In battle against IS, Iraqi forces retake town near Tikrit

March 10, 2015

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraqi security forces on Tuesday retook a town next to the militant-held city of Tikrit as they pressed their offensive against Islamic State militants, two military officials said.

The Iraqi forces entered Alam early in the morning and hours later gained full control of the town adjacent to Tikrit, the two Iraqi officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.

The battle for Saddam Hussein's hometown is a key test for the Iraqi forces as they struggle to win back some of the Islamic State group's biggest strongholds in Iraq. Ahmed al-Karim, the Salahuddin provincial council chief, told The Associated Press that progress had been slow due to roadside bombs and sniper attacks.

Tikrit, Salahuddin's provincial capital that lies about 130 kilometers (80 miles) north of Baghdad, fell to the Islamic State group last summer, along with Iraq's second largest city, Mosul, and other areas in the country's Sunni heartland.

The offensive to wrest Tikrit from IS has received significant assistance from Iranian military advisers who are guiding Iraq's Shiite militias on the battlefield. U.S.-led coalition forces have said they are not providing aerial support for this particular mission because the Iraqis have not requested it.

Before Alam, the offensive succeeded in clawing back a few villages and towns, most notably Dawr, south of Tikrit. Among those directing operations is Iranian Gen. Ghasem Soleimani, commander of the powerful Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force. The overt Iranian role and the prominence of Shiite militias in the campaign have raised fears of possible sectarian cleansing should Tikrit, an overwhelmingly Sunni city, fall to the government troops.

Meanwhile, in neighboring Syria, activists said Tuesday that more than 70 prisoners escaped from an Islamic State jail in a town held by the militant group. The militants then went house-to-house and set up checkpoints around the northern town of Al-Bab, searching for those who fled.

The prisoners took the opportunity to escape when clashes erupted between rival militant groups, said Bari Abdelatif, an activist from al-Bab who is now based in Turkey. "There are checkpoints everywhere," Abdelatif said of the situation in the town. He said he was contact with residents and added that IS fighters were driving through town streets and calling on people over loudspeakers to hand over any prisoners they were hiding.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Abdelatif said those who fled included Kurdish fighters who were captured by the Islamic State group in recent months. The Observatory said the IS extremists were able to recapture some of those who fled but did not provide details or numbers.

Along with a third of Iraq, the Islamic State last year also captured a third of Syria last year. In the past months, the group has been defeated in some areas, including the Syrian border town of Kobani and several surrounding villages.

U.S. military officials have that said a coordinated military mission to retake Mosul will likely begin in April or May and involve up to 25,000 Iraqi troops. But the Americans have cautioned that if the Iraqis are not ready, the offensive could be delayed.

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said while on a visit to the region on Monday that he is "a bit concerned" about whether the international coalition fighting the Islamic State is sustainable for the longer-term challenge of confronting extremists elsewhere.

Dempsey said that in military terms the campaign against IS is "on path." But he put equal emphasis on the importance of sustaining the coalition for the longer term. Shiite dominance in Baghdad has upset predominantly Sunni countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Associated Press writers Vivian Salama in Baghdad and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.

Erdogan slams brakes on Kurdish peace process ahead of polls

April 08, 2015

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (AP) — The peace process to end decades of violent strife between Turkey and Kurdish rebels has been one of Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan's signature achievements.

But with key parliamentary elections looming in June, the president has hit the brakes on peace talks — and exposed a rare rift within his own party. Until recently, chances looked good for a deal that could see the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, lay down its arms after a three-decade insurgency that has left tens of thousands dead. Last month, imprisoned Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan was allowed to release a statement in Kurdish read out to hundreds of thousands of Kurds celebrating a Kurdish holiday in Diyarbakir, the symbolic heart of Turkey's Kurdish southeast. A decade ago, neither the celebration, nor the statement would have been conceivable.

