U.S. may change plans about cutting troop strength in Afghanistan

Commander of the US forces in Afghanistan General John Nicholson claims there is a shift in the relationship of the Taliban to Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. He claims this is complicating anti-terrorism efforts.

Nicholson claims the closer relationship has developed since the death of the former Taliban leader Mohammad Omar, who was replaced by Mullah Akhtar Mansour. Nicholson says that Mansour cultivated the closer relationship as a means of winning support in a leadership battle. This development could influence plans to cut US troops in Afghanistan. The presence of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan has all along been the reason for U.S. and NATO forces to go into Afghanistan in the first place even though for some while the numbers of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan were not large. A perceived resurgence of the group could be a justification for the U.S. not cutting their forces or even increasing them even though the U.S. combat role in Afghanistan is supposedly ended.

Nicholson said: "You see a more overt cooperation between the Taliban and these designated terrorist organizations. Our concern is that if the Taliban were to return, that because of their close relationships with these groups, that they would offer sanctuary to these groups."Nicholson is reviewing a plan that would see U.S. troop numbers in Afghanistan cut in half to 5,500 by 2017. Some U.S. politicians and Afghan commanders are requesting that Washington reconsider its plans. Nicholson would not comment on the review which is to be presented this June. The warning about Al Qaeda is rather suspicious given that U.S. officials estimates that there are just 100 to 300 Al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan although some claim the estimate is low.

It is the Taliban who are still the main threat to the US-supported Afghan government. It numbers its fighters in the thousands and has retaken swaths of territory in the southern province of Helmand, and even took over the northern city of Kunduz for a short period. A recent attack on Kunduz has been repulsed with more than 50 Taliban reported killed but the Taliban remain on the outskirts where they took over some military outposts. The Taliban just announced their spring offensive.

U.S. operations in Afghanistan have already picked up since the Islamic State in Khorasan has been designated as a terrorist group this January. In just the first 3 months of this year the U.S. has carried out nearly 100 strikes against the group mainly in the province of Nangarhar in eastern Afghanistan. The Islamic State and the Taliban are enemies with the IS attacking the Taliban as well as the government. Another source gives slightly different figures about the number of attacks: In the three months since the Obama Administration gave forces in Afghanistan authority to strike ISIS even when they don’t pose a direct threat, the Pentagon says some 70-80 such airstrikes have been launched, with 70% to 80% of them in Nangarhar Province.General Charles Cleveland said that airstrikes had been quite effective in that at one point the Islamic State controlled six to eight districts but now controls only two to three. Before this announcement, the U.S. had not officially confirmed that the IS controlled any territory in Afghanistan. Cleveland estimates that there are around 1,000 Islamic State fighters in Afghanistan, considerably more than Al Qaeda.

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/world/op-ed-al-qaeda-growth-in-afghanistan-may-signal-more-usa-intervention/article/463104#ixzz46bDf3zAx

Taliban mounting strong attacks in Afghanistan but Islamic State recruiting

The Afghan Taliban are able to mount serious attacks in Afghanistan. Most recently they carried out deadly attacks on the Afghan parliament and in the northern city of Kunduz.

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As the appended video shows, the attack on parliament shattered windows and filled the parliamentary chamber with smoke disrupting the confirmation of the new defense minister Masoom Stanikzai.

The parliament is supposed to be the most secure building in the country. The Taliban want to show both the Kabul government and their competitors the Islamic State just how powerful they are. They also have captured areas in the northern province of Kunduz and attacked Kunduz city. The Taliban has warned the Islamic State to stay out of Afghanistan. .

The Kunduz Police Chief Gen. Nasrati said Char Darah was just one of many districts lost in the last few days. Although reinforcements had arrived Kabul was unable to stop the violence he said. General Wahid Taqat, a former member of Afghan intelligence said that the government had simply lost control of many areas and hasnt the power to strike back. Afghan military expert, Jawed Kohistani, said:"The lack of coordination within the military, the central government's failure in the provinces and the cooperation with terrorist networks are the main reasons for the current volatile security situation."He also criticized the government for trying to make deals with Pakistani intelligence. To add to this unstable situation the Islamic State appears to be actively recruiting in Afghanistan and attempting to gain a foothold in the country.

Some time ago, General John F. Campbell the commander of the international forces in Afghanistan said that IS was using a sophisticated social media campaign to attract Taliban fighters not only in Afghanistan but Pakistan as well. The group points to the lack of success so far of the Taliban to overthrow the Kabul government after many years of battle. They point to their own success in seizing huge swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq.

