Tag Archives: Syria

Coalition aims to recapture ISIS ‘caliphate’ in Iraq, Syria

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – The U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State aims this year to recapture Iraq’s second city Mosul, working with Iraqi government forces, and drive the jihadis out of Raqqa, their stronghold in northeast Syria, Arab and Western officials say.

If it succeeds, the coalition will have struck a crippling blow against Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate in Iraq and Syria.

The strategy is to regain territory at the heart of IS’s cross-border state, take both its “capitals”, and destroy the confidence of its fighters that it can expand as a Sunni caliphate and magnet for jihadis, according to these Arab and Western officials, few of whom were willing to speak on the record on a matter of such strategic sensitivity.

“The plan is to hit them in Raqqa in Syria and in Iraq at Mosul, to crush their capitals,” said an Iraqi official with knowledge of the strategy. “I think there is some speed and urgency by the coalition, by the U.S. administration and by us to end this year with the regaining of control over all territory.”

“Iraqi officials say 2016 will witness the elimination of Daesh (IS) and the Americans have the same idea – get the job finished, then they can withdraw and (President Barack) Obama will have a legacy,” said a diplomat in Baghdad, emphasizing the Iraqi part of the operation. “The day Mosul is liberated, Daesh will be defeated.”

The war against jihadi insurgents in this turbulent region has had its twists and turns but there is a palpable sense in Baghdad that the tide has turned against IS.

TWIN-PRONGED ANTI-IS STRATEGY

In the year after the jihadis’ summer 2014 surge back into Iraq from the bases they managed to build amid the chaos of Syria’s civil war, IS momentum as a rapid, flexible and brutal military force seemed unstoppable.

But in the past nine months IS has lost swathes of territory and strategic towns. In Iraq it was driven out of Tikrit and Sinjar in the north, the oil refinery town of Baiji in central Iraq, and Ramadi west of Baghdad in Anbar province, the heart of insurgency after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam.

In northern Syria, U.S.-allied Kurdish militia of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) have taken vital territory and border crossings below the frontier with Turkey, after breaking a long IS siege at Kobani and later taking Tel Abyad, north of Raqqa and a key supply line for the jihadi capital.

“Daesh are losing their ability to hold onto territory in Iraq and to stage the kind of complex attacks that allow them to hold the towns they seized,” said a U.S. official, adding that the recapture of Mosul would start in 2016.

Lieutenant-General Sean MacFarland, Baghdad-based head of the U.S.-led coalition, emphasized to a group of reporters last month the twin-pronged approach to operations against IS in Iraq, “in conjunction with something we might have going on over in Syria about the same time (and) see if we can put pressure on the enemy in two places at once and create a dilemma.”

Hisham al-Hashemi, an Iraqi expert on IS who advises the Iraqi government on the group, points out that as a result of last year’s setbacks “out of seven strategic roads between Iraq and Syria they (IS) now have one; they cannot move with ease and Turkey has tightened the noose on them.”

IS is under pressure across many other fronts apart from its ability to deploy. The collapse in oil prices has dented its revenue from oil smuggled, now through a less permeable Turkish border, from captured Syrian and Iraqi fields.

COVERT OPERATIONS

Coalition air strikes recently incinerated a stockpile of cash from looting and kidnapping, taxation and extortion, forcing IS to cut wages. It is losing top cadres. More than 100 mid-level to senior leaders have been killed since May, according to coalition spokesman Colonel Steve Warren, who says that “works out to an average of one every two days”.

“The place where they were holding huge cash reserves was targeted and destroyed,” the diplomat told Reuters.

“Daesh will be defeated in Iraq. It is not a question of if but when,” added another senior Western diplomat in Iraq.

A top Iraqi official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Mosul operation would require delicate collaboration between the U.S. air force, the Iraqi army, local Sunni tribal forces, and Peshmerga fighters from the self-governing Kurdistan Regional Government east of the city.

“Most likely, coalition special forces will be embedded with the Iraqi forces and the Peshmerga will close on Mosul from the north and east.”

In Syria, he said, the likely combination would involve coalition air strikes with special forces and U.S.-led covert missions operating alongside mainly Kurdish fighters of the YPG and other Syrian rebels. “They have some special forces on the ground in Syria in Hasaka, on the outskirts of Raqqa with the rebels,” the Iraqi official said.

An airstrip at Hasaka is being prepared by the United States for this purpose.

The official warned, however, of the need for coordination with Russia, which brought its air force to Syria last September to shore up the Iran-backed rule of President Bashar al-Assad, and is using an airstrip in Qamishli further north, but focusing most of its fire on mainstream and other Islamist rebels rather than IS.

This “competition between the two superpowers is really very, very dangerous”, he said. “There must be coordination (around) the complex operations that will take place.”

LIBYA, NEW IS DESTINATION

Yet even in the unlikely event that all these plans go like clockwork, that alone would not put an end to IS.

