Tag Archives: Syria

New U.N. Data Suggests Record 60 Million People Displaced Worldwide

The number of people forced to flee their homes in 2015 likely “far surpassed” 60 million, a new record for global displacement, a new report from the United Nations Refugee Agency indicates.

The report, published Friday, projects that about 1 in every 122 people in the world have been forcibly displaced from their homes as a result of conflict or persecution. It’s based on data from the first half of the year, which indicated global surges in refugees, asylum-seekers and so-called internally displaced persons, or people who fled their homes but still live in their own countries.

According to the report, there were 20.2 million global refugees at end of June. It was a rise from last year’s total of 19.5 million, and the first time that number hit 20 million since 1992.

The U.N. report also documented a 78 percent increase in applications for asylum during the first half of 2015, from last year’s total of 558,000 to this year’s figure of 993,600. And the number of internally displaced people hit 34 million, an increase of about 2 million over 2014.

“Never has there been a greater need for tolerance, compassion and solidarity with people who have lost everything,” U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said in a statement.

The Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research, which analyzes global conflict, reported 46 highly violent conflicts in 2014, the most recent year for which data is available.

The U.N. report indicates Syria’s civil war remains the single largest driver behind displacement, with about 4.2 million people fleeing the war-torn nation and another 7.6 million forced out of their homes but still in the country as of mid-2015. But the report notes that even without Syria included in the totals, there still would have been a 5 percent global rise in refugees since 2011.

There was also a rise in new refugees this year — about 839,000 in six months, or 4,600 a day. About half came from Syria and the Ukraine, the site of another armed conflict. Globally, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Myanmar, Eritrea and Iraq were the 10 countries that produced the most refugees.

A large number of refugees flee to neighboring countries, the report indicated. Turkey hosts the most refugees — 1.84 million in all, 1.81 of them from Syria — followed by Pakistan with 1.5 million, “virtually all of them from Afghanistan.” Lebanon is third with 1.2 million — 99 percent of them from Syria — followed by Iran, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Uganda, Chad and Sudan.

The United Nations warned that countries hosting the refugees are facing growing pressure, which, if unmanaged, “can increase resentment and abet politicization of refugees.” The report also indicated refugees in this day and age are less likely to return home than at any other point in the past 30 years, according to a statistic the United Nations calls the voluntary return rate.

In terms of asylum, Germany was the runaway leader in new applications. It received 159,900 in the first six months of 2015, nearly equaling the 173,100 it received in 2014. The country is known for having extremely favorable, yet often criticized policies for those who seek to resettle there. Russia was next with about 100,000 — fueled by conflict in Ukraine, the report indicates.

The United States was third with 78,200. While that was an increase of 44 percent from last year, the report indicated that most people who sought asylum in the United States were from countries like El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras and China. Syria wasn’t mentioned.

Other countries in the top 10 for most new asylum applications were Hungary, Turkey, South Africa, Serbia, Italy, France and Austria.

The report indicated there were 6.5 million internally displaced people in Columbia, 4 million in Iraq and 2.3 million in Sudan. Pakistan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria and Ukraine also had more than 1.4 million internally displaced people. Yemen, the site of an ongoing civil war, and Afghanistan also saw surges in their figures, the report indicated.

Kerry Working With Russians to Fuel Syrian Peace Talks

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with key Russian leaders on Tuesday in an attempt to work past their philosophical differences and find a diplomatic solution to the Syrian civil war.

Kerry met with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, and foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov.

The talks came ahead of a planned meeting of the International Syria Support Group (ISSG), a collection of countries looking to put an end to the ongoing conflict in Syria. The nations, which include the United States and Russia, are scheduled to meet this coming Friday in New York.

Russia and the United States haven’t been on the same page about how to end the conflict, particularly about the fate of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The controversial leader has been the main point of contention in the conflict, which began with an uprising in 2011 and subsequently led to millions of Syrians fleeing their homes to escape the war-torn nation.

