France has proof Assad regime used chemical weapons: Macron

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday that he had evidence that chemical weapons were used in rebel-held enclave of Douma in Syria and that the regime of Bashar al-Assad was guilty, reiterating that attacking Damascus is necessary.

Macron was one of several Western leaders to enter the diplomatic crisis following last week's attack on Douma, which left 70 people dead, including 40 who showed signs of exposure to chemical toxins, Efe news reported citing a report by the World Health Organization.

"We have evidence chemical weapons were used and that it was the regime who used them," said Macron in a televised interview with TF1 broadcaster. "We will have decision to take in due course."

Last week, an attack on Douma left at least 70 people dead, of which 40 showed signs of exposure to chemical toxins.

Russia, Iran, Turkey together to end six-yr Syrian civil war: Putin

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that his Iranian and Turkish counterparts have agreed to hold a "congress" in Russia in a bid to end the six-year civil war in Syria.

Putin made the announcement after talks with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

However, no date for the proposed congress has been announced.

The three leaders have issued a joint statement aimed at continuing the Syrian peace talks and finding a sustainable solution for the post-conflict period by convening a "Syrian National Congress of Dialogue," reported CNN, citing Putin as saying.

In a joint statement they urged the Syrian government and opposition to "participate constructively".

"The congress will look at the key questions on Syria's national agenda including working out a political organisation and the endorsement of a new constitution" and "the organisation of the new elections under the auspices of the UN", Putin added.

This came days after he hosted his Syrian ally, President Bashar al-Assad.

Bashar al-Assad, during a visit to Sochi earlier this week, stated that he was "totally committed" to a peaceful solution.

Putin told Assad that the military campaign was "wrapping up", but there was still "a long way to go".
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The dangerous trend threatening the future of the nation-state

When the historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., published his bestseller The Disuniting of America in 1991, he didn’t seriously entertain the worst-case scenario suggested by the title. At the time, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia were imploding, while separatist movements in Quebec, East Timor, Spain’s Basque country, and elsewhere were already clamouring for their own states.

But when it came to the United States, Schlesinger’s worries were principally focused on the far smaller battlefield of the American classroom and what he saw as multiculturalism’s threat to the mythic “melting pot.” Although he took those teacup tempests seriously, the worst future Schlesinger could imagine was what he called the “tribalization of American life.” He didn’t contemplate the actual dismemberment of the country.

Today, controversies over hate speech and gender politics continue to roil American campuses. These, however, are probably the least important conflicts in the country right now, considering the almost daily evidence of disintegrative pressures of every sort: demonstrations by white supremacists, mass shootings and police killings, the current dismantling of the federal government. Not to speak of the way cities and states are defying Washington’s dictates on immigration, the environment, and health care. The nation’s motto of e pluribus unum — out of many, one —is in serious danger of being turned inside out.

A country that hasn’t had a civil war in more than 150 years, where secessionist movements from Texas to Vermont have generally caused merriment rather than concern, now faces divisions so serious and a civilian arsenal of weapons so huge, that the possibility of national disintegration has become part of mainstream conversation. Indeed, after the 2016 elections, predicting a second civil war in the United States — a real, bloody, no-holds-barred military conflict — has become all the rage among journalists, historians, and foreign policy pundits across the political spectrum.
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Islamic State lost 87% of territory seized in 2014: US-led coalition

The Islamic State (IS) group has lost 87% of the territory it controlled in 2014, when it proclaimed a "caliphate" straddling Iraq and Syria, the US-led coalition said today.

The announcement by the coalition, which has carried out thousands of air strikes against the jihadists and deployed advisers in both countries, came on the day of its third anniversary and as the Kurdish-Arab force, it supports captured IS's one-time bastion of Raqa.

"Our partners have removed ISIS from 87% of territory they once held and liberated over 6.5 million people," coalition spokesperson Ryan Dillon said on social media, using another acronym for IS.

Attacking from bastions it consolidated in Iraq and especially in war-torn Syria, the organisation that eventually re-branded itself "Islamic State" swept through Iraq's Sunni Arab heartland in June 2014 and conquered roughly a third of the country.

In a separate statement, the coalition, formed after former US president Barack Obama sent warplanes to Iraq in a bid to stop the IS genocide of the Yazidi minority, said it had trained close to 120,000 forces in Iraq and more than 12,000 in Syria.
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US-allied forces begin final assault on IS in Syria's Raqqa

US-backed Syrian fighters launched an operation to retake the last Islamic State-held pocket of the northern city of Raqqa today after some 275 militants and their family members surrendered.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said the operation will continue "until all the city is cleansed from terrorists who refused to surrender."

