• La #révolution et le #djihad. #Syrie, #France, #Belgique

    Après le soulèvement de la population syrienne contre la dictature de #Bachar_al-Assad en 2011, sa répression sanglante a conduit nombre de révolutionnaires à s’engager dans la #lutte_armée. L’intervention de groupes se réclamant de l’#islam_politique et les ingérences étrangères ont ensuite rendu le #conflit singulièrement opaque. Jusqu’à l’émergence en 2014 de l’#État_islamique, qui a fait de la #religion le noyau d’une #politique_de_la_terreur. Ce qui a conduit une petite minorité dévoyée des jeunes Européens ayant rejoint la révolution à perpétrer, en France et en Belgique, de terribles #attentats-suicides en 2015 et 2016.
    Pour tenter d’éclairer ces enchaînements tragiques, les interprétations idéologiques centrées sur la « #radicalisation » de l’islam politique ont trop souvent prévalu. D’où l’importance de ce livre, qui s’appuie à l’inverse sur les #témoignages des acteurs – ; révolutionnaires syriens et « #migrants_du_djihad » – ; recueillis par l’auteur entre 2015 et 2023 au Moyen-Orient et en Europe. On y découvrira comment des gens ordinaires ont vécu leurs #engagements, marqués par le dépassement des organisations partisanes et le rapprochement improbable entre islamistes et gauches. Ces témoignages mettent en récit le sens de leurs actions, de la mobilisation pacifique initiale à la guerre révolutionnaire. Ils éclairent le rôle du #symbolisme_religieux dans la #révolution_syrienne et dans les motivations des quelque 2 500 jeunes Français et Belges issus de l’#immigration_postcoloniale, nouveaux « internationalistes » l’ayant rejointe à la faveur des #printemps_arabes. Au total, un regard sans équivalent sur la confrontation singulière, dans la lutte contre la #dictature, de deux forces utopiques antagoniques, celle positive de soutien à la cause révolutionnaire, et celle négative animant le #fascisme d’un #Etat_théocratique.

    https://www.editionsladecouverte.fr/la_revolution_et_le_djihad-9782348078316
    #livre #internationnalisme

    • La mosaïque éclatée ; une histoire du mouvement national palestinien (coédition Institut des Etudes Palestiniennes), Nicolas Dot-Pouillard, Actes Sud, 256pp, 2016.


      https://www.actes-sud.fr/node/56808

      Les accords d’Oslo signés par Arafat et Rabin en septembre 1993 constituent un tournant décisif dans l’histoire du mouvement national palestinien : l’OLP s’installe en Cisjordanie et dans la bande de Gaza. Or ces accords laissent en suspens toutes les questions de fond (l’avenir de Jérusalem, le droit au retour des réfugiés, les frontières du futur État palestinien, etc.), et les gouvernements israéliens successifs ne vont pas manquer d’en tirer profit pour accélérer la judaïsation de Jérusalem et la colonisation de la Cisjordanie.

      Dès lors, le mouvement national palestinien se divise sur la faisabilité de l’option dite des deux États, mais aussi sur le bilan de l’Autorité nationale, la restructuration de l’OLP, les formes de résistance, armée ou non violente, et les alliances régionales à établir, avec l’Iran ou avec les pays du Golfe. Il connaît en conséquence bien des recompositions idéologiques, entre nationalisme et islamisme.

      Nicolas Dot-Pouillard insiste dans ce livre solidement documenté sur les principaux débats stratégiques et tactiques qui agitent la scène politique palestinienne dans sa diversité géographique, éclairant les positions des différentes forces en présence, du Fatah au Hamas, en passant par le Jihad islamique et la gauche.

  • Iraq Building Syria Wall to Keep Out IS Fighters

    Iraq is building a concrete wall along part of its border with Syria to stop Islamic State group jihadists from infiltrating, an Iraqi military source said Sunday.

    In the “first stage” of construction, a wall around “a dozen kilometers (7 miles) long and 3.5 meters (11 feet) high was built in #Nineveh province,” in the #Sinjar area of northwest Iraq, a senior officer told AFP, requesting anonymity.

    Iraq, which shares a more than 600-kilometer-long border with Syria, seeks to “put a stop to the #infiltration of Islamic State members” into its territory, the source added, without specifying how long the wall would eventually run.

    Iraq in 2018 said it had begun building a fence along the Syrian border for the same reason.

    The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said the wall’s construction was carried out in an area facing the town of #Al-Shaddadi, in the south of Syria’s #Hasakeh province.

    In January in the Kurdish-controlled province, IS fighters attacked a prison to free fellow jihadists, sparking days of clashes that left hundreds dead.

    Many prisoners are thought to have escaped, with some crossing to neighboring Turkey or Turkish-held territory in Syria’s north, the Observatory said.

    IS overran large swathes of Iraq and Syria in 2014, declaring a “caliphate” before Baghdad proclaimed victory in late 2017 after a grinding campaign.

    But a low-level jihadist insurgency has persisted, flaring up particularly in rural and mountainous areas between Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region and northern outskirts of the capital.

    https://www.voanews.com/a/iraq-building-syria-wall-to-keep-out-is-fighters/6503811.html
    #Irak #murs #barrières_frontalières #frontières #Syrie #Etat_islamique #terrorisme #anti-terrorisme

    • SOHR: Iraq Building Syria Wall to Keep Out IS Fighters

      Iraq is building a concrete wall along part of its border with Syria to stop Islamic State group jihadists from infiltrating, an Iraqi military source said Sunday.

      In the ‘first stage’ of construction, a wall around ‘a dozen kilometers (7 miles) long and 3.5 meters (11 feet) high was built in Nineveh province,’ in the Sinjar area of northwest Iraq, a senior officer told AFP, requesting anonymity.

      Iraq, which shares a more than 600-kilometer-long border with Syria, seeks to ‘put a stop to the infiltration of Islamic State members’ into its territory, the source added, without specifying how long the wall would eventually run.

      Iraq in 2018 said it had begun building a fence along the Syrian border for the same reason.

      The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said the wall’s construction was carried out in an area facing the town of Al-Shaddadi, in the south of Syria’s Hasakeh province.

      In January in the Kurdish-controlled province, IS fighters attacked a prison to free fellow jihadists, sparking days of clashes that left hundreds dead.

      Many prisoners are thought to have escaped, with some crossing to neighboring Turkey or Turkish-held territory in Syria’s north, the Observatory said.

      IS overran large swathes of Iraq and Syria in 2014, declaring a ‘caliphate’ before Baghdad proclaimed victory in late 2017 after a grinding campaign.

      But a low-level jihadist insurgency has persisted, flaring up particularly in rural and mountainous areas between Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region and northern outskirts of the capital.

      https://www.syriahr.com/en/244765

  • #Shingal

    En août 2014, L’État islamique attaque le peuple Yézidis dans la région montagneuse de Shingal, et perpétue un véritable massacre dans cette région au nord-ouest de l’Irak. Asmail, son frère Mazlum et leurs familles sont des leurs. Comme nombre d’autres Yézidis, ils vont devoir fuir vers ce refuge ancestral que sont les montagnes de Shingal et lutter pour la survie de leurs familles et de leur peuple...

    Si la crise humanitaire qui a découlé de cette tragédie est relativement connue de tous, de nombreuses zones d’ombre persistent quant aux éléments qui ont conduit au génocide et à l’exode de toute une population.
    Tout au long de cet album, Tore Rørbæk et Mikkel Sommer donnent corps à un peuple méconnu, victime de la barbarie, et tentent de faire la lumière sur ces éléments souvent passés sous silence...

    https://www.la-boite-a-bulles.com/book/618
    #BD #bande_dessinée #livre

    #monts_Shingal #montagne #Yézidis #Irak #Siba #peshmerga #Gerzerik #daesh #territoires_contestés #Kurdistan #Al-Qaïda #yézidisme #Snouni #Sikeniye #massacre #génocide #Ousman_Pacha #conversion_forcée #histoire #viols #exécutions_de_masse #esclavage_sexuel #aide_humanitaire #corridor_humanitaire #réfugiés #camp_de_Newroz #Newroz #Essian #Dohuk #Kurdistan_irakien #Etat_islamique #religion #résistance #ISIS #Etat_islamique

    • La montagna sola. Gli ezidi e l’autonomia democratica di Şengal

      Gli ezidi sono diventati noti a livello internazionale dopo il massacro subito dall’Isis nell’agosto del 2014. Un popolo di cui si è sempre saputo pochissimo – anche per l’assenza di testi scritti dovuta a un ferreo ricorso alla tradizione orale – è stato preso come esempio della brutalità dello Stato islamico e usato per giustificare l’intervento militare occidentale. Relegando gli ezidi al ruolo di vittime senza speranza né capacità di pensiero politico. Questo libro ne ricostruisce la storia millenaria, la cultura e la religione, e ne riporta la voce diretta raccolta dalle autrici nei loro viaggi a Şengal, di cui uno compiuto insieme a Zerocalcare, autore dell’illustrazione in copertina.
      Şengal è l’unica montagna che si staglia nella vasta piana di Ninive, al confine con Siria e Turchia. In Iraq la chiamano «la montagna sola», come solo è sempre stato il popolo ezida che la abita, società divenuta introversa a seguito delle numerose persecuzioni subite. Dalla loro resistenza contro l’Isis e dalla liberazione di Şengal, grazie all’aiuto del Partito dei lavoratori del Kurdistan e delle unità curde del Rojava, è nata un’esperienza di autogoverno ispirata al confederalismo democratico, ancora in fieri e minacciata dalle stesse forze che nel 2014 permisero il massacro.
      Sulla montagna sola si respira la voglia di una vita finalmente libera dalla paura insieme all’entusiasmo di chi ha preso in mano le redini del proprio destino. Una popolazione chiusa al mondo esterno, conservatrice e legata alle proprie pratiche ha saputo costruire una forma di autogestione del proprio territorio secondo un paradigma estremamente moderno e allo stesso tempo adattabile alle peculiari e antiche caratteristiche dei popoli mediorientali – perché è da lì che trae origine e ispirazione.

      https://edizionialegre.it/product/la-montagna-sola

  • Le #Nigeria vide les camps de déplacés de #Maiduguri

    Ces réfugiés avaient fui les exactions de #Boko_Haram, mais le gouverneur de l’Etat de #Borno les presse aujourd’hui de revenir sur leurs terres, malgré le risque humanitaire et la présence du groupe #Etat_islamique en Afrique de l’Ouest.

    Un silence de plomb est tombé sur le camp de déplacés de #Bakassi. Il ne reste presque rien de ce gros village de fortune qui abritait, il y a encore quelques semaines, plus de 41 800 déplacés, à la sortie de la grande ville de Maiduguri, chef-lieu de l’Etat de Borno, dans le nord-est du Nigeria. Les tentes et les abris de tôle ont disparu, la clinique a fermé ses portes et les enclos de terre se sont vidés de leurs bêtes.

    Pendant sept ans, des dizaines de communautés fuyant les exactions des djihadistes de Boko Haram se sont réfugiées sur ce terrain, initialement occupé par des logements de fonction, aujourd’hui à l’abandon. Mais, le 19 novembre, les déplacés de Bakassi ont été réveillés au beau milieu de la nuit par une délégation officielle, venue leur annoncer qu’ils avaient onze jours pour plier bagage et reprendre le chemin de leurs champs.

    Dans les heures qui ont suivi, #Babagana_Zulum, le gouverneur de l’Etat de Borno, a supervisé en personne l’attribution d’une #aide_alimentaire et financière à chaque chef de famille présent : 100 000 nairas (215 euros) ont été versés pour les hommes et 50 000 nairas (107 euros) pour les femmes, ainsi qu’un sac de riz de 25 kilos, un carton de nouilles et cinq litres d’huile de friture. Une aide censée leur permettre de tenir trois mois, le temps de reprendre la culture de leurs terres ou de trouver un autre lieu de vie, à Maiduguri ou à proximité de leur terre d’origine.

