Tag: ISIS

U.S. reportedly reaches Afghanistan truce with Taliban

Axios logoThe U.S. reached an initial deal with the Taliban on Friday that could begin a drawdown of American troops from Afghanistan, AP reports, citing a senior U.S. official.

The big picture: Top administration officials, including President Trump, had signaled that an agreement could be reached soon, allowing America’s 18-year war in Afghanistan to end after thousands of lives lost and billions of dollars spent. But previous attempts to leave Afghanistan have not panned out.

What we know: The “very specific” deal calls for a seven-day “reduction of violence” covering the entire country, to act as the precursor to all-Afghan peace talks within 10 days, a U.S. official said on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.

  • Defense Secretary Mark Esper said on Thursday that the U.S. and Taliban had “negotiated a proposal for a seven-day reduction in violence.”
  • The full conditions remain unclear. If the administration deems they’ve been met, it would then withdraw some troops and the Taliban would enter negotiations with the Afghan government about the country’s political future.
  • A U.S. exit likely wouldn’t mean an end to the fighting. The Taliban have been unwilling to lay down their arms, rebuffing calls for a ceasefire during negotiations. Continue reading.

Europeans shift troops from Iraq, warn fight against Islamic State is imperiled because of U.S. actions

Washington Post logoBRUSSELS — U.S. allies said Tuesday that they were reducing and repositioning troops inside Iraq amid fears that Iran will retaliate for the killing of Qasem Soleimani, one of its most senior military officials, in a U.S. airstrike.

Some European diplomats expressed fears that the shifting of troops would diminish their ability to fight the Islamic State.

Militants “would be the only winners” of a full-blown war as a result of U.S.-Iran tensions, British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said Tuesday, singling out the Islamic State as having the most to gain. Continue reading.

U.S. Resumes Large-Scale Operations Against ISIS in Northern Syria

New York Times logoAfter a lull of several weeks, American troops and Syrian Kurdish fighters are once again conducting large-scale counterterrorism missions.

MANAMA, Bahrain — United States troops have resumed large-scale counterterrorism missions against the Islamic State in northern Syria, military officials say, nearly two months after President Trump’s abrupt order to withdraw American troopsopened the way for a bloody Turkish cross-border offensive.

The new operations show that despite Mr. Trump’s earlier demand for a complete withdrawal of all American forces from Syria, the president still has some 500 troops in the country, many of them in combat, for the foreseeable future.

“Over the next days and weeks, the pace will pick back up against remnants of ISIS,” Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the commander of the military’s Central Command, told reporters on the sidelines of the Manama Dialogue security conference in Bahrain on Saturday.

View the complete November 25 article by Eric Schmitt on The New York Times website here.

The Memo: ISIS leader’s death is no game-changer for Trump

The Hill logoPresident Trump scored a significant success with the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on Saturday. But political experts on both sides of the partisan divide say it is unlikely to reshape his domestic fortunes.

Even Republicans accept that the death of al-Baghdadi, who reportedly blew himself up while being pursued by American forces, is of lesser importance than the 2011 killing of al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden during former President Obama’s tenure.

“This is much different from Osama bin Laden because everyone knew who the terrorist was,” said one GOP strategist with ties to the White House. “Not a lot of people know who the leader of ISIS is.”

View the complete October 28 article by Niall Stanage on The Hill website here.

Trump’s Retreat

Trump’s actions in Syria mean Russia is in control – and it’s unclear what comes next.

President Donald Trump’s surprise withdrawal from Syria – ordered with no forewarning at a time when he faces ever-intensifying political pressure at home – represents a remarkable American retreat from a relatively stable situation it did not have to abandon. Whatever clout the U.S. may have earned in the region, and subsequent ability to create further stability that would benefit Americans, is now gone.

“The U.S. has blown it. Trump has successfully blown it to the benefit of all the others,” says Anders Aslund, a senior fellow at The Atlantic Council.

The question is what comes next.

Kurdish forces who fought alongside the U.S. against the Islamic State group served as an essential bulwark protecting the Washington’s goal of negotiating a peace that would secure its political interests in Syria’s future and in the wider region. But any sense of cooperation the Kurds felt with the U.S. is now dashed. And questions remain about whether the Trump administration can deliver on the terms of a dubious cease-fire agreement with Turkey that Vice President Mike Pence announced Thursday in Ankara.

View the complete Paul D. Shinkman on The U.S. News and World Report website here.

Trump Followed His Gut on Syria. Calamity Came Fast.

New York Times logoAll the warnings were there. But President Trump’s reliance on his instincts, and his relationships, led him to ignore the consequences of a move that has emboldened Russia, Iran and the Islamic State.

President Trump’s acquiescence to Turkey’s move to send troops deep inside Syrian territory has in only one week’s time turned into a bloody carnage, forced the abandonment of a successful five-year-long American project to keep the peace on a volatile border, and given an unanticipated victory to four American adversaries: Russia, Iran, the Syrian government and the Islamic State.

