As if the current 662 U.S.military bases around the world from which air strikes can be launched aren’t enough.
How many Americans are aware that the U.S. is currently engaged in five wars — in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen, and that our forces are involved in lesser conflicts in Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia? The answer is, probably very few. These wars are largely out of the news, and since there are seldom any American casualties, they are virtually invisible.
Combat operations primarily involve drones operated from thousands of miles away, and bombs dropped from thousands of feet in the air. According to the Pentagon, there are currently 662 U.S.military bases around the world from which air strikes can be launched using a variety of aircraft. Also stationed on these bases are Special Operations forces that carry out hit-and-run raids and sinations in various parts of the world.
WNU Editor: And are we safer with such a presence?
The Taliban weren't supposed to able to get to American forces like this. But somehow, a suicide bomber, riding a motorcycle, just took out a half-dozen U.S. troops.
Six U.S. troops were killed while on patrol in Afghanistan. It marked the deadliest day for American forces in nearly 18 months, and signaled that a resurgent Taliban was on the move in what was supposed to be the waning year of the war.
Another three Afghan troops who were on patrol with their American counterparts were injured.
The Taliban reportedly claimed responsibility for the attack, which left U.S. military officials scrambling to figure out how the Taliban could’ve taken out so many troops at once.
WNU Editor: The Pentagon has more than just 6 soldiers being killed to worry about .... the Taliban are on the verge of seizing half of the country ....
.... In October, the Long War Journal concluded the Taliban 20 has control of percent of the country and has influence in half of it. On Monday, the same publication said the group has control over nearly all of the south, an area the U.S. and allied partners spend more than a decade wrestling out of Taliban hands.
It would be difficult to overstate just how deadly and destabilizing a year it was in the Middle East. From the civil wars raging in Syria and Yemen, to the ongoing military campaign against the Islamic State group and its self-styled caliphate across Iraq and Syria, 2015 undoubtedly marked a year of violence, displacement, and heartbreak for much of the region.
We try to avoid making predictions here at the Mideast Memo, preferring instead to leave that to the analysts and experts who study and report on the region each and every day. It's with that in mind that we humbly offer these five Mideast news stories as ones to watch in the rapidly approaching new year:
Commentaries, Analysis, And Editorials -- December 21, 2015
* Commander and his men are trapped inside police HQ by Taliban fighters * He said: 'If we don't get support in an hour, our fighters will be captured' * Deputy governor took to Facebook to warn Helmand province could fall * The official said 'unless the government acts now we will lose the province'
An Afghan police chief has made a desperate plea for help fighting the Taliban, saying he is trapped inside his headquarters and surrounded by dead bodies.
Commander Mohammad Dawood said he and his men were running out of ammunition and feared they would soon be overrun as fighting raged in Sangin in Helmand Province.
His warning came hours after the province's deputy governor, resorted to Facebook to warn the president the Taliban could soon take over the area where British troops died.
Hmeymim airbase, Latakia, Syria (CNN)Russians are renowned for their endless patience -- and I sometimes feel they like to test us foreigners whenever they can.
Certainly our journey into Syria with the Russian defense ministry was testing: Seven hours on a bus to a military airport outside Moscow, three hours going through security, then six hours on a Soviet-era Tupolev passenger jet to Syria.
It was 4 a.m. when we finally touched down, bleary-eyed, at the Hmeymin Air Base in Latakia on northwest Syria's Mediterranean coast, the staging ground for Russia's air war against Islamist terror groups fighting for control of Syria.
Military And Intelligence News Briefs -- December 21, 2015
A Canadian pilot has been named responsible for the accidental deaths of nine Iraqi soldiers near the city of Fallujah, a military source told Iraqi television channel Al-Sumar.
Iraqi Defense Minister Khaled al-Obeidi on Friday confirmed the death of nine Iraqi soldiers after an unintentional air strike during an offensive on rebel positions near the city of Fallujah in Anbar province.
“The plane of the international coalition forces that fired at the Iraqi army near Fallujah three days ago, was Canadian, the pilot was Canadian,” the source said.