The group, IS experts say, has become expert at defensive warfare, and is spreading its tentacles from Europe to North Africa.

Inside the recaptured city of Ramadi the Iraqi army found a warren of underground tunnels the jihadi forces used for shelter, mobility and escape. Mosul, a far bigger city with one million people and a river on one side, is heavily defended and tunneled, with berms, trenches and hidden bombs.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the IS “caliph” still based near Mosul, has already begun to anticipate tactical reverses.

Arab and Western security sources say he has recently sent several hundred of his top lieutenants to Libya, to consolidate the existing IS bridgehead there amid the chaos of a splintering country, and to offset diminishing revenue in Syria and Iraq by creaming off Libyan oil resources.

Coalition dependence on Kurdish forces in both northern Syria and Iraq, and the Iraqi army’s reliance on Iran-backed Shi’ite militia up until the reconquest of Ramadi by regular forces, were and are being exploited by IS as a means to rally Sunni Arab grievances.

Battlefield success will count for little, officials and diplomats say, without political reconciliation and power-sharing to heal the wounds opened in the ethno-sectarian bloodletting that followed the overthrow of Saddam’s minority Sunni Arab rule in 2003.

AFTER MOSUL?

Islamic State, whose forerunner first emerged as a Sunni reaction to the U.S. installation of Shi’ite majority rule in Iraq, twisted the sectarian knife in the country.

But after the fall of Mosul, then prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, leader of the Shi’ite Islamist Dawa party, who had alienated the Sunnis by tearing up a power-sharing pact with them and the Kurds, was pushed aside. He was replaced by a more conciliatory Dawa leader, Haider al-Abadi.

Most observers give Abadi credit for trying to be more inclusive by negotiating oil revenue sharing with the Kurdistan Regional Government, proposing a National Guard, under which the different sects and ethnic groups would police their areas, and setting out a vision of a decentralized, federal Iraq.

Yet distrust of the Dawa is now so engrained it extends to Abadi. “The problem among the Shi’ites, especially in Dawa, is that there is a deep anti-Sunni feeling,” said one Iraqi leader.

But fear of a return to the Sunni domination of the Saddam era is widespread too, and fanned by IS.

“The National Guard law is rejected by the Shi’ites because the Sunnis will then have their own army and this will threaten the Shi’ite population even if they are dominant now,” said the Baghdad-based diplomat. “The Shi’ites fear the return of Sunni power.”

Yet Abadi has shown signs of independence, from his party and its Iranian patrons.

Baghdad is abuzz with the story of how the prime minister recently ejected Major General Qassem Soleimani from a national security council meeting. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander had until recently been photographed often on the frontlines in Iraq and Syria.

The critical question, however, is whether Abadi can build up the army and regular security forces enough to establish control over Shi’ite militias under the sway of Tehran, accused by Sunnis of human rights abuses when they spearheaded the attacks on Baiji, Tikrit and Diyala last year.

Even if Mosul works, Abadi will still have to move quickly to provide things his corrupt predecessors were unwilling or unable to give to Iraqi citizens in general and disgruntled Sunnis and Kurds in particular.

(Addtional reporting by Maher Chmaytelli and Stephen Kalin; editing by Janet McBride)

Syrian army threatens to encircle Aleppo as peace talks falter

BEIRUT/AMMAN/GENEVA (Reuters) – A Syrian military offensive backed by heavy Russian air strikes threatened to cut critical rebel supply lines into the northern city of Aleppo on Tuesday while the warring sides said peace talks had not started despite a U.N. statement they had.

U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura announced the formal start on Monday of the first attempt in two years to negotiate an end to a war that has killed 250,000 people, caused a refugee crisis in the region and Europe and empowered Islamic State militants.

But both opposition and government representatives have since said the talks had not in fact begun and fighting on the ground raged on without constraint.

The opposition canceled a meeting with de Mistura on Tuesday afternoon, and issued a statement condemning “a massive acceleration of Russian and regime military aggression on Aleppo and Homs”, calling it a threat to the political process.

Rebels described the assault north of Aleppo as the most intense yet. One commander said opposition-held areas of the divided city were at risk of being encircled entirely by the government and allied militia, appealing to foreign states that back the rebels to send more weapons.

The main Syrian opposition council said after meeting de Mistura on Monday it had not and would not negotiate unless the government stopped bombarding civilian areas, lifted blockades on besieged towns and released detainees.

The head of the Syrian government delegation also denied talks had started after discussions with de Mistura on Tuesday.

Bashar al-Ja’afari said after two and a half hours of talks that the envoy had yet to provide an agenda or list of opposition participants. “The formalities are not yet ready,” he told reporters at the United Nations office in Geneva.

He also said that if the opposition “really cared” about the lives of Syrians it should condemn the killing of more than 60 people on Sunday by Islamic State bombers in a neighborhood that is home to the country’s holiest Shi’ite shrine.

A U.N. source said de Mistura had promised to present an opposition delegation list by Wednesday. Its makeup is subject to fierce disagreements among the regional and global powers that have been drawn into the conflict.

