Category Archives: Human Rights Violations United Nations

The Road of Terror Leading into Mosul, Iraq

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Matt Cetti-Roberts photo

On the Road to Mosul With Iraq’s Golden Brigade

Elite Iraqi troops retake town of Bartella

by MATT CETTI-ROBERTS

WiB: A soldier from the Iraqi Army’s Golden Brigade ushers a party of journalists down a dusty side street in the town of Bartella and points to a flattened pile of concrete. The rubble is all that’s left of a building after a coalition air strike.

When the bomb hit, at least one Islamic State militant was hiding in the structure. We know this because a large blackened piece of a foot lies baking in the midday sun.

It has been sitting there for at least two days. The smell is ripe.

One member of our group, a translator called Ali, starts happily taking pictures with his iPhone. Six months ago, he barely escaped Mosul with his wife and children.

The journey involved sneaking through Islamic State lines and luckily finding a safe path through the minefields that surround Iraq’s second largest city. Ali still has relatives living in Mosul under the brutal terrorist group’s rule.

For him, this is personal.

Golden Brigade soldiers travel through Bartella on the back of an armored Humvee. Matt Cetti-Roberts photo

On Oct. 21, 2016, the Golden Brigade, one of Iraq’s elite special operations units, recaptured Bartella. Islamic State fighters took over the town as they pushed into the Nineveh plains in August 2014. At that time, approximately 30,000 Iraqis lived here, mainly Christians and Assyrians.

Situated on the main highway between Erbil and Mosul, Bartella is a strategic point. On Oct. 17, 2016, the Iraqi Army’s started down the route as part of a multi-pronged push towards Islamic State’s de facto capital in the country.

This marking on the door of a former Islamic State headquarters warns troops there is an improvised bomb inside. Matt Cetti-Roberts photo

The Golden Brigade found that two years of Islamic State occupation were not kind to Bartella. Many streets are full of rubble and overgrown weeds. We see the occasional burned-out shop and a lot of militant graffiti.

Right now, the town is still a front line. Before residents can return and rebuild, someone will have to remove hundreds of improvised explosive devices and other dangerous ordnance the extremists left behind.

Iraqi soldiers put up this Christian cross after retaking Bartella, a now routine practice after liberating Christian and Assyrian towns. Matt Cetti-Roberts photo

Beyond Bartella, in other parts of the Nineveh Governorate, the Iraqi Army and Kurdish Peshmerga have gradually retaken more ground from Islamic State. Christian and Assyrian militias contributed to some of the operations.

Many of these local troops escaped just before the extremists arrived. Some fled Mosul after militants demanded non-Muslims convert to Islam, pay a tax or suffer execution.

This stencil says the house is property of Islamic State. Below is the Arabic letter “nun,” which militants used to mark Christian or Assyrian homes. Matt Cetti-Roberts photo

After seizing Bartella and other towns, Islamic State disparagingly branded non-Muslim homes with the Arabic letter nun. In some passages, the Koran refers to Christians as Nasarah, or inhabitants of Nazareth, the birthplace of Jesus Christ. The symbol is reminiscent of the Nazis marking Jews with a yellow Star of David.

Golden Brigade soldiers relax in the shade. Matt Cetti-Roberts photo

During War Is Boring’s visit to Bartella, some of the Golden Brigade troops were resting, while others were still clearing portions of the town. Soldiers mentioned a militant appeared that morning, shot at their comrades and then disappeared.

An Iraqi Army engineer deals with a discarded suicide belt. Matt Cetti-Roberts photo

Islamic State hid improvised bombs throughout Bartella. Trying to advance quickly toward Mosul, the Iraqi Army couldn’t stop to disarm all of the devices. Someone else will have to clear the rest out later.

Iraqi Army engineers disarmed this improvised explosive device inside Bartella’s Mart Shmony Church. Matt Cetti-Roberts photo

Although rigged with explosives, Islamic State left the Mart Shmony Church standing as the Golden Brigade approached Bartella. Despite the well-publicized demolition of churches in Mosul, the terrorists used this Christian house of worship for their own purposes.