WNU Editor: Talk about timing. Canada's defence minister is in Iraq today .... Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan visits Iraq(CBC). No one else has verified this claim that a Canadian pilot was involved in this friendly fire incident.
Fighters alleging to be the “Soldiers of the Caliphate in the Philippines” have released a short video showing a training camp somewhere in the Southeast Asian country. It is unclear which group the fighters belong to, but several Philippines-based jihadist groups have pledged allegiance or support to the Islamic State.
The video begins with a masked figure speaking to the camera about making “hajj [pilgrimage] to the Caliphate” before switching to showing the rudimentary training camp. Fighters are then shown participating in running obstacles and partaking in other physical training. Additionally, the jihadists are then shown undergoing basic weapons training with what appears to be a US-made assault rifle. Many of the fighters seen in the video appear to be young, but almost all have their faces covered.
WNU Editor: It was only a question of time before they started showing up in this part of Asia.
The Littoral Combat Ship was supposed to represent the future of small, fast, and flexible warships. Instead it was beset by significant flaws and questions of reliability.
After years of work costing billions of dollars, the U.S. Navy is scaling back its controversial effort to build a fleet of small, speedy, flexible warships for near-shore patrols—a fleet plagued by design flaws, mismanagement and technical malfunctions.
But the Navy’s not cutting the fleet by choice—and not everyone is happy with the change. The decision to reduce the Littoral Combat Ship program from 52 ships to 40, while also building them all at one shipyard, reflects an ongoing conflict inside the Pentagon over America’s military strategy.
On one side are the advocates of what defense planners call “presence”—that is, stationing lots of inexpensive troops, planes and ships near potential hotspots in order to reassure America’s allies and ward off its enemies, theoretically preventing war without anyone firing a shot.
WNU Editor: So much for the U.S. Navy's goal of having 300 ships by 2019.
A massive tumble in Azerbaijan's currency has shuttered shops and sent people scrambling to convert their manats into foreign currency or durable goods.
"This is such a miserable situation for the whole nation," a Baku man told RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service. "Everyone wants to buy dollars and only a few [banks and exchange officies will] sell.... There are almost no dollars left at exchange points."
The Azerbaijani Central Bank's decision to float the country's currency on December 21 led to the loss of some 48 percent of the manat's value -- from 1.05 to 1.55 manats to the dollar.
The drop led stores and even entire shopping malls across the country to close as people rushed to buy things before store owners raised their prices.
Moscow (AFP) - Russia is not trying to bring back the USSR, President Vladimir Putin said in a documentary aired Sunday, but the problem is that "nobody wants to believe it".
Since the beginning of the Ukraine crisis, which saw pro-Russian leader Viktor Yanukovych ousted by pro-European demonstrators, Moscow has accused the West of using "the politics of containment" in a Cold War throwback.
"With Ukraine and other areas of the former USSR, I'm sure our Western partners aren't working in the interests of Ukraine, they are working to prevent the recreation of the USSR," he said in "World Order", a documentary broadcast on the public Rossiya 1 channel.
"But nobody wants to believe us, nobody wants to believe that we're not trying to bring the Soviet Union back," he said.
WNU Editor: Among all the Russians that I know .... family included .... I can count on one hand the number of people who may miss the "old days". They are all old .... alone .... on pensions .... wondering why no one is paying attention to them. The mass majority of Russians .... by far .... have no appetite for a return to the old Soviet Union. None. Zero. Nada. Myself included.
Donald Trump has gained traction in the Republican primary, according to President Obama, because the boisterous billionaire has found a way to play off American anxieties, especially among "blue-collar men."
The president told NPR's Steve Inskeep in an interview late last week that economic and demographic changes in the country, including his own "unique demographic," have left a void that Trump is "exploiting."
An Indian Agni-II intermediate range ballistic missile on a road-mobile launcher, displayed at the Republic Day Parade on New Delhi's Rajpath, January 26, 2004. Wikipedia
A recent report in Foreign Policy magazine claims that India is building a massive new nuclear research facility. The facility would also help produce fuel for the country’s nuclear submarines and reactors.