The SDF has been on the offensive in Raqqa since early June and now controls about 90 percent of the city that was once the extremist group's self-styled capital.

Most of the fighters who remain in the pocket are foreigners, according to the SDF and opposition activists.

The operation was named after Adnan Abu Amjad, an Arab commander with the SDF who was killed in August while fighting against IS in central Raqqa.

The loss of Raqqa would hand another major blow to IS, which has lost most of the territory it once held in Syria and Iraq.

Iraqi forces captured the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, the largest ever held by the extremist group, in July, and Syrian government forces retook the eastern Syrian city of Mayadeen, near the border with Iraq, yesterday.
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Trump is going to make a huge mistake on the Iran deal

President Trump is expected this week to refuse to recertify that Iran is complying with the 2015 nuclear deal, a milestone diplomatic agreement that prevents Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Mr Trump seems poised to take that action despite the reality that Iran is not violating the terms of the deal. In fact, his key national security cabinet officers have publicly said that Iran is meeting its commitments. The International Atomic Energy Agency, which is charged with monitoring and verifying the deal, has issued eight reports over the past two years echoing these conclusions.

Instead, the president seems prepared to argue that the deal is no longer in the United States’ vital national security interest because of Iran’s other activities in the Middle East, including its support for terrorism, its meddling in Syria and Yemen, and its threats to Israel’s security.

The Trump administration is right that Iranian behaviour destabilises the region, but wrong when it says that such behaviour contradicts the “spirit” of the agreement and that he is therefore justified in refusing to certify Iran’s compliance. In fact, Iran’s troubling foreign policy is precisely why the deal was necessary in the first place: An Iran armed with a nuclear weapon would be far more threatening to regional and global security.
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Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to ISIS militants: Have patience, step up your attack

The leader of the Islamic State group urged followers to burn their enemies everywhere and target "media centers of the infidels," according to an audio recording released Thursday that the extremists said was by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The reclusive leader of Islamic State, who has only appeared in public once, also vowed to continue fighting and lavished praise on his jihadis for their valor in the battlefield — despite the militants' loss of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul in July.

The recording was released by the Islamic State-run al-Furqan outlet, which has in the past released messages from al-Baghdadi and other top figures of the extremist group. The voice in the over 46-minute-long audio sounded much like previous recordings of al-Baghdadi. His last previous purported message was released in November, also in an audio recording.

"You soldiers of the caliphate, heroes of Islam and carriers of banners: light a fire against your enemies," said al-Baghdadi, a shadowy cleric who has been surrounded by controversy since the Sunni terror group emerged from al-Qaida in Iraq, its forerunner.

Russian officials said in June there was a "high probability" that al-Baghdadi had died in a Russian airstrike on the outskirts of the Syrian city of Raqqa, the group's de facto capital. US officials later said they believed he was still alive.

Al-Baghdadi's whereabouts are unknown but he is believed to be in Islamic State' dwindling territory in eastern Syria. The Islamic State-held cities of Raqqa and Deir el-Zour are under siege and likely too dangerous for him to hide in. Some Islamic State leadership is believed to have gone to the nearby town of Mayadeen, and the group still holds a stretch of the Euphrates River from Deir el-Zour to the Iraqi border, as well as remote desert areas along the border.
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Syria government behind sarin gas attack in April: UN

United Nations war crimes investigators said on Wednesday they had evidence that Syrian government forces were behind the chemical attack that killed dozens of people in Khan Sheikhun in April.

In the first UN report to officially blame Damascus, the UN Commission of Inquiry (COI) on Syria said it had gathered an "extensive body of information" showing the Syrian airforce was behind the horrific sarin gas attack on April 4.

"All evidence available leads the Commission to conclude that there are reasonable grounds to believe Syrian forces dropped an aerial bomb dispersing sarin in Khan Sheikhun," the report said.

At least 83 people, a third of them children, were killed and nearly 300 wounded in the attack on Khan Sheikhun, a town in the opposition-held northern province of Idlib, it said.

Other sources have given a death toll of at least 87.

Syria's government has denied involvement and claims it no longer possesses chemical weapons after a 2013 agreement under which it pledged to surrender its chemical arsenal.

A fact-finding mission by the UN's chemical watchdog, the OPCW, concluded earlier this year that sarin gas was used in the attack, but did not assign blame.
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In the name of Lebanon, we begin offensive against IS: Lebanese army

The Lebanese army announced today the start of an offensive against the Islamic State (IS) group close to the Syrian border in the east of the country, where jihadists have been operating for several years.