U.S. President Barack Obama has publicly said Assad must be out of office before the war can end. It’s been widely reported that Russia is one of Assad’s biggest allies, and Moscow believes Syria’s residents — and not any other nation — should ultimately get to determine what happens.

Complicating the issue is the fact that the Islamic State terrorist organization has taken control of territory in both Syria and Iraq, and the United States is leading a 65-nation coalition that is conducting airstrikes in the region. Russia has also been carrying out some airstrikes on its own.

Speaking to reporters at a joint news conference with Lavrov, Kerry said the two nations “did reach some common ground today,” but it wasn’t appropriate for him to elaborate further because they ultimately needed the entire ISSG to come together to discuss the future of Syria.

“We are cooperating now in Syria because (the Islamic State) is a threat to all of us,” Kerry told reporters, adding he expected Friday’s ISSG meeting in New York to proceed as scheduled.

Kerry’s visit to Russia came days after a collection of Assad’s critics gathered in Saudi Arabia to and developed a unified vision as to how they could politically resolve the multi-year conflict.

The Syrian Coalition said it’s seeking a new democracy built upon equality, transparency, law and accountability, but took a firm stance that neither Assad nor the members of his current regime could take part in any transitional government “or any future political settlement.”

That coalition wants to meet Assad’s government for peace talks, potentially next month.

34 Islamic Nations Team Up to Fight Terrorism

A group of 34 Islamic nations have formed a military alliance to fight terrorist organizations.

​Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Defense, confirmed the announcement at a news conference Monday night in Riyadh, where the alliance will be based.

Operating out of a room in the Saudi capital, the group will “coordinate and support efforts to fight terrorism in all countries and parts of the Islamic world,” according to a news release.

Perhaps the most notable Islamic terrorist group is the Islamic State, which has seized territory in Iraq and Syria as it tries to spread its radical interpretations of the religion through violence.

At the news conference, Abdulaziz said the new military alliance won’t just fight the Islamic State, but will take action “against any terrorist organization (that) emerges before us.” He called Islamic extremism a “disease which infected the Islamic world first” and spread internationally.

The Saudi Arabian news release did not specify the 33 other nations that joined the anti-terrorism alliance. Reuters reported those countries included Egypt, Qatar, Turkey, Malaysia, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates and multiple nations in Africa.

Abdulaziz said each country will contribute according to its capabilities and that he hoped more nations would join soon. While he offered concrete little details on how exactly the alliance would work, he stressed that collaboration and coordination would be important pillars.

“Today, every Islamic country is fighting terrorism individually,” Abdulaziz told reporters at the news conference. “The coordination of efforts is very important; and through this room, means and efforts will be developed for fighting terrorism all over the Islamic world.”

The United States is currently providing equipment and training to forces in Iraq and Syria that are fighting the Islamic State, and have urged for more help in the fight against the group. The U.S. also heads a 65-nation coalition that carries out airstrikes against ISIS-linked targets there.

Before Saudi Arabia’s announcement, U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter was travelling to Turkey as part of a plan to get other countries to boost their efforts to defeat the Islamic State.

According to Reuters, Carter told reporters at the Incirlik airbase that he wanted to learn more about Saudi Arabia’s alliance, but more anti-ISIS involvement from Islamic nations generally appears to be “very much in line with something we’ve been urging for quite some time.”

Syrian Opposition Agrees to Meet Government for Peace Talks

Syrian opposition forces have agreed to meet with the government for peace talks next month.

A wide variety of critics of President Bashar al-Assad, consisting of both political opponents and rebel forces, had spent the past two days in the Saudi Arabian city of Riyadh trying to develop a unified vision as to how they could politically put an end to the country’s ongoing civil war.

On Friday, the Syrian Coalition released a statement saying the group was successful.

Its members said they’re seeking a new, pluralistic democracy built upon equality, transparency, accountability and law. The coalition said in the statement that it will form a committee that will pick the delegates to attend the meeting with Assad, but neither the president nor those in his current regime could participate in the transition process “or any future political settlement.”

