IS jihadists pull out of several Iraq towns: officers

Baghdad (AFP)
March 13, 2016

Islamic State fighters retreated from several western Iraqi towns and towards the Syrian border on Sunday as security forces worked their way up the Euphrates Valley, officers said.

The jihadist organisation's leadership ordered its fighters out of Hit, Kubaysa and Rutba, prompting thousands of civilians to take to the road to meet advancing federal forces while others enjoyed their first hours of freedom in months.

"The majority of Daesh (IS) fighters in Hit, Rutba and Kubaysa have fled through the desert to other regions," Yahya Rasool, Iraq's top security spokesman, told AFP.

Hit, around 145 kilometers (90 miles) west of Baghdad, was one of the main towns in Anbar province that was still held by IS.

Kubaysa is a smaller town to the west of Hit while Rutba is a desert outpost on the road to Jordan about 390 kilometers (245 miles) west of the capital.

"There is an operation to hunt them down with Iraqi aircraft," said Rasool, spokesman for the Joint Operations Command coordinating the fight against IS in Iraq.

"Hit is surrounded by Iraqi forces from the south and north," he said. "Thousands of families have fled the area to meet our forces."

Iraqi government forces have yet to enter Hit and no security source would immediately confirm whether any holdout IS fighters remained.

However, residents reached by AFP said no jihadists were visible on Sunday following a pullout that began on Saturday.

One resident said IS's local military leader was killed in an air strike as he tried to escape on Saturday.

"Ahmed Mashaan Abdelwahed al-Batran was killed when an air raid destroyed his boat -- he was trying to cross the river with his family," he said.

"Since yesterday, the Hisba (Islamic police) has vanished from the streets. Before they withdrew, Daesh (IS) fighters booby-trapped houses, roads and government buildings," he added.

- First cigarette -

Another Hit resident said one of the first things the men did after IS pulled out was to light a cigarette.

"The young people in Hit are smoking on the street and they also changed back into their normal clothes," he said, also speaking on condition of anonymity.

"There are women in the street without the niqab (full veil) for the first time" since the town fell to IS in October 2014, he said.

Witnesses and officials said IS leaders -- many of them from the city of Mosul or foreigners -- tried to slip out of Hit by blending in with fleeing families after shaving their beards.

"Yesterday there was not one razor blade left in the markets of Hit," the second witness told AFP.

The top regional army commander, 7th division chief Noman al-Zobaie, overflew the city to assess the situation, senior officials said.

Naim al-Kaoud, leader of the local Albu Nimr tribe, said tribal fighters in the area were close to Hit but awaiting government coordination to move in.

"The decision to retake control of Hit has to come from the leadership of the security forces. It is when they go in that the recapture of Hit will be complete," he told AFP.

In Rutba, "Daesh's armed men started pulling out last night and completed their withdrawal this morning," a major general told AFP on Sunday.

He said they all moved towards Al-Qaim, a jihadist bastion on the border with Syria, further north in Anbar province.

After launching a final push against IS in provincial capital Ramadi late last year, Iraq's security forces established full control over the city last month.

They have since been securing areas east of Ramadi, further isolating the jihadist stronghold of Fallujah, which is only 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of Baghdad.

The US-led coalition that has been carrying out air strikes against IS for more than a year and a half has said that the jihadist group was stretched increasingly thin.

Iraqi forces have in recent weeks been trying to flush out jihadists from vast areas around Lake Tharthar, which straddles Anbar and the province of Salaheddin.

In several of its strongholds, IS is reported to have forcibly recruited children for checkpoints duty as it sends adult males into combat.

Source: Space War.
Link: http://www.spacewar.com/reports/IS_jihadists_pull_out_of_several_Iraq_towns_officers_999.html.

Yemeni forces recapture key port city

25 April 2016 Monday

Yemeni troops have recaptured a key port city from Al-Qaeda militants who held it for a year, in what a Saudi-led coalition hailed Monday as a major victory in which over 800 fighters were killed.

