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Al-Qaida-linked militants attack a strategic town in Somalia

OMAR FARUK — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 20:41:43 +0000

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — The Somalia -based militant group al-Shabab on Wednesday attacked a strategic town that serves as a major base for government troops, raising new concerns about the sustainability of the fight against the al-Qaida-linked militants.

The dawn attack on Adan Yabal in Middle Shabelle region started with the launching of explosives before the militants attacked on foot on multiple fronts.

Al-Shabab in a statement claimed it captured the town. A Somali military officer who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media said government troops controlled some areas and fighting continued.

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Source: https://apnews.com/article/somalia-al-shabab-attack-military-14850858cde0d18aa57453cf5c09d988

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US general says Russia turmoil could spill to Middle East

AP via MSN — Wed, 09 Feb 2022 09:47:12 +0000

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Army general tapped to take over as top U.S. commander in the Middle East warned senators Tuesday that if Russian invades Ukraine, as many fear, it could create broader instability in the Middle East, including Syria. But he was clear that Iran remains the key threat to U.S. and allies in the region.

Lt. Gen. Erik Kurilla also told the Senate Armed Services Committee that China is expanding its power and spending in the Central Command region, including in countries needed by the U.S. to gather intelligence on extremist activities in Afghanistan.

“The United States faces a new era of strategic competition with China and Russia that is not confined to one geographical region and extends into the (Central Command) area of responsibility,” said Kurilla during the committee’s hearing on his nomination. “As the United States rightfully prioritizes competition with China, we must remain engaged in the Middle East and Central and South Asia.”

Kurilla, a combat-hardened officer with extensive experience in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, got a friendly reception from the panel and was told he would probably be confirmed.

If he gets the job, Kurilla would take over as the Pentagon continues to try to shift its focus to the Indo-Pacific and counter a rising China, and to bolster defenses against Russia in Europe. But Iran and Tehran-backed proxies have kept up a steady drumbeat of attacks on U.S. and allied forces across the Middle East, often hindering plans to shift more troops out of the region.

Kurilla would replace Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, who is retiring after three years leading the command. McKenzie has overseen a tumultuous time in the region, with America’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, the dismantling of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and escalating threats from Iran and its proxies as they launch more attacks against Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and ships at sea.

Kurilla, who is currently the commander of the 18th Airborne Corps, told the committee that after the hearing he was deploying to Germany as part of the U.S. effort to reassure allies concerned about Russia’s military build-up along Ukraine’s borders.

Asked about the potential for repercussions in the Middle East of a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine, Kurilla said he believes that it could spill over into Syria, where Russia already has a military base and troops.

“If Russia does invade Ukraine they would not hesitate to be able to act as a spoiler in Syria as well,” said Kurilla, who previously served as a deputy at Central Command.

He added that the U.S. doesn’t believe Russia wants to go to war with the United States.

On China, Kurilla said 18 of the 21 countries in the Central Command region have signed strategic agreements with Beijing, which has increased its development in the Middle East. The U.S., he said, has to be able to counter China there.

Senators quizzed Kurilla on efforts to monitor al-Qaida and Islamic State extremists in Afghanistan, now that there are no longer U.S. forces in the country. He said efforts continue to work with surrounding nations to set up “over-the-horizon” capabilities.

The U.S., which left Afghanistan at the end of August, has been struggling to negotiate with a number of countries in the region to allow overflights, basing or other intelligence gathering from within their borders. Military leaders say it is difficult to monitor extremist groups from afar because doing so requires long drone flights that allow limited surveillance time.

Asked about working with the Taliban, Kurilla said the U.S. should take a pragmatic approach. He said the Taliban also views the Islamic State group as an enemy, so that may be a potential area of agreement. He also said the U.S. must find ways to deal with the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, and that may involve Taliban help with food deliveries.

Kurilla graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1988, and has served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, commanding conventional and special operations forces. He commanded a Stryker battalion in Iraq in 2004, and was shot and wounded.

Source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/us-general-says-russia-turmoil-could-spill-to-middle-east/ar-AATCKqt

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Can Israel Really Trust Russia to Remove Iranian Forces From Syria?

Amos Harel — Mon, 16 Jul 2018 14:36:26 +0000

Fate of Iran’s presence in Syria rests with Trump-Putin meeting ■ Israeli official to EU counterparts: Iran nuke deal is dead, and you insist on giving it Advil.

/AP

U.S. News and World Report this week ranked Israel as the world’s eighth most powerful nation. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made sure to mention this to Likud lawmakers at a party meeting. He also pointed out, rightly, that all the countries ranked ahead of Israel have much larger populations.