The refugee crisis and spread of the jihadist Islamic State through large areas of Syria, and from there to Iraq, has injected a new urgency to resolve the five-year-old Syria war.

But the chances of success, always very slim, appear to be receding ever more as the government, supported by Russian air strikes, advances against rebels, some of them U.S.-backed, in several parts of western Syria where the country’s main cities are located.

“DECISIVE BATTLE”

The attack north of Aleppo that began in recent days is the first major government offensive there since the start of Russian air strikes on Sept. 30.

The area is strategic to both sides. It safeguards a rebel supply route from Turkey into opposition-held parts of the city and stands between government-held parts of western Aleppo and the Shi’ite villages of Nubul and al-Zahraa which are loyal to Damascus.

“The supply routes were not cut but there is heavy bombardment of them by the jets,” said a commander in the Levant Front rebel group who gave his name as Abu Yasine. “The Russian jets are trying to hit headquarters and cut supply routes.”

The Russian jets had been working “night and day” for three days, he added, and reiterated the rebels’ long-held demand for anti-aircraft missiles to confront the assault.

“If there is no support, the regime could besiege the city of Aleppo and cut the road to the north,” said Abu Yasine, whose group is one of the rebel movements that have received military support from states opposed to Assad, funneled via Turkey.

Advancing government forces seized the village of Hardatnin some 10 km (six miles) northwest of Aleppo, building on gains of the previous day, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring body. Syrian state media also reported the advance.

Another rebel commander said he had sent reinforcements to the area. “We sent new fighters this morning, we sent heavier equipment there. It seems it will be a decisive battle in the north, God willing,” said Ahmed al-Seoud, head of a Free Syrian Army group known as Division 13. “We sent TOW missile platforms. We sent everything there,” he told Reuters.

U.S.-made TOW missiles, or guided anti-tank missiles, are the most potent weapon in the rebel arsenal and have been supplied to vetted rebel groups as part of a program of military support overseen by the Central Intelligence Agency.

But while they have helped rebels to slow advances on the ground, they are of little use against fighter bombers.

The Russian intervention has reversed the course of the war for Damascus, which suffered a series of major defeats to rebels in western Syria last year before Moscow deployed its air force as part of an alliance with Iran.

In an interview with Reuters, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said Russian President Vladimir Putin was undermining international efforts to end the war by bombing opponents of Islamic State in an attempt to bolster Assad.

OPPOSITION WARY OF ENVOY

“The Russians say let’s talk, and then they talk and they talk and they talk. The problem with the Russians is while they are talking they are bombing, and they are supporting Assad,” Hammond said.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Hammond was spreading “dangerous disinformation”, while the Kremlin said his statements could not be taken seriously.

Western states opposed to Assad, including the United States and Britain, piled pressure on the opposition to attend the Geneva talks which have been beset by problems including a row over who should be invited to negotiate with Damascus.

The opposition says talks are impossible without a halt to bombing, release of prisoners and lifting of sieges to allow humanitarian aid to reach blockaded civilians.

“Nothing has changed in the situation on the ground. So as long as the situation is like this we are not optimistic,” opposition negotiator Mohamad Alloush told reporters. “There are no good intentions from the regime’s side to reach a solution.”

De Mistura said on Monday the responsibility of agreeing ceasefires across Syria lay with major powers and that his remit was only to hold talks on a U.N. resolution on elections, governance and a new constitution.

(Additional reporting by Kinda Makieh in Geneva; writing by Tom Perry; editing by Philippa Fletcher and Peter Graff)

Jordan needs international help over refugee crisis, king says

LONDON (Reuters) – Jordan’s King Abdullah says his country needs long-term aid from the international community to cope with a huge influx of Syrian refugees, warning that unless it received support the “dam is going to burst”.

In an interview with the BBC aired on Tuesday, King Abdullah said the refugee crisis was overloading Jordan’s social services and threatening regional stability. Jordan has already accepted more than 600,000 U.N.-registered Syrian refugees.

“Jordanians are suffering from trying to find jobs, the pressure on infrastructure and for the government, it has hurt us when it comes to the educational system, our healthcare. Sooner or later I think the dam is going to burst,” he said.

Last Thursday, officials said the European Union would promise some $2.2 billion at an international donor conference to be held in London this week to aid Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said last month he would press the EU to relax export rules for Jordan, to help spur economic growth.

“This week is going to be very important for Jordanians to see is there going to be help not only for Syrian refugees but for their own future as well,” King Abdullah told the BBC.

Part of the U.S.-led coalition that is bombing Syria, Jordan has long been praised for helping refugees and been a big beneficiary of foreign aid as a result.

However, it has drawn criticism from western allies and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees over the situation near its border with Syria, where thousands of refugees are being kept far from any aid.

The situation has deteriorated since Russia started air strikes last September to support President Bashar al-Assad.