    Le #plan_de_développement établi par les autorités indique qu’au moins 50 % des déplacés de l’Etat de Borno devront avoir quitté les camps d’ici à l’année prochaine et que tous les camps de l’Etat devront avoir fermé leurs portes d’ici à 2026. Pour l’heure, le gouverneur a ordonné la fermeture des #camps_officiels situés autour de la ville de Maiduguri, afin de pousser les populations vers l’#autonomie_alimentaire. Quatre camps, abritant environ 86 000 personnes, ont déjà fermé ; cinq autres, accueillant plus de 140 000 personnes, doivent suivre.

    Abus subis par les réfugiés

    Le gouvernement local, qui assure qu’il « ne déplace personne de force », a justifié sa décision en pointant notamment les #abus que les réfugiés subissent dans ces espaces surpeuplés, où ils sont victimes de #violences_sexuelles et à la merci des détournements de l’aide alimentaire d’urgence. Mais les moyens déployés pour vider les camps ne sont pas à la hauteur des besoins.

    « Pendant la distribution de l’aide au départ, les autorités ont demandé à tous les hommes célibataires de s’éloigner. Beaucoup de gens de mon âge n’ont rien reçu du tout », assure Dahirou Moussa Mohammed. Ce paysan de 25 ans a passé un peu plus d’un an dans le camp après avoir fui les territoires occupés par Boko Haram, où il dit avoir été emmené de force après l’invasion de son village par les djihadistes en 2014.

    Depuis que Bakassi a fermé ses portes, Dahirou s’est installé sur une dalle de béton nu, à quelques mètres seulement du mur d’enceinte désormais surveillé par des gardes armés. « Nous avons récupéré la toile de nos tentes, les structures en bois et les tôles de la toiture, et nous les avons déplacées ici », explique le jeune homme.

    Dans un communiqué publié le 21 décembre, l’organisation Human Rights Watch regrette le manque « de consultations pour préparer les déplacés à rentrer chez eux ou pour les informer des alternatives possibles » et rappelle qu’on ignore tout du sort de 90 % des personnes ayant quitté Bakassi fin novembre. « Les déplacements multiples risquent d’accroître les besoins dans des zones où la présence humanitaire est déjà limitée. Cela est particulièrement préoccupant, compte tenu des indicateurs d’#insécurité_alimentaire dans la région », note, de son côté, la coalition d’ONG internationales Forum Nigeria.

    2,4 millions de personnes menacées par la #faim

    Selon un rapport des Nations unies datant du mois d’octobre, 2,4 millions de personnes sont menacées par la faim dans le Borno, ravagé par douze années de conflit. L’inquiétude des ONG est encore montée d’un cran avec la publication d’une lettre officielle datée du 6 décembre, interdisant expressément les #distributions_alimentaires dans les communautés récemment réinstallées.

    « La création délibérée de besoins par les humanitaires ne sera pas acceptée. (…) Laissons les gens renforcer leur #résilience », a insisté le gouverneur lors d’une réunion à huis clos avec les ONG, le 21 décembre. Il les accuse de rendre les populations dépendantes de l’#aide_humanitaire sans leur proposer de solutions de développement à long terme, afin de continuer à profiter de la crise.

    Même si le projet de fermeture des camps de Maiduguri a été évoqué à de multiples reprises par les dirigeants du Borno ces dernières années, la mise à exécution de ce plan par le gouverneur Babagana Zulum a surpris tout le monde. « Les gens ont besoin de retrouver leurs terres et on comprend bien ça, sauf que le processus actuel est extrêmement discutable », s’alarme la responsable d’une ONG internationale, qui préfère garder l’anonymat étant donné le climat de défiance qui règne actuellement dans le Borno. « On ne sait même pas comment ils vont rentrer chez eux, vu la dangerosité du voyage, et nous n’avons aucun moyen de les accompagner », regrette-t-elle.

    « Il faut que le gouvernement local reconnaisse que la situation sécuritaire ne permet pas ces retours, pour l’instant. Dans le contexte actuel, j’ai bien peur que les déplacés ne soient poussés dans les bras des insurgés », appuie un humanitaire nigérian qui travaille pour une autre organisation internationale.

    C’est par crainte des violences que Binetou Moussa a choisi de ne pas prendre le chemin du retour. « Ceux qui ont tenté de rejoindre notre village d’Agapalawa ont vite abandonné. Il n’y a plus rien là-bas et il paraît qu’on entend chaque jour des coups de feu dans la brousse. Je ne veux plus jamais revivre ça ! », justifie la vieille femme, qui garde en elle le souvenir terrifiant de sa longue fuite à pied jusqu’à Maiduguri, il y a sept ans.

    Faute d’avoir pu rejoindre leur village, beaucoup de déplacés de Bakassi ont finalement échoué à #Pulka ou #Gwoza, à plus de 100 kilomètres au sud-est de la capitale régionale. « Ils dorment dehors, sur le marché, et ils n’ont même plus assez d’argent pour revenir ici ! », gronde Binetou, en tordant ses mains décharnées. Dans ces villes secondaires sécurisées par l’armée, la menace d’une attaque demeure omniprésente au-delà des tranchées creusées à la pelleteuse pour prévenir l’intrusion de djihadistes. Une situation qui limite les perspectives agricoles des rapatriés.

    Attaques probables

    Le groupe Etat islamique en Afrique de l’Ouest (Iswap) est effectivement actif dans certaines zones de réinstallation. « L’armée contrôle bien les villes secondaires à travers tout le Borno, mais ils ne tiennent pas pour autant les campagnes, souligne Vincent Foucher, chercheur au CNRS. L’Iswap fait un travail de fond [dans certaines zones rurales] avec des patrouilles pour prélever des taxes, contrôler les gens et même rendre la justice au sein des communautés. »

    Et bien que l’organisation Etat islamique se montre plus pacifique dans ses rapports aux civils que ne l’était Abubakar Shekau – le chef historique de Boko Haram, disparu en mai 2021 au cours d’affrontements entre factions djihadistes rivales –, les risques encourus par les populations non affiliées sont bien réels. « Si on renvoie des gens dans les villes secondaires, l’#Iswap pourrait bien les attaquer », prévient Vincent Foucher. Sans oublier les civils « partis travailler dans les territoires contrôlés par l’Iswap et qui ont été victimes des bombardements de l’armée ».

    Dans un rapport publié le 15 décembre, Amnesty International évoque les attaques qui ont ciblé des personnes rapatriées au cours de l’année 2021 à Agiri, New Marte et Shuwari. L’ONG ajoute que « certains ont été forcés [par les militaires] à rester dans les zones de réinstallation, malgré l’escalade de la violence ». D’un point de vue politique, la fermeture des camps serait un moyen de reconquérir des territoires et même de tenter de mettre un point final à un conflit de douze années. Même si cela revient, selon les termes de Vincent Foucher, à « laisser des gens avec peu de mobilité, encerclés par les djihadistes et forcés de cohabiter avec une armée sous pression ».

    https://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2021/12/30/au-nigeria-la-fermeture-des-camps-de-deplaces-jette-des-milliers-de-personne

    #réfugiés #déplacés_internes #migrations #camps_de_réfugiés #fermeture #renvois #retour_au_pays (tag que j’utilise pour les réfugiés et pas les déplacés internes, en général, mais ça permettra de retrouver l’article, si besoin)

  • Affaire Lafarge : une note prouve que l’Etat était informé des versements d’argent à Daech – Libération
    https://www.liberation.fr/societe/police-justice/affaire-lafarge-une-note-prouve-que-letat-etait-informe-des-versements-da

    Un document de la Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure (DGSE), que révèle « Libération », atteste que l’Etat avait connaissance d’un accord passé entre le cimentier et l’organisation terroriste dès l’été 2014. La Cour de cassation doit se prononcer jeudi sur la mise en examen de l’entreprise.

    C’est une note qui ne laisse plus de place au doute. L’Etat, à travers la Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure (DGSE), était bien au courant des conditions dans lesquelles Lafarge maintenait son activité en Syrie en territoire en partie occupé par l’Etat islamique (EI). Le document que révèle Libération, émane de la direction de la stratégie de ce service de renseignement, est daté du 26 août 2014 et estampillé « confidentiel défense ». Il y est consigné qu’un « agreement [accord en français, ndlr] » a été trouvé entre le cimentier et l’EI pour la poursuite de l’activité commerciale.

    #Hollande #Macron #Lafarge #Daech

    • La date de cette note a son importance. Elle est rédigée à un moment où Lafarge avait toujours le contrôle de son usine [...] La région de l’usine est alors en proie à des combats menés par plusieurs groupes armés dont l’EI. Les précédentes notes des services de renseignement versées à la procédure judiciaire, et révélées par Libération, décrivaient jusque-là les relations avec le groupe terroriste après la prise de l’usine par l’ #EI, le 19 septembre 2014. Le nouveau document prouve que la DGSE avait connaissance de la situation avant cette date cruciale.

      « Daech vient de les autoriser à reprendre les activités commerciales et donc transiter sur les routes du nord de la Syrie entre Membij, Aïn Issa, Raqqah, Deir ez Zor et Qamishli. Derrière cette autorisation il y a un “agreement” », expose la DGSE dans la note. Le service de renseignement obtient alors ses informations sur la situation de Lafarge en Syrie auprès de son « correspondant » dont le nom n’apparaît pas. Cet accord trouvé avec le groupe terroriste « bien entendu » a un coût, peut-on lire dans le même document : « L’agreement consiste bien entendu à fixer un prix fixe et une variable à la tonne transportée. »

      L’ #État_islamique administre alors la vie économique dans la région de l’usine. « Des volumes conséquents mais non contrôlés circulent actuellement entre la #Turquie, la #Syrie et l’ #Irak. Ces transits sont contrôlés par #Daech », indique également le document

      [...]

      Les interrogations sur le rôle de l’Etat dans cette affaire ne sont pas nouvelles. Lors de ses auditions devant l’une des juges d’instruction, l’ancien directeur sûreté de Lafarge, #Jean-Claude_Veillard, avait détaillé ses relations avec les services de renseignement français. A l’appui de ses déclarations, l’ancien militaire avait notamment communiqué les dates des nombreux rendez-vous avec la #DGSE mais aussi avec la Direction générale de la sécurité intérieure (#DGSI) et la Direction du renseignement militaire (#DRM). A la question de savoir quelles informations transmettait Jean-Claude Veillard, l’ancien directeur sûreté du cimentier avait répondu sans détour : « Je ne faisais aucun tri dans les informations que je donnais aux services des renseignements […]. Au cours des réunions, j’ai donné toutes les informations. »

      [...]

      Outre l’argent obtenu grâce à l’activité commerciale de Lafarge, l’organisation terroriste s’est aussi enrichie en mettant la main sur l’usine. Des milliers de tonnes de ciment sont alors encore dans les cuves. Des notes de la direction du renseignement militaire, déjà révélées par Libération, permettent de saisir l’ampleur des bénéfices réalisés : « 65 000 tonnes ont déjà été accaparées par Daech pour une valeur estimée à 6,5 millions USD [dollars] », et un « reliquat de 50 000 tonnes fait/fera l’objet d’un “contrat” […] pour une valeur estimée à 5 millions USD », observe la DRM à la fin de l’année 2014. Le service de renseignement suit au jour le jour les négociations en cours. « On comprend que le démantèlement de l’usine Lafarge en Syrie se poursuit au bénéfice financier à la fois de Daech et des hommes d’affaires impliqués », conclut la même note.

