US BLACKLISTS PROMINENT DAESH PREACHER, 2 OTHERS – UAE berets, Saudi air power on IS

This news has been read 6451 times!

BRUSSELS, Feb 12, (Agencies): US Defense Secretary Ash Carter says a key Arabian Gulf ally has agreed to send special forces soldiers to Syria to assist in the development of local Sunni Arab fighters focused on recapturing Raqqa, the Islamic State group’s capital. Carter made the comment after meeting Friday at his Brussels hotel with his counterpart from the United Arab Emirates.

Carter declined to say how many Emirati special forces would go to Syria. He said they would be part of an effort led by the United States and bolstered by Saudi special forces to train and enable local Arab fighters who are motivated to recapture Raqqa.

The US war plan for fighting the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq is designed to unseat the extremists in Raqqa and Mosul, which is the group’s main stronghold in northern Iraq. Carter also told reporters that however the proposed suspension of Syrian civil war hostilities is implemented, as announced in Munich, the US will continue combating IS in Syria. “There is no cease-fire in the war against ISIL,” Carter said.

“Let’s be clear about that.” Diplomats meeting in Munich, Germany fell short early Friday in organizing a truce in the Syrian civil war but agreed to try to work out details and implement a temporary “cessation of hostilities” in a week’s time.

The foreign ministers from the International Syria Support Group managed to seal an agreement to “accelerate and expand” deliveries of humanitarian aid to besieged Syrian communities beginning this week. Carter said the US military will not participate in those aid deliveries. US and Russia are to lead a working group meeting Friday to work out aid delivery details.

Five years of conflict have killed more than a quarter-million people, created Europe’s biggest refugee crisis since World War II and allowed the Islamic State to carve out its own territory across parts of Syria and neighboring Iraq.

Overall, the United Nations says almost half a million people are besieged in Syria. Since the beginning of 2015, Syria’s government had approved just 13 inter-agency aid convoys, out of 113 requested, the UN reported last month. Carter, who has been under pressure to shore up support from Sunni Arab allies to fight the Islamic State group, on Thursday welcomed a commitment from Saudi Arabia to expand its role in air strikes against the Sunni militants. At a gathering of more than two dozen defense ministers at NATO headquarters, Saudi Arabia, which has quietly resumed its participation in air strikes in the past few weeks, also renewed the possibility of sending forces into Syria. “Saudi Arabia’s defense minister … indicated that the Kingdom is reinvigorating its commitment to the coalition air campaign, which is very welcome news, and contributing in other critical ways on the ground,” Carter said after the talks in Brussels. Carter, broadly praising contributions from allies, said the US-led war against Islamic State would be won despite former Cold War foe Russia’s role in the civil war in Syria on the side of President Bashar al-Assad’s government.

On Wednesday, France delivered a rebuke to President Barack Obama, demanding that Washington show a clearer commitment to resolving the crisis in Syria, where Russia is tipping the military balance in favor of Assad. Four months of Russian air strikes in Syria have helped Assad claw back territory from rebels fighting government forces, alarming Gulf Arab states who back the insurgents. Saudi Arabia said it has carried out more than 190 aerial missions in Syria, although it has focused its military efforts over the last year on the conflict in Yemen, where it is leading a coalition of mainly Gulf Arab forces battling Houthi fighters who control Sanaa.

In Munich, US Secretary of State John Kerry was leading a diplomatic push to rescue imperiled peace efforts, which are being held despite Russian bombing raids to bolster Syrian forces around the city of Aleppo. Carter sought to draw a line between military and diplomatic efforts, saying Islamic State needed to be defeated “whatever happens with the Syrian civil war”. But he also said Russia’s bombing of Western-backed opposition fighters could prolong the civil war that helped give rise to Islamic State.

War
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned Thursday that if Arab forces entered the Syrian war they could spark a “new world war” and urged ceasefire talks instead. Asked about proposals by some Arab countries to enter the conflict under a US command, Medvedev said, “that would be bad because ground offensives usually lead to wars becoming permanent”. “The Americans and our Arabic partners must think hard about this: do they want a permanent war?” he was quoted as telling the German Handelsblatt business daily in an interview.

“Do they really think they would win such a war very quickly? That’s impossible, especially in the Arabic world. There everyone is fighting against everyone … everything is far more complicated. It could take years or decades.” “Why is that necessary?” he added, according to a pre-released excerpt from the daily’s Friday edition. “All sides must be forced to the negotiating table instead of sparking a new world war.”

Blacklisted
The United States blacklisted three people on Thursday for working for Islamic State, including the militant group’s most prominent ideologue and a senior oil official. Turki al-Bin’ali was sanctioned for helping Islamic State recruit foreign fighters, the US Treasury said in a statement. Bin’ali, 31, was an early supporter of Islamic State and authored a frequently cited biography of the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Experts said the preacher’s writings helped lay the religious legal groundwork for Islamic State to declare a “caliphate,” which it did in 2014 in parts of Syria and Iraq it controls. Bin’ali is believed to be the group’s chief religious authority, and has written a text that traces Baghdadi’s lineage to the Prophet Mohammad, said Cole Bunzel, an Islamic State expert at Princeton University.

Bin’ali issued a treatise that rallied militant Islamists to the cause and has denounced Islamic State’s many Muslim critics. Bahrain revoked Bin’ali’s citizenship in 2015. Sanctions are unlikely to have any impact on Bin’ali, who comes from a wealthy Bahraini family, Bunzel said. “He’s the most ideologically committed person to this movement that I know,” he said. “To him, this is very much not about money.” A Treasury spokeswoman said Thursday’s actions were the first US sanctions to target Bin’ali.

The sanctions freeze any US assets the men might have and prohibit Americans from dealing with them. While they have little immediate practical impact, the sanctions have a “naming and shaming” effect and allow for follow-on actions against people connected to Bin’ali, said Matt Levitt, a former US Treasury official now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Another man sanctioned on Thursday was Faysal Ahmad Ali al-Zahrani, from Saudi Arabia, who the Treasury Department said is responsible for Islamic State’s oil and gas activities in areas of northeastern Syria. Treasury said Zahrani for a time answered directly and transferred funds to top Islamic State financial official Abu Sayyaf, who was killed in a US Special Operations Forces raid last May.

This news has been read 6451 times!