The assault on the southeastern city of Mukalla, home to some 200,000 people, was part of a wider counter-offensive against the Sunni extremists launched by pro-government forces last month after a year in which they had focused their firepower on Shiite Huthi rebels who control the capital.

It comes as government and rebel delegations hold peace talks in Kuwait and after US President Barack Obama during a visit to Saudi Arabia called for a negotiated settlement that would enable both sides to turn their attention on Al-Qaeda.

At the talks, which opened last Thursday, UN envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed said that "significant differences... remain but nonetheless there is consensus on the need to make peace".

The peace talks and Obama visit have contributed to a change in "strategic priorities", with Al-Qaeda back at the top, according to the Soufan Group consultancy.

The rebels' Yemen-based branch, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), is regarded by Washington as their most dangerous and the group's militants have come under repeated US air and drone strikes in and around Mukalla.

The rebels used the area as a base to plan attacks overseas, including a January 2015 assault on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo that killed 12 people in Paris.

"We entered the city center and were met by no resistance from Al-Qaeda militants who withdrew west," a military officer told AFP by telephone from Mukalla.

The officer, who requested anonymity, said residents had appealed to the rebels to spare the city the destruction of fighting and to withdraw.

Qaeda car bombing

Government troops were backed by special forces from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as coalition air strikes, commanders said in a statement published by the official Saudi Press Agency.

Loyalist forces also recaptured a swathe of the adjacent Arabian Sea coast, including the city of Shihr and its Mina al-Dhaba oil terminal as well as Mukalla's Riyan airport.

"The operation resulted... in the deaths of more than 800 Al-Qaeda members and some of their leaders, while some others fled," the coalition commanders said.

The death toll could not be independently confirmed and no indication was given of any civilian casualties.

Mukalla is one of a number of southern cities that Al-Qaeda had overrun since the Saudi-led coalition launched its military intervention in March last year when President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi fled into exile after the Iran-backed rebels seized much of the country.

The rebels overran two other provincial capitals further west -- Huta, which government forces recaptured last week, and Zinjibar which they entered late on Saturday, only to beat a tactical retreat.

An Al-Qaeda car bomb killed seven soldiers and wounded 14 as they were entering Zinjibar on Sunday triggering the pullback, military sources said.

"The withdrawal was decided following information that Al-Qaeda was preparing other car bomb attacks against our troops," an officer in the province told AFP.

The counter-offensive against the rebels has come as a fragile April 11 ceasefire between pro-government forces and the rebels firms up.

US drone war

Washington, which has provided reconnaissance and refueling support for the coalition air campaign, had put mounting pressure on coalition leaders to call a halt and seek a negotiated settlement.

Obama joined a Gulf summit last week and Pentagon chief Ashton Carter also held talks with Gulf counterparts.

Washington has been waging a drone war against AQAP since November 2002, when it killed the suspected mastermind of an October 2000 bombing of a US destroyer that killed 17 sailors in the southern port of Aden.

In April last year, a US air strike killed AQAP commander Nasser bin Ali al-Ansi, who claimed responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo attack in a video, outside the presidential palace in Mukalla where the rebels had set up base.

Last month, an air strike on an AQAP training camp in Hajr, west of Mukalla, killed more than 70 rebels, provincial officials said.

During its year-long rule in Mukalla, AQAP imposed its strict interpretation of sharia law forbidding consumption of the mild narcotic qat, a mainstay of Yemeni social life, and demolishing the tombs of revered Sufi mystics.

Source: World Bulletin.
Link: http://www.worldbulletin.net/middle-east/171969/yemeni-forces-recapture-key-port-city.

Troops refuse to fight: Thousands of Yemeni soldiers shun civil war

Friday 22 April 2016

TAIZ, Yemen - Mohammed Abdullah Saeed used to wake up by 5am every day to begin his daily military drills. But when the civil war broke out in Taiz he refused to fight his own countrymen, and fled to his home village.