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But strong as it may be, Israel is still just another player on the international playing field – and the Middle East is far from the most important region on the world map at the moment. Strategic developments depend on relations between the world powers that Israel trailed in the rankings: The trade war declared by the Trump administration on China, and U.S. relations with Russia, which will be put to an important test at the Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki on Monday.

The critical arena in Netanyahu’s mind remains, as always, the fight against Iran. This battle expanded in the past year from efforts to halt Tehran’s nuclear project to a direct clash with Iranian forces in Syria, with the aim of reducing their presence and influence there.

> The Delusion of a Ukraine for Syria ‘Deal’ | Opinion >>

But even with regard to Iran and Syria, Israel must take broader processes into account. Russia is currently pressing for the completion of the de-escalation plan in Syria. Netanyahu may have influenced its design during his meeting with Putin in Moscow on Wednesday. But what comes next depends on what happens when Putin exerts his nearly magical – perhaps blackmail is part of it? – influence on President Donald Trump.

Putin appears to be seeking a wider deal that, in addition to Syria, would include new understandings in Eastern Europe.

One point being raised by the Russians is their expectation that the West lift the sanctions it imposed following Russian involvement in the fighting in eastern Ukraine in 2014.

The Russian plan in Syria is clear: President Bashar Assad will get full control of most parts of the country, including the Syrian Golan Heights to which his forces will soon return, and Israel will pledge not to interfere. In return, Moscow promises to block Iranian forces and Shi’ite militias’ proximity from the Golan Heights border: Various distances – 40, 60, even 80 kilometers (25, 37 and 50 miles, respectively) – have been mentioned. Netanyahu believes the Russians will keep their word. In a briefing with Israeli journalists in Moscow on Wednesday, he spoke of the process as if it were already underway.

The Israel Defense Forces has also been sounding cautiously optimistic. Distancing the Iranians from the border is seen as being a Russian interest – the war is about to end and Iran has exhausted the benefit it can bring to the Kremlin. Putin is not looking for partners with whom to share the dividends of success. Assad would also probably like to wriggle a little freer of the Iranian embrace.

This forecast minimizes the potential difficulties. Even in an international climate where keeping one’s word is far from the norm, Moscow stands out for its cynicism, and Putin and his spokespeople have been lying for years without batting an eyelid.

>> Iran must adapt to new strategic reality – or risk the fall of the Islamic Republic || Opinion >> ■ Russia-Israel deal is clear: Iran away from border, Assad’s rule accepted || Analysis >>

Israel won’t be able to easily rely on Russian insistence that the understandings are being upheld. Their enforcement will be especially complicated in the densely populated Damascus region – which is within the range Israel wants the Iranians to be kept out of. Already, there are signs that members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Shi’ite militia fighters are shedding their uniforms to mix in with Syrian Army units in the battles taking place in the south.

Above all, even after the series of blows inflicted upon it in Syria, Iran has not relented in its drive for military entrenchment there. Per several of the attacks that have been attributed to Israel by foreign media in the past month – first at Abu Kamal in eastern Syria and then at the T4 airbase near the central Syrian city of Homs – Iran is once again trying to deploy advanced weapons systems in Syria, and Israel is again seemingly taking measures against this.

Most of the attempts to smuggle in weapons systems is done by air. However, the airstrike on the weapons convoy in eastern Syria shows that the Iranians are also often trying to make use of the ground corridor they established after the Americans rid the area of Islamic State forces. If the Russians don’t keep their word, the airstrikes will likely continue.

It’s interesting that since the exchange of blows on February 10 (in which an Iranian drone penetrated Israeli territory and an Israeli F-16 was shot down), no more condemnations have been heard from Moscow. Only a tiny fraction of the measures taken by Israel is made known to the Israeli public and the foreign media. One could cautiously venture that the amount of munitions dropped by the air force in unpublicized missions over the past several years is not far from the amount of munitions it used in Gaza in the summer war of 2014.

For the most part, this effort has proceeded without mishaps or complications. And this is the source of the Israeli satisfaction with the operative results: The Iranian penetration into Syria is limited and Hezbollah has so far not been able to achieve its objective of significantly improving the precision of its rockets in Lebanon.

In the longer term, as Netanyahu told Putin at their meeting, Israel still wants to see all the Iranian advisers and Shi’ite fighters entirely removed from Syria – since even weapons systems deployed 100 or 200 kilometers from Israel’s border with Syria endanger Israel’s security.