      Au regard de la note de la DGSE datée elle du 26 août 2014, le rôle joué par la diplomatie française est d’autant plus troublant. Comme l’avait révélé Libération, des mails échangés entre le ­cabinet du ministre des Affaires étrangères de l’époque, #Laurent_Fabius et l’ambassadeur de France pour la Syrie, #Franck_Gellet, attestent de l’implication de la diplomatie française dans le dossier. L’ambassadeur Gellet est notamment en contact étroit avec Jean-Claude Veillard.

      Dès le 19 septembre 2014, Gellet contacte le cabinet de Laurent Fabius face à l’arrivée de l’EI dans l’usine. Lafarge craint alors que sa cimenterie soit frappée par un bombardement de la coalition pilotée par les Etats-Unis. L’ambassadeur œuvre pour empêcher ce scénario. « Il convient de protéger cet investissement français […] pour le cas où, Daech en faisant une possible source de lucre, les Américains envisageraient un jour de le bombarder », expose l’ambassadeur Franck Gellet. Le message est reçu par l’un des plus proches collaborateurs de Laurent Fabius, Martin Briens, et transmis au ­ministère de la Défense pour « qu’ils puissent en parler aux Américains ».

      Quelques jours plus tard, dans un mail de l’ambassade de #France aux Etats-Unis, Franck Gellet apprend que le sujet a « bien été évoqué par nos militaires auprès de leurs collègues américains », et que l’usine de Lafarge est « désormais sur la liste appropriée ».

      Nouvelle crainte le 27 janvier 2015. Ce jour-là, Franck Gellet ­s’inquiète d’une possible frappe des #États-Unis sur la cimenterie dans un mail envoyé au cabinet de Laurent Fabius. « Lafarge sait, par le réseau des distributeurs, que Daech a besoin de ciment pour Mossoul », écrit l’ambassadeur et prévient qu’« il ne faudrait pas que cela conduise les #Américains à frapper l’usine dans le cadre de la lutte contre les sources de financement de Daech ». Franck Gellet obtient alors gain de cause.

      #Rassemblement_national #Wallerand_de_Saint-Just #Marine_Le_Pen

  • Mocimboa da Praia : Key Mozambique port ’seized by IS’ - BBC News
    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-53756692

    C’est passé sous les radars apparemment, mais la situation au Mozambique se dégrade et devient très préoccupante

    https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1632/idt2/idt2/f0df8b16-d8df-480d-89d5-f23f1d740e73/image/816

    Militants linked to the Islamic State group have seized a heavily-defended port in Mozambique after days of fighting, according to reports.

    Local media say government forces that were in the far northern town of Mocimboa da Praia fled, many by boat, after Islamists stormed the port.

    The town is near the site of natural gas projects worth $60bn (£46bn).

    In recent months militants have taken a number of northern towns, displacing tens of thousands of people.

    –-----------

    Avec les décapitations de villages, l’État islamique intensifie les attaques au Mozambique - News 24

    https://news-24.fr/avec-les-decapitations-de-villages-letat-islamique-intensifie-les-attaques-a

    NAIROBI, Kenya – Les militants de l’État islamique, selon plusieurs témoignages, ont frappé la petite communauté agricole sur un plateau dans le nord du Mozambique lors d’un rite d’initiation pour amener les adolescents à devenir virils.

    Armés de machettes, les assaillants ont décapité jusqu’à 20 garçons et hommes dans le village de 24 de Marco, selon un rapport des médias locaux qui confirmé mercredi par ACLED, un groupe américain de surveillance de la crise qui cartographie l’explosion de l’insurrection au Mozambique.

    –-----------------

    Mozambique - Escalation of conflict and violence drive massive displacements and increased humanitarian needs in Cabo Delgado | Digital Situation Reports
    https://reports.unocha.org/en/country/mozambique/card/qXCEhl8yNX
    https://images.ctfassets.net/ejsx83ka8ylz/Z9ojahmui2MxmPMagjmfA/5c75e52ed09bf8c5724c3553183c05a3/WhatsApp_Image_2020-10-26_at_18.53.21.jpeg?w=1024

    Escalation of conflict and violence drive massive displacements and increased humanitarian needs in Cabo Delgado

    The humanitarian situation in Cabo Delgado Province, in northern Mozambique, significantly deteriorated over the last 10 months. The ongoing conflict in the region has escalated in 2020, compounding a fragile situation marked by chronic underdevelopment, consecutive climatic shocks and recurrent disease outbreaks. The increasing number of attacks by non-state armed groups, particularly impacting the northern and eastern districts of the Province, are driving massive and multiple displacements, disrupting people’s livelihoods and access to basic services.

    –-----------------------

    Cabo Ligado Weekly : 2-8 November 2020 | ACLED
    https://acleddata.com/2020/11/10/cabo-ligado-weekly-2-8-november-2020

    The battle for the road between Palma and Mueda continued last week, starting with a 2 November insurgent attack on Pundanhar, Palma district. Several houses were burned in the attack, and five civilians were kidnapped.

    At the same time, insurgents were in the midst of a four-day occupation of Muatide, Muidumbe district. According to a Pinnacle News report, insurgents used Muatide as a base from which they carried out attacks against young men involved in initiation rites. Fifteen boys and five adults from the 24 de Marco village were reported decapitated, and their bodies brought to the soccer field at Muatide. Pinnacle also reported that another 24 youths and six adults from other areas of the district were beheaded during the occupation, and their bodies similarly gathered at Muatide. Pinnacle later reported that many other civilians had been killed at Muatide. There is no confirmed final death toll, and sources can only confirm the targeting of male initiation rites and the initial report of 20 deaths at 24 de Marco.

    #mozambique #is #état_islamique #daesh #djihadisme_international

  • Après presque dix ans de cauchemar, le peuple syrien revient dans la danse des révoltes
    | Volte-face ! https://volte-face.info/syrian-revolt-starts-again

    Celles et ceux qui, dans leur cynisme et leur indifférence, voudraient voir l’Etat islamique anéanti et les réfugié-es syrien-nes rentrer chez elleux par l’opération du saint esprit ou par la seule force brute, devraient comprendre que l’équilibre du monde dépend de la chute des régimes qui portent en eux l’autoritarisme viril et le goût de l’argent, où qu’ils se trouvent. Le menace ne vient pas des révoltes populaires et de l’exil, mais de ces élites qui croient qu’on peut disposer des humain-es comme on dispose de pions sur un échiquier noir et blanc.

    Solidarité internationale avec le peuple syrien !!

    https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2013/03/08/les-enfants-de-deraa-l-etincelle-de-l-insurrection_1845327_3210.html

    https://www.lemonde.fr/proche-orient/article/2012/09/04/allez-degage-bachar-le-chant-revolutionnaire-des-rebelles-syriens_1755193_32

    https://www.lorientlejour.com/article/715172/Qachouch%252C_le_rossignol_de_la_contestation_syrienne_s%2527est_tu_a

    https://www.lemonde.fr/disparitions/article/2019/06/10/abdel-basset-al-sarout-voix-des-revoltes-de-homs-mort-au-combat-a-27-ans_547

    https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/12/16/if-dead-could-speak/mass-deaths-and-torture-syrias-detention-facilities

    https://sp-today.com/en

    https://www.facebook.com/104105744468398/videos/624223138176708

    #Syrie #Daesh #Etat_Islamique #liberation_populaire

  • Il Comune di #Bologna rimuove la targa in memoria di Lorenzo «Orso» Orsetti

    Il 7 novembre 2019 pubblicavamo il comunicato (https://www.wumingfoundation.com/giap/2019/11/lorenzo-orsetti-in-cirenaica) col quale il «collettivo di collettivi» Resistenze in Cirenaica rivendicava l’intitolazione dal basso di un giardino pubblico ancora senza nome al compagno Lorenzo Orsetti detto «Orso», nome di battaglia «#Tekosher», caduto in Siria nella lotta contro l’ISIS.

    Oggi, 31 gennaio 2020, la targa è stata rimossa. Ora il giardino ha un altro nome, un nome «con tutti i crismi» burocratici e amministrativi.

    La targa in memoria di Orso sarebbe potuta rimanere, perché no? Tanti luoghi delle nostre città hanno un nome ufficioso e uno ufficiale, coesistenti e mai confusi l’uno con l’altro. Tantopiù che parliamo di un giardino pubblico, senza numeri civici, dove non poteva sorgere alcun equivoco o disguido. E invece no, il nome di Orso lo si è voluto rimuovere ed è stato rimosso, senza alcuna remora.

    RIC ha appena pubblicato sul proprio blog alcune considerazioni sull’episodio: https://resistenzeincirenaica.com/2020/01/31/odomen-omen



    https://www.wumingfoundation.com/giap/2020/01/rimossa-targa-ilorenzo-orsetti
    #Bologne #toponymie #Lorenzo_Orsetti #mémoire #plaque_commémorative #Italie #toponymie_politique

    #partisans #ISIS #Etat_islamique #nouveaux_partisans #Syrie

    ping @albertocampiphoto @wizo @reka

    • Un nuovo partigiano in Cirenaica: RIC intitola un giardino pubblico a Lorenzo Orsetti

      La sera del 7 novembre 2019 Resistenze In Cirenaica ha reso omaggio al combattente internazionalista Lorenzo Orsetti, caduto in Siria il 18 marzo 2019. Abbiamo dato il suo nome a un giardino ancora privo di intitolazione all’inizio di via Sante Vincenzi. Ora si chiama Giardino Lorenzo Orsetti detto Orso – Partigiano (1986 – 2019).

      Nel rione Cirenaica di Bologna la maggior parte delle vie porta nomi di partigiani caduti per la Liberazione; anche Lorenzo è stato un partigiano ed è così che lo ricordiamo, tra le combattenti e i combattenti di tutte le liberazioni.

      “Orso” stava dando il proprio contributo alla lotta contro l’ISIS e alla rivoluzione del confederalismo democratico, un esempio di società laica, antisessista e antifascista in pieno Medio Oriente.

      In diverse città – Roma, Torino, Palermo, Firenze… – piazze e parchi portano già il nome di questo nostro compagno.

      Dal 2014 Resistenze In Cirenaica lavora per fare dell’intero rione un grande luogo di memoria, raccontando le storie di resistenza al colonialismo e al fascismo incastonate nei nomi delle vie e nel nome stesso del quartiere; organizzando trekking urbani e performance; realizzando murales e curando libri autoprodotti. L’azione che ha tenuto a battesimo il progetto RIC è stata l’intitolazione dal basso al ferroviere anarchico Lorenzo Giusti del giardino pubblico di via Barontini.

      Durante un trekking urbano abbiamo anche reintitolato via Libia alla partigiana Vinka Kitarovic e via De Amicis alla partigiana Tolmina Guazzaloca.

      Le nostre azioni hanno ispirato le ignote che l’8 marzo scorso hanno ribattezzato la piazzetta degli Umarells «piazzetta delle Partigiane», così come molte altre performance nel resto d’Italia.

      Quella di ieri sera non era dunque la prima azione di guerriglia odonomastica e non sarà l’ultima.

      In Siria del Nord si continua a combattere e morire e dopo l’invasione turca la situazione si è fatta ancora più grave. In questi anni migliaia di persone provenienti da tutta la Siria e da tutto il mondo sono cadute per difendere la rivoluzione del Rojava. Questo cartello non è solo per Orso ma per tutte e tutti loro.

      Della situazione in Siria si parlerà questa sera al Vag61 di via Paolo Fabbri 110.