"Our leadership told us that we should liberate Taiz province from al-Qaeda fighters, but I did not see al-Qaeda in Taiz, I only saw Yemenis kill each other, so the leadership could not convince me to fight," he told Middle East Eye.

"I realized this civil war would destroy our country, and so I fled."

Saeed was not the only conscript soldier to do so - dozens of his colleagues threw down their guns in protest at the coming conflagration, joining an estimated 10,000 who are believed to have deserted.

The result for many were accusations of treachery and isolation, and the loss of any means of support.

The one-time corporal and his comrades came under the control of the Houthi movement after it kicked out the government of Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi.

"When I fled the camp, the Houthis stopped my salary, and demanded that I join battle. I refused," he said.

He still gets up at 5am, every day. But instead of training he sells qat, the mild narcotic ubiquitous in Yemen, to make ends meet.

"I do not have another alternative," he says, pointing out that he makes about 20,000 riyals a month - about $80. His soldier's salary was almost twice as much.

He is stuck where he is, as the Houthis hunt for deserters they consider traitors.

"The Houthis have caught hundreds of people, some of them deserters, and until now no one knows where they are," he said.

"If the Houthis caught them, they will go to jail."

A question of faith

Other deserters refuse to kill on the basis of religion - it is considered a terrible sin to kill a fellow Muslim.

Fras Alwan, 45, left his unit in Marib province last April, and fled to his village in Taiz's al-Shimayateen district. His salary was stopped a few months later.

"I am a Muslim, and I trust that Allah will not forget me if I am doing according to the Quran, and the Quran says that it is a big sin to kill a Muslim," he said.

Alwan was conscripted into the Yemeni army and fought armed tribes in Marib before the civil war erupted.

"We fought in military campaigns against the tribesmen who attacked power and oil pipelines, but those were thugs and it was our duty to fight them," he said.

The civil war, he said, had turned into a battle between mercenaries fighting for foreign powers, none of whom care about Yemen nor Islam.

"My neighbors respect me so much, because I did not take part in the war, and most of them help me by providing me with work," Alwan said.

But he, too, is trapped in his village and aware that the Houthis consider him a traitor.

Alwan now works as a laborer, earning more than he did as a soldier, but the work is hard.

"I am suffering from arthritis and this profession is very hard for me, but it is the only solution to get money," Alwan said.

Meanwhile, the war rages on around him even despite a UN-backed attempt to end the fighting, with a ceasefire agreement coming into effect earlier this month.

That truce, however, has been violated by all sides and on multiple occasions. Taiz city is still besieged by the Houthi movement, as it seeks to gain control of the province, and Saudi coalition forces continue to drop weapons to their allies.

As both sides gear up for much-delayed peace talks in Kuwait, the US has agreed to join Saudi-led patrols to prevent Iranian weapons reaching Houthi fighters.

Blood and treasure

A source at the defense ministry in Houthi-controlled Sanaa told Middle East Eye that an estimated 10,000 soldiers had refused to fight for any side in the civil war, and a similar number had rebelled against Houthi control and were now fighting against the movement.

In response, the Houthis had enlisted thousands of civilians into its "Popular Committee" forces as replacements, many of whom are raw recruits who have no other means of support in the war.

The source added: "The ministry has stopped the salaries of more than 20,000 soldiers either because they are pro-government soldiers or because they are peaceniks.

"The ministry does not pay salaries for the pro-government and deserters. That MONEY NOW goes to the Popular Committees."

Ammar al-Wardi is one of those soldiers who decided to side with pro-Hadi forces.

He left his brigade in Taiz city when it came under the control of the Houthis, and crossed over to the Popular Resistance forces fighting them.

"I swore to defend my country, and nowadays I defend my country from the Houthis rebels who try to control the country by force," he added to MEE, stating that he gets the same salary of 35,000 riyals ($140) a month, plus 1,000 a day extra "pocket money" from his commanders.