The situation has progressed to the point where there are even reports of some militants fighting each other in the east of Afghanistan. One report from two anonymous commanders of the Taliban claims that the group is splintering into three parts. One group remains loyal to the original Taliban such as those who attacked the parliament and Kunduz recently. There are also a group who want to make peace with the Kabul government and lay down their arms. A third group has joined the Islamic State and is aiming at upping the pace of fighting against Kabul. While these splits might seem to give the advantage to Kabul over a divided opposition, it seems to have made the situation worse as two of the groups compete with each other to see who can fight best against Kabul. There are other divisions with those opposed to Kabul including separate Taliban groups based in Pakistan.

A senior Afghan intelligence officer told reporters:"The cracks in the ranks of Taliban began late last year with the emergence of Daesh in the region. The first big defection [from Taliban] to Daesh was senior Taliban commander Abdul Rauf Khadin ... who was killed in a joint operation with U.S. forces a few months ago."Even back in January the group announced the creation of a council for Khorasan a historic name for territory that includes present day Pakistan and Afghanistan. While Kabul has stepped up the pace of peace talks with one group of Taliban, the talks seem doomed given that other groups not only refuse to join the process but step up their attacks and take over more territory.

American analysts say that Islamic State in Afghanistan is just starting to get organized in Afghanistan. However, there is one area in the north where their presence is already being felt. As in other countries such as Libya, Islamic State is introducing foreign fighters into local areas. In a northern area in Afghanistan, local villagers and officials say that the militants are much more brutal and vicious than the Taliban. The fighters come from Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikstan. Mullah Abdul Rasheed said that a village elder was shot dead by militants while he was praying in a mosque and two of his cousins were killed in a gun battle with the militants. He said that he fled his village with others leaving everything behind. He said that the fighters had killed a person in a neighbouring village and dragged the body behind a motorcycle. In some villages they have already raised the black flag of Daesh (Islamic State) he said.

US and Russia discuss Syrian settlement as US program to arm moderates in tatters

Russian and U.S. officials have had new talks on finding a political solution to the Syrian civil war and a unified battle against the Islamic State in Syria. However, it is not clear how serious the discussions are.

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Secretary of State John Kerry confirmed that he had talked to his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Geneva on the issues. Kerry said that in discussing Syria they talked "about steps that might be..taken to try to see if there is common ground". He also said that “one of the things that drives that interest . . . is the reality of what is happening to Syria as a result of the presence of Daash there and its use of Syria as a base for spreading its evil to other places.” Daash is the Arabic term for the Islamic State. However, in the following days he also spoke about stepping up "military pressure" on the Assad regime once the Islamic State is defeated. The US aim still appears to be regime change in Syria although the first priority is to attack the Islamic State in Syria. Not only will many rebel groups not be interested in peace talks, Assad may not be either as the number of moderate groups arrayed against him are shrinking and also the Islamic State is being attacked by all sides.

Kerry said that military pressure on the Assad regime would probably be required to obtain a political solution:“Military pressure particularly may be necessary, given President Assad’s unwillingness to negotiate seriously. And what we must do is strengthen the capacity for this political solution.”

The last peace talks on Syria sponsored by the US and Russia in Geneva in February 2014 broke down. One reason for the breakup was Assad's insistence that fighting terrorism must be the top priority while the opposition wanted to focus on a transitional government that would exclude Assad. Now there is more of a focus by the US as well on the terrorism associated with the Islamic State. However, rebels are still mostly concerned with ousting Assad. Even last week in Aleppo rebel groups rejected a UN proposal to freeze fighting in Aleppo, a city divided between government held areas and areas held by the opposition. Russia has scheduled a meeting with Syrian opposition leaders in April.

The covert CIA operation to arm "moderate" Syrian rebels has been undermined by the dissolution of the Hazzm movement with their base being taken over by the Al Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front. Much US provided equipment and weapons in a warehouse on the base was captured, as shown on the appended video. Some of the members of the movement joined the Al-Nusra Front. To a considerable extent this was all caused by US policy. When the US coalition bombed the IS in Syria, the US--but not other members of the coalition--also bombed Al-Nusra positions, While they claimed only to be targeting the Khorasan group, they are part and parcel of Al Nusra. All rebel groups were incensed by the attack on Al-Nusra, which had been cooperating with other rebels. Consequent to the bombings, Al-Nusra Front turned on rebel groups funded by the US, first and foremost the Hazzm movement.