"In the name of Lebanon, in the name of kidnapped Lebanese soldiers, in the name of martyrs of the army, I announce that (this) operation.... Has started," said army chief General Joseph Aoun.
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Russian detained in Turkey over planned drone attack on US warplane

Turkish authorities on Thursday detained a Russian suspected member of the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group for allegedly plotting a drone attack on an American warplane at a US base in southern Turkey.

State-run Anadolu news agency said that Renat Bakiev is accused of seeking to stage an attack at "the Incirlik airbase or a plane stationed there".

Quoting local police, it said that "for this purpose, he worked to obtain a drone".

Dogan news agency added that Bakiev is suspected of seeking to "stage a bomb attack aiming to bring down a US plane using a drone" at the Incirlik airbase.

He allegedly carried out reconnaissance work for the plot, both reports said, without giving further details on how the plan would have been put in place.

Anadolu further reported the suspect had asked fellow IS members through the Telegram messaging app for 2,800 lira ($790) in order to buy the drone.

The Russian embassy in Ankara said in a statement it was "carrying out the necessary work to understand what happened and make clear the circumstances"
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How Islamic State is luring women with false sense of 'empowerment': Report

The dreaded Islamic State terror group is luring foreign women recruits with a false sense of "empowerment", according to a new report by a UK think tank.

The report compiled by the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI) said the reasons that drove hundreds of women to journey from Europe to ISIS territories were "complex".

"We talked to women who hadn't been radicalised but could understand why some of these girls might have gone to Syria and Iraq so they could live as 'good Muslims'," said Emily Winterbotham, the report's co-author.

She said the use of the term "jihadi bride" to describe all female ISIS members was not truly representative.

"ISIS has been successful at selling that image to women. It's not just about the naive vulnerable jihadi bride, it's women saying: 'This is in line with my religion, my political beliefs, the fact I want to live how I want'," Winterbotham told 'The Independent'.

Possible draws were found to include "a rejection of Western feminism, online contact with recruiters who offer marriage and adventure, peer or family influence, adherence to ISIS ideology, naivety and romantic optimism, and the chance to be part of something new, exciting and illicit", she said.
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Why Russia needs troops from Syria; how they boost Moscow's 'eastern' image

During the early years of the Cold War, the Soviet Union made a great push to reach out to the developing world, and particularly to the Middle East and Asia. It established particularly close ties with Nasser’s Egypt and later with Syria, but didn’t do so well with others; the Chinese leadership in particular doubted whether the USSR really empathised with the Global South and its anti-colonial struggle. Russia, it argued, was essentially a former colonial power, or at the very least a white European country incapable of understanding the developing world’s problems.

Moscow duly tried to prove the opposite by cultivating its own “eastern” identity. It sent its “easterners” on conspicuous missions abroad: Armenians and Azerbaijanis worked in solidarity committees and friendship societies, while Uzbeks and Tajiks served as ambassadors in the Middle East or played a key role as soldiers during the invasion of Afghanistan.

These plans to win over Middle Eastern and Asian allies were rendered moot when the USSR crumbled. But today, Russia’s push to claim an eastern identity seems to be underway once again – and nowhere more so than in Syria.

As media attention has shifted to efforts to oust the so-called Islamic State from its Syrian stronghold, Raqqa, the Syrian regime is struggling to govern the areas of Syria it has recaptured with the help of Russia and other backers. Particularly troublesome is Aleppo, the country’s largest city and former business hub, which was brought back under Damascus’s full control in December 2016. Enter Russia, whose help has already turned the tide in the Syrian regimes’s favour.
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Russia signs deal to use Syria air base for 49 years

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed into law a protocol to an agreement with Syria to deploy a Russian Air Force group at a Syrian military base.

The protocol was signed into law on Wednesday and ratifies the agreement signed by Russia and Syria which allows the Russian air group to use Syria's Hmeymim air base free of charge for 49 years with possible extension for another 25-year period, Xinhua news agency reported.

The document was posted on the Russian government's legal information portal.

The protocol to the 2015 Russian-Syrian agreement "aimed at establishing the international legal framework governing the conditions for the location of the Russian air force group" was signed in Damascus on January 18, 2017.

Prior to being signed into law by Putin, the protocol was ratified by both chambers of the Russian Parliament.