Ahmed Obaid, a retired army officer, said that Sanaa's defense ministry was acting illegally by stopping payments to its soldiers - it can only dock a certain percentage.

"The ministry has to continue giving salaries to all soldiers as this is the right of their families, but the ministry can use some of the salary if the soldier did not obey the ministry," he said.

He stated that Yemeni law has been violated by the different sides, and the language of force has become the only one that can be heard.

Saeed contemplates the consequences of refusing to fight in a war that has killed thousands of his countrymen.

"I hope the war will stop soon," says Saeed. "Then I will stop selling qat and will join the special forces again."

Source: Middle East Eye.
Link: http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/yemenis-who-refuse-fight-white-feathers-2007823567.

Qaeda Fighters Ousted From South Yemen Town: Security

Apr 15, 2016

AFP

ADEN: Pro-government forces expelled Al-Qaeda fighters from a provincial capital close to Yemen's second city of Aden on Friday, security officials said.

Soldiers and police drove the jihadists out of Huta, 30 kilometers (20 miles) north of Aden, and arrested 49 people suspected militants, they said.

A ceasefire has been in place in Yemen since last Sunday, although fighting is continuing in pockets across the country.

At least 35 pro-government fighters were killed during the first three days of the truce, according to military sources.

The ceasefire is meant to lay the groundwork for forthcoming peace talks in Kuwait.

Saudi Arabia and its Sunni-dominated Arab allies are backing the Yemeni government in the conflict while Shiite Iran supports Shiite Huthi rebels, who have seized the capital Sanaa and other regions.

Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group have taken advantage of the chaos caused by the war to strengthen their grip on southern Yemen.

Forces loyal to President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi have launched operations against jihadists in recent weeks, backed by the firepower of the Arab coalition.

A military official said the operation to liberate Huta was "designed to secure Aden", where Hadi's government has temporarily based itself.

A car bomb exploded on Friday in the port city near a building housing the foreign ministry, without causing casualties, security sources said.

The war has killed more than 6,300 people since March 2015 and worsened already dire conditions in the impoverished country, with more than 80 percent of the population now on the brink of famine.

Source: The New Indian Express.
Link: http://m.newindianexpress.com/news/646461.

Jordanians to replace UAE forces in war on Yemen: Report

Thu Apr 14, 2016

Jordanian military forces and advisers will be replacing UAE troops fighting in the Saudi war on Yemen, following reports of serious disputes among the few "coalition" members, a report says.

Yemen’s Khabar news agency, citing informed sources, reported on Thursday that the decision had been made following a recent visit by Saudi deputy crown prince Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud to Jordan.

Prince Mohammad, who is the Saudi defense minister, met King Abdullah in the Jordanian port city of Aqaba and signed a package of agreements, including on development of military cooperation.

The report said the deployment of Jordanian forces will now be coming after the United Arab Emirates withdrew the bulk of its military force from Yemen's Ma’rib following a series of military setbacks.

The Saudi crown prince also traveled to the UAE in an effort to mend fences after reports of significant frictions between the two allies over the war on Yemen.

Emirati authorities are reportedly angry with a Saudi decision to dismiss a former general with close ties to the UAE.

In February, the Saudi kingdom sacked Khaled Bahah and appointed Ali Mohsen Al Ahmar to lead the fight against Yemen's Houthis.

Ahmar has been based in Saudi Arabia since the Houthis took over Sana'a in 2014.

Jordanian military forces reportedly took part in the Saudi operation in Aden last July following the flight of Saudi-backed militiamen loyal to former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi.

Early on Thursday, Saudi military aircraft carried out a fresh round of aerial assaults against the Nihm district of Sana’a Province, though there were no immediate reports of possible casualties and the extent of damage caused.

The development came only hours after Saudi-backed militiamen fired a barrage of artillery rounds at Dhubab, Harir and al-Jumhuri districts in Yemen’s southwestern province of Ta’izz and Ghorab and al-Madaniyah neighborhoods in the provincial capital city of Ta’izz.