The coalition said it wants equal rights in Syria, and wants to craft a regime “that represents all sectors of the Syrian society, with women playing an important role and with no discrimination against people, regardless of their religious, denominational or ethnic backgrounds.”

Reuters reported the peace talks will take place in the first 10 days of January.

Syria has been in turmoil since 2011, when Assad’s opponents began a rebellion that developed into a civil war. The BBC reported Friday that at least 250,000 people have died and about 11 million additional people have been driven from their homes as a result of the ongoing conflict.

Islamic State Militants Reportedly Using U.S. Weapons

Islamic State militants are using some weapons that originally came from the United States, according to a new report from the human rights group Amnesty International.

The report, released Tuesday, provides a glimpse into how the Islamic State has stockpiled the weapons it is using to fight battles in Iraq and Syria and commit deadly terrorist acts worldwide.

Amnesty International found the Islamic State has amassed more than 100 kinds of weapons and ammunition from at least 25 countries, and most of its weapons were stolen from the Iraqi military. Amnesty reported a large number of these arms were obtained when the Islamic State captured Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul, in June 2014 and looted military stockpiles there.

The Mosul haul, which Amnesty described as a “windfall,” included American-made weapons and military vehicles. The organization said both were subsequently used in Islamic State activities elsewhere in the country as the group successfully took control of additional territory.

The report comes days after President Barack Obama gave an address from the Oval Office and said one of America’s strategies to defeat the Islamic State terrorists was to continue providing training and support to local groups who were fighting the insurgents in the Middle East, rather than deploy large numbers of American soldiers there. But Amnesty’s report provides evidence that strategy seems to have, somewhat inadvertently, aided the Islamic State’s terror campaign.

“The vast and varied weaponry being used by the armed group calling itself Islamic State is a textbook case of how reckless arms trading fuels atrocities on a massive scale,” Patrick Wilcken, a researcher on arms control, security trade and human rights at Amnesty, said in a statement. “Poor regulation and lack of oversight of the immense arms flows into Iraq going back decades have given (ISIS) and other armed groups a bonanza of unprecedented access to firepower.”

Amnesty’s report said “a large proportion” of the Islamic State’s weapons were originally given to the Iraqi military by the United States, Russia and the former Soviet Union. They range from handguns and assault rifles to anti-tank weapons and shoulder-mounted missile launchers, most of which were manufactured between the 1970s and 1990s. But the Islamic State has also been crafting its own weapons, such as hand grenades, car bombs and other explosive devices.

Amnesty said the diverse nature of the Islamic State’s weapons “reflects decades of irresponsible arms transfers to Iraq,” a country that saw its military stockpile swell when at least 34 countries began sending it weapons around the time of the Iran-Iraq war. Amnesty said the country began bringing in fewer weapons after it invaded Kuwait in 1990, largely due to a United Nations embargo, but its weapons imports spiked again after the United States invaded Iraq in 2003.

Amnesty reported that 30 countries have sent weapons to Iraq in the past 12 years, but many were not properly tracked by the Iraqi military or the U.S. military forces occupying the nation.

“Hundreds of thousands of those weapons went missing and are still unaccounted for,” the report states. It goes on to note that “mass desertion” from the Iraqi military during the rise of the Islamic State in 2013-14 “left huge quantities of military equipment exposed to looting.”

While the Amnesty report says the majority of the Islamic State’s weapons were looted from those military stockpiles, the document notes the group also added arms by seizing them from Syrian soldiers on battlefields and from defectors who have brought firepower with them.

Speaking to CNN, a Pentagon spokesman said the United States monitors the technology that it gives to its partners to prevent any American weapons from ending up in the wrong hands, but conceded those monitoring programs don’t include any weapons lost on battlefields.

Amnesty’s report calls for countries to stop providing military equipment and arms to forces in Syria and stronger protocols for sending weapons to Iraqi authorities. It also calls for national laws and procedures to prevent arms from ending up in the hands of groups who will use them nefariously, and for more strict rules regarding stockpile management and record-keeping.