>> Israel’s ultimate consideration in shooting down Syrian drone ■ What Syrian children learn: Anti-Semitism, love of Russia and suspicion of Iran >>

Israel is not making a similar claim against Hezbollah’s weapons arsenal – some of which is stored in southern Lebanon, in violation of UN Resolution 1701 – because it understands that this would be an impossible demand. But in fact, almost 12 years to the day after the outbreak of the Second Lebanon War, the top security risk is found in Lebanon, not Syria, where the Iranians are in a clearly inferior position from a security standpoint.

Iran is also engaged in a holding action on its other front. Right now, things appear to be going badly for its nuclear program. A senior Israeli official who recently met with visiting European Union representatives told them that European efforts to keep the nuclear accord with Iran alive following the Americans’ withdrawal from it in May are doomed.

“There’s a corpse in the room, the Vienna agreement, and you want to give it Advil and persist in believing it will come back to life,” the Israeli said. The visitors pointed out that the European partners to the agreement – Great Britain, France and Germany – have all decided to stick to its framework. Their host argued that the market will dictate the outcome and the major corporations are already voting with their feet and fleeing Iran, for fear of being subjected to U.S. sanctions.

Israeli defense officials are reacting positively to the 12-point paper issued by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, outlining the administration’s policy against Iran. The shift in American strategy is also reflected in the understandings in Washington regarding Syria. In previous years, the Obama administration and then the Trump administration concentrated their efforts in Syria and Iraq on fighting ISIS and various Al-Qaida affiliates. This effort enabled the Assad regime and the Russians to free up forces and aircraft to attack the less extreme rebel groups, and later to step into part of the vacuum left behind when ISIS fled Syria. Now the Americans are attempting to take a more balanced approach and to increase coordination with Israel.

Pompeo, who visited the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday, spoke in a television interview of his main objective: forming a regional coalition to counter Tehran. He accused Iran of using its embassies in Europe as terrorism bases, and said an Iranian attempt to plant a bomb at a convention of regime opponents in Paris had been foiled.

The U.S. secretary of state singled out Gen. Qassem Soleimani of the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds force. The general is causing trouble in Syria and Iraq, and he and his organization must be made to pay a higher price for it, said Pompeo.

Asked about the possibility that the U.S. and Israeli efforts will ultimately help to bring about regime change in Iran, Israeli defense officials were wary of making any such predictions.

The protests in Iran in recent months are perceived as authentic and of significant magnitude. The complaint that the country is investing money it does not have abroad at the expense of its own citizens ($12 to 14 billion alone to aid the Assad regime over the last seven years) is increasingly gaining public sympathy in Iran. But intelligence officials stress there is no real way to predict the outcome of a popular rebellion, and note that the Iranian authorities already showed great skill (and brutality) in suppressing the failed Green Movement of 2009.

Israeli politicians appear less skeptical. Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman have been making direct appeals to the Iranian people in recent weeks via social media, denouncing the Iranian regime. And Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz, speaking at a conference of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs this week, asserted that “the economic pressure on Iran could lead the regime to collapse within a year.

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Al Shabab militants ban starving Somalis from accessing aid

Gulf News - Somalia — Thu, 10 Aug 2017 06:57:40 +0000

Somalia is suffering its worst drought in 40 years.

Mogadishu: Islamist militants in Somalia have imposed a ban on humanitarian assistance in areas they control, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to choose between death from starvation and disease or brutal punishment. In some towns, hungry and weak people have been ordered by extremist leaders to remain where they are to act as human shields against US air strikes.

Somalia is suffering its worst drought in 40 years, with the effects of climatic catastrophe compounded by war and poor governance.

Interviews with villagers in the swaths of land controlled by Al Qaida-affiliate Al Shabab, in the centre and south of the east African state, reveal a population on the brink of catastrophe, with children and older people already dying in significant numbers. Al Shabab has told people they will be punished — possibly executed as spies — if they have any contact with humanitarian agencies.

Strict British and US counter-terrorism laws are also discouraging humanitarian organisations from delivering vital emergency assistance, aid agencies have said.

Although aid officials say a huge international effort and donations by Somalia’s vast diaspora have so far averted a repeat of the 2011 famine, when 250,000 people died, conditions in much of the country have continued to deteriorate in recent months.

An additional 500,000 people now need humanitarian assistance, bringing the total to 6.7 million.

Almost half of these people face starvation if they do not receive help. One reason for the high death toll six years ago was a blockade imposed by Al Shabab on humanitarian assistance by international and local NGOs that did not meet its strict criteria.