The event was part of a calibrated effort toward a final deal that would include legislating greater autonomy and rights for Kurds, who make up 20 percent of Turkey's 78 million people. The negotiations, begun secretly in late 2012 with Ocalan, were a political risk for Erdogan in a country that has often demonized the Kurdish rebels. Turkish leaders going back to the Republic's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk had maintained harsh repressions of Kurdish culture, even calling Kurds "mountain Turks" to deny their separate ethnic identity.

But the ceasefire negotiated in the talks has been a boon to Erdogan and the country. In return Erdogan has eased some of the restrictions pending a more comprehensive deal. Early last month, negotiators under Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and Kurdish members of parliament held a joint press conference, while emissaries shuttled to Ocalan's island prison for talks. The rebel leader, in statements read at the festival, called on PKK militants to abandon arms for good and seek a democratic solution.

Then, Erdogan abruptly sounded a halt. Just days before the Kurdish celebration, he asserted that "there is no Kurdish question" — implying that Kurds grievances had already been addressed. Then he castigated his own party members for considering a key concession demanded by the Kurds.

This provoked rare criticism of Erdogan by a party elder, Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc, who was a co-founder with Erdogan of the Justice and Development Party, or AKP. Arinc accused Erdogan of meddling in the negotiations, which he said should be the responsibility of the prime minister, and vowed that the government would plow ahead.

Erdogan, who sits astride an increasingly authoritarian government, appears to have won. Last month, in a blow to the peace process, parliament passed a security bill giving broad new powers to the police. Kurdish parties and PKK militants had included defeat of the bill among a list of demands for the talks to move forward.

The explanation for Erdogan's gambit appears to lie in electoral politics and his own future ambitions to change the constitution and head a strong presidential system. Amid signs that opposition parties including the Kurdish HDP are gaining support, Erdogan appears to have concluded that further peace moves won't aid his cause.

In previous elections the HDP has sent a relatively small number of legislators to parliament by running as independents. But this time, the party, led by the charismatic Selahattin Demirtas, seems to be in reach of a 10 percent threshold required for entering parliament as a party. If they make it, Erdogan will almost certainly not obtain the supermajority needed to make constitutional changes.

"Erdogan has a plan and that is to increase tensions and polarization ahead of the elections. This plan has worked well for him in the past," said Sukru Kucuksahin, a columnist for the liberal Turkish daily Hurriyet. "The HDP falling below the threshold would greatly benefit the AKP and the government is doing all it can to ensure it does."

But the gamble could backfire, as many non-Kurdish liberals seem intent on voting HDP to catapult it into parliament. One such voter, Cem Terzih, a doctor and peace activist from the staunchly secularist redoubt of Izmir, was in in Diyarbakir for the Kurdish celebrations. "HDP getting in will stop Erdogan's big ambitions," he said.

Erdogan may hope that in that event he can trade concessions to the Kurds for HDP support on constitutional changes. But following Erdogan's recent comments, Demirtas ruled that out. "Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as long as the HDP exists, as long as the HDP continues to breathe on these lands," he said, "you will never be the head (of a presidential system)."

Despite the escalation of rhetoric, Kurds in Diyarbakir seem confident that the peace process is already too far along to go backwards. "All the people in this country have suffered violence for so long, they know the value of peace," said H. Sherife Farqin, an 84-year-old practitioner of traditional Kurdish verse. "After the election, they will demand it."

New Gaza-bound 'Freedom Flotilla' expected to sail this summer

Simona Sikimic
Tuesday 31 March 2015

A new “Freedom Flotilla” is scheduled to embark for Gaza in two months’ time, organizers said on Tuesday.

The voyage is scheduled to begin in the first half of the year, which means the flotilla could set sail within weeks, Mazen Kahel, an organizer with the European Campaign to end the Siege on Gaza, told MEE.

Like its 2010 predecessor, this year's flotilla aims to challenge Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip which has been in place since 2007.