More troubling, the report claims that India will use the space to create an extra stockpile of enriched uranium fuel for use in nuclear weapons, particularly a powerful thermonuclear weapon.
If true, this revelation could spark fears in China and Pakistan, rivals in the region, wary of India’s secretive nuclear program.
The report says: “India’s close neighbors, China and Pakistan, would see this move as a provocation: Experts say they might respond by ratcheting up their own nuclear firepower.”
Pakistan’s estimated stockpile nuclear weapons is about 120, while China is said to possess about 260 nuclear warheads. WNU Editor: For those who may not know .... thermonuclear weapons use atomic weapons as a trigger to produce a far greater explosion. The Foreign Policy article is here .... India Is Building a Top-Secret Nuclear City to Produce Thermonuclear Weapons, Experts Say (Foreign Policy). Whats my take .... if these reports are true, China and Pakistan will probably expand their nuclear weapons program.
Paper says Moscow proposed sending jets to protect Syrian president and warned coalition against "getting close".
Russia has proposed sending four fighter jets to escort the plane carrying Syrian President Bashar al-Assad when he makes a visit to the Iranian capital, regional media outlets have reported.
Al-Diyar, a Lebanese newspaper close to the regime of Assad, said on Monday that Moscow had alerted the US-led coalition not to "get close to Assad's plane in order to avoid an aerial battle".
It is expected that Assad's plane will fly to Iran through Iraqi airspace, al-Diyar reported.
WNU Editor: Would the U.S. or the coalition force down this plane .... it looks like some in the Syrian government believe that such a possibility is very real.
Kabul: Afghanistan's Helmand province could fall to the Taliban after months of heavy fighting, with 90 members of the security forces killed over the past two days, the deputy governor of the volatile southern province warned.Mohammad Jan Rasulyar said unless President Ashraf Ghani took urgent action, the province, a centre of opium production and a Taliban heartland that British and American troops struggled to control for years, would be lost.
"Your Excellency, Helmand is standing on the brink and there is a serious need for you to come," he wrote on Facebook.
WNU Editor: This is becoming a disaster.
More News On The Battle For The Afghan Province Of Helmand
Six foreign troops were killed and three wounded Monday in a suicide car bombing near the largest U.S. military base in Afghanistan, NATO officials said.
The U.S.-led military coalition did not immediately confirm the victims’ nationalities, but an Afghan official said that at least three U.S. service members were among the dead in the attack near Bagram Airfield in northern Afghanistan.
Taliban insurgents claimed responsibility for the bombing in a statement, saying their target was a joint Afghan-NATO security patrol.
“We’re deeply saddened by this loss,” U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Wilson A. Shoffner, spokesman for coalition forces, said in a statement. “Our heartfelt sympathies go out to the families and friends of those affected in this tragic incident, especially during this holiday season.”
More News On Today's Suicide Attack That Killed 6 American Soldiers In Afghanistan
James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal wrote his last column of 2015 on a John Kerry profile by New Yorker editor David Remnick, and a Rolling Stone interview with Kerry. He found this exchange with Jeff Goodell in the aging-hippie magazine “unhinged” in tone:
Q: Given your characterization of climate change as a national-security threat, when you look at what the Koch brothers and Exxon Mobil are doing—as you know, Exxon Mobil is being investigated by the New York state attorney general for lying to investors about what it knew about climate change.
Kerry: Absolutely. It’s tobacco—it’s R.J. Reynolds all over again.
Q: Given what’s at stake, do you consider Exxon Mobil or the Koch brothers an enemy of the state?
Kerry: Well, I’ll leave it to other people to assign metaphors or allegories. I would prefer to try to build the consensus necessary, and we don’t get there if we start accusing people of things. So we need to try to bring people into an understanding. I don’t think we’re going to do it with the Koch brothers. But I think that Exxon Mobil stands potentially to lose billions of dollars in what I would imagine would be one of the largest class-action lawsuits in history.