“The legacy of arms proliferation and abuse in Iraq and the surrounding region has already destroyed the lives and livelihoods of millions of people and poses an ongoing threat,” Wicken said in a statement. “The consequences of reckless arms transfers to Iraq and Syria and their subsequent capture by (ISIS) must be a wake-up call to arms exporters around the world.”

Great Britain Begins Airstrikes Against ISIS in Syria

Great Britain jets began carrying out airstrikes against Islamic State interests in Syria on Thursday, mere hours after lawmakers approved a plan to expand their military’s actions.

The fighter jets successfully attacked an ISIS-controlled oil field about 35 miles inside the country’s eastern border with Iraq, the country’s Ministry of Defense said in a news release.

The jets targeted six specific points within the Omar oil field, which is one of the Islamic State’s most significant holdings. It accounts for more than 10 percent of the potential oil income for the terrorist group, which is known as Daesh in some circles.

“Carefully selected elements of the oilfield infrastructure were targeted, ensuring the strikes will have a significant impact on Daesh’s ability to extract the oil to fund their terrorism,” Ministry of Defense officials said in the news release.

The ministry said the aircraft’s pilots ensured there were no civilians near the targets.

According to the BBC, the bombings came just a few hours after members of British parliament voted 397-223 to back their prime minister’s plan to approve carrying out airstrikes in Syria. Previously, Great Britain had only been executing airstrikes in Iraq. Those began last year.

But French leaders had asked for more help in the fight against ISIS after gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people during the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris, Reuters reported.

Video Claims to Show ISIS Beheading Russian Spy

A new Internet video purports to show the Islamic State beheading a Russian spy.

Multiple news agencies couldn’t verify the authenticity of the video or the claims within it.

The video ends with a man in an orange jumpsuit kneeling before a man holding a knife.

The man with the knife threatens Russian citizens and the country’s president, Vladimir Putin, according to reports. He then cuts the throat of the man in the jumpsuit and decapitates him.

Earlier in the video, the man in the jumpsuit is shown speaking to the camera.

Russian television network RT says the man in the jumpsuit claims to be Magomed Khasiev, a 23-year-old from Grozny. The report says the man describes how he was recruited by Russia’s Federal Security Service and gathered intelligence during undercover missions in Iraq and Syria.

CNN reports the man with the knife expressed displeasure with Russia’s recent airstrikes against the Islamic State and warned Russian citizens of retaliatory violent acts against life and property.

RT reports the Russian government hadn’t indicated any of its citizens were being held by ISIS.

Russia-Turkey tensions continue to rise as neither side apologizes

A tense quarrel between Russia and Turkey continued on Friday, as Russia reportedly opted to suspend visa-free travel with the country that recently shot down one of its warplanes over Syria.

Meanwhile, the president of Turkey cautioned Russia not to mistreat Turkish citizens who had traveled to the country and accused the country of playing with fire during a televised speech.

The countries have been closely watched following the Tuesday incident in which a Turkish jet fired at a Russian plane that it said crossed into its airspace despite repeated warnings not to do so. Russian officials, including the surviving pilot of the warplane, dispute Turkey’s version of the events and say no warning was given and the plane never once violated Turkey’s airspace.

The BBC reported Friday that Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan is seeking a face-to-face meeting with Vladimir Putin in France, where the leaders are scheduled to attend a summit on climate change beginning Monday. But Putin wants Turkey to apologize before such a meeting.

According to CNN, that won’t happen.

“I think if there is a party that needs to apologize, it is not us,” Erdogan told CNN in an exclusive interview Thursday. “Those who violated our airspace are the ones who need to apologize.”

Instead, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, announced Friday that the country would put visa-free travel to Turkey on hold beginning January 1, the BBC reported. That could have major impacts on the country’s tourism industry, which welcomed 3 million Russian visitors in 2014.

The countries are also trading partners, though some of those relationships now appear rocky.

Reuters reported that several Russian manufacturers have been advised to stop purchasing supplies from Turkey, a move it said could adversely affect multi-million dollar contracts.