This time, Al Shabab appeared initially to adopt a more moderate policy, which analysts said suggested leaders were wary of being blamed once more for failing to either provide or allow help to reach needy communities. However, its approach appears to have hardened since late June, possibly owing to internal power struggles.

Tiyeglow, a town in the Bakool region that is largely controlled by Al Shabab, has been badly affected, according to its government-appointed mayor. “People in Tiyeglow are starving. Al Shabab suddenly stopped aid agencies which were trying to reach hungry people in the town. That is why some of the residents began to flee to seek food aid,” Ebrahim Abdi Rahman Mohammad said.

“Children under five are particularly in a very risky situation, because the malnutrition rate is going up, and if this blockade by Al Shabaab continues we will be witnessing more and more children dying,” Mohammad warned.

A Save the Children survey published last month showed that the number of severe acute malnutrition cases had soared in four out of nine districts it assessed in southern and central Somalia. In the district of Mataban, 9.5 per cent of children aged under five were severely malnourished.

The survey focused on areas that are largely controlled by Al Shabab. Hassan Noor Saadi, Save the Children’s country director in Somalia, said any aid reaching Al Shabab-controlled areas was “a very localised response”. “These locations are getting perhaps 10 to 15 per cent of what is reaching places where there is government control or the presence of humanitarian actors,” Saadi added. More than two million people — a fifth of the population of Somalia — live in areas controlled by Al Shabab.

The extremist group has repeatedly attacked aid workers and continues to launch daily strikes against government targets.

More than 700,000 people have already fled their homes in Somalia, 200,000 over the past two months.

Almost all have left Al Shabab-controlled territory in a desperate bid to find food or medical aid. Abdiya Barrow, a 48-year-old mother of seven who fled Tiyeglow, told the Guardian she had walked for seven days to reach the city of Baidoa, where her three youngest children were being treated by international medical teams for diarrhoea and malnutrition.

“When the drought began, Al Shabab told us that we could accept food only from aid agencies related to Islamic organisations, but eventually they said no. Anybody found bringing food aid will be killed because of suspicion that aid agencies might be affiliated to the [Somali] government,” Barrow said. “Life was extremely bad. There is no food and water. People were dying on a daily basis. The day I and my family left, a male neighbour and his young son starved and died.” In some towns, Al Shabaab leaders have stopped residents leaving their homes.

Mohammad Usman, who lives in Buale, a drought-hit town in Somalia’s Middle Juba region, said the group did not allow aid workers to operate there and had warned locals they would be punished if they attempted to arrange assistance from outside.

“[Al Shabaab] warned the residents not to move out, because they said they do not want the town to become empty, but … there is nothing to eat.

A kilo of rice is nearly $4. Who can afford that? Children and women are dying,” Osman said.

One woman in Buale, who requested anonymity owing to security concerns, said her four-year-old daughter died from diarrhoea last month. “My five-year-old son is now sick. He is severely malnourished. Al Shabaab is giving us nothing and yet they do not allow aid agencies to come to us. If you talk about the aid or call for aid, they even kill you by labelling you a spy,” she said.

Abdi Rahman Mohammad Hussein, the government official overseeing humanitarian aid in Jubaland, said the situation in Al Shabab-controlled areas was likely to deteriorate in coming weeks.

“The situation will turn into famine if the people in these towns do not get food very soon. We are very worried about the condition there.” Al Shabab is facing a new military campaign launched by Mohammad Abdullahi Mohammad, the president of Somalia, and supported by the US.

Hussein said the extremists used local populations as a human shield because they wanted to ensure towns remained “safe havens for Al Shabab militant leaders”.

“They do not want people to move out because they are worried that there could be an air strike if the civilians leave,” he added. A recent United Nations assessment said “Somalia is not yet out of the woods”, with other analyses suggesting that an “elevated risk of famine in 2017 persists”.

This year’s rainy season has been disappointing. Some parts of Somalia, already parched, have so far received only half of the usual rainfall. Donald Trump, the US president, recently designated Somalia a “zone of active hostilities”, allowing commanders greater authority when launching air strikes, broadening the range of possible targets and relaxing restrictions designed to prevent civilian casualties. He also authorised the deployment of regular US forces to Somalia for the first time since 1994. The US in effect pulled out of Somalia after 1993, when two helicopters were shot down in Mogadishu and the bodies of American soldiers were dragged through the streets.

Source: http://gulfnews.com/news/mena/somalia/al-shabab-militants-ban-starving-somalis-from-accessing-aid-1.2071927

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