The Russian air group was deployed at Hmeymim from the end of September 2015 to help Syria fight the Islamic State (IS) and other terrorist groups at the request of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
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UN urges Australia to stop detaining refugees, shut detention centres

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on Monday urged Australia to stop detaining refugees and close down its offshore detention centres in Papua New Guinea and Nauru.

"Four years on, more than 2,000 people are still languishing in unacceptable circumstances. Families have been separated and many have suffered physical and psychological harm," UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi said in a statement.

According to the statement, around 2,500 refugees and asylum-seekers have been forcibly transferred by Australia for offshore processing of their applications in Papua New Guinea and Nauru since the introduction of the current policy in 2013.

Of these, some 1,100 remain in Nauru and 900 in Papua New Guinea, added the statement.

The statement adds that the Australian government informed the UNHCR it will not accept refugees on its territory and offered the options of either letting them be where they are, or transferring them to Cambodia, with whom it signed an agreement in 2014, or the US, with whom it signed an agreement in 2016, to transfer some of the refugees detained in Papua New Guinea and Nauru.

"To avoid prolonging their ordeal, UNHCR has no other choice but to endorse the relocation of all refugees on Papua New Guinea and Nauru to the US, even those with close family members in Australia," the UN High Commissioner said in his statement.

Many of the refugees in these offshore centres have fled strife-torn countries such as Afghanistan, Darfur, Pakistan, Somalia and Syria, and others have escaped discrimination or status as stateless persons such as the Rohingya minorities from Myanmar.
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US top court okays Trump travel ban enforcement, rejects block on relatives

The US Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that while President Donald Trump's administration can continue to bar refugees from entering the country, officials will have to show greater flexibility in enforcing the accompanying ban on travellers from six Muslim-majority countries.

The Justice Department had asked the high court to stay an order issued last week by a federal district judge in Hawaii who found the administration's definition of close family in allowing exemptions to the travel ban was too narrow, Efe reported.

US District Judge Derrick Watson also said that the government could not prohibit entry by refugees assured of placement in the US by recognized refugee agencies.

The Supreme Court sided with the Justice Department on the refugee question, staying that portion of Watson's decision, but they supported the district judge's finding on the government's exemption criteria.

More broadly, the nine justices declined to rule definitively on the Trump administration's appeal of Watson's ruling, insisting that the case would have to follow the usual course through the federal appellate courts.

Last month, the Supreme Court set aside injunctions issued by federal appellate courts and said that portions of Trump's March 6 executive order could take effect.

That document barred citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from entering the US for 90 days and excluded all refugees for 120 days.
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Islamic State is on its knees, but its legacy will long haunt Middle East

After three years of violence, Islamic State has encountered a major defeat that could mean that its end is near. On July 10 2017, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi, after a successful nine-month military offensive to “liberate” the northern city of Mosul, declared “total victory” over IS in Iraq.

He categorically said: “I announce from here the end and the failure and the collapse of the terrorist state of falsehood and terrorism which the terrorist Daesh announced from Mosul”, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS or ISIL.

Almost exactly three years ago, on June 29 2014, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the group’s self-styled caliph, proclaimed a cross-border caliphate stretching over vast swathes of northwestern Iraq and eastern Syria.


Today, the Iraqi half of that territory has been almost totally eliminated (the northwestern Iraqi city of Tel Afar, close to the Syrian border, being an exception) while the Syrian half, based in the city of Raqqa, is facing imminent collapse under powerful US-backed Kurdish-led military offensives.

It’s a major turning point.

In the summer of 2014, an ISIL blitzkrieg swiftly defeated Iraqi defence forces across northwestern Iraq, capturing some 40% of Iraqi territories.

Prior to this rapid conquest, ISIL fighters had captured the Syrian province of Raqqa in January 2014, taking advantage of the bloody civil war let loose by pro-democracy movements.
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Justice in Syria: 5 ways to prosecute international crime

The conflict in Syria has seen atrocities committed by all sides for six long years. Barbarities are an everyday occurrence.

There are rules governing the conduct of warring parties. The 1949 Geneva Conventions form the core of international humanitarian law. Violating these rules is a war crime. Some atrocities go even beyond this level of criminality. Genocide, for instance, is an international crime in itself, while the systematic killing of political opposition would constitute a crime against humanity.

The existence of these offences counts for little, of course, unless the law is enforced. This raises the question: is there any way of prosecuting any side of the Syrian conflict? These are some options that could help inform the way forward.

1. International Criminal Court investigation

The International Criminal Court (ICC), based in the Hague, is designed to prosecute “the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole”. So perhaps it could act in Syria.