The Reuters report also indicated Erdogan was angry about published reports that said Turkish businessmen had been detained while in Russia. There was reportedly an issue with their visas.

“We sincerely recommend Russia not to play with fire,” he said, according to a video on Reuters’ website.

Russian pilot: Turkey provided no warning before shots were fired

The pilot of the Russian warplane that was shot down on Tuesday is claiming that Turkey did not provide any sort of warning before opening fire on the aircraft, according to reports.

Captain Konstantin Murakhtin is also claiming that the plane never crossed into Turkey’s airspace, though this claim has been disputed by NATO and United States military officials.

Murakhtin spoke to reporters a Russian air base in northern Syria on Wednesday, a day after he and the aircraft’s other pilot ejected from the aircraft that was shot down near the Syrian border. He was rescued after a half-day operation that involved using special forces, the BBC reported.

The other Russian pilot was killed.

Murakhtin told RT, a Russian television network, that the pilots did not receive a verbal or visual warning before a Turkish plane opened fire and hit their aircraft with a missile. He also claimed he knew the area very well and it was “impossible that we violated their airspace.”

Turkish officials had said they warned the pilots 10 times in five minutes, the New York Times reported, and that the plane crossed a tiny piece of Turkish territory in about 17 seconds.

NATO, of which Turkey is a member, has backed Turkey’s version of the events. A senior United States military official, speaking to the New York Times, said the data indicated the Russian plane flew over Turkey. CNN reported Turkey released tapes of what it said were the warnings.

The back-and-forth nature of the claims were escalating tensions between the two nations.

Multiple countries have called for the situation to be de-escalated, according to reports, and officials from Turkey and Russia are both quoted as saying they want to avoid military conflict.

Yet the Russian defense minister announced the country will deploy missile defense systems to the air base in Syria. The missiles would be able to reach the Turkish border, CNN reported.

Canada to accept 25,000 Syrian refugees by February

Canada’s newly elected government will resettle 25,000 refugees from Syria in the next three months, according to multiple published reports, with 10,000 able to arrive by the end of 2015.

That’s a change to the Liberal government’s original plan to bring all 25,000 in by year’s end.

During his election campaign, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had promised to bring in all of the refugees before Dec. 31, 2015. But the country’s immigration officials said host communities needed more time to prepare to receive the refugees, according to a CBC report on the subject. They will be spread out through 36 different cities throughout Canada, 13 of them in Quebec.

Resettling 25,000 refugees between the Oct. 19 elections and the Dec. 31 deadline would have required the country to accept more than 340 refugees every day. Some politicians had been asking to slow down the timeline to allow more time for security vetting, the CBC reported.

Trudeau told the CBC that the adjustment to the proposal was “not about security.” While he conceded that recent terrorist attacks in Paris has affected the public perception of refugees, the prime minister insisted that the ISIS-affiliated attacks did not influence the revision to the plan.

“We want these families arriving to be welcomed, not feared,” Trudeau told the CBC.

The country’s public safety minister, Ralph Goodale, told the CBC that security screenings will completed on the refugees before they board a plane to Canada. If the checks uncover any doubts about applications, interviews or data, he said, the application will be put on hold.

The refugees will be a mix of privately sponsored and government-assisted individuals. They must register with the United Nations or government of Turkey, according to a BBC report.

Canada will accept the most vulnerable individuals first. These include entire families, at-risk women, and members of the LGBT community. Single men and those not accompanied by their families won’t be initially included in the relocation plan, according to multiple media reports.

Some are wondering if excluding straight, single men from the plan is really necessary.

Benoit Gomis, an international security analyst, wrote in an email to Newsweek that “the multi-layer vetting process should be sufficient enough to alleviate security concerns,” and noted that there wasn’t any evidence that suggested refugees were more dangerous than non-refugees.

“The Migration Policy Institute recently pointed out that out of the 784,000 refugees resettled in the U.S. since 9/11, only three were arrested for terrorism offenses (and they were not plotting attacks in the U.S.),” he wrote. “This type of knee-jerk reaction is common after terrorist attacks.”