WNU Editor: If a Republican official said the same thing .... without denouncing the premise of the question .... the media would be in a frenzy right now. Instead .... this is buried in a news website that examines media bias. The Rolling Stone interview is here ....John Kerry on Climate Change: The Fight of Our Time (Jeff Goodell, Rolling Stone). Sighhh .... I left the Soviet Union because of this mindset .... but it appears that this mindset exists among many in Washington.
Update: Someone has just emailed me that Rush Limbaugh has said the same thing.
Need to go for blood tests and other medical tests this morning. Nothing serious .... this is part of my medical check-up. Blogging will return in a few hours. Military And Intelligence News Briefs and World News Briefs will be posted at 17:00 EST and 18:00 EST today.
Republican presidential candidates are blasting Hillary Clinton over the Democratic frontrunner’s assertion that the United States is “finally where we need to be” in the fight against the ISIS — and her unsubstantiated claim that the terror group is using a video of Donald Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric as a recruiting tool.
“We now finally are where we need to be,” Clinton said during Saturday’s Democratic debate in New Hampshire. “We have a strategy and a commitment to go after ISIS. … And we finally have a U.N. Security Council resolution bringing the world together to go after a political transition in Syria.”
Her GOP rivals and other top Republicans pounced.
“No @HillaryClinton,” former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush tweeted. “We are not ‘where we need to be’ in fight against ISIS.”
WNU Editor: When I heard her say that my eyebrows went up. But she is stating what many Americans want to hear .... that America is slowly degrading ISIS and we are doing so without committing massive numbers of American troops. The Republican alternative (with the exception of Trump and to a lesser extent Ted Cruz) .... is to escalate and expand the war by committing massive number of U.S. ground troops .... a position that I suspect many Americans do not feel comfortable with. As for that Trump recruitment video that she says the Islamic State is using .... Trump supporters are having a field day .... Donald Trump Recruitment Video.
President Obama meeting in the Oval Office in late August with his national security advisers to discuss strategy on Syria, in a photo released by the White House. Credit Pete Souza/White House
Seymour M. Hersh on US intelligence sharing in the Syrian war
Barack Obama’s repeated insistence that Bashar al-Assad must leave office – and that there are ‘moderate’ rebel groups in Syria capable of defeating him – has in recent years provoked quiet dissent, and even overt opposition, among some of the most senior officers on the Pentagon’s Joint Staff. Their criticism has focused on what they see as the administration’s fixation on Assad’s primary ally, Vladimir Putin. In their view, Obama is captive to Cold War thinking about Russia and China, and hasn’t adjusted his stance on Syria to the fact both countries share Washington’s anxiety about the spread of terrorism in and beyond Syria; like Washington, they believe that Islamic State must be stopped.
WNU Editor: I am not a fan of Seymour Hersh .... but his analysis and conclusions are hard to dispute in this post. This is a long post .... but worth the read.
Hat Tip to Jay for this link.
On a side note .... Seymour Hersh focuses on U.S. policy in this post, but it looks like the Germans have taken his analysis as their own policy .... Report: German Intelligence Is Working With Syrian Intelligence. My prediction .... expect more countries to partner up and share their intelligence with Russia and Syria in 2016 .... even conducting operations together.
The MAARS is one of three robotic, unmanned vehicles demonstrated to Soldiers from the 519th Military Police Battalion, 1st Maneuver Enhancement Brigade, Aug. 5, 2015. It is equipped with non-lethal and lethal armament. (US Army photo)
Pentagon plans envisioning smart, autonomous weapons able to instantly react and respond to combat situations may run up against a proposed United Nations ban on lethal autonomous weapons systems.
The UN is hoping to head off autonomous killing systems before countries begin making them part of their arsenals, though the US, Russia and others appear to be in no hurry to slow the advance of killer robots.
Just last week Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work told a national defense forum in Washington, D.C., that a strong deterrence strategy in the future will depend partly on having weapons systems that "learn" in real-time and operate autonomously.
WNU Editor: This Pandoras Box has been open .... China, Russia, the U.S. are not going to support this UN ban.