      Alle 19:30 ci sarà una cena a sostegno della Mezzaluna Rossa Kurdistan Italia Onlus.
      Alle 21 si svolgerà l’incontro con il regista Luigi D’Alife, autore del documentario Binxet – Sotto il confine, per un aggiornamento sulla situazione della Siria del Nord.
      A seguire, la proiezione del documentario Radio Kobani di Reber Dosky.

      https://www.wumingfoundation.com/giap/2019/11/lorenzo-orsetti-in-cirenaica

  • Sur la piste des damnés de #Daech

    Nous sommes partis en Syrie, à la recherche de citoyens suisses qui ont cédé aux sirènes de l’Etat islamique. Tandis que des femmes et des adolescents livrent des témoignages inédits sur la vie à l’intérieur du #Califat, un détenu vaudois dénonce les mauvais traitements dont il est l’objet tandis qu’à Lausanne, pour la première fois, sa famille témoigne. Ils sont parmi les 11’000 combattants, femmes et enfants étrangers de Daech, détenus dans les prisons et camps tenus par les Kurdes au Nord-Est de la Syrie. Alors que leur famille et les autorités locales réclament leur rapatriement, les Etats européens, Suisse comprise, mettent le dos au mur.


    https://pages.rts.ch/emissions/temps-present/international/10646701-sur-la-piste-des-damnes-de-daech.html?anchor=10738842#10738842
    #EI #Etat_islamique #film #film_documentaire
    #Al-Hol #Daesh #femmes #enfants #camps #disparitions #Irak #Kurdistan #Baghouz #Centre_Hori (centre de #déradicalisation) #rapatriement #limbe #Syrie #prisons_kurdes #Suisse

    –---

    Sur le camp de Hal-Hol, voir aussi :
    https://seenthis.net/messages/806159
    https://seenthis.net/messages/805681

  • « Les Kurdes nous ont dit "sortez, courez !" » : le témoignage de djihadistes françaises

    Prises sous le feu de l’armée turque, les forces kurdes ouvrent les portes des camps de #prisonniers #djihadistes. Témoignages recueillis par deux journalistes qui les avaient suivies dans le cadre d’un livre.

    Dix Françaises, membres de l’organisation Etat islamique (EI), sont libres en Syrie, après avoir pu sortir du camp d’Aïn Issa, à 50 km au nord de Raqqa. Selon nos informations, les forces kurdes, qui les détenaient, ne pouvaient plus les garder.

    Ces dix Françaises et leurs 25 enfants ont été sortis du camp, dimanche 13 octobre au matin, alors que l’armée turque prenait pour cible Aïn Issa, ville sous contrôle kurde dans le nord de la #Syrie. Dans l’incapacité de gérer ces centaines de femmes djihadistes étrangères retenues dans cette prison, les gardes kurdes ont quitté les lieux, les laissant libres.

    Comme les autres, les dix Françaises sont donc sorties dans la précipitation avec leurs enfants. Toutes sont connues des services de renseignement et sont sous le coup d’un mandat international pour avoir rejoint #Daech.

    http://www.leparisien.fr/international/en-syrie-les-kurdes-laissent-s-echapper-des-djihadistes-francaises-14-10-
    #femmes #camps #Kurdistan #EI #ISIS #Etat_islamique #prison #Aïn_Issa #France #françaises #fuite

  • British orphans found trapped in Syria IS camp

    The war in Syria has been reignited on new fronts by Turkey’s incursion into the north east of the country.

    In camps across the regions are thousands of terrified children whose parents supported the Islamic State group, but most of their countries don’t want them home.

    In one camp, the BBC has discovered three children, believed to be from London, whose parents joined IS five years ago, and were subsequently killed in the fighting.

    The children - Amira, Heba and Hamza - are stranded, in danger and they want to come home.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-middle-east-50030567/british-orphans-found-trapped-in-syria-is-camp
    #enfants #enfance #ISIS #EI #Etat_islamique #camps #orphelins #Syrie #conflit #guerre #combattants_étrangers

    • Gli svizzeri della Jihad

      Chi sono gli jihadisti elvetici, di che reti facevano parte e cosa li ha spinti a partire? Da Winterthur a Ginevra, dai palazzi popolari ai quartieri borghesi, siamo andati a cercare i giovani che si sono uniti all’ISIS.

      Sono svizzeri e sono partiti per fare la jihad. Molti di loro hanno combattuto per lo stato islamico, altri sono entrati in contatto con gli attentatori che hanno colpito l’Europa. Sono stati catturati in Siria e adesso si trovano nelle prigioni nel nord del paese.Con loro ci sono donne e bambini. Per ora nessun tribunale sta giudicando i loro crimini, tutti quanti sono in attesa che i rispettivi paesi d’origine decidano come procedere nei loro confronti. Uno stallo che sembra però sbloccarsi: secondo alcune indiscrezioni Berna starebbe considerando l’ipotesi di far rientrare le donne e i bambini.Una squadra di Falò è stata nei campi di prigionia che ospitano donne e bambini dell’ISIS; tendopoli al collasso in cui l’ideologia radicale sta risorgendo. Ma ci sono anche svizzeri che hanno fatto parte dello Stato Islamico e sono già rientrati in Svizzera.Chi sono questi jihadisti elvetici, di che reti facevano parte e cosa li ha spinti a partire? Da Winterthur a Ginevra, dai palazzi popolari ai quartieri borghesi, siamo andati a cercare i giovani che si sono uniti all’ISIS. Alcuni si dicono pentiti, altri sembrano aver mantenuto dei legami con gli ambienti radicalizzati. A che punto stanno i processi nei loro confronti? Chi si occupa di sorvegliare le loro attività? Quanto pericolosi li dobbiamo considerare?

      https://www.rsi.ch/play/tv/falo/video/gli-svizzeri-della-jihad----------?id=12256843
      #documentaire #film #suisse #femmes #al-Hol #camps_de_réfugiés #détention #prison

    • UK special forces may help British orphans escape Syria

      Home Office reverses stance and says it will consider repatriating children in camps.
      https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/d0a1d88ba6202391e12730afd5aac7dc8694af18/0_235_5616_3370/master/5616.jpg?width=620&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=204f73a9482a4debc42258

      Britain will consider repatriating orphans and unaccompanied children in north-east Syria if they are alerted to their presence by local military or aid agencies.

      Home Office officials said the UK would assist British orphans trapped in Syria after the Turkish invasion, reversing a previous policy that children had to be taken out of the country before they might get any help.

      Officials would not say exactly how children might be extracted from the country, implying that SAS or other special forces, still understood to be based in the region, could be involved in the repatriations.

      They said children thought to be British would be assessed on a case-by-case basis once removed from Syria and only orphans and unaccompanied children would be eligible to be brought back to the UK.

      The shift in policy comes after a BBC reporting team found three English-speaking orphans aged 10 or under in a Syria camp over the weekend. The children are believed to have been taken by their parents to live under Islamic State five years ago.

      The eldest, Amira, 10, told the film crew that their parents and other immediate adult family members were killed in an air assault on Baghouz, the last Isis stronghold, which fell in March, and she wanted to return to the UK.

      Save the Children, one of the few charities operating in north-east Syria, said the Home Office developments were a step in the right direction but more detail was required.

      “For this to translate into a real change of policy, we need to know that the government is working on how to bring all British children to the UK while we still can, not just those featured in the media,” the charity said.

      It is not clear how many British unaccompanied children remain in the crowded refugee camps in the Kurdish region of Syria. Some unofficial estimates put the figure at around 30.

      Any child born to a Briton – whether inside or outside the UK – is a British citizen. Before the Turkish invasion the government had said it was too risky to try to attempt any rescue children with a legitimate claim.

      When Shamima Begum was deprived of her UK citizenship in February, the British government said her infant son was still British. After the child died at a Syrian refugee camp at the age of three weeks, Jeremy Hunt, then foreign secretary, said it had been too dangerous for British officials to attempt to a rescue.

      Opposition MPs questioned whether the change in stance would lead to more orphaned children getting help. Stephen Gethins, the SNP’s foreign affairs spokesman, said: “We know the UK government’s record on resettling refugees and vulnerable people leaves a lot to be desired. Beyond the rhetoric there is very little substance from the UK government.”

      On Tuesday the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, had hinted at a change of policy when, during an urgent debate on the Syrian crisis, he said: “We are looking at whether orphans and unaccompanied minors who bear UK nationality can be given safe passage to return to the UK.”

      Further details were spelled out on Wednesday by the Home Office, which has been leading on repatriations from Syria.

      The government does not want former Isis fighters and adult supporters to return to the UK, although around 450 are thought to have previously done so, and it is suggesting they could be put on trial in the region.

      https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/oct/16/uk-shifts-stance-on-helping-british-orphans-escape-syria?CMP=Share_iOSA
      #orphelins #rapatriement

  • Syria-Turkey briefing: The fallout of an invasion for civilians

    Humanitarians are warning that a Turkish invasion in northeast Syria could force hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes, as confusion reigns over its possible timing, scope, and consequences.

    Panos Moumtzis, the UN’s regional humanitarian coordinator for Syria, told reporters in Geneva on Monday that any military operation must guard against causing further displacement. “We are hoping for the best but preparing for the worst,” he said, noting that an estimated 1.7 million people live in the country’s northeast.

    Some residents close to the Syria-Turkey border are already leaving, one aid worker familiar with the situation on the ground told The New Humanitarian. Most are staying with relatives in nearby villages for the time-being, said the aid worker, who asked to remain anonymous in order to continue their work.

    The number of people who have left their homes so far remains relatively small, the aid worker said, but added: “If there is an incursion, people will leave.”

    The International Rescue Committee said “a military offensive could immediately displace at least 300,000 people”, but analysts TNH spoke to cautioned that the actual number would depend on Turkey’s plans, which remain a major unknown.

    As the diplomatic and security communities struggle to get a handle on what’s next, the same goes for humanitarians in northeastern Syria – and the communities they are trying to serve.

    Here’s what we know, and what we don’t:
    What just happened?

    Late on Sunday night, the White House said that following a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, “Turkey will soon be moving forward with its long-planned operation into Northern Syria,” adding that US soldiers would not be part of the move, and “will no longer be in the immediate area”.

    The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – the Syrian-Kurdish-led militia that until now had been supported by the United States and played a major role in wresting territory back from the so-called Islamic State (IS) group in Syria – vowed to stand its ground in the northeast.

    An SDF spokesperson tweeted that the group “will not hesitate to turn any unprovoked attack by Turkey into an all-out war on the entire border to DEFEND ourselves and our people”.

    Leading Republicans in the US Congress criticised President Donald Trump’s decision, saying it represents an abandonment of Kurdish allies in Syria, and the Pentagon appeared both caught off-guard and opposed to a Turkish incursion.

    Since then, Trump has tweeted extensively on the subject, threatening to “totally destroy and obliterate the economy of Turkey” if the country does anything he considers to be “off limits”.

    On the ground, US troops have moved out of two key observation posts on the Turkey-Syria border, in relatively small numbers: estimates range from 50 to 150 of the total who would have been shifted, out of around 1,000 US soldiers in the country.
    What is Turkey doing?

    Erdogan has long had his sights on a “safe zone” inside Syria, which he has said could eventually become home to as many as three million Syrian refugees, currently in Turkey.

    Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu said in August that only 17 percent of Turkey’s estimated 3.6 million Syrian refugees come from the northeast of the country, which is administered by the SDF and its political wing.

    Turkish and US forces began joint patrols of a small stretch of the border early last month. While Turkey began calling the area a “safe zone”, the United States referred to it as a “security mechanism”. The terms of the deal were either never made public or not hammered out.

    In addition to any desire to resettle refugees, which might only be a secondary motive, Turkey wants control of northeast Syria to rein in the power of the SDF, which it considers to be a terrorist organisation.

    One of the SDF’s main constituent parts are People’s Defense Units – known by their Kurdish acronym YPG.