King Abdullah said if Jordan was not helped, the refugee crisis would worsen.

“The international community, we’ve always stood shoulder to shoulder by your side. We’re now asking for your help, you can’t say no this time,” he said.

(Reporting by Michael Holden; editing by Katharine Houreld)

Kerry says ISIS pushed back in Iraq and Syria, but a threat in Libya

 

ROME (Reuters) – An international coalition is pushing back Islamic State militants in their Syrian and Iraqi strongholds, but the group is threatening Libya and could seize the nation’s oil wealth, U.S Secretary of State John Kerry said on Tuesday.

Officials from 23 countries met in Rome to review the fight against Islamic State militants, who have created a self-proclaimed Caliphate across swathes of Syria and Iraq, and are spreading into other countries, notably Libya.

While Western officials worry about the growing threat posed by Islamic State in the former Italian colony, there was no suggestion that foreign powers were preparing to launch a major military offensive against them there for now.

Islamic State forces have attacked Libya’s oil infrastructure and established a foothold in the city of Sirte, exploiting a power vacuum in the North African country where two rival governments have been battling for supremacy.

“That country has resources. The last thing in the world you want is a false caliphate with access to billions of dollars of oil revenue,” Kerry said.

Under a U.N.-backed plan for a political transition, Libya’s two warring administrations are expected to form a unity government, but a month after the deal was agreed in Morocco, its implementation has been dogged by in-fighting.

Kerry said the two sides were “on the brink of getting a government of national unity”. Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said once it was in place, many countries would be prepared to respond to any request for help with security.

However, Kerry said the United States was opposed to deploying any of its ground forces into Libya and French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius dismissed media speculation that Paris was poised to intervene in the oil-rich country.

“That is totally inexact,” he told reporters in Rome.

The United States is leading two different coalitions carrying out air strikes in Iraq and Syria that have targeted Islamic State, but the jihadist group has been left largely left untouched in Libya.

“We are still not at the victory that we want to achieve, and will achieve, in either Syria or Iraq and we have seen Daesh playing a game of metastasizing out to other countries, particularly Libya,” Kerry said, using a pejorative Arabic term for Islamic State.

INTERRUPTING ISLAMIC STATE

Defense ministers from the anti-IS group are due to meet in Brussels next week to discuss further options, while Kerry said he expected further consultations with allies at a security conference in Munich, Germany later this month.

While the Islamic State remained undefeated, it had suffered many setbacks, Kerry said, losing 40 percent of the territory it once controlled in Iraq and 20 percent of its lands in Iraq.

“Our advances .. are undeniable. We have launched nearly 10,000 air strikes, we have interrupted their finance mechanisms, they have had to cut the salaries of their fighters, we have interrupted their capacity to get revenues,” Kerry said.

The one-day Rome meeting took place as talks have begun in Geneva to try to end the five-year-old Syrian civil war, which has killed at least 250,000 people, driven more than 10 million from their homes and drawn in the United States and Russia on opposite sides.

While Washington has long said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has lost the legitimacy to lead, it has made clear that its first priority is to try to rein in Islamic State group.

“If you want to beat Daesh quickly, then get a negotiated deal to end the Syria war,” Kerry said.

Tuesday’s meeting also covered stabilizing areas such as the Iraqi city of Tikrit, which has been wrested from the group, as well as broader efforts to undercut its finances, stem the flow of foreign fighters and counter its messaging, officials said.

(Additional Reporting by John Irish in Geneva; Writing by Crispian Balmer and Arshad Mohammed; editing by Ralph Boulton)

Pentagon to hike spending request to fund fight versus Islamic State

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama’s administration will seek a significant increase in funding for the fight against Islamic State as part of its 2017 defense budget request, U.S. officials say, in another possible sign of U.S. efforts to intensify the campaign.

The fiscal year 2017 Pentagon budget will call for more than $7 billion for the fight against Islamic State, a roughly 35 percent increase compared with the previous year’s request to Congress, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter is due to disclose his spending priorities for the $583 billion 2017 defense budget on Tuesday in an address to the Economic Club of Washington. The White House plans to release Obama’s full budget proposal for fiscal 2017, which begins Oct. 1, on Feb. 9.

Carter in his speech is expected to cite his intent to increase the administration’s request for funds to battle Islamic State, officials say, although it was unclear how much detail he would offer.

He was also expected to touch on other budget priorities, including plans to increase spending to reassure European allies following Russia’s intervention in Ukraine, and the need for the United States to maintain its military edge over China and Russia.

Carter’s budget will underscore the need for Washington to fund a new Air Force bomber awarded last year to Northrop Grumman Corp, a replacement for the Ohio-class submarines that carry nuclear weapons, and to start replacing a fleet of nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles, according to a source briefed on the plans.

The proposed budget will also seek to boost spending for several key priorities, including increased cybersecurity, electronic warfare and increased security for crucial U.S. satellites, the source said.