Rarely has a presidential decision resulted so immediately in what his own party leaders have described as disastrous consequences for American allies and interests. How this decision happened — springing from an “off-script moment” with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, in the generous description of a senior American diplomat — probably will be debated for years by historians, Middle East experts and conspiracy theorists.

But this much already is clear: Mr. Trump ignored months of warnings from his advisers about what calamities likely would ensue if he followed his instincts to pull back from Syria and abandon America’s longtime allies, the Kurds. He had no Plan B, other than to leave. The only surprise is how swiftly it all collapsed around the president and his depleted, inexperienced foreign policy team.

View the complete October 14 article by David E. Sanger on The New York Times website here.

Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman lays out 3 ‘perfectly plausible’ reasons for Trump’s betrayal of the Kurds — and they’re all horrifying

AlterNet logoThe Trump White House shocked the U.S. military and the defense community over the weekend with an announcement that U.S. forces, which have been working with Kurdish-led forces in northeastern Syria, will be pulling out — a decision that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wholeheartedly agrees with. And economist and veteran New York Times opinion columnist  Paul Krugman has three theories on the matter — all of which he asserts paint a troubling picture of Trump.

Monday on Twitter, Krugman posted, “So, did Trump just betray the Kurds because (a) He has business interests in Turkey, (b) Erdogan, being a brutal autocrat, is his kind of guy, (c) His boss Vladimir Putin told him to. Remarkable that all three stories are perfectly plausible.”

Trump, to be sure, has had very friendly relations with Erdogan. Prior to Erdogan’s presidency, Turkey was among the most liberal and democratic countries in the Islamic world. But it has taken an increasingly authoritarian turn under Erdogan, who Trump has repeatedly praised. Trump has been highly critical of long-time NATO allies like Germany and the U.K., but in 2018, he gave Erdogan a friendly fist bump and exalted him as the NATO member who “does things the right way.”

View the complete October 7 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.

Syria’s Kurds stand to lose all gains from US pullout

BEIRUT (AP) — Syria’s Kurds accused the U.S. of turning its back on its allies and risking gains made in the fight against the Islamic State group as American troops began pulling back on Monday from positions in northeastern Syria ahead of an expected Turkish assault.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to stand aside — announced by the White House late Sunday — infuriated Kurds, who stand to lose the autonomy they gained in the course of Syria’s civil war.

The Kurdish force pledged to fight back, raising the potential for an eruption of new warfare in Syria. “We will not hesitate for a moment in defending our people” against Turkish troops, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said in a statement, adding that it has lost 11,000 fighters in the war against IS in Syria.

View the complete October 7 article by Bassem Mroue and Suzan Fraser on the Associated Press website here.

A Yazidi woman from Iraq told Trump that ISIS killed her family. ‘Where are they now?’ he asked.

Washington Post logoWhen President Trump this week met human rights activist Nadia Murad, an Iraqi who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018 for speaking out about her agonizing torture and rape while in Islamic State captivity, he seemed unaware of her story and the plight of her Yazidi ethnic minority.

For several minutes in the Oval Office on Wednesday, Murad stood beside a seated Trump, who mostly avoided eye contact with Murad, and implored the president to help her community return to Iraq. She explained that the Islamic State, or ISIS, may be gone but that Iraqis and Kurds are fighting for control over Yazidi lands.

“If I cannot go to my home and live in a safe place and get my dignity back, this is not about ISIS,” she said, her voice breaking. “It’s about I’m in danger. My people cannot go back.”

View the complete July 19 article by Colby Itkowitz on The Washington Post website here.

Fact Checker Analysis Have Iraq and Syria been ‘liberated’ from ISIS, as President Trump says?

Trump has claimed his administration has defeated ISIS and beaten back the caliphate. But those aren’t the same. The caliphate may be gone but ISIS remains. (Video: Meg Kelly, Joy Yi, Atthar Mirza/Photo: Atthar Mirza and Andrew Quilty/The Washington Post)
Over the past several months, President Trump has made a variety of claims about the Islamic State. He has said “we have won,” that ISIS has been “beaten,” “defeated” and that there is “very little ISIS” left. He’s also said “the caliphate [is] almost knocked out” and the United States has “liberated virtually 100 percent of ISIS in Iraq and Syria.”

Army Gen. Joseph Votel, the head of U.S. Central Command, CIA Director Gina Haspel and Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats have all used more-measured language to describe the situation.

We asked the White House and the National Security Council for comment on the discrepancies in language between the president and his intelligence chiefs. An NSC spokesman pointed us to national security adviser John Bolton’s remarks on ABC News’ “This Week” on March 10.

View the complete March 13 article by Meg Kelly on The Washington Post website here.