Saudi Arabia launched its military aggression against Yemen on March 26, 2015, in a bid to bring Hadi — who is a staunch ally of Riyadh — back to power and undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement.

More than 9,400 people have been killed and at least 16,000 others injured since the onset of the aggression.

The Saudi strikes have also taken a heavy toll on the country’s facilities and infrastructure, destroying many hospitals, schools, and factories.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2016/04/14/460698/Yemen-Jordan-UAE-forces/.

Sudan: Student Protests Ripple Across Sudan

21 April 2016

Khartoum — Students at universities across Sudan have taken to the streets and campuses in protest against the murder of a student at the University of Kordofan on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, protests and demonstrations broke out at the universities of Khartoum, as well as several other universities including Port Sudan in Red Sea state, the University of Kordofan in El Obeyed, and the University of Dongola in the Northern State.

As reported by Radio Dabanga this week, Abu Bakr Hashim, who studied in the first level at the University of Kordofan Faculty of Engineering in El Obeid, was shot dead when students who support the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) fired at members of the United Students Opposition, who were on their way to deliver their student council election list to the university center.

Kordofan

A demonstration by Kordofan University students toured the streets of El Obeid City, monitored closely by agents of the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) and police.

On Wednesday the Red Sea University students in Port Sudan condemned the killing of student Hashim of the University of Kordofan, and demanded the return of their own students union that has been stopped for years.

Red sea

A student from the Red Sea University told Radio Dabanga that the police broke up a peaceful demonstration at the city market by using batons and tear gas.

One student was seriously injured and taken to Port Sudan hospital for treatment. The police and NISS forces chased the students back to the university campus.

Also on Wednesday, the NISS detained four students from the front of a building complex at the University of Khartoum after beating them; thus bringing the number of student detainees to nine.

Khartoum

A student from the University of Khartoum told Radio Dabanga that the NISS gents attacked the students with batons after they held a vigil at University Avenue and the medical complex demanding the release of the detainees and refusing the sale or transfer of the university headquarters.

He explained that the NISS closed all entrances leading from dormitories to the university and have besieged the university buildings. The four new detainees include Saiyed Mohamed Zain and three other students whose names have not been identified.

White Nile State

A sit-in by sit -in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Imam El Mahdi in Kosti in White Nile State has entered its third week. The students are demanding amendments to the regulations prepared by the university administration earlier last year.

A student told Radio Dabanga the Governor of White Nile state visited the Faculty and asked them to end the sit-in, promising to resolve the problem.

He added that the students are demanding a timetable for the amendments to the regulations and the need to involve students in drafting the new regulations as stipulated in the Constitution of the university.

Source: allAfrica.
Link: http://allafrica.com/stories/201604220407.html.

Pakistani Sikhs open temple after 73 years, risking attacks

April 27, 2016

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — An armed policeman stood guard outside the 300-year-old Sikh temple, known as a gurdwara, in northwest Pakistan. He kept a watchful eye on everyone who passed him on the narrow street, looking for a suspicious gesture, or a bulge beneath the clothes that hints at a hidden gun or a bomb.

Earlier this month, the gurdwara in Peshawar's crowded Old City opened its doors to worshippers for the first time in 73 years. The reopening was celebrated by Pakistan's tiny Sikh minority, but security is a constant concern.

On Friday, a Sikh leader and provincial lawmaker was shot and killed outside his home in a remote area in Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province, some 140 kilometers (86 miles) from Peshawar. The murder of Sardar Suran Singh devastated the Sikh community and heightened their fears of militant attacks.

It also added to human rights activists' despair over rising violence against religious minorities in Pakistan. "It is tragic, but this is the trend in Pakistan right now. It is increasingly intolerant," said Zohra Yusuf, chairwoman of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP).

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the shooting of Sardar Suran Singh, but police disputed their claim, blaming the shooting on political rivalry and saying they had arrested the culprit. There was no response from the Taliban, who often make unsubstantiated claims.

