid the rubble of both countries, where it is slowly yet assuredly stirring.
Continue reading...Biden commended the US military for its overnight raid in north-west Syria that resulted in the death of Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, the Islamic State leader and one of the world’s most wanted men. The US president said the operation sent a strong message to terrorists around the world: 'We will come after you and find you'
The leader of Islamic State has been killed during an overnight raid by US special forces in north-west Syria. Drone footage shows the aftermath of a pre-dawn attack on a property in the village of Atme, just south of the Turkish border, that led to up to 13 casualties. A senior US administration official said Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi detonated a bomb at the beginning of the operation that killed him and members of his family.
Joe Biden says military has removed Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi from the battlefield
Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, the leader of Islamic State and one of the world’s most wanted men, has been killed during an overnight raid by US special forces in north-west Syria.
The pre-dawn attack on a house in the village of Atme, just south of the Turkish border, led to up to 13 casualties, among them women and children. It also resulted in the destruction of a US helicopter, which had been used to carry special forces troops from Erbil in Iraq.
Continue reading...Lisa Smith ‘enveloped’ herself in the ‘black flag of IS’ in Syria, prosecutor says
A former Irish soldier accused of joining Islamic State was prepared to die a martyr, a court in Dublin has heard.
Lisa Smith, 39, from Dundalk, County Louth, has pleaded not guilty to being a member of the terrorist organisation between October 2015 and December 2019.
Continue reading...Siege in Kurdish-run prison in Syria ‘deeply distressing’, says Save the Children
The fate of more than 700 boys and teenage detainees has become central to the siege of a Kurdish-run prison in Syria that was overrun on Friday by jihadists, who are accused of using the boys as human shields.
As the siege around the Ghwayran prison in the Kurdish-run northern city of Hasakah entered a fifth day, Islamic State prisoners inside moved into a dormitory housing the boys, some of whom are as young as 12, in an attempt to prevent an assault by Kurdish forces stationed outside.
Continue reading...A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Cambodia to Costa Rica
Continue reading...‘Dozens of IS fighters’ were freed from the jail and the attacks raise fears of the terror group’s resurgence
Islamic State has attacked a Syrian prison housing its suspected members and a military base in Iraq in near-simultaneous deadly operations that have revived fears of the terror group’s resurgence.
IS has yet to comment on the attacks and there is no indication that these were coordinated, but according to analysts they strongly suggest IS is trying to boost its ranks and arsenal in an attempt to reorganise across both countries.
Continue reading...Analysis: sentencing of former colonel to life by German court may not be last chink in Assad’s armour
It was a moment thought nearly impossible after a decade of impunity: a senior Syrian intelligence officer jailed for life for helping direct the horrors of one of modern history’s most brutal wars.
But as Anwar Raslan, a former colonel in Bashar al-Assad’s forces, bowed to his fate, survivors of the barbarous regime of torture that he helped run finally had something to cling to.
Continue reading...