Lockheed Martin Corp, maker of the F-35 fighter jet, Boeing Co and other big weapons makers are anxiously awaiting details about the budget and how it will affect their programs.

Senior defense officials have said that $15 billion in cuts required under a two-year budget agreement with Congress last year would largely come from procurement accounts since personnel costs and operations costs were harder to cut.

One official noted that spending on the Islamic State fight was expected to be drawn from the roughly $59 billion Overseas Contingency Operations account, or OCO, a separate budget that supplements the larger, $524 billion base budget for fiscal year 2017.

Still, key details on the more than $7 billion request were unclear, including whether the funding applied to operations outside Iraq and Syria.

The disclosure about plans for an increased spending request to combat Islamic State came as the Obama administration seeks to intensify its campaign, looking to capitalize on recent battlefield gains against the militants in Iraq.

Carter has called a meeting later this month in Brussels with defense ministers from all 26 military members of the anti-Islamic State coalition, as well as Iraq. He is asking them to come prepared to discuss further contributions to the fight.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Andrea Shalal; Editing by James Dalgleish)

U.N. announces start of Syria peace talks as government troops advance

GENEVA/BEIRUT/ROME (Reuters) – The United Nations announced on Monday peace talks for Syria had begun and called on world powers to push for a ceasefire, even as government forces, backed by Russian air strikes, launched their biggest offensive near Aleppo in a year.

Government troops and allied fighters captured hilly countryside near Aleppo on Monday, putting a key supply route used by opposition forces into firing range, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.

Rebels said the offensive was being conducted with massive Russian air support, despite a promise of goodwill steps by the Syrian government to spur peace negotiations.

The opposition has said that without a halt to bombing, the lifting of sieges on towns and freeing of prisoners, it will not participate in talks in Geneva called by the United Nations.

Nevertheless, opposition delegates met in Geneva for two hours with U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura, who said this session marked the official beginning of peace talks. He also said that the Syrian people deserved to see improvements on the ground and the opposition had a “strong point” in demanding goodwill steps.

International powers should immediately begin talks on how to enforce a ceasefire, he said.

The government’s military assault has overshadowed de Mistura’s attempts to convene the first peace negotiations in two years, intended to start as “proximity talks,” with government and opposition delegations in separate rooms.

A senior U.S. official returned from a visit to northern Syrian territory held by Kurdish fighters, who have advanced against Islamic State militants with the help of U.S. air support.

The Geneva peace talks mark the first attempt in two years to hold negotiations to end a war that has drawn in regional and international powers, killed at least 250,000 people and forced 10 million from their homes.

The death toll from an Islamic State suicide attack near Damascus climbed to more than 70 people, the Observatory said. The attack by the Sunni Muslim militants targeted a government-held neighborhood that is home to Syria’s holiest Shi’ite Muslim shrine.

ATTACK

Opposition delegates agreed late on Friday to travel to Geneva after saying they had received guarantees to improve the situation on the ground, such as a release of detainees and a halt to attacks on civilian areas.

But the opposition says there has been no easing of the conflict, with government and allied forces including Iranian militias pressing offensives across important areas of western Syria, most recently north of Aleppo.

“The (latest) attack started at 2 a.m., with air strikes and missiles,” said rebel commander Ahmed al-Seoud, describing the situation near Aleppo, once Syria’s biggest city and commercial center, now partly ruined and divided between government and insurgent control.

Seoud told Reuters his Free Syrian Army group had sent reinforcements to an area near the village of Bashkoy.

“We took guarantees from America and Saudi to enter the negotiations … (but) the regime has no goodwill and has not shown us any goodwill,” he said from nearby Idlib province.

The British-based Observatory monitoring group said government forces were gaining ground in the area, and had captured most of the village of Duweir al-Zeitun near Bashkoy. It reported dozens of air strikes on Monday morning. Syrian state television also said government forces were advancing.

The fighting has created a new flow of refugees. A Turkish disaster agency said more than 3,600 Turkmens and Arabs fleeing advancing pro-government forces in northern Latakia province had crossed into Turkey in the past four days.

NEGOTIATION “UNDER ESCALATION”

The opposition High Negotiations Committee (HNC) indicated it would leave Geneva unless peace moves were implemented.

Bashar al-Jaafari, the head of the government delegation, said on Sunday Damascus was considering options such as ceasefires, humanitarian corridors and prisoner releases. But he suggested they might come about as a result of the talks, not as a condition for negotiations to begin.

The humanitarian crisis wrought by the almost five-year-old conflict has worsened as a result of the increased fighting. International attention has focused in particular on the fate of civilians trapped and starving in besieged towns.

The United Nations said on Monday the Syrian government had approved “in principle” a U.N. request for aid deliveries to the town of Madaya, under siege from government forces, as well as the towns of al-Foua and Kefraya, beset by insurgents.

“Based on this, the U.N. will submit a detailed list of supplies and other details; and will include and reiterate the request for nutrition supplies and entry of nutrition/health assessment teams,” said Jenes Laerke, spokesman for the U.N Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. No date was given for aid shipments.