    The YPG are an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK – a Turkey-based Kurdish separatist organisation that has conducted an insurgency against the Turkish government for decades, leading to a bloody crackdown.

    While rebels fight for the northwest, and Russian-backed Syrian government forces control most of the rest of Syria, the SDF currently rules over almost all of Hassakeh province, most of Raqqa and Deir Ezzor provinces, and a small part of Aleppo province.
    How many civilians are at risk?

    There has not been a census in Syria for years, and numbers shift quickly as people flee different pockets of conflict. This makes estimating the number of civilians in northeast Syria very difficult.

    The IRC said in its statement it is “deeply concerned about the lives and livelihoods of the two million civilians in northeast Syria”; Moumtzis mentioned 1.7 million people; and Save the Children said “there are 1.65 million people in need of humanitarian assistance in this area, including more than 650,000 displaced by war”.

    Of those who have had to leave their homes in Raqqa, Deir Ezzor, and Hassakeh, only 100,000 are living in camps, according to figures from the International Committee of the Red Cross. Others rent houses or apartments, and some live in unfinished buildings or tents.

    “While many commentators are rightly focusing on the security implications of this policy reversal, the humanitarian implications will be equally enormous,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development, and a former high-ranking Obama administration aid official.

    “All across Northern Syria, hundreds of thousands of displaced and conflict-affected people who survived the horrors of the… [IS] era will now face the risk of new violence between Turkish and SDF forces.”
    Who will be first in the firing line?

    It’s unlikely all of northeast Syria would be impacted by a Turkish invasion right away, given that so far the United States has only moved its troops away from two border posts, at Tel Abyad (Kurdish name: Gire Spi), and roughly 100 kilometres to the east, at Ras al-Ayn (Kurdish name: Serê Kaniyê).

    Depending on how far into Syria one is counting, aid workers estimate there are between 52,000 to 68,000 people in this 100-kilometre strip, including the towns of Tel Abyad and Ras al-Ayn themselves. The aid worker in northeast Syria told TNH that if there is an offensive, these people are more likely, at least initially, to stay with family or friends in nearby villages than to end up in camps.

    The aid worker added that while humanitarian operations from more than 70 NGOs are ongoing across the northeast, including in places like Tel Abyad, some locals are avoiding the town itself and, in general, people are “extremely worried”.
    What will happen to al-Hol camp?

    The fate of the rest of northeast Syria’s population may also be at risk.

    Trump tweeted on Monday that the Kurds “must, with Europe and others, watch over the captured ISIS fighters and families”.

    The SDF currently administers al-Hol, a tense camp of more than 68,000 people – mostly women and children – deep in Hassakeh province, where the World Health Organisation recently said people are living “in harsh and deplorable conditions, with limited access to quality basic services, sub-optimal environment and concerns of insecurity.”

    Many of the residents of al-Hol stayed with IS through its last days in Syria, and the camp holds both these supporters and people who fled the group earlier on.

    Last week, Médecins Sans Frontières said security forces shot at women protesting in a part of the camp known as “the annex”, which holds around 10,000 who are not Syrian or Iraqi.

    The SDF also holds more than 10,000 IS detainees in other prisons, and the possible release of these people – plus those at al-Hol – may become a useful bargaining chip for the Kurdish-led group.

    On Monday, an SDF commander said guarding the prisoners had become a “second priority” in the wake of a possible Turkish offensive.

    “All their families are located in the border area,” General Mazloum Kobani Abdi told NBC News of the SDF fighters who had been guarding the prisoners. “So they are forced to defend their families.”

    https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news/2019/10/08/syria-turkey-briefing-fallout-invasion-civilians
    #Syrie #Turquie #guerre #conflit #civiles #invasion #al-Hol #Kurdistan #Kurdes #camps #camps_de_réfugiés
    ping @isskein

    • Il faut stopper Erdogan

      Les Kurdes de Syrie ont commencé à payer le prix de la trahison de l’Occident. Une pluie de bombes s’est abattue mercredi après-midi sur les villes frontière, précédant de peu une offensive terrestre de l’armée turque et de ses alliés islamistes de Syrie. Le macabre décompte des victimes peut débuter. On imagine l’effroi qui a saisi les habitants du #Rojava déjà durement éprouvés par plusieurs années de guerre contre les djihadistes.

      Le tweet dominical de Donald Trump avait annoncé la trahison ultime des Etats-Unis. Mais l’offensive turque répond à une logique plus profonde. A force de voir l’Union européenne lui manger dans la main, à force de jouer sans trop de heurts la balance géopolitique entre Moscou et Washington au gré de l’opportunisme des deux grandes puissances, Recep Tayyip Erdogan a des raisons de se sentir intouchable. Lorsqu’en 2015 et 2016, il faisait massacrer sa propre population dans les villes kurdes de Cizre, Nusaybin, Silopi ou Sur, le silence était de plomb.

      L’offensive débutée hier, le sultan l’annonce de longue date, sans provoquer de réaction ferme des Européens. La girouette Trump a bon dos : en matière d’allégeance à Ankara, les Européens sont autrement plus constants.

      Il faudra pourtant stopper Erdogan. Laisser le #Kurdistan_syrien tomber aux mains des milices islamistes et de l’armée turque reviendrait à cautionner un crime impardonnable. A abandonner des centaines de milliers de civils, dont de très nombreux réfugiés, et des milliers de combattants de la liberté à leurs bourreaux. Ce serait également la certitude d’une guerre de longue durée entre la Turquie et sa propre minorité kurde, environ un cinquième de sa population.

      Plusieurs pays européens ont réclamé une réunion du Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU. Le signe d’un sursaut ? L’espoir d’un cessez-le-feu rapide ? Ou des jérémiades d’arrière-garde, qui cesseront dès que la Turquie aura atteint ses objectifs ?

      Comme souvent, la superpuissance étasunienne détient les cartes maîtresses. Et Donald Trump n’en est pas à son premier virage intempestif. S’il a donné son feu vert à Erdogan, le républicain se retrouve coincé entre les interventionnistes et les isolationnistes de son propre parti. Hier, le premier camp s’indignait bruyamment. Exerçant une pression redoutable pour un président déjà affaibli par le dossier ukrainien.

      Il faudra qu’elle pèse aussi sur les dirigeants européens. La solidarité avec le Rojava doit devenir une priorité du mouvement social et des consciences.

      https://lecourrier.ch/2019/10/09/il-faut-stopper-erdogan

    • #Al-Hol detainees attack guards and start fires as Turkish assault begins

      Camp holding thousands of Islamic State suspects thrown into ’chaos’, says Kurdish official

      The Turkish assault on northeast Syria has prompted Islamic State group-affiliated women and youth in al-Hol’s camp to attack guards and start fires, a Kurdish official told Middle East Eye.

      Kurdish-held northeastern Syria has been on high alert since the United States announced on Sunday it would leave the area in anticipation of a Turkish offensive.

      Over the three days since the US announcement, chaos has broken out in the teeming al-Hol camp, Mahmoud Kro, an official that oversees internment camps in the Kurdish-run autonomous area, told MEE.

      Some 60,000 people suspected of being affiliated or linked to the Islamic State (IS) group, the majority women and children, are being held in the camp.

      “There are attacks on guards and camp management, in addition to burning tents and preparing explosive devices,” Kro told MEE from Qamishli.

      The status of al-Hol’s detainees has been a major concern since Turkey began making more threats to invade northeast Syria this year.

      In the phone call between Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Donald Trump on Sunday that precipitated the United States’ pullout, the US president pressed his Turkish counterpart on the fate of foreign IS suspects in Kurdish custody, MEE revealed.
      ‘Targeting our existence as Kurds’

      Turkey launched its assault on northeastern Syria on Wednesday alongside its Syrian rebel allies, aiming, it says, to push the Kurdish YPG militia at least 32km from the border.

      Ankara views the YPG as an extension of the outlawed PKK militant group.

      However, the YPG is a leading component of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militia, which has been Washington’s principal partner on the ground in the fight against IS.

      SDF fighters guard al-Hol, but Kro said the Turkish attack would draw them away to join the battle.

      “Any war in the region will force the present forces guarding the camp to go defend the border,” he said. “This will increase the chance of chaos in the camp.”

      Kro said that the administration in al-Hol has not made any preparations for a war with Turkey because the SDF’s priority is protecting northeast Syria and Kurds.

      “In terms of preparations, our first priority is protecting our region and existence,” he said. “The Turks are targeting our existence as Kurds to the first degree.”

      Some officials from the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), the political wing of the SDF, agree with Kro’s assessment that the detainees in al-Hol could get out.

      “If fighting breaks out between the SDF and Turkey, security at prisons will relax and prisoners could escape,” Bassam Ishak, the co-chair of the SDC in the US, told MEE ahead of the offensive.

      Meanwhile, SDC spokesman Amjad Osman said, as other Syrian Kurdish officials have, that a Turkish attack on northeast Syria would negatively affect the continuing war on IS in the country.

      “We are committed to fighting terrorism,” he told MEE. “But now our priority is to, first of all, confront the Turkish threats. And this will have a negative effect on our battle against Daesh,” using the Arabic acronym for IS.

      However, Turkey has bristled at the suggestion that the camps and fight against IS will be endangered by Ankara’s offensive.

      “This blackmail reveals the true face of the YPG and demonstrates how it has no intent of fighting against IS,” a Turkish official told MEE.

      Some residents of northeast Syria are already starting to flee. Many fear yet another war in the country that is still dealing with the conflict between government and rebel forces, and lingering IS attacks.

      Osman stopped short of saying the SDF would pack up and leave al-Hol. However, it will be hard for the group to keep holding the Syrian, Iraqi and international detainees during such a war, he said.

      “We are trying as much as possible to continue protecting the camps,” Osman said. “But any attempt to drag us into a military battle with Turkey will have a dangerous impact.”

      https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/al-hol-detainees-attack-guards-and-start-fires-turkish-assault-begins
      #ISIS #Etat_islamique #EI

  • Guns, Filth and #ISIS: Syrian Camp Is ‘Disaster in the Making’

    In the desert camp in northeastern Syria where tens of thousands of Islamic State fighters’ wives and children have been trapped for months in miserable conditions with no prospects of leaving, ISIS sympathizers regularly torch the tents of women deemed infidels.

    Fights between camp residents have brought smuggled guns into the open, and some women have attacked or threatened others with knives and hammers. Twice, in June and July, women stabbed the Kurdish guards who were escorting them, sending the camp into lockdown.

    Virtually all women wear the niqab, the full-length black veil demanded by ISIS’s rigid interpretation of Islam — some because they still adhere to the group’s ideology, others because they fear running afoul of the true believers.

    The Kurdish-run #Al_Hol camp is struggling to secure and serve nearly 70,000 displaced people, mainly women and children who fled there during the last battle to oust the Islamic State from eastern Syria. Filled with women stripped of hope and children who regularly die before receiving medical care, it has become what aid workers, researchers and American military officials warn is a disaster in the making.
    Image

    The daily ordeals of overcrowded latrines and contaminated water, limited medical care, flaring tensions between residents and guards, and chronic security problems have left the residents embittered and vulnerable. A recent Pentagon report that cautioned that ISIS was regrouping across Iraq and Syria said ISIS ideology has been able to spread “uncontested” at the camp.

    It is impossible to know how many of the women are ISIS believers, and many have publicly disavowed the group. But a stubborn core of followers is menacing the rest with threats, intimidation and, occasionally, violence, aid workers and researchers who have interviewed Al Hol residents said.

    The result is something more like a prison than a camp, a place where security concerns often overwhelm humanitarian ones — which only heightens the danger, according to aid workers and researchers who described conditions there to The New York Times.