Peshawar is a deeply conservative city at the foot of the mountainous Khyber Pass — once a popular route for traders and tourists travelling to nearby Afghanistan, now the focus of an extremist insurgency. Militants have attacked Peshawar schools, killing children as they studied, bombed buses of government workers and attacked Christians in their churches.

The newly-opened gurdwara has a 24-hour Sikh Security detail as well as police guards, but their Muslim neighbors believe an attack is inevitable. "Security is very necessary ... for the people who want to come here for prayers without any fear," said Gurpal Singh, security chief for Peshawar's Sikh community.

Gohar Iqbal, a bookseller who works at a busy stall opposite the temple was certain the building would be targeted by militants. "We are worrying because of the children if something happens," he said, gesturing to the white cement building that houses a girls' high school, which abuts the gurdwara.

Few in this overwhelmingly Muslim neighborhood welcomed the gurdwara's opening. Apart from the security risks, many simply don't want Sikhs in their midst. The Sikhs that lived in the area and attended the gurdwara left when it closed in the 1940s.

It is not known how many Sikhs live in Pakistan today. The vast majority migrated to India in 1947, the year Pakistan was created as a homeland for Muslims of the subcontinent. The CIA Factbook estimates that 3.6 percent of Pakistan's 180 million people are non-Muslims, including Sikhs, Christians and Hindus.

Sikhs are among the smallest minorities. They are easily identifiable because of their tightly wound and often colorful turbans, and because they share the surname Singh. Many of the Sikhs living in Pakistan are internally displaced, having fled their traditional homes in Pakistan's tribal regions as the threat posed by militants increased.

As the Taliban grew in strength in tribal regions such as Orazkai and Bajour, Sikhs were forced to pay protection money to local militant leaders or were killed, Yusuf at HRCP said. Two years ago, extremists in the area swore allegiance to the Islamic State group. IS militants routinely video the brutal killings of non-Muslims in their territory.

Charanjeet Singh, a volunteer at the gurdwara and a community spokesman, fled his home in Orazkai several years ago. He spoke to The Associated Press from inside the cavernous prayer hall of the gurdwara. Inside the sprawling compound, most of the buildings are crumbling — only the ornately carved prayer hall has been renovated.

Still, remnants of its former glory are visible — a small arch made up of odd-shaped blocks of stone, known as Waziri bricks, remains from the original structure laid around 300 years ago. Charanjeet Singh said the community had been battling government intransigence and local resistance since 2012 to reopen the gurdwara.

In the 73 years it stood empty, the gurdwara was administered by the government's Evacuee Trust, an organization that looks after properties vacated by those who left for India during partition in 1947. Sometimes the buildings are returned to their original owners — as happened with the gurdwara — and at other times they are given to those who migrated from India to Pakistan, provided they can prove they owned property of a similar value in India.

Under the Pakistani government's guardianship, the gurdwara went through many incarnations. At one point, it housed a vocational school and it has been used for private homes. Several members of the Evacuee Trust still work and live there.

Despite receiving a chilly reception from their Muslim neighbors, the Sikhs of the gurdwara are giving shelter to an elderly Muslim woman. In one of the ramshackle buildings lives Begum Shafqat Ara, a diminutive old woman who believes her age to be around 90. She has lived in the gurdwara for some 60 years. She never married and taught at the vocational school, where she continued to live after she retired.

"I didn't have anywhere to go, no family. This is my home," she told AP, sitting on the purple carpeted floor of the gurdwara's prayer hall. Charanjeet Singh says Ara will stay. The Sikh community takes care of her and has promised to continue to do so for as long as she lives. Ara smiled a mostly toothless grin as she heard this and affectionately rested her hand on the knee of a nearby Sikh volunteer who had helped her to the prayer hall.

Despite the dangers they face, Charanjeet Singh said they will not capitulate to the militants. "If we do, they win," he said. "We are fully determined we will keep our holy places open."