The court operates on a consensual basis, so that (perhaps counterintuitively) states must sign up to it to allow the exercise of ICC jurisdiction. Syria is not a party to the court.

There is a workaround though. The ICC can investigate international crimes in any country if the UN Security Council requests it to do so. This happened to Sudan in 2005 and Libya in 2011. Despite best efforts by lobbying states, the same has not happened in the case of Syria. Both Russia and China blocked a proposed referral in 2014 and there is little sign of them changing their minds.
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G20 Summit: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin discuss Ukraine, Syria, terrorism

US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin held their first ever and much-anticipated sit-down discussion here on Friday, focussing on the situation in Ukraine and Syria, fight against terrorism and cyber security, on the sidelines of the G20 summit here.

The meeting lasted about 2 hours and 20 minutes, according to Russian news agency Sputnik.

"I had a very lengthy conversation with the President of the United States. There were a lot of issues such as Ukraine, Syria, other problems, some bilateral issues," Putin said at the beginning of his meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Xinhua news agency reported.

"We again returned to the issues of fighting terrorism and cyber security," Putin added.

The Trump-Putin formal meeting came hours after a brief encounter upon arrival at the Hamburg summit, during which they shook hands and exchanged a few words.

Trump began their meeting by saying: "President Putin and I have been discussing various things. And I think it is going very well."

"We look forward to a lot of very positive things happening for Russia, for the United States and for everybody concerned. And it is an honor to be with you," Trump said.

"I'm delighted to meet you personally, and I hope our meeting will bring results," Putin said after shaking hands with Trump.

Following the meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the Putin-Trump meeting was constructive and confirmed desire to search for mutually-beneficial agreements, according to Sputnik.
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Chemical weapons: Key players in Syria swap denials and accusations

The Khan Sheikhoun attack of April 4 2017, which killed dozens and injured hundreds, drew a response in the form of targeted US missile strikes on a Syrian airbase. As far as the West is concerned, it was clearly just the latest in a long line of chemical weapon attacks authorised by the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad; a recent French intelligence report lists seven sarin attacks which it either presumes or is confident were ordered by the regime – this in addition to some 22 incidents of chlorine use.

All this is broadly in keeping with public statements and declassified reports released by other Western states. From a Western perspective, the Assad regime has for years now played cat-and-mouse with the international community, using chemical weapons to kill, terrorise, demoralise and displace both militants and civilians. He has attempted to employ such weapons below the threshold that would trigger greater Western intervention, or the threshold which might lead Russia or another ally to withdraw vital support.

These thresholds are neither clear nor stationary – and Damascus has hedged its bets time and time again on the benefits of use. This included the use of chemical weapons at, and in the run up to, the 2013 Ghouta attack. It was also reflected in Assad’s decision to secretly retain sarin stockpiles when it was forced to give up its chemical weapons in the aftermath of the Ghouta massacre. From this perspective, the persistent use of chlorine by the regime also fits the pattern.

The Syrian and Russian governments have consistently publicly denied that the Syrian government has ever employed chemical weapons, either before or after it declared and destroyed some 1,000 tonnes of chemical agents and decommissioned some 27 production facilities. But, more than that, Russian and Syrian officials still challenge the Western narrative by questioning whether the attacks in question were staged, carried out by rebels or – as in the latest case – a consequence of rebel groups stockpiling sarin supplies of their own. They argue that pinning chemical weapon use on Assad is a Western tactic to undermine his regime – and to leverage public support for Western intervention.
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Trump's travel ban takes effect, doesn't consider grandparents as close family

The Trump administration is all set to partially implement its travel ban against people coming from six Muslim majority nations.

Being enforced from tonight 8 pm (5:30 am IST), officials said the travel ban is being rolled out across the country as part of its effort to prevent people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from entering the US.

The move comes after the US Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the vast majority of the US President's March 6 'Executive Order Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States' could go into effect.

"As recent events have shown, we are living in a very dangerous time, and the US government needs every available tool to prevent terrorists from entering the country and committing acts of bloodshed and violence. And as the President reiterated following Monday's ruling, his number one responsibility as Commander-in-Chief is to keep the American people safe," said a senior administration official.

Ahead of its implementation, officials hoped to have business as usual at the airports.

"We expect business as usual at the ports of entry starting at 8:00 pm tonight. There have been reports of people who have already indicated that they would like to be there to either cause chaos or to protest. Lawyers have indicated they would like to be at the ports of entry to assist people," a senior administration official said.
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