Former Tunisian president Moncef Marzouki has given his “full support” to the mission. He is expected to take part and will be on one of the boats, several organizers have confirmed.

“Marzouki has always been engaged with the cause and has openly supported the Palestinians in his time of power,” Kahel told MEE.

Negotiations are currently underway with other political, religious and business figures, but their names have yet to be confirmed and will be announced at a later date, Kahel added.

Activists from across Europe, the US and the Middle East will participate in the flotilla, organised by a string of civil society groups and NGOs working under the Freedom Flotilla Coalition.

Three to four boats are currently undergoing preparation for the voyage, but several more could yet join. The boats are expected to depart from several European ports, including one in Greece and possibly Turkey, although no specific information is being released as yet.

For now, much of the information about the flotilla is being kept under wraps for security reasons, although more details are expected to emerge in the coming weeks.

“There is a huge problems there [in Gaza]. It is an open prison,” Kahel said.

“The situation there is unhuman. It is criminal and human beings cannot continue like this. We need to see an end to this blockade.”

The first flotilla that set sail in 2010 was attacked by Israeli soldiers in international waters. Nine activists were killed in the attack that sparked widespread international outrage.

A second flotilla was set to sail in 2011 but the voyage never materialized.

Source: Middle East Eye.
Link: http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/new-gaza-bound-freedom-flotilla-expected-sail-summer-1262594650.

Ukrainian leader lifts objections to vote on regional power

April 06, 2015

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Monday publicly lifted his objections to a referendum that could give more powers to the restive regions engulfed in more than a year of warfare, reversing his government's previous position. Russia-backed separatists, however, dismissed Poroshenko's gesture as meaningless.

The conflict between Russia-backed rebels and government troops in eastern Ukraine has claimed more than 6,000 lives. When it began, protesters in the east demanded a vote on giving their regions more autonomy. Such calls were rejected by the Ukrainian government at the time.

But Poroshenko on Monday met a parliamentary commission that is drafting amendments to the country's constitution and said in a televised meeting that if the commission decides a referendum is necessary, he would not stand in the way.

"I'm ready to launch a referendum on the issue of state governance if you decide it is necessary," he said. Ukraine's eastern industrial heartland was the support base for Kremlin-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted in February last year after months of protests. Several months into the fighting, however, pro-Russia rebels said they no longer wanted autonomy, but rather an independent state.

Hostilities have subsided in the region after the parties agreed in February to a cease-fire deal brokered by Western leaders in Minsk, Belarus. Russia-backed separatists on Monday balked at the idea of a referendum as offering too little.

Senior rebel official Andrei Purgin told The Associated Press on Monday that none of their representatives were invited to sit on the constitutional commission to start with, "which already says a lot."

"Everything that Kiev does shows that they have to decide to find agreement but dictate their terms to us, which contradicts the Minsk accords," Purgin said, adding that "Poroshenko's statement does not mean anything" because there are no details of the referendum — if it happens at all.

Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk on Monday dismissed suggestions of direct talks with the rebels. "When we talk about our dialogue with the east, we mean a dialogue with legitimately elected representatives of the east of the country, not Russian gangsters and terrorists."

Yatsenyuk said he looks forward to a local election in the rebel-occupied areas that, he said, both Russia and the rebels had committed to in Minsk. Moscow sided with the rebels, calling on Kiev to include them in deliberations on constitutional reform. Speaking at a televised news conference, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that reform should go ahead "only with the approval and agreement of Luhansk and Donetsk," the two biggest cities under separatist control.

Poroshenko on Monday insisted that he still opposed federalization, which Russia has advocated, but favors decentralizing power in favor of the regions. Decision-making on security, defense and foreign policy, Poroshenko said, would remain in the hands of the central government.

Poroshenko added that he still opposes making Russian a second official language. "Ukrainian has been and will be our only state language." Purgin said Poroshenko's insistence shows that "he doesn't listen to the voice of the east: we speak Russian here."