No other groups came to the rescue of the Hazzm group, since many disliked the group and saw them as the "favourite son" of the Americans who got everything while other groups got little or nothing. The apparent US solution to the problem of finding moderates to train in a new program is to consider any group not directly affiliated with the Islamic State as moderates. The Nusra front may cooperate by going along with a re-branding exercise being pushed by Qatar and some other Arab states. The Front would cut off any formal ties to Al Qaeda. In return they would receive more funding and perhaps even the blessing of the US as moderate rebels.

Two moderate Syrian rebel groups surrender to Al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front

Two of the main moderate rebel groups who had received weapons from the US have surrendered to the Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front after defeats in battle.There are reports that Islamic State forces joined the Nusra Front in at least one attack.

When the US bombed Islamic State positions in Syria they also bombed Nusra Front positions claiming they were attacking a group called Khorasan said to be threatening attacks on the west. However, the result has been disastrous. Not only were almost all rebel groups furious but the move appears to have led to the Nusra Front cooperating with the Islamic State rather than fighting it along with other rebel groups. The Harakat Hazm and the Syrian Revolutionary Front were two major rebel groups to become part of the vetted moderate rebel forces chosen to fight the Islamic State. The Hazm movement had even received heavy weapons including Grad rockets and TOW anti-tank weapons and they had in turn supplied weapons to the Syrian Revolutionary Front(SRF).
 On Saturday, Jabhat al-Nusra or the Nusra Front stormed villages controlled by Hazm in the northern province of Idlib. The group surrendered their bases and weapons supplies to the group. A day earlier the Nusra Front had captured the home town of the Revolutionary Front's leader Jamal Marouf. The Nusra Front claims to have captured TOW missiles when it took over the home town of Marouf. His group fled into the mountains.
 Aymen al-Tammimi an analyst of the Syrian situation said:"As a movement, the SRF is effectively finished. Nusra has driven them out of their strongholds of Idlib and Hama." Marouf had become a prominent rebel leader praised in the west because he had launched the rebel offensive that had driven the Islamic State forces from most of the territory in two northern provinces they had wrested mostly from other rebel forces. Now jihadist forces linked to Al-Qaeda have driven him from his own strongholds into the mountains and taken over his home village. The US has from the beginning been wary of supplying any heavy weapons to the Syrian rebels in case they should end up in the hands of militant groups they oppose.
  Some reports indicate that Harakat Hazm simply decided to surrender to the Nusra Front without a shot being fired and that some members of Hazm joined the jihadist group. Even the moderate rebel groups were furious that the US is bombing groups fighting the Assad regime, especially Al Nusra Front who had been working with them. Even moderate rebels are primarily interested in the overthrow of Assad. The Hazm group still exists in Aleppo but only after they gave up some of their checkpoints to Al Nusra and signed a ceasefire agreement with them. One of the conditions for giving Hazm weapons was that the group would not work with Jabhat al-Nusra. The Al-Qaeda group felt that Hazm's close relations with the US made it a threat and that may be one of the reasons they attacked the group.
Obama announced that part of his fight against the Islamic State will involve training, arming, and equipping 5,000 Syrian rebels to fight against the Islamic State. The US appears to have completely misread the situation. The rigorous vetting process will take several months before training can even begin and it will be up to a year before the force is prepared to fight. Just last month a US official said that they would hasten the process by choosing rebels from groups already vetted. Included among those were Harakat Hazm.
 Apparently the operation rooms in Turkey that funnel weapons to rebels have been revamped and have representatives from the US, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. A Syrian source said that Qatar had been thrown out of the group over suspicions that it had been helping Jabhat al-Nusra but was being allowed back. The system for supplying weapons is complicated and is intended more to ensure that donor countries have confidence that the weapons were used for their proper purposes rather than providing effective aid to commanders. The US is intending to develop its own elite forces but these forces also could become victims of jihadist rebels who are interested only in attacking Assad and will only attack the Islamic State if IS attacks them.

Al Qaeda group in Yemen urges all jihadists to support the Islamic State

The Islamic State (IS) has been disowned by Al-Qaeda for not following orders. The Jabhat al-Nusra or Nusra Front is now recognized as the official representative of Al Qaeda in Syria.