Opposition delegate Farrah Atassi said government forces were escalating their military campaign, making it hard to justify the opposition’s presence in Geneva.

“Today, we are going to Mr De Mistura to demand again and again, for a thousand times, that the Syrian opposition is keen to end the suffering of the Syrian people,” Atassi said. “However, we cannot ask the Syrian opposition to engage in any negotiation with the regime under this escalation.”

Since the last Syrian peace talks took place in early 2014, militants from Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh, have proclaimed a “caliphate” in swathes of Syria and Iraq, drawing a U.S.-led coalition into the conflict with air strikes. Last year Russia began a separate campaign of air strikes in support of its ally, President Bashar al-Assad.

Brett McGurk, U.S. envoy to the coalition, said he had visited territory held by Kurdish fighters in Syria over the weekend to assess the counter-Islamic State campaign.

The Kurds have proven the most capable allies of U.S.-led forces on the ground in Syria, capturing territory from Islamic State. But their relationship with Washington irks U.S. ally Turkey, which sees the Syrian Kurds as allies of its own Kurdish separatist militants. The Syrian Kurds have so far been excluded from the Geneva talks.

McGurk said he had discussed next steps in the Syria campaign with “battle-tested and multi-ethnic anti-ISIL fighters”. Washington supported an inclusive approach to the talks, he said.

All previous diplomatic efforts have failed to stop the war.

A senior Western diplomat said the opposition had shown up in the Swiss city so as not to play “directly into the hands of the regime” by staying away.

“They want tangible and visible things straight away, but there are things that realistically can’t be done now such as ending the bombing. It’s obvious that that is too difficult. The easiest compromises are releasing civilians and children.”

(Additional reporting by John Davision in Beirut and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

U.S. weighs options to speed Iraq’s fight to retake Mosul

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States is willing to deploy Apache attack helicopters and advisers to help Iraq retake the city of Mosul from Islamic State as it considers options to speed up the campaign against the militant group, a top U.S. general said on Monday.

U.S. officials, including President Barack Obama, have said they want to accelerate the campaign against Islamic State militants, and have called on allies to increase their military contributions to efforts to destroy the group in Iraq and Syria.

U.S. Army Lieutenant General Sean MacFarland, the head of the U.S.-led coalition battling Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, said he is looking to retake Mosul as quickly as possible, but did not say whether he agreed with Iraqi estimates that it could be wrested from Islamic State control by the end of this year.

“I don’t want to put a date out there,” MacFarland said. “I would like to get this wrapped up as fast as I possibly can.”

Past steps to speed up the campaign have included the deployment of dozens of U.S. special operations forces in northern Syria, and an elite targeting force to work with Iraqi forces to go after Islamic State targets.

It could also include deployment of more military and police trainers, including from the United States. MacFarland said the U.S.-led coalition has trained more than 17,500 Iraqi soldiers, and about 2,000 police, with another 3,000 soldiers and police in training now.

MacFarland said the proposals he is drawing up do not necessarily require the commitment of more U.S. troops, who have largely stayed away from the front lines of combat. Instead, coalition partners could contribute troops, he said.

“As we extend operations across Iraq and into Syria … there is a good potential that we’ll need additional capabilities, additional forces to provide those capabilities and we’re looking at the right mix,” MacFarland said.

The United States is also ready to send Apache attack helicopters and deploy advisers to help Iraqi and Kurdish forces retake Mosul if requested, MacFarland said. U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said in December that the United States was ready to send the advisers and helicopters if requested by Iraq to help in the fight to retake Ramadi, but Iraqi officials did not ask for the extra help.

Iraqi forces retook Ramadi, a provincial capital just a short drive west of Baghdad, late last year.

“We can’t inflict help on somebody, they have to ask for it, they have to want it, and we’re here to provide it as required,” MacFarland said. “Everything that the secretary said is really still on the table.”

(Reporting by Yeganeh Torbati; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Coalition now training brigades that will fight ISIS in Mosul, spokesman says

The United States-led coalition against the Islamic State is currently helping the Iraqi Security Forces put together the force that will try to retake the city of Mosul, a spokesman said Friday.

Col. Steve Warren, the spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve, made the announcement while addressing a news briefing in Washington. He was speaking via video link from Baghdad.

Warren told reporters it would still be “many months” before the Iraqi Security Forces began their campaign to recapture Mosul, which the Islamic State has occupied since June 2014.

“Right now our focus is ‘Let’s start training some brigades. Let’s start building some combat power. Let’s continue to train some police and start building up some combat power,’” he said.

Mosul is the capital of Nineveh province in northern Iraq and is one of the nation’s largest cities.

Warren told reporters the coalition still needs to assemble approximately 10 brigades, consisting of some 2,000 to 3,000 people in all, and wanted to first place them through additional training.