Poland marks 5th anniversary of presidential plane disaster

April 10, 2015

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland is marking the fifth anniversary of the plane crash that killed President Lech Kaczynski and 95 members of his presidential entourage on a visit to Russia, the worst catastrophe to strike the Polish state since World War II and an event that deepened historical strains between the two Slavic neighbors.

Although the disaster briefly united the nation's 38 million people in profound shock and grief, it has since deepened divisions within Polish society. There are some, including the president's surviving twin brother Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who believe that the president was assassinated by Russian authorities. They are deeply at odds with the majority of Poles, who trust a state investigation which laid a large share of the blame on pilots who chose to land in heavy fog. State investigators also put some blame on Russian air traffic controllers for giving faulty guidance.

The national bitterness was revived this week with the leak of transcripts from the cockpit shortly before the plane crashed near Smolensk. It added to evidence that an air force general was in the cockpit pressuring the pilots to make the dangerous landing — further undermining the theory of an assassination.

The president's daughter, Marta Kaczynska, who also lost her mother in the disaster, placed flowers early Friday at her parents' grave at Wawel Cathedral in Krakow. In Warsaw, President Bronislaw Komorowski, Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz and other leaders attended a memorial ceremony at the Powazki military cemetery, gathering next to a memorial shaped like airplane wings entering the ground.

Earlier, Parliament Speaker Radek Sikorski and other parliamentary leaders placed wreaths in the building to remember the 18 lawmakers who were also killed in the crash on April 10, 2010. Many other commemorations were scheduled throughout the day, including a memorial march to be led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

The crash deepened tensions with Russia. Poles are angry that the wreckage still has not been returned to Poland., Russian authorities say Poland has failed to hand over evidence needed in their investigation, but Polish officials say they are doing their best to cooperate.

Ordinary folk take up military training over Russia threat

April 06, 2015

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — NATO aircraft scream across eastern European skies and American armored vehicles rumble near the border with Russia on a mission to reassure citizens that they're safe from Russian aggression.

But these days, ordinary people aren't taking any chances. In Poland, doctors, shopkeepers, lawmakers and others are heeding a call to receive military training in case of an invasion. Neighboring Lithuania is restoring the draft and teaching citizens what to do in case of war. Nearby Latvia has plans to give university students military training next year.

The drive to teach ordinary people how to use weapons and take cover under fire reflects soaring anxiety among people in a region where memories of Moscow's domination — which ended only in the 1990s — remain raw. People worry that their security and hard-won independence are threatened as saber-rattling intensifies between the West and Russia over the conflict in Ukraine, where more than 6,000 people have died.

In Poland, the oldest generation remembers the Soviet Army's invasion in 1939, at the start of World War II. Younger people remain traumatized by the repression of the communist regime that lasted more than four decades.

It's a danger felt across the EU newcomer states that border Russia. "There's a real feeling of threat in our society," Latvian defense ministry spokeswoman Aija Jakubovska told The Associated Press. Military training for students is a "way we can increase our own defense capabilities."

Most people are still looking to NATO's military umbrella as their main guarantor of security. Zygmunt Wos waved goodbye to a detachment of U.S. armored vehicles leaving the eastern Polish city of Bialystok with apprehension: "These troops should be staying with us," he said, "not going back to Germany."

Poland has been at the forefront of warnings about the dangers of the Ukraine conflict. Just 17 hours by car from the battle zone, Poland has stepped up efforts to upgrade its weapons arsenal, including a possible purchase of U.S.-made Tomahawk missiles. It will host a total of some 10,000 NATO and other allied troops for exercises this year. Its professional army is 100,000-strong, and 20,000 reservists are slated for test-range training.

It's the grassroots mobilization, however, that best demonstrates the fears: The government has reached out to some 120 paramilitary groups with tens of thousands of members, who are conducting their own drills, in an effort to streamline them with the army exercises.