Al-Qaeda disowned the Islamic State back in February of this year. IS was then known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or the Levant (ISIS or ISIL) and earlier as Al Qaeda in Iraq. Now a branch of Al-Qaeda in Yemen, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula(AQAP) has issued a statement urging all jihadists to support the Islamic State against the United States. The call for solidarity is significant since the leader of AQAP is thought to have been appointed the "general manager" and deputy to Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri. The AQAP statement said in part: "We urge all Muslims to back their brethren, with their souls, money and tongues, against the crusaders. We call on anyone who can wear down the Americans to strive to do so by military, economic or media means."
The expression of solidarity with IS from AQAP may be in part a result of US bombing raids in Syria. The US bombed the IS in Syria but it also bombed positions of what it called "Khorasan" near Aleppo. Khorasan is just a fancy name, invented by US intelligence, for a group within the Al Nusra front. Rebels of all descriptions were outraged by these bombings since the Nusra Front is cooperating with other rebel groups against the Assad regime and are key fighters in the Aleppo area. The US bombing of the Nusra Front may lead to the group also expressing solidarity with the Islamic State in time. Up to now there has been conflict between the two groups.
 If the Nusra Front decides to support the Islamic State this will make the US hopes of creating a force of moderate rebels to fight the IS and Assad a pipe dream. Indeed, the US plans are not yet even worked out with the Free Syrian Army only with exile political groups. Al-Qaeda rejects the IS declaration of a caliphate with Baghdadi as its head, however the AQAP statement insists that they are all brothers: "We urge all mujahidin to set aside their differences and inter-factional fighting and move instead against the crusade targeting all." Judging from the appended video Jabhat al-Nusra is not interested in recruiting cowboys.

US still considering a no fly zone over rebel-held areas of Syria

The U.S. public has been told that bombing raids in Syria were to attack the Islamic State and areas it occupies. It turns out that the US raids also attacked areas held by other radical Islamists such as Al Nusra Front.

The media also began to talk of a new threat the Khorasan who appear to be simply a group within the Al Qeda-linked Al Nusra Front. These attacks incensed rebels of all stripes since they are seen to be helping Assad and also targeted groups that cooperate with and are vital to the campaign against Assad. Even the Assad government which earlier had complained that the attacks violated Syrian sovereignty, the UN charter, and international law now applauded the attacks. While the US does intend to spend about half a billion training moderate rebels to fight against Assad and the Islamic State many rebels feel abandoned by the US. The US seems more interested in tackling the Islamic State than defeating the Assad forces in Syria.
 In a news conference at the Pentagon, General Dempsey, announced that a rebel force of about 12 to 15 thousand fighters would be required to defeat the Islamic State The current plan is to train 5,000 rebels. The training and arms will be provided by the US but will take place in Saudi Arabia. Dempsey said the 5,000 was not intended to be a ceiling. The US may intend to do even more to show that it supports the rebel cause.
 The New York Times had discussed the prospect of enforcing a no-fly zone back in July of 2013: "To establish buffer zones to protect parts of Turkey or Jordan to provide safe havens for Syrian rebels and a base for delivering humanitarian assistance would require imposing a limited no-fly zone and deploying thousands of American ground forces." The idea of a "no fly zone" is again being floated in an article in the New York Times using the same humanitarian theme that was offered up in the earlier suggestions a year ago. This was the same tactic that was used in Libya to degrade Gadaffi's military power and ultimately enabled rebels to overthrow his regime. However, this time a UN resolution is not involved. As Russia and others have maintained, the attacks are a clear violation of the UN charter and international law but that issue is not even worth mentioning let alone discussion in most of the mainstream media.
 The Times article describes the no-fly zone as follows:"The Obama administration has not ruled out establishing a no-fly zone over northeastern Syria to protect civilians from airstrikes by the Syrian government…Creating a buffer, or no-fly zone, would require warplanes to disable the Syrian government’s air defense system through airstrikes." This move would bring the US in direct conflict with Syrian jets and no doubt would require the destruction of Syrian air defense systems. This could very well result in direct conflict between the US and the Syrian government a situation that would please the Syrian rebels but might not be welcomed by the US. Russia and Iran could intervene to help Assad.
Of course civilians do die when Syria attacks rebel positions particularly when they use weapons such as barrel bombs. Interestingly though, US bombing also causes civilian deaths and the US has lowered its own standards for collateral damage as it steps up its attacks on the Islamic State in Syria. The Jerusalem Post reports: Already facing reports of high civilian deaths tolls early in its campaign against Islamic State, Caitlin Hayden from the National Security Council publicly lowered the administration’s standards on Tuesday, expecting collateral damage to mount in its fight against Islamic State in urban Syria. The “near certainty” required for counterterrorism strikes elsewhere, Hayden told The Jerusalem Post, only applies “when we take direct action ‘outside areas of active hostilities,’ as we noted at the time.”“That description – outside areas of active hostilities – simply does not fit what we are seeing on the ground in Iraq and Syria right now,” Hayden said. Indeed, much of the US and allies' bombing has targeted infrastructure such as oil fields and even grain silos.
 Even those that are not wounded or injured in Islamic State controlled territories face more miserable conditions caused not by the Islamic State but by bombing by the US and its allies. There seems little concern to protect Syrians who happen to be in territory taken by the Islamic State. If Obama was interested only in attacking the Islamic State he would have asked permission from Assad to carry out the strikes and gained the cooperation of Russia as well. Assad may find that future plans of the US in Syria include intervention that provides more help for the rebels. Although the US at present is hurting the rebel cause through their attacks on radical groups allied with them, in the future there may be more actions in Syria directed against Assad now that the US has directly acted within Syrian territory. As shown in the appended video, Turkey has now also suggested there be a no fly zone in Syria.