A basic training process takes eight weeks, Warren told reporters, with supplemental options for people like medics or snipers. But the number of troops that can be trained at once has varied.

“Over the last month or so, we’ve gotten about 900 police officers and roughly two brigades through training,” Warren told reporters. “This was the most graduates that we’ve had in a month. There’s been weeks or months where it’s been significantly less.”

He said the coalition has trained about 20,000 members of the Iraqi Security Forces, including police and tribal fighters. But he said even the ones who helped secure a key victory at Ramadi, a city that had been under Islamic State control, should receive additional training before Mosul.

“We believe that all of the forces that we’ve already trained and run through Ramadi are certainly capable of moving to Mosul, but we have made a decision that we want to run them through another cycle of training,” Warren told reporters. “Are they trained? Yes. Could they go to Mosul now? Yes. But we would prefer to give them additional training before they go.”

Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, was captured by the Islamic State last year.

Iraqi officials announced that the military had raised the nation’s flag over a key government complex in Ramadi late in December, and forces have been working to secure outlying parts of the city ever since. On Friday, Warren told reporters that those efforts were continuing.

Warren also told reporters the coalition launched 676 airstrikes against the Islamic State in January, 522 of them in Iraq and 154 in Syria. Most of them were concentrated near Ramadi, Mosul and Raqqa, the Syrian city which the Islamic State considers its capital.

Syrian opposition to go to Geneva as peace talks open

GENEVA/BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syria’s main opposition group agreed to travel to Geneva, where the United Nations on Friday opened peace talks to end the country’s five-year-old war, but said it wanted to discuss humanitarian issues before engaging in political negotiations.

On the ground, opponents of President Bashar al-Assad said they were facing a Russian-backed military onslaught, with hundreds of civilians reported to be fleeing as the Syrian army and allied militia tried to capture a suburb of Damascus and finish off rebels defending it.

U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura had invited the Syrian government and an opposition umbrella group to Geneva for “proximity talks”, in which they would meet in separate rooms.
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Until the last minute, the opposition High Negotiations Committee (HNC) had refused to go. The group, which includes both armed and political opponents of Assad, had insisted it wanted an end to air strikes and sieges of towns and the release of detainees before talks could start.

Late on Friday, the HNC said it was going to Geneva, having received guarantees that its demands, outlined in a U.N. Security Council resolution last month, would be met, but it made clear its engagement in the process would initially be limited.

“The HNC will go to Geneva tomorrow to discuss these humanitarian issues which will pave the way into the political process of negotiations,” spokesman Salim al-Muslat told the Arabic news channel al-Arabiya al-Hadath.

The HNC said it had drawn up a list of 3,000 Syrian women and children in government prisons who should be released.

SUNDAY MEETING

De Mistura opened the talks on Friday by meeting the Syrian government delegation. He said that while he had not yet received formal notice that the HNC would attend, he expected to meet its delegation on Sunday.

“They’ve raised an important point of their concern, they would like to see a gesture from the government authorities regarding some kind of improvement for the people of Syria during the talks, for instance release of prisoners, or some lifting of sieges,” de Mistura said.

But he added this was a human rights point and “not even an issue to negotiate”, and had strongly suggested the best way to get such measures implemented would be to start negotiating in Geneva, by proxy or directly.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had made a major push to get the HNC delegation to Geneva, and the group said he had contacted it by phone to urge it to attend.

“Secretary Kerry has been in touch with all of his counterparts, including this morning with (Russian Foreign Minister) Sergei Lavrov … and with others, trying to find a way, a formula, in which we can urge the delegation or some version of the delegation to show up here,” a senior U.S. official said.

The Syrian government delegation, headed by United Nations ambassador Bashar al Jaafari, arrived at the talks on Friday afternoon but made no statement.

Another major force, the Kurds who control much of northeast Syria and have proven one of the few groups capable of winning territory from Islamic State, were excluded from the talks after Turkey demanded they be kept away. The Kurds say their absence means the talks are doomed to fail.

GOVERNMENT MOMENTUM

International diplomacy has so far seen only failures in a 5-year-old multi-sided ethno-sectarian civil war that has killed more than 250,000 people and driven more than 10 million from their homes while drawing in regional states and global powers.

De Mistura’s two predecessors both quit in apparent frustration after staging failed peace conferences.

Since the last talks collapsed in 2014, Islamic State fighters surged across Syria and Iraq declaring a “caliphate”, the United States and its European and Arab allies launched air strikes against them, and Russia joined in last year with a separate air campaign to support Assad.

Moscow’s intervention in particular has altered the balance of power on the ground, giving strong momentum to government forces and reversing months of rebel gains.

The Syrian military and allied militia are seeking to build on gains in western Syria, and have turned their focus to opposition-held suburbs southwest of Damascus.

The aim is to crush rebels in the district of Daraya to secure the nearby military airport at Mezzeh, said Rami Abdulrahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict with sources on the ground.

