Excerpts: Hezbollah calls IS a growing 'monster'. IS kills 700+ in Syria. US
warplanes back Kurds re Iraq dam August 16, 2014


+++SOURCE: Saudi Gazette 16 Aug.’14:”Islamic State threatens Gulf,
Jordan:Hezbollah”, Agence France Presse

SUBJECT: Hezbollah calls IS a growing ‘monster’

QUOTE: “Hezbollah’s Nasrallah:IS could threaten Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait
and other Gulf States”
FULL TEXT:BEIRUT — The leader of Lebanese group Hezbollah described the
radical movement that has seized territory in Iraq and Syria as a growing
"monster" that could threaten Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Gulf
states. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, whose group has been helping Syria's
President Bashar Al-Assad fight a Sunni dominated insurgency, said Islamic
State could easily recruit in other areas where its hardline ideology
exists. "Wherever there are followers of the ideology there is ground for
(Islamic State), and this exists in Jordan, in Saudi Arabia, in Kuwait, and
the Gulf states," Nasrallah said in an interview with the Lebanese newspaper
Al-Akhbar published Friday[15 Aug.]. – AFP

+++SOURCE: Naharnet(Lebanon) 16 Aug.’14:”Islamic State Killed More Than 700
Syria Tribe Members in 2 Weeks”, Agence France Presse

SUBJECT: IS kills 700+Syria tribe members

QUOTE:”IS jihadists have killed more than 700 members of a tribe in eastern
Syria in 2 weeks.”

FULL TEXT:Islamic State jihadists have killed more than 700 members of a
tribe in eastern Syria in two weeks, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights
said on Saturday.

Among the members of the Shaitat tribe killed were 100 fighters, but the
rest were civilians, the Britain-based monitoring group said.

They were killed in the Ghranij, Abu Hamam and Kashkiyeh villages of the
mainly IS-controlled province of Deir Ezzor, said the Observatory, which
relies on a vast network of activists and medics on the ground for its
information.

Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said that the fate of 1,800 other members
of the tribe was unknown.

Fighting between the jihadists and the Sunni Muslim tribe erupted in the
oil-rich province after a deal between the two sides collapsed, with the
tribe refusing to bow to IS control.

The clashes broke out after IS detained three members of the tribe,
"violating an agreement", the monitor said.

The IS has captured most of Deir Ezzor and declared it to be part of its
"caliphate," along with large swathes of territory it has captured across
the border in Iraq.

The Observatory said the Shaitat had vowed not to oppose the jihadist
group's authority, in exchange for the IS not harassing or attacking its
members.

On August 5, the Observatory said IS beheaded three Shaitat tribesmen and
put their heads on public display.

Source



+++SOURCE: Naharnet (Lebanon)16 Aug.’14:”U.S. Warplanes Back Kurds in Battle
to Retake Iraq’s Largest Dam”, Agence France Presse

SUBJECT:U.S. warplanes back Kurds re Iraq dam

QUOTE:”Kurdish…with U.S. air support have seized control of the eastern side
of the dam”

FULL TEXT:Kurdish forces backed by U.S. warplanes battled Saturday[16 Aug.]
to retake Iraq's largest dam from Islamic State jihadist fighters, whose
latest atrocity was a massacre in a Yazidi village.

Two months of violence have brought Iraq to the brink of breakup, and world
powers relieved by the exit of long-time premier Nuri al-Maliki were flying
aid to the displaced and arms to the Kurds.

Kurdish forces attacked the IS fighters who wrested the Mosul dam from them
a week earlier, a general told Agence France Presse.

"Kurdish peshmerga, with U.S. air support, have seized control of the
eastern side of the dam" complex, Major General Abdelrahman Korini told AFP,
saying several jihadists had been killed.

Buoyed by the air strikes U.S. President Barack Obama ordered last week, the
peshmerga have tried to claw back the ground they lost since the start of
August.

The dam on the Tigris provides electricity to much of the region and is
crucial to irrigation in vast farming areas in Nineveh province.

The recapture of Mosul dam would be one of the most significant achievements
in a fightback that is also getting international material support.

A day after the European Union foreign ministers encouraged the bloc's
member countries to send arms to the Kurds, German Foreign Minister
Frank-Walter Steinmeier visited Iraq.

Steinmeier, whose country hosts the largest Yazidi diaspora in the West,
visited the autonomous region to assess the needs of the displaced and the
peshmerga.

Fear of an impending genocide against the Yazidi minority, whose faith is
anathema to the Sunni Muslim extremists, was one reason Washington cited for
air strikes it began on August 8.

Obama declared the Mount Sinjar siege over on Thursday[14 Aug.], but
vulnerable civilians remain in areas taken by the jihadists.

In Kocho, senior Kurdish official Hoshyar Zebari said the jihadists "took
their revenge on its inhabitants, who happened to be mostly Yazidis who did
not flee their homes".

Human rights groups and residents say IS fighters have demanded that
villagers in the Sinjar area convert or leave, unleashing violent reprisals
on any who refused.

A senior official of one of Iraq's main Kurdish parties said 81 people had
lost their lives in the Friday[15 Aug.] attack, while a Yazidi activist said
the death toll could be even higher.

The village lies near the northwestern town of Sinjar, which the jihadists
stormed on August 3 sending tens of thousands of civilians, many of them
Yazidi Kurds, fleeing into the mountains to the north.

They hid there for days with little food or water.

Mohsen Tawwal, a Yazidi fighter, said he saw a large number of bodies in
Kocho on Friday[15 Aug.].

"We made it into a part of Kocho village, where residents were under siege,
but we were too late," he told AFP by telephone.

"There were corpses everywhere. We only managed to get two people out alive.
The rest had all been killed."

The Pentagon announced that U.S. drones had struck an IS convoy leaving the
village on Friday after receiving reports that residents were under attack.

The outcome of the latest U.S. strike was not immediately clear.

Amnesty International, which has been documenting mass abductions in the
Sinjar area, says IS has kidnapped thousands of Yazidis since it launched
its offensive in the region on August 3.

Members of the Christian, Turkmen and other minorities have also been
affected by the violence.

In New York, the U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution
aimed at weakening the jihadists, who control large areas of neighboring
Syria as well as of Iraq.

The resolution "calls on all member states to take national measures to
suppress the flow of foreign terrorist fighters", and threatens sanctions
against anyone involved in their recruitment.

When jihadist forces began their Iraq offensive on June 9, Kurdish peshmerga
forces initially fared better than retreating federal soldiers, but the
U.S.-made weaponry abandoned by government troops turned IS into an even
more formidable foe.

They were able to sweep through the Sunni Arab heartland north and west of
Baghdad in early June, encountering little effective resistance.

Many in and outside Iraq say the Shiite-led government was partly to blame
by pushing sectarian policies that have marginalized and radicalized the
Sunni minority.

Outgoing premier Nuri al-Maliki was seen as an obstacle to any progress, and
his announcement on Thursday that he was abandoning his efforts to cling to
power was welcomed with a sigh of relief at home and abroad.

In another potentially game-changing development, 25 Sunni tribes in the
western province of Anbar, including some that had previously been on the
fence, announced on Friday that they were launching a coordinated effort to
oust IS fighters.

SourceAgence France Presse

Sue Lerner - Associate, IMRA