Khorasan a mixture of reality and intelligence agencies' propaganda

When the U.S. began bombing the Islamic State in Syria it turns out that they were also targeting Khorasan. This is a group that is linked with Al Qaeda. The name for the group is actually a creation of intelligence agencies.

Khorasan refers to Greater Khorasan, which consists of Eastern Iran-Northern Afghanistan-Tajikistan-Uzbekistan-Turkmenistan-region. Intelligence agencies used the term to refer to high-ranking members of Al Qaeda within the Khorasan Shura. However, the group in Syria has members from other areas such as Yemen. A good description of the historical associations of the term to Al Qaeda is given in this article.
The rebels on the ground working in the areas where Khorasan operates have never heard of the group. The group themselves are not known to use the name to describe themselves. While the group exists and may even have some vague plans of the sort ascribed to them by western intelligence they are in reality simply a group of foreign fighters in Syria linked to Jabhat al-Nusra, which Al Qaeda recognizes as their official branch in Syria. Many analysts of jihadist movements are annoyed at the whole idea of Khorasan. Pieter van Ostayen, a historian and follower of jihadist movements, wrote in an e-mail that "in all of the official Jihadi accounts I follow(ed) the name was never mentioned." Ostayen claims the name clearly has a U.S. origin and said he believes that the US has blown up the whole story of their being a huge threat to the west in order to justify their attacks on the Nusra Front in Syria.
 One might wonder if it matters whether Khorasan is part of Jabhat al-Nusra or not since even the US regards both as linked to Al Qaeda. One difference is that Jabhat a-Nusra cooperates with other rebel groups in fighting against Assad and the Islamic State as well. Khorasan is defined as a small splinter group that is supposed to be a huge and imminent threat to the west: At an intelligence gathering in Washington, D.C. on 18 September 2014, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper stated that "in terms of threat to the homeland, Khorasan may pose as much of a danger as the Islamic State (IS)."
 Attacks on Jabhat al-Nusra are extremely unpopular with rebels off all stripes, because they are great fighters in the war against Assad. Instead of bombing Assad, the US is simply bombing radical groups it opposes as jihadists even though those jihadists may be key to fighting Assad. It is hardly any wonder that so far the Assad government has applauded the strikes even though at first they were opposed as against Syrian sovereignty and the UN charter. They still are but they obviously are seen by Assad as a great help against radicals fighting his regime.
Using the Arabic term Daesh for the Islamic State, Ali Bakran, commander of a Free Syrian Army brigade, the moderate rebels in western eyes, said to the Washington Post: “If they hit Daesh and the regime, it’s okay. But why are they striking Nusra? Nusra are from the people — they are the people.”
 Now the press has a new threat and group to talk about —the Khorasan — and the U.S. has a new justification for bombing radical jihadists in Syria other than the Islamic State. The rebels in Syria know what is going on but who are they except pawns to be used as western interests see fit? Some of them may be picked for training in Jordan or Saudi Arabia to become paid proxies fighting against Assad unless the west, Russia and Iran decide it is time for a peace deal. As of now, the US does not seem interested in seeing rebel groups militarily defeat the Assad regime. The Arab nations that were part of the coalition that attacked Islamic State positions did not take part in the bombing attacks upon Jabhat al Nusra and Khorasan as the map on the appended video shows