In an unprecedented appeal, Parliament Speaker Radek Sikorski urged lawmakers to train at a test range in May, while Defense Minister Tomasz Siemoniak called on men and women aged between 18 and 50, and with no military experience, to sign up for test-range exercise. So far, over 2,000 people have responded.

"The times are dangerous and we must do all we can to raise Poland's ability to defend its territory," President Bronislaw Komorowski said during a recent visit to a military unit. The Poles believe they have grounds for feeling particularly vulnerable because they have been invaded by Russia repeatedly since the 18th century. Russian leader Vladimir Putin seems to have singled out Poland, a staunch U.S. ally, as a prime enemy in the struggle over Ukraine, accusing it of training "Ukrainian nationalists" and instigating unrest.

Recently Moscow said it will place state-of-the-art Iskander missiles in its Kaliningrad enclave, bordering Poland and Lithuania, for a major exercise. Last week, over 550 young Polish reservists were summoned on one hour's notice to a military base for a mobilization drill. In their 20s and 30s, in jeans and sneakers, the men and women arrived at a base in Tarnowskie Gory, in southern Poland for days of shooting practice. One of them, 35-year-old former soldier Krystian Studnia, said the call was "absolutely natural."

"Everyone should be willing and ready to fight to defend his country," he said. In Warsaw, Mateusz Warszczak, 23, glowed with excitement as he signed up at a recruitment center. "I want to be ready to defend my family, my relatives, from danger," he said.

Even older Poles feel obliged to take responsibility for their own safety. In September, Wojciech Klukowski, a 58-year-old medical doctor, and his friends organized a civic militia group of about 50 men and women of various ages, and called it the National Guard. They practiced skirmishes and shooting, with the aim of becoming citizen-soldiers in their hometown of Szczecin, on the Baltic Sea coast.

"We do not feel fully safe," Klukowski said. "Many people ... want to be trained to defend their homes, their work places, their families."

Rayyan Sabet-Parry in Riga, Latvia and Jari Tanner in Tallinn, Estonia contributed to this report.

Czech president, US envoy in rare public spat over Ukraine

April 06, 2015

PRAGUE (AP) — Czech President Milos Zeman and the U.S. ambassador to Prague are in a rare public dispute over Zeman's decision to attend a Russian military parade, and the country's prime minister together with Czech lawmakers are siding with the American.

In an interview with online publication Parlamentni Listy on Sunday, Zeman bristled at the envoy's implied criticism of his decision to attend Moscow's traditional May 9 military parade despite the crisis in Ukraine. Zeman said U.S. Ambassador Andrew Shapiro is no longer welcome in the Prague Castle, the seat of presidency.

"I think that the reaction of President Zeman was not adequate," Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka said. "I would naturally welcome it if the attitude of Mr. President to foreign policy in general was a bit more professional," Sobotka told the Czech public television on Monday.

"We should be able to communicate with our friends and allies," Sobotka added. Parliament's lower house speaker, Jan Hamacek, said he thought Zeman was overreacting; the deputy speaker of Parliament's upper house, Premysl Sobotka, said Zeman demonstrated a lack of "diplomatic thinking."

Jan Mlejnek, an analyst, said Zeman's rhetoric was unfortunate and will harm Czech-U.S. relations. In an emailed statement from the U.S. embassy, Shapiro said "it would be unfortunate for President Zeman to be there as perhaps? the only EU head of state."

Zeman, whose is critical of European Union sanctions against Russia, said he wanted to honor Soviet soldiers who sacrificed their lives to liberate his country in World War II. The Czech presidency is a largely ceremonial post and the government is in charge of foreign policy. Sobotka said he accepted Zeman's explanation for the trip.

Shapiro said he regretted that Zeman felt offended. "I value a good working relationship with everyone, and I want him to know that my door will be open to him,"? Shapiro said. "I also want the Czech people to know that the United States government, and the people of America, value our relationship as partners and allies more than ever."