Obama calls for front against militant threat

People inspect a destroyed house after an apparent air raid by the Iraqi Air Force in Mosul yesterday.  According to medical sources, at least five people including two children were killed and 12 others wounded in the air raid.

AFP/Baghdad

US President Barack Obama called yesterday for an international front against militants in Iraq and Syria after they beheaded a second American reporter, as Britain and France weighed military action.

“We know that if we are joined by the international community, we can continue to shrink ISIL’s sphere of influence, its effectiveness, its financing, its military capabilities,” said Obama, referring to the Islamic State (IS).

“And the question is going to be making sure we’ve got the right strategy, but also making sure that we’ve got the international will to do it,” he said in Estonia’s capital Tallinn.

Britain, with one of its nationals also under threat of beheading, said it would not rule out taking part in air strikes if necessary.

“I can assure you that we will look at every possible option to protect this person,” Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said.

And French President Francois Hollande likewise raised the prospect of a military response to the threat posed by IS.

“The head of state underlined the importance of a political, humanitarian and if necessary military response in accordance with international law” to fight against IS, the presidency said.

Obama pledged that justice would be done to the killers of 31-year-old reporter Steven Sotloff, wherever they hid and however long it took.

IS on Tuesday posted video footage on the Internet of Sotloff’s beheading, confirmed as authentic by Washington, sparking outrage around the world.

It said the journalist’s killing, which comes on the heels of the beheading last month of another US reporter, James Foley, was in retaliation for expanded US air strikes against its fighters in Iraq during the past week.

It warned that a British hostage would be next unless London backs off from its support for Washington’s air campaign.

Obama said Washington was determined to halt the IS threat but warned it would depend on close co-operation with partners in the region.

Hammond said British air strikes were now an option. 

“We will look very carefully at the options available to us to support the legitimate government of Iraq and Kurdistan in defending themselves,” the foreign minister said.

“If we judge that air strikes could be beneficial, could be the best way to do that, then we will certainly consider them but we have made no decision to do so at the moment.”

British Prime Minister David Cameron said the beheading video depicted an “absolutely disgusting, despicable act” and chaired a meeting of security chiefs to discuss how to tackle the IS threat.

The masked executioner in the video spoke with a London accent and claimed to be the same man, confirmed by UK security services as a Briton, who beheaded Foley.

At the end of the five-minute recording, the militant threatens another captive, identified as Briton David Cawthorne Haines.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the world was outraged at the beheading.

Hours after the posting of the video, the White House announced that Obama had authorised about 350 more US troops to beef up security at US diplomatic facilities and protect personnel in Baghdad.

US official: Islamic State not invincible, losing ground

AFP/Washington

The militants of the Islamic State pose a real threat to the West but are “not invincible”, and air strikes have exposed their weaknesses, a senior US intelligence official said yesterday.

Matthew Olsen, director of the National Counter-Terrorism Centre, said there is no “credible” evidence that the IS militants fighting in Iraq and Syria are plotting an imminent attack on American soil. 

But he acknowledged that the group could eventually try to strike at the United States.

US air strikes in Iraq over the past month have shown the militants are vulnerable on the battlefield, Olsen said, at an event organised by the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington.

“Because of the successes of these strikes, ISIL is losing arms, it’s losing equipment and it’s losing territory,” he said, using the acronym for the group’s former name, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Iraqi government, Kurdish and US forces taking joint action in recent weeks have, he said, “revealed that ISIL is vulnerable to co-ordinated and effective military action.

“The strikes have begun to sap ISIL’s momentum and created the space for Iraqi and Kurdish forces to take the offensive.”

He said the outrage caused by the group’s brutal tactics and its setbacks on the battlefield showed IS extremists are “not invincible.”

As head of the NCTC, Olsen oversees US intelligence assessments of terror suspects and potential threats to the United States.

Olsen said the Islamic State is merely one of a myriad of extremist organisations around the world, and cautioned against overstating the threat the group represented.

He said it was important to keep the IS threat “in perspective”, saying the militants were dangerous but not equivalent to the threat presented by Al Qaeda before the attacks of September 11, 2001.

“ISIL is not Al Qaeda pre-9/11,” he said. “At this point, we have no credible information that ISIL is planning to attack the United States.”

If “left unchecked”, the group would eventually turn their sights to the United States and the West, he added.

Instead of a large-scale attack similar to 9/11, it was more likely an IS member or someone inspired by the group could carry out a smaller scale assault, he said.

Olsen cited the May 2014 attack on a Jewish museum in Brussels as having been carried out by an IS extremist. 

Four people died in the shooting and a French national has been extradited to Belgium and charged in the case.

Echoing comments by President Barack Obama, Olsen called for an international coalition to defeat the extremists.

The group triggered global shock and revulsion on Tuesday when it posted another video showing the grisly execution of an American journalist, Steven Sotloff.  

UAE backs world fight against terrorist threats

The United Arab Emirates voiced readiness yesterday to back world efforts to confront the threat from terrorists, amid calls by Western powers for an international fight against the Islamic State. 

The UAE affirms “its solidarity with regional and international efforts against terrorist threats... and its readiness to take needed measures to confront this phenomenon in line with UN Security Council Resolution 2170”, its foreign ministry said.

The resolution, passed last month, seeks to cut funds and the flow of foreign fighters both to the Islamic State, which has seized swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq, and to Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, Al Nusra Front.

The UAE said it “stands against terrorist threats facing our region and the world, especially with the dangerous human rights violations by terrorist groups in Iraq, Syria and other Arab and Muslim countries such as Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Afghanistan suffering from... movements such as IS, Al Nusra, and Al Qaeda”.

Abu Dhabi “strongly condemns the continuing terrorist and criminal acts by extremist groups, especially the so-called IS... that undermine regional and international stability”, said the statement carried by the official Wam news agency.

Kidnapped Saudi diplomat makes video plea

A Saudi diplomat kidnapped in Yemen by Al Qaeda and held since 2012 has appealed for Riyadh to negotiate his release, in a video posted on YouTube.

Abdullah al-Khalidi, deputy consul in the southern port city of Aden who was kidnapped on March 28, 2012, appears in the nearly two-minute video with his head covered and sporting a long beard.

In the video posted online on Tuesday and released by Al Qaeda’s Al Malahem Media, Khalidi said he has so far spent two years and five months in captivity.

Militants from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula said they seized Khalidi in a bid to secure the release of female prisoners in Saudi Arabia and to raise a ransom.

AQAP claimed responsibility for Khalidi’s abduction in April.

Although weakened, Al Qaeda is still present in Yemen’s restive south and east, and it launches sporadic attacks against security forces.