    “Living in conditions that are difficult and being surrounded by people who are highly radical — is that conducive to deradicalization?” said Elizabeth Tsurkov, a fellow at the Forum for Regional Thinking who researches Syria and Iraq, and who has visited the camp twice recently.
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    “This is a place that can possibly radicalize someone, but certainly doesn’t help deradicalize anyone,” she added.

    Yet few have been able to leave.

    The Iraqis face being ostracized for their ISIS associations or sent to detention camps if they return to Iraq, which has been executing people accused of being ISIS members in what watchdogs and journalists have called sham trials. The Syrians may not have homes to go back to.

    And the roughly 10,000 foreigners from at least 50 other countries are largely unwanted at home.

    The Kurdish authorities overseeing the camp have pleaded for the non-Syrians to be allowed to return to their own countries, saying they are not equipped to detain them indefinitely. But only a few countries, including Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, have repatriated their citizens on a large scale, with the occasional exception of a few young children whom Western governments have agreed to take back.

    “They’re in no man’s land. They’re in limbo,” said Sara Kayyali, a Syria researcher at Human Rights Watch who visited the camp earlier this year. “They’re stuck in the desert in a camp that’s not equipped for their needs, with children who grew up in the worst possible conditions, only to get to a place where things are, if possible, even worse.”

    Adding to their frustration, the women have little information about where their ISIS fighter husbands are. Authorities at first told them that they would be reunited with their relatives or at least be allowed to speak to them, but little has come of that promise, partly because contact is seen as a security risk.

    “I’m struggling to reconcile the two things, wanting to look at them as displaced people and human,” said Dareen Khalifa, an International Crisis Group analyst who has visited the camp, but some of the women are “very ideological, and the atmosphere is very ripe for all sorts of indoctrination of little kids and of women who just don’t know what’s going to happen to them or their families.”

    The struggles of daily life have not helped.

    The tents were freezing cold in the winter and have been swelteringly hot this summer, with temperatures rising as high as 122 degrees. Much of the water is contaminated with E. coli. Human Rights Watch researchers saw children drinking water from a tank with worms coming out of the spout, according to a report the group released in July, and the skin of many women and children they saw was pocked with sores caused by a parasite.

    Conditions are especially poor in the so-called annex, where those who are neither Syrian nor Iraqi are housed, including more than 7,000 children — about two-thirds of whom are younger than 12 — and 3,000 women.

    Annex residents are not allowed to leave their section without a guard. The authorities have also restricted aid groups’ access to the annex, making it difficult to provide much more than basics like water and food, aid workers said.

    As a result, children in the annex are going without school and other services. There is not even a playground.

    “We fear that the narrative of a radicalized population has played a role in hindering humanitarian access,” said Misty Buswell, a spokeswoman for the International Rescue Committee. “The youngest and most vulnerable are paying the highest price and suffering for the perceived misdeeds of their parents.”

    Aid groups are gradually expanding services to keep up with the camp’s population, which leapt from under 10,000 at the end of 2018, to more than 72,000 as ISIS lost its last territory in March. But donors are wary of supporting a camp perceived to be housing hardened ISIS followers.

    Medical care in the annex is limited to two small clinics, neither of which operates overnight, and women from the annex must clear numerous hurdles to be referred to an outside hospital. Women there regularly give birth in a tent without a doctor or a midwife, aid workers said.

    The number of child deaths — mostly from treatable conditions like severe malnutrition, diarrhea and pneumonia — has nearly tripled since March, Ms. Buswell said. Between December and August, the deaths of 306 children under 5 have been recorded at the camp, she said. Almost a third of them were in the annex, double or sometimes triple the rate of deaths elsewhere in the camp, often because children there cannot get medical care, she said.

    The women’s grievances are on display in the group chat channels where some of them congregate, which simmer with violent videos, sinister rumors and desperation.

    One recurring message in the group-chat app Telegram holds, without evidence, that Kurdish guards are kidnapping children and forcing them to serve in Kurdish militias. Another rumor falsely claims that camp residents’ organs are being sold. Others allege murders, sexual assaults and rapes. Many of the posts are pure ISIS propaganda, including beheading videos and vows to rebuild the so-called caliphate.

    Given that residents are being guarded by the same military force that fought their husbands and sons, the American-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, the tensions may have been inevitable. The families who arrived between December and March were among the most committed of the group’s followers, Ms. Tsurkov said, choosing to leave only as the last shreds of the caliphate were being bombarded.

    Aid workers and researchers said the guards often raid women’s tents at night, confiscating items or relocating families for what they say are security reasons, and fire into the air to keep order. Guards have confiscated women’s cash and valuables, leaving them without money to buy fresh food for their children, according to Human Rights Watch. Women in the annex are not allowed to have cellphones, though some do anyway.

    A spokesman for the camp did not reply to a request for comment for this article. But the camp authorities, as well as some aid workers and researchers, have said extra security measures were warranted by the frequent outbreaks of bullying, harassment and violence.

    The Pentagon report said local forces did not have enough resources to provide more than “minimal security,” allowing extremist ideology to spread unchecked.

    “It’s a cycle of violence,” said Ms. Kayyali, the Human Rights Watch researcher. “ISIS has committed atrocities against the world. Policymakers don’t want to deal with anyone connected to ISIS. Then they’re re-radicalized by mistreatment, and they go back to what they know.”

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/03/world/middleeast/isis-alhol-camp-syria.html
    #réfugiés #asile #migrations #déplacés_internes #IDPs #Syrie #réfugiés_syriens #Etat_islamique #violence #Kurdes #Kurdistan_syrien #radicalisation

    • Dans le nord-est de la Syrie, la mort lente des #prisonniers djihadistes

      « Le Monde » a pu accéder à l’un des centres gérés par les forces kurdes. S’y entassent des centaines de détenus, les derniers irréductibles du « califat » du groupe Etat islamique, souvent blessés ou mourants.

      La mort a une odeur. Le désespoir aussi ; son effluve se mêle à celle de la maladie, de la dysenterie, de la chair humaine que la vie, peu à peu, abandonne. Quand la porte de la cellule réservée aux malades de cette prison pour membres de l’organisation Etat islamique (EI) du nord-est de la Syrie s’ouvre sur d’innombrables détenus en combinaisons orange, entassés les uns sur les autres sur toute la superficie d’une pièce de la taille d’un hangar, c’est bien cette odeur-là qui étreint la poitrine.

      Les responsables de la prison, appartenant aux forces kurdes de sécurité, ne connaissent pas le nombre d’hommes et d’enfants qui gisent là, entre le monde des vivants et celui des morts. « On ne peut pas les compter. Ça change tout le temps. » Certains guérissent et regagnent leurs cellules. D’autres meurent.


      https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2019/10/31/au-nord-est-de-la-syrie-dans-une-prison-de-djihadistes-de-l-ei-tous-les-jour

  • Plusieurs études soulignent la résurgence de Daech en Irak et en Syrie
    https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/220819/plusieurs-etudes-soulignent-la-resurgence-de-daech-en-irak-et-en-syrie

    Quelques mois après l’annonce du retrait américain et la quasi-reconquête de son territoire par Bachar al-Assad, l’État islamique ne contrôle plus une vaste portion de territoire comme auparavant, mais le groupe islamiste multiplie les opérations de guérilla.

    #MOYEN-ORIENT #Etat_islamique,_Syrie,_Irak,_Daech

  • Ces enfants-soldats enrôlés par #Daech appelés « bombes à retardement », je les ai rencontrés | Le Huffington Post

    https://www.huffingtonpost.fr/entry/ces-enfants-soldats-de-daech-appeles-bombes-a-retardement-je-les-ai-r

    Dans l’Irak de l’#Etat_Islamique, l’utilisation des enfants comme boucliers humains et armes de guerre était systématique. “Enfants-soldats”, ou encore “lionceaux du Califat”, leur définition englobe les espions, les kamikazes, les passeurs, les gardes aux postes de contrôle. Malgré la chute de Daech, cette situation perdure parmi les groupes armés qui ont mainmise sur une partie des zones reprises dans la région de Mossoul.

  • Le musée de Cluny a rendu les sommes versées par le groupe Lafarge - Le Quotidien de l’Art
    https://www.lequotidiendelart.com/articles/15699-le-mus%C3%A9e-de-cluny-a-rendu-les-sommes-vers%C3%A9es-par-

    En 2015, l’entreprise Lafarge versait au musée du Moyen Âge-Cluny la somme de 200 000 euros pour la réalisation d’une passerelle de béton au-dessus des vestiges gallo-romains, inaugurée en juillet 2018. Entre temps, en juin 2016, le journal Le Monde révélait le financement par le géant du ciment de groupes armés en Syrie, dont l’#État_islamique, afin de poursuivre en 2013-2014 ses activités dans cette zone de guerre.[...]

    Par ailleurs, « l’un des membres les plus actifs de l’association des Amis du musée de #Cluny (...) n’est autre que Christian Herrault, ex-bras droit du PDG de #Lafarge, directeur général adjoint chargé à l’époque des opérations à l’étranger, dont la #Syrie », révèle l’article, qui suggère qu’« il est vraisemblable que c’est lui qui convainquit son ex-employeur de mécéner la passerelle de béton ».

    #mécénat

  • Pour ses djihadistes et leur famille, la France veut un tribunal pénal international
    https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/200619/pour-ses-djihadistes-et-leur-famille-la-france-veut-un-tribunal-penal-inte

    Après qu’Emmanuel Macron a refusé de rapatrier les familles de djihadistes français de Syrie, le Quai d’Orsay réfléchit à la création d’un tribunal pénal international basé en Irak. Il y a urgence : les Kurdes ont la plus grande difficulté à assurer la garde des détenus djihadistes tandis que la situation sanitaire se dégrade dans les camps où, selon nos informations, sont retenus plus de 300 enfants.

    #Terrorisme #Etat_islamique,_Emmanuel_Macron,_Jean-Yves_Le_Drian,_Florence_Parly,_A_la_Une

  • Douze enfants français orphelins rapatriés de Syrie, neuf autres attendus demain
    https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/100619/douze-enfants-francais-orphelins-rapatries-de-syrie-neuf-autres-attendus-d

    Orphelins âgés de un à six ans pour la plupart, douze enfants français et deux néerlandais, issus de familles de djihadistes, sont rapatriés ce lundi dans l’Hexagone en provenance du Kurdistan syrien. Ils « ont vocation à être placés », nous confie un haut cadre des services de renseignement. Selon nos informations, neuf autres sont attendus demain. Le rapatriement de ces orphelins est le premier signe d’un infléchissement de la position de la France.

    #Terrorisme #Etat_islamique,_Emmanuel_Macron,_Kurdistan

  • Douze enfants français orphelins rapatriés de Syrie
    https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/100619/douze-enfants-francais-orphelins-rapatries-de-syrie

    Orphelins âgés de moins de six ans, douze enfants français et deux néerlandais, issus de familles de djihadistes, en provenance du Kurdistan syrien, sont rapatriés ce lundi dans l’Hexagone. Ils « ont vocation à être placés » nous confie un haut cadre des services de renseignement. Le rapatriement de ces orphelins est le premier signe d’un infléchissement de la position de la France.

    #Terrorisme #Etat_islamique,_Kurdistan,_Emmanuel_Macron

  • ’Walls Often Fail; They Have Unintended Consequences’

    Along the Iraq-Syria border, Iraqi patrol forces have swapped their hard tactical helmets for the warmth of beanie caps. The soldiers look out from their observation towers, across a stretch of desert into Syria.