A new Iranian precision-guided ballistic missile is launched as it is tested at an undisclosed location October 11, 2015. REUTERS/FARSNEWS.COM/HANDOUT VIA REUTERS
IRAN IS following through on the nuclear deal it struck with a U.S.-led coalition in an utterly predictable way: It is racing to fulfill those parts of the accord that will allow it to collect $100 billion in frozen funds and end sanctions on its oil exports and banking system, while expanding its belligerent and illegal activities in other areas — and daring the West to respond.
Unfortunately, the Obama administration’s response to these provocations has also been familiar. It is doing its best to downplay them — and thereby encouraging Tehran to press for still-greater advantage.
We’ve pointed out how the regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has unjustly sentenced Post correspondent Jason Rezaian to prison and arrested two businessmen with U.S. citizenship or residence since signing the nuclear accord. There have been no penalties for those outrageous violations of human rights. Now a United Nations panel has determined that Iran test-fired a nuclear-capable missile on Oct. 10 with a range of at least 600 miles, in violation of a U.N. resolution that prohibits such launches. Moreover, it appears likely that a second missile launch occurred on Nov. 21, also in violation of Security Council Resolution 1929.
WNU Editor: How times have changed. Just a few months ago some in the Washington Post were saying that President Obama's outreach to Iran and reaching a nuclear deal was a good thing .... A nuclear deal with Iran is the best option(Fareed Zakaria, Washington Post).
President Barack Obama listens during a meeting with aides on Air Force One en route to Beijing, China, Nov. 16, 2009. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
An emerging scandal exemplifies a long-running critique of Obama’s foreign policy.
According to the Daily Beast (here and here) and the New York Times, some 50 intelligence analysts posted with U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East, have formally complained that their superiors altered assessments about the Islamic State and Al Qaeda in order to adhere more closely with the Obama administration’s public line that the military campaign against these groups is progressing well.
There is, of course, a sad irony that a White House filled with people who frequently charge the George W. Bush administration with manipulating intelligence on the region now stand accused of the same thing.
WNU Editor: I suspect that there are many in the intelligence community who are now counting the days when President Obama leaves office.
U.S. President Barack Obama greets former U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel during a farewell ceremony at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Virginia. Yuri Gripas / Reuters
When Chuck Hagel resigned as defense secretary last year, the narrative was clear: President Obama and he did not see eye-to-eye on how to prosecute the war against the Islamic State, so Hagel needed to go. White House officials, speaking anonymously, said at the time that the president had lost faith in Hagel’s ability to lead — a charge that Hagel’s advisers brushed aside.
Now, a little over a year later, Hagel is swinging back. In an interview with Foreign Policy magazine published Friday, he said he remains puzzled why White House officials tried to “destroy” him personally in his last days in office, adding that he was convinced the United States had no viable strategy in Syria and was particularly frustrated with National Security Adviser Susan Rice, who he said would hold meetings and focus on “nit-picky” details.
“I eventually got to the point where I told Susan Rice that I wasn’t going to spend more than two hours in these meetings,” Hagel told Foreign Policy. “Some of them would go four hours.”
WNU Editor: Here is another commentary on Chuck Hagel's remarks .... Chuck Hagel's Astonishing Admission on Syria(Micah Zenko, The Atlantic). As to what is my take on this story .... Chuck Hagel was an "underwhelming" Defense Secretary .... and could not get alone with President Obama's inner circle ... hence his firing. On a side note .... expect more "exposes" and "confessions" from other former administration officials when President Obama is no longer in the White House .... doubly so if the Republicans win the White House in 2016 resulting in many Democrats looking for work.
U.S. Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Godson Bagnabana puts up an inflatable snowman on the flight deck of the USS Ronald Reagan in Yokosuka, Japan, Dec. 17, 2015. U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Nathan Burke
Washington (CNN)Navy officials are evaluating the damage to a guided-missile submarine that struck a buoy.
The USS Georgia is in dry dock after it hit a buoy in the channel near Fernandina Beach, Florida, in late November, according to Military.com. The submarine was returning to its home port at Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay in Georgia.