Rebels had rejected a government deadline for them to withdraw from the suburb of Mouadamiya – home to 45,000 people – by Friday, said Abu Ghiath al-Shami, spokesman for rebel group Alwiyat Seif al-Sham.

More than 500 families had fled, he said. “They are suffering a shortage of food, medicine, milk – there is no power, nothing,” he said, adding that 16 barrel bombs had been dropped on Friday.

A Syrian military source denied the use of barrel bombs, which have been widely documented in the war, and accused the opposition of exaggerating the conditions. “There has been progress by the army in the last days, some successes particularly in the Daraya area,” the source said.

Rebels say the fighting is of more concern to them than the fate of the negotiations. Asked about the future of the talks, Shami told Reuters he was “a bit busy” dealing with the fighting.

(Addional reporting by Lisa Barrington, Ali Abdelaty and Stephanie Nebehay; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Giles Elgood)

Syria peace talks derailed as opposition stays away

AMMAN/BEIRUT/GENEVA (Reuters) – The Syrian opposition said it will not attend peace talks due to begin in Geneva on Friday, derailing the first attempt in two years to hold negotiations aimed at ending the five-year-long war.

An opposition council convening in Riyadh said its delegation would “certainly” not be in Geneva on Friday, saying it had not received convincing answers to its demands for goodwill steps including an end to air strikes and blockades.

The failure to get talks off the ground on time reflects the challenges facing peace-making as the conflict rages unabated on the ground.

The Syrian government is clawing back territory from rebels with military help from Iran and Russia. It has said it is ready to attend the negotiations, which U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura plans to hold in an indirect format.

Another opposition representative said the delegation might turn up if their demands were met in a day or two, but the chances of that appeared vanishingly slim.

The turn of events is a bitter blow to De Mistura, whose office had issued a video message that he had sent to the Syrian people, in which he said the talks were expected to happen “in the next few days”.

A spokeswoman for his office, speaking before the opposition statement, said the talks would begin on Friday as scheduled.

George Sabra, a member of the opposition High Negotiations Committee (HNC), said: “For certain we will not head to Geneva and there will not be a delegation from the High Negotiations Committee tomorrow in Geneva.”

GUARANTEES

Before agreeing to talks, the HNC had been seeking U.N. guarantees of steps including a halt to attacks on civilian areas, a release of detainees, and a lifting of blockades. The measures were mentioned in a Security Council resolution approved last month that endorsed the peace process for Syria.

Sabra said a response from de Mistura was “unfortunately still ink on paper”. “We are not certain that the opportunity is historic,” he told Arabic news channel Arabiya al-Hadath.

Another HNC official said the opposition could attend if their demands were met “within two, three or four days.”

“Tomorrow will probably the start will be with those who attend but it has no value,” Monzer Makhous told Al-Hadath.

The talks were meant to start in Geneva on Monday but the United Nations has pushed them back to Friday to allow more time to resolve problems including a dispute over which groups should be invited to negotiate with the government.

The exclusion of a powerful Kurdish faction that controls wide areas of northern Syria has triggered a boycott by some of the invitees. Turkey had opposed the PYD’s participation on the ground it views it as a terrorist group.

The United States, whose Secretary of State John Kerry is among those pushing for negotiations to start on Friday, urged the opposition to seize the “historic opportunity” and enter talks without preconditions to end the war, which has also displaced more than 11 million people.

Diplomacy has so far had little impact on the conflict, which has spawned a refugee crisis in neighbouring states and Europe. De Mistura is the third international envoy for Syria. His two predecessors – Kofi Annan and Lakhdar Brahimi – both quit.

“TERRORISTS IN A NEW MASK”

Enormous challenge include tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which are vying for influence across the region, and the underlying dispute over the future of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

With backing from Iranian fighters and Lebanon’s Hezbollah on the ground, and Russian air raids, the government has recaptured areas in the west, northwest and south of Syria since Moscow intervened last September, reversing rebel gains.

The HNC groups political and armed groups fighting Assad. It includes some of the main armed groups fighting in western Syria, including the Islamist Jaysh al-Islam, which is deemed a terrorist group by Russia, and Free Syrian Army factions that have received military support from states including the Saudi Arabia and the United States.

Earlier this week the Syrian army took a strategic town in the southern province of Deraa, securing its supply routes from the capital to the south, days after retaking more territory in Latakia province.

Damascus, Tehran and Moscow have objected to the inclusion of groups they consider terrorists in any peace talks.

Deputy Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said on Thursday his country strongly opposed moves by Saudi Arabia to allow “terrorists in a new mask” to sit down for talks.

Syria’s opposition has said it has come under pressure from Kerry to attend the talks in order to negotiate over the very steps which it says must be implemented beforehand.

(Additional reporting by Tom Perry and Mariam Karouny in Beirut, John Irish in Paris, Ali Abdelatti in Cairo,; Tom Miles in Geneva and Alexander Winning in Moscow; writing by Tom Perry; editing by Mark Trevelyan and Philippa Fletcher)