    From this concrete tower on the border, you can almost see the Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor, where the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has made its final stand. Over there, Syrian Democratic Forces—a Kurdish-led alliance dedicated to rooting out ISIS and backed by the US—have nearly liberated the city and its suburbs, and American troops are beginning a long-awaited drawdown. A plume of gray-white smoke breaches skyward as an artillery strike reaches the villages and towns near Deir ez-Zor. The horizon is a diaphanous blur of dark smoke.

    Between us and Syria is a fence. It is about 43 miles long, and a guard tower is located every few hundred feet, manned by squadrons from the Iraqi border security forces. The roughly 10-foot-tall chain-link barrier bucks and rattles in the wind. Barbed wire unspools along the top, and about 20 feet beyond the fence, on the Syrian side, there’s a ditch to stop explosive-laden ISIS vehicles that might charge the border. Beyond the ditch is a desiccated stretch of desert now mostly cleared of booby traps.

    The fence divides two villages, both called #Baghouz. The residents of Syrian Baghouz and Iraqi Baghouz once traveled freely between the towns, visiting with family and friends in a place where international borders are as hazy as the smoke between them. “It was normal for us to go to Syrian Baghouz,” says Alaa Husain, an Iraqi shepherd who has lived in this hamlet for 28 years.


    https://www.wired.com/story/the-wall-journey-across-divide-iraq-syria
    #murs #barrières_frontalières #frontières #Irak #Syrie #ISIS #EI #Etat_islamique

  • #Niger, part 3 : Guns won’t win the war

    After an ambush killed four US special forces and five local soldiers in #Tongo_Tongo, a village in the northern part of the #Tillabéri region close to Niger’s border with Mali, Boubacar Diallo’s phone rang constantly.

    That was back in October 2017. Journalists from around the world were suddenly hunting for information on Aboubacar ‘petit’ Chapori, a lieutenant of #Islamic_State_in_the_Greater_Sahara, or #ISGS – the jihadist group that claimed the attack.

    Diallo, an activist who had been representing Fulani herders in peace negotiations with Tuareg rivals, had met Chapori years earlier. He was surprised by his rapid – and violent – ascent.

    But he was also concerned. While it was good that the brewing crisis in the remote Niger-Mali borderlands was receiving some belated attention, Diallo worried that the narrow focus on the jihadist threat – on presumed ISGS leaders Chapori, Dondou Cheffou, and Adnan Abou Walid Al Sahrawi – risked obscuring the real picture.

    Those concerns only grew later in 2017 when the G5 Sahel joint force was launched – the biggest military initiative to tackle jihadist violence in the region, building on France’s existing Operation Barkhane.

    Diallo argues that the military push by France and others is misconceived and “fanning the flames of conflict”. And he says the refusal to hold talks with powerful Tuareg militants in #Mali such as Iyad Ag Ghaly – leader of al-Qaeda-linked JNIM, or the Group for the support of Islam and Muslims – is bad news for the future of the region.

    Dialogue and development

    Niger Defence Minister Kalla Moutari dismissed criticism over the G5 Sahel joint force, speaking from his office in Niamey, in a street protected by police checkpoints and tyre killer barriers.

    More than $470 million has been pledged by global donors to the project, which was sponsored by France with the idea of coordinating the military efforts of Mauritania, Mali, #Burkina_Faso, Niger, and Chad to fight insurgencies in these countries.

    “It’s an enormous task to make armies collaborate, but we’re already conducting proximity patrols in border areas, out of the spotlight, and this works,” he said.

    According to Moutari, however, development opportunities are also paramount if a solution to the conflict is to be found.

    "Five years from now, the whole situation in the Sahel could explode.”

    He recalled a meeting in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, in early December 2018, during which donors pledged $2.7 billion for programmes in the Sahel. “We won’t win the war with guns, but by triggering dynamics of development in these areas,” the minister said.

    A European security advisor, who preferred not to be identified, was far more pessimistic as he sat in one of the many Lebanese cafés in the Plateau, the central Niamey district where Western diplomats cross paths with humanitarian workers and the city’s upper-class youth.

    The advisor, who had trained soldiers in Mali and Burkina Faso, said that too much emphasis remained on a military solution that he believed could not succeed.

    “In Niger, when new attacks happen at one border, they are suddenly labelled as jihadists and a military operation is launched; then another front opens right after… but we can’t militarise all borders,” the advisor said. If the approach doesn’t change, he warned, “in five years from now, the whole situation in the Sahel could explode.”

    Tensions over land

    In his home in east Niamey, Diallo came to a similar conclusion: labelling all these groups “jihadists” and targeting them militarily will only create further problems.

    To explain why, he related the long history of conflict between Tuaregs and Fulanis over grazing lands in north Tillabéri.

    The origins of the conflict, he said, date back to the 1970s, when Fulani cattle herders from Niger settled in the region of Gao, in Mali, in search of greener pastures. Tensions over access to land and wells escalated with the first Tuareg rebellions that hit both Mali and Niger in the early 1990s and led to an increased supply of weapons to Tuareg groups.

    While peace agreements were struck in both countries, Diallo recalled that 55 Fulani were killed by armed Tuareg men in one incident in Gao in 1997.

    After the massacre, some Fulani herders escaped back to Niger and created the North Tillabéri Self-Defence Militia, sparking a cycle of retaliation. More than 100 people were killed in fighting before reconciliation was finally agreed upon in 2011. The Nigerien Fulani militia dissolved and handed its arms to the Nigerien state.

    “But despite promises, our government abandoned these ex-fighters in the bush with nothing to do,” Diallo said. “In the meantime, a new Tuareg rebellion started in Mali in 2012.”

    The Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (known as MUJAO, or MOJWA in English), created by Arab leaders in Mali in 2011, exploited the situation to recruit among Fulanis, who were afraid of violence by Tuareg militias. ISGS split from MUJAO in 2015, pledging obedience to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

    Diallo believes dialogue is the only way out of today’s situation, which is deeply rooted in these old intercommunal rivalries. “I once met those Fulani fighters who are the manpower of MUJAO and now of ISGS, and they didn’t consider themselves as jihadists,” he said. “They just want to have money and weapons to defend themselves.”

    He said the French forces use Tuareg militias, such as GATIA (the Imghad Tuareg Self-Defence Group and Allies) and the MSA (Movement for the Salvation of Azawad), to patrol borderlands between Mali and Niger. Fulani civilians were killed during some of these patrols in Niger in mid-2018, further exacerbating tensions.

    According to a UN report, these militias were excluded from an end of the year operation by French forces in Niger, following government requests.

    ‘An opportunistic terrorism’

    If some kind of reconciliation is the only way out of the conflict in Tillabéri and the neighbouring Nigerien region of Tahoua, Mahamadou Abou Tarka is likely to be at the heart of the Niger government’s efforts.

    The Tuareg general leads the High Authority for the Consolidation of Peace, a government agency launched following the successive Tuareg rebellions, to ensure peace deals are respected.

    “In north Tillabéri, jihadists hijacked Fulani’s grievances,” Abou Tarka, who reports directly to the president, said in his office in central Niamey. “It’s an opportunistic terrorism, and we need to find proper answers.”

    The Authority – whose main financial contributor is the European Union, followed by France, Switzerland, and Denmark – has launched projects to support some of the communities suffering from violence near the Malian border. “Water points, nurseries, and state services helped us establish a dialogue with local chiefs,” the general explained.

    “Fighters with jihadist groups are ready to give up their arms if incursions by Tuareg militias stop, emergency state measures are retired, and some of their colleagues released from prison.”

    Abou Tarka hailed the return to Niger from Mali of 200 Fulani fighters recruited by ISGS in autumn 2018 as the Authority’s biggest success to date. He said increased patrolling on the Malian side of the border by French forces and the Tuareg militias - Gatia and MSA - had put pressure on the Islamist fighters to return home and defect.

    The general said he doesn’t want to replicate the programme for former Boko Haram fighters from the separate insurgency that has long spread across Niger’s southern border with Nigeria – 230 of them are still in a rehabilitation centre in the Diffa region more than two years after the first defected.

    “In Tillabéri, I want things to be faster, so that ex-fighters reintegrate in the local community,” he said.

    Because these jihadist fighters didn’t attack civilians in Niger – only security forces – it makes the process easier than for ex-Boko Haram, who are often rejected by their own communities, the general said. The Fulani ex-fighters are often sent back to their villages, which are governed by local chiefs in regular contact with the Authority, he added.

    A member of the Nigerien security forces who was not authorised to speak publicly and requested anonymity said that since November 2018 some of these Fulani defectors have been assisting Nigerien security forces with border patrols.

    However, Amadou Moussa, another Fulani activist, dismissed Abou Tarka’s claims that hundreds of fighters had defected. Peace terms put forward by Fulani militants in northern Tillabéri hadn’t even been considered by the government, he said.

    “Fighters with jihadist groups are ready to give up their arms if incursions by Tuareg militias stop, emergency state measures are retired, and some of their colleagues released from prison,” Moussa said. The government, he added, has shown no real will to negotiate.

    Meanwhile, the unrest continues to spread, with the French embassy releasing new warnings for travellers in the border areas near Burkina Faso, where the first movements of Burkinabe refugees and displaced people were registered in March.

    https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/special-report/2019/04/15/niger-part-3-guns-conflict-militancy
    #foulani #ISIS #Etat_islamique #EI #Tuareg #terrorisme #anti-terrorisme #terres #conflit #armes #armement #North_Tillabéri_Self-Defence_Militia #MUJAO #MOJWA #Movement_for_Oneness_and_Jihad_in_West_Africa #Mauritanie #Tchad

    @reka : pour mettre à jour la carte sur l’Etat islamique ?
    https://visionscarto.net/djihadisme-international

  • #Shamima_Begum: Isis Briton faces move to revoke citizenship

    The Guardian understands the home secretary thinks section 40(2) of the British Nationality Act 1981 gives him the power to strip Begum of her UK citizenship.

    He wrote to her family informing them he had made such an order, believing the fact her parents are of Bangladeshi heritage means she can apply for citizenship of that country – though Begum says she has never visited it.

    This is crucial because, while the law bars him from making a person stateless, it allows him to remove citizenship if he can show Begum has behaved “in a manner which is seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of the UK” and he has “reasonable grounds for believing that the person is able, under the law of a country or territory outside the UK, to become a national of such a country or territory”.


    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/19/isis-briton-shamima-begum-to-have-uk-citizenship-revoked?CMP=Share_Andr
    #citoyenneté #UK #Angleterre #apatridie #révocation #terrorisme #ISIS #EI #Etat_islamique #nationalité #déchéance_de_nationalité

    • What do we know about citizenship stripping?

      The Bureau began investigating the Government’s powers to deprive individuals of their British citizenship two years ago.

      The project has involved countless hours spent in court, deep and detailed use of the freedom of information act and the input of respected academics, lawyers and politicians.

      The Counter-Terrorism Bill was presented to Parliament two weeks ago. New powers to remove passports from terror suspects and temporarily exclude suspected jihadists from the UK have focused attention on the Government’s citizenship stripping powers, which have been part of the government’s counter-terrorism tools for nearly a decade.

      A deprivation order can be made where the home secretary believes that it is ‘not conducive’ to the public good for the individual to remain in the country, or where citizenship is believed to have been obtained fraudulently. The Bureau focuses on cases based on ‘not conducive’ grounds, which are related to national security and suspected terrorist activity.

      Until earlier this year, the Government was only able to remove the citizenship of British nationals where doing so wouldn’t leave them stateless. However, in July an amendment to the British Nationality Act (BNA) came into force and powers to deprive a person of their citizenship were expanded. Foreign-born, naturalised individuals can now be stripped of their UK citizenship on national security grounds even if it renders them stateless, a practice described by a former director of public prosecutions as being “beloved of the world’s worst regimes during the 20th century”.