No leadership has been removed from the sub following the collision, said Lt. Lily Hinz, a public relations officer with Submarine Group 10. CNN has submitted a request for comment from the division.
Official are conducting an investigation into the accident, which happened at the entrance to the channel leading to the base.
U.S. presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump said separately on Sunday that the United States should not try to topple dictators such as Syria's Bashar al-Assad, highlighting a skepticism over foreign wars that transcends party lines.
Both candidates said the Middle East would be less tumultuous today if Libya's Muammar Gaddafi and Iraq's Saddam Hussein were still in charge, arguing that the United States faces a greater threat from Islamic State and other extremist groups that have flourished in their wake.
"The region would be much more stable" with Gaddafi, Hussein and Assad in place, Sanders, a Democrat, said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
"100 percent - is there even a doubt in your mind?" Trump, the Republican frontrunner, said in a separate interview on the same show.
WNU Editor: After the toppling Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi .... and the subsequent chaos that it produced .... overthrowing dictators and the unforeseen consequences that it produces is something that today's American electorate is not comfortable to repeat. For Donald Trump .... this position will differentiate him away from Hillary Clinton .... who is still standing by the role that she played in advocating the toppling of Libya's former dictator Muammar Gaddafi. For Bernie Sanders .... his remarks resonate with many in the Democrat party .... but it will not be enough to overtake Hillary Clinton for the nomination.
Concerns about the Middle East, and especially Syria, have displaced other threats.
In the summer of 2012—around the time that the Islamic State’s inchoate plans for a caliphate merited a mere footnote in a U.S. congressional report on the year-old Syrian conflict—Robert Satloff argued that a civil war was taking shape in Syria, and that its terrible consequences would extend far beyond Syrians; Americans, too, would soon be acquainted with the horror.
Among the plausible scenarios, he reasoned in the New Republic, were a revived Kurdish insurgency in Turkey and thousands of jihadists “descending on Syria to fight the apostate Alawite regime, transforming this large Eastern Mediterranean country into the global nexus of violent Islamist terrorists.”
“None of this is fantasy,” Satloff, the executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, assured his readers.
Today, they need no convincing. In the three years since Satloff issued his warning, the Syrian Civil War has steadily metastasized as a perceived threat to U.S. national security, nurturing ISIS, bludgeoning Iraq, and radiating refugees in the Middle East and Europe. WNU editor: Not an optimistic view for 2016
Russia's President Vladimir Putin (C) attends a conference at the main operation centre of the Russian armed forces, with Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu (L) and armed forces Chief-of-Staff Valery Gerasimov (R) in Moscow, June 6, 2013. Credit: Reuters/Michael Klimentyev/RIA Novosti/Kremlin
“Russia is serious in fighting terrorism,” one sheikh tells The Daily Beast, ”unlike the U.S.”
BAGHDAD, Iraq — In the last Iraq war, the U.S. military helped beat ISIS’ predecessors with the help of the Sunni tribes. Now, Russia is trying to take a page from the old American playbook, and forge its own tribal alliances.
“Russia is serious in fighting terrorism and wants to finish the war as soon as possible, unlike the U.S.,” Faisal al-Asafi, a Sunni sheikh in Iraq’s Anbar province who opposes ISIS, told The Daily Beast. “Russia has already started bombing the transmission lines of ISIS while the U.S. is watching ISIS fighters moving freely from Syria to Anbar.”
Two U.S. officials told The Daily Beast that they are seeing early signs of this Russian outreach to Sunni tribal leaders in Iraq, aimed at bolstering the minority sect’s efforts to combat ISIS militants embedded within Sunni communities.
WNU Editor: Russia is looking for allies in its war in Syria .... it makes sense to reach out to the Sunni Arab tribes in western Iraq.
Assault rifles are known worldwide with the various understanding or definitions. Amongst all of those definitions, there is one definition that said that assault rifles are standard military rifles those capable to control fully-automatic fire from shoulder and have effective range for at least 300 meters. From here, it is known that assault rifles are primary offensive weapons those are stable and produce enough muzzle energy. These are powerful weapons but not the traditional full power weapons. These are the type of weapons those become the choice of modern military units from all around the world as the main weapons used by modern army troops.