      So what do we know about how these powers are used?
      The numbers

      53 people have been stripped of their British citizenship since 2002 – this includes both people who were considered to have gained their citizenship fraudulently, as well as those who have lost it for national security reasons.
      48 of these were under the Coalition government.
      Since 2006, 27 people have lost their citizenship on national security grounds; 24 of these were under the current Coalition government.
      In 2013, home secretary Theresa May stripped 20 individuals of their British citizenship – more than in all the preceding years of the Coalition put together.
      The Bureau has identified 18 of the 53 cases, 17 of which were deprived of their citizenship on national security grounds.
      15 of the individuals identified by the Bureau who lost their citizenship on national security grounds were abroad at the time of the deprivation order.
      At least five of those who have lost their nationality were born in the UK.
      The previous Labour government used deprivation orders just five times in four years.
      Hilal Al-Jedda was the first individual whose deprivation of citizenship case made it to the Supreme Court. The home secretary lost her appeal as the Supreme Court justices unanimously ruled her deprivation order against Al-Jedda had made him illegally stateless. Instead of returning his passport, just three weeks later the home secretary issued a second deprivation order against him.
      This was one of two deprivation of citizenship cases to have made it to the Supreme Court, Britain’s uppermost court, to date.
      In November 2014 deprivation of citizenship case number two reached the Supreme Court, with the appellant, Minh Pham, also arguing that the deprivation order against him made him unlawfully stateless.
      Two of those stripped of their British citizenship by Theresa May in 2010, London-born Mohamed Sakr and his childhood friend Bilal al Berjawi, were later killed by US drone strikes in Somalia.
      One of the individuals identified by the Bureau, Mahdi Hashi, was the subject of rendition to the US, where he was held in secret for over a month and now faces terror charges.
      Only one individual, Iraqi-born Hilal al-Jedda, is currently known to have been stripped of his British citizenship twice.
      Number of Bureau Q&As on deprivation of citizenship: one.

      https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2014-12-10/what-do-we-know-about-citizenship-stripping
      #statistiques #chiffres

    • ‘My British citizenship was everything to me. Now I am nobody’ – A former British citizen speaks out

      When a British man took a holiday to visit relatives in Pakistan in January 2012 he had every reason to look forward to returning home. He worked full time at the mobile phone shop beneath his flat in southeast London, he had a busy social life and preparations for his family’s visit to the UK were in full flow.

      Two years later, the man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is stranded in Pakistan, and claims he is under threat from the Taliban and unable to find work to support his wife and three children.

      He is one of 27 British nationals since 2006 who have had their citizenship removed under secretive government orders on the grounds that their presence in the UK is ‘not conducive to the public good’. He is the first to speak publicly about his ordeal.

      ‘My British citizenship was everything to me. I could travel around the world freely,’ he told the Bureau. ‘That was my identity but now I am nobody.’

      Under current legislation, the Home Secretary, Theresa May, has the power to strip dual nationals of their British citizenship if she deems their presence in the UK ‘not conducive to the public good’, or if their nationality was gained on fraudulent grounds. May recently won a Commons vote paving the way to allow her to strip the citizenship of foreign-born or naturalised UK nationals even if it rendered them stateless. Amendments to the Immigration Bill – including the controversial Article 60 concerning statelessness – are being tabled this week in the House of Lords.

      A Bureau investigation in December 2013 revealed 20 British nationals were stripped of their citizenship last year – more than in all previous years under the Coalition combined. Twelve of these were later revealed to have been cases where an individual had gained citizenship by fraud; the remaining eight are on ‘conducive’ grounds.

      Since 2006 when the current laws entered force, 27 orders have been made on ‘conducive’ grounds, issued in practice against individuals suspected of involvement in extremist activities. The Home Secretary often makes her decision when the individual concerned is outside the UK, and, in at least one case, deliberately waited for a British national to go on holiday before revoking his citizenship.

      The only legal recourse to these decisions, which are taken without judicial approval, is for the individual affected to submit a formal appeal to the Special Immigration and Asylum Committee (Siac), where evidence can be heard in secret, within 28 days of the order being given. These appeals can take years to conclude, leaving individuals – the vast majority of whom have never been charged with an offence – stranded abroad.

      The process has been compared to ‘medieval exile’ by leading human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce.

      The man, who is referred to in court documents as E2, was born in Afghanistan and still holds Afghan citizenship. He claimed asylum in Britain in 1999 after fleeing the Taliban regime in Kabul, and was granted indefinite leave to remain. In 2009 he became a British citizen.

      While his immediate family remained in Pakistan, E2 came to London, where he worked and integrated in the local community. Although this interview was conducted in his native Pashto, E2 can speak some English.

      ‘I worked and I learned English,’ he says. ‘Even now I see myself as a British. If anyone asks me, I tell them that I am British.’

      But, as of March 28 2012, E2 is no longer a British citizen. After E2 boarded a flight to Kabul in January 2012 to visit relatives in Afghanistan and his wife and children in Pakistan, a letter containing May’s signature was sent to his southeast London address from the UK Border Agency, stating he had been deprived of his British nationality. In evidence that remains secret even from him, E2 was accused of involvement in ‘Islamist extremism’ and deemed a national security threat. He denies the allegation and says he has never participated in extremist activity.

      In the letter the Home Secretary wrote: ‘My decision has been taken in part reliance on information which, in my opinion should not be made public in the interest of national security and because disclosure would be contrary to the public interest.’

      E2 says he had no way of knowing his citizenship had been removed and that the first he heard of the decision was when he was met by a British embassy official at Dubai airport on May 25 2012, when he was on his way back to the UK and well after his appeal window shut.

      E2’s lawyer appealed anyway, and submitted to Siac that: ‘Save for written correspondence to the Appellant’s last known address in the UK expressly stating that he has 28 days to appeal, i.e. acknowledging that he was not in the UK, no steps were taken to contact the Appellant by email, telephone or in person until an official from the British Embassy met him at Dubai airport and took his passport from him.’

      The submission noted that ‘it is clear from this [decision] that the [Home Secretary] knew that the Appellant [E2] is out of the country as the deadline referred to is 28 days.’

      The Home Office disputed that E2 was unaware of the order against him, and a judge ruled that he was satisfied ‘on the balance of probabilities’ that E2 did know about the removal of his citizenship. ‘[W]e do not believe his statement,’ the judge added.

      His British passport was confiscated and, after spending 18 hours in an airport cell, E2 was made to board a flight back to Kabul. He has remained in Afghanistan and Pakistan ever since. It is from Pakistan that he agreed to speak to the Bureau last month.

      Daniel Carey, who is representing E2 in a fresh appeal to Siac, says: ‘The practice of waiting until a citizen leaves the UK before depriving them of citizenship, and then opposing them when they appeal out of time, is an intentional attack on citizens’ due process rights.

      ‘By bending an unfair system to its will the government is getting worryingly close to a system of citizenship by executive fiat.’

      While rules governing hearings at Siac mean some evidence against E2 cannot be disclosed on grounds of national security, the Bureau has been able to corroborate key aspects of E2’s version of events, including his best guess as to why his citizenship was stripped. His story revolves around an incident that occurred thousands of miles away from his London home and several years before he saw it for the last time.

      In November 2008, Afghan national Zia ul-Haq Ahadi was kidnapped as he left the home of his infirmed mother in Peshawar, Pakistan. The event might have gone unnoticed were he not the brother of Afghanistan’s then finance minister and former presidential hopeful Anwar ul-Haq Ahadi. Anwar intervened, and after 13 months of tortuous negotiations with the kidnappers, a ransom was paid and Zia was released. E2 claims to have been the man who drove a key negotiator to Zia’s kidnappers.

      While the Bureau has not yet been able to confirm whether E2 had played the role he claimed in the release, a source with detailed knowledge of the kidnapping told the Bureau he was ‘willing to give [E2] some benefit of the doubt because there are elements of truth [in his version of events].’

      The source confirmed a man matching E2’s description was involved in the negotiations.

      ‘We didn’t know officially who the group was, but they were the kidnappers. I didn’t know whether they were with the Pakistani or Afghan Taliban,’ E2 says. ‘After releasing the abducted person I came back to London.’

      E2 guesses – since not even his lawyers have seen specific evidence against him – that it was this activity that brought him to the attention of British intelligence services. After this point, he was repeatedly stopped as he travelled to and from London and Afghanistan and Pakistan to visit relatives four times between the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2012.

      ‘MI5 questioned me for three or four hours each time I came to London at Heathrow airport,’ he says. ‘They said people like me [Pashtun Afghans] go to Waziristan and from there you start fighting with British and US soldiers.

      ‘The very last time [I was questioned] was years after the [kidnapping]. I was asked to a Metropolitan Police station in London. They showed me pictures of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar [former Afghan prime minister and militant with links to the Pakistani Taliban (TTP)] along with other leaders and Taliban commanders. They said: ‘You know these guys.’

      He claims he was shown a photo of his wife – a highly intrusive action in conservative Pashtun culture – as well as one of someone he was told was Sirajuddin Haqqani, commander of the Haqqani Network, one of the most lethal TTP-allied groups.

      ‘They said I met him, that I was talking to him and I have connections with him. I said that’s wrong. I told [my interrogator] that you can call [Anwar al-Ahady] and he will explain that he sent me to Waziristan and that I found and released his brother,’ E2 says.

      ‘I don’t know Sirajuddin Haqqani and I didn’t meet him.’

      The Haqqani Network, which operates in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas and across the border in Afghanistan, was designated as a terrorist organisation by the United States in September 2012. It has claimed responsibility for a score of attacks against Afghan, Pakistani and NATO security forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The UN accuses Sirajuddin Haqqani of being ‘actively involved in the planning and execution of attacks targeting International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF), Afghan officials and civilians.’

      E2 says he has no idea whether Haqqani was involved in Zia’s kidnapping, but he believes the security services may have started investigating him when he met the imam of a mosque he visited in North Waziristan.

      ‘The imam had lunch with us and he was with me while I was waiting for my father-in-law. I didn’t take his number but I gave him mine. That imam often called me on my shop’s BT telephone line [in London]. These calls put me in trouble,’ he says.

      If E2’s version of events is accurate, it would mean he gained his British citizenship while he was negotiating Zia’s release. He lost it less than three years later.

      The Home Office offered a boilerplate response to the Bureau’s questions: ‘The Home Secretary will remove British citizenship from individuals where she feels it is conducive to the public good to do so.’

      When challenged specifically on allegations made by E2, the spokesman said the Home Office does not comment on individual cases.

      E2 says he now lives in fear for his safety in Pakistan. Since word has spread that he lost his UK nationality, locals assume he is guilty, which he says puts him at risk of attack from the Pakistani security forces. In addition, he says his family has received threats from the Taliban for his interaction with MI5.

      ‘People back in Afghanistan know that my British passport was revoked because I was accused of working with the Taliban. I can’t visit my relatives and I am an easy target to others,’ he said. ‘Without the British passport here, whether [by] the government or Taliban, we can be executed easily.’

      E2 is not alone in fearing for his life after being exiled from Britain. Two British nationals stripped of their citizenship in 2010 were killed a year later by a US drone strike in Somalia. A third Briton, Mahdi Hashi, disappeared from east Africa after having his citizenship revoked in June 2012 only to appear in a US court after being rendered from Djibouti.

      E2 says if the government was so certain of his involvement in extremism they should allow him to stand trial in a criminal court.

      ‘When somebody’s citizenship is revoked if he is criminal he should be put in jail, otherwise he should be free and should have his passport returned,’ he says.

      ‘My message [to Theresa May] is that my citizenship was revoked illegally. It’s wrong that only by sending a letter that your citizenship is revoked. What kind of democracy is it that?’

      https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2014-03-17/my-british-citizenship-was-everything-to-me-now-i-am-nobody-a