WNU Editor: This website (All Military Weapons) also has a good directory of other weapon platforms and systems.
The Pentagon is considering increasing the pace and scope of cyberattacks against Islamic State, arguing that more aggressive efforts to disable the extremist group's computers, servers and cellphones could help curtail its appeal and disrupt potential terrorist attacks.
Military hackers and coders at Cyber Command, based at Fort Meade, Md., have developed an array of malware that could be used to sabotage the militants' propaganda and recruitment capabilities, said U.S. officials, who were not authorized to speak publicly on internal discussions.
But closing off the extremists' communications faces resistance from the FBI and intelligence officials. They warn that too sweeping an effort to constrict Internet, social media and cellphone access in Syria and Iraq would shut a critical window into the militants' locations, leadership and intentions.
WNU Editor: Why delay .... cyber attacks should begin immediately and take down as much of ISIL's operations as possible. I find it hard to believe that this has not been done so far .... even when the President Obama himself has admitted the important role that the internet plays in ISIS recruiting efforts.
At least 43 people have been killed in a series of air strikes believed to have been carried out by Russian planes in the Syrian city of Idlib, according to activists and residents.
A marketplace, homes and official buildings were all hit, reports say. Bodies were still being pulled from the rubble, a civil defence worker said.
Russia has not confirmed whether it carried out strikes in the area.
Russia began an air campaign to bolster President Bashar al-Assad in September.
U.N. Secretary-General Special Envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed speaks to the media after the Yemen peace talks in Switzerland in Bern December 20, 2015. REUTERS/Ruben Sprich
United Nations-brokered peace talks on Yemen ended Sunday with a broad agreement that the war has to end, but no major breakthroughs.
U.N. envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed said after the Geneva talks that officials from Yemen's recognized government and the Houthi rebels will meet again next month.
Ahmed told reporters that fighting and shelling continued even as both sides fruitlessly sought a way to stop it.
"It is very clear that, unfortunately, the cease-fire that was agreed upon... wasn't respected and, in some cases, was violated from the first hours of these talks. We will aim... in the coming days to make every single effort to ensure that a new cease-fire is put in place," Ahmed said.
WNU Editor: The UN officials are trying to put a brave face on these talks .... but bottom line .... no one respected the ceasefire, and little if any progress was made in these talks.
Left-wing parties are close to winning an absolute majority of parliamentary seats in Spain's general election Sunday, preliminary results showed, likely scuppering Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's chances of winning a second term for the People's Party (PP).
Despite garnering the most votes, the center-right PP had its worst result ever in a general election as Spaniards hurt by a grinding recession and yet to feel an economic recovery turned away from the party in droves.
Anti-austerity Podemos roared into third place, outpacing fellow newcomer Ciudadanos whose market-friendly policies had been seen as a natural fit for a PP coalition.
WNU Editor: People are fed up with austerity. But like Greece .... the anti-austerity parties will be limited to do anything because of the country's high debts and dependence on foreign banks and governments.
About a third of rebel groups in Syria - some 100,000 fighters - share the ideology of so-called Islamic State (IS), new research suggests.
The Centre on Religion and Geopolitics, linked to former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, said defeating IS militarily "would not end global jihadism".
That would require an "intellectual and theological defeat" of its ideology.
The Syrian conflict has killed more than 250,000 people. Millions more have been displaced.
A Western coalition has been carrying out air strikes against IS in Syria and Iraq for more than a year.
In September, Russian forces began air strikes against rebels in Syria, targeting "all terrorists", including IS. However, Western-backed groups are also reported to have been hit. targeting "all terrorists", including IS. However, Western-backed groups are also reported to have been hit. WNU Editor: The Centre on Religion and Geopolitics website is here.
More News On The Centre On Religion and Geopolitics Study That Claims That A Majority Of Syrian Rebels Share The Islamic State Ideology