A list of banal tasks for ISIS fighters on a whiteboard in the Mart Shmony Church. Matt Cetti-Roberts photo

Empty ammunition boxes, stripper clips and bandoliers lie on a floor of the Mart Shmony Church. Matt Cetti-Roberts photo

Militants drew this flag on a wall of the Mart Shmony Church. After Iraqi troops liberated the town, someone came hit it with a boot as an insult. Matt Cetti-Roberts photo

A Christian card saying “Do not be afraid, I am with you” lies on a tiled floor outside the ransacked library. Matt Cetti-Roberts photo

A Golden Brigade stands near a defaced statue in Bartella. Matt Cetti-Roberts photo

Islamic State fighters blotted out the faces on this Christian mural. Matt Cetti-Roberts photo

While in control of Bartella, Islamic State fighters defaced numerous statues, murals and other depictions of non-Muslim figures. The extremist group claimed these icons were an affront to their puritanical, exclusionary beliefs.

One of Islamic State’s home-built rocket sits abandoned in a graveyard attached to the Mart Shmony Church. Matt Cetti-Roberts photo

The militants also smashed Christian gravestones and vandalized parts of the church.

A Christian flag hangs in the chapel of the Mart Shmony Church on the day that high ranking priests were due to arrive for the first time since August 2014. Matt Cetti-Roberts photo

Empty shell cases and machine gun belt links litter the ground inside Bartella. Matt Cetti-Roberts

The Iraqi Army’s fight for the town and the surrounding area was not easy. Although we don’t have official casualty figures, Golden Brigade soldiers mentioned comrades who died in the battle.

This TOS-1 thermobaric rocket launcher in Bartella is ready to support the Iraqi Army push on toward Mosul. Matt Cetti-Roberts

Beheaded by extremists, this statue depicting the Virgin Mary perches on a dirt pile where it was placed by Iraqi soldiers. Matt Cetti-Roberts

The deserted main street of what was once Bartella’s bazaar. Matt Cetti-Roberts

It’s hard to work out how much damage militants wrought on Bartella before the Iraqi Army arrived to liberate the town. In spite of the fighting, most houses seem intact.

The resting place of an Islamic State fighter. His severed foot was out in the street. Matt Cetti-Roberts

Still, when we visited Bartella, the aftermath of battle was obvious. Pieces of clothing poked from under nearby rubble.

The remains of a body is in there somewhere, but no one is in a hurry to bury it. For now, the remains will mark the spot where the coalition hit its mark.

The smell in certain parts of town hints at more corpses hidden in the debris. When the front line has moved far enough beyond Bartella, troops will clear the bodies and bombs Islamic State abandoned in the city.

Only then will the town be ready for its displaced residents to return and begin again.

Defused improvised explosive devices sit by the side of highway from Erbil to Mosul. Matt Cetti-Roberts
 ****
A B-52 bomber refuels during a mission over Mosul in October 2016. U.S. Air Force photo

U.S. Military Blasts Islamic State’s Tunnels in Mosul

But getting at underground networks from the air is difficult

by JOSEPH TREVITHICK

WiB: On Oct. 17, 2016, Iraqi troops and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters — backed by American and other foreign forces — began to liberate Mosul and its surrounding environs from Islamic State. The offensive quickly uncovered extensive terrorist tunnels in the city.

The Pentagon responded by blasting the underground network for the sky.

“Many of you have seen and noted the enemy’s developed extensive tunneling networks in some of the areas that they use for tactical movement and to hide weapons,” U.S. Air Force Col. John Dorrian, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters on Oct. 28, 2016.

In total, American strikes destroyed “46 of those tunnels since the liberation battle for Mosul started on October 17th, reducing the threat from a favored enemy tactic.”

However, despite decades of experience, destroying below-ground linkages from the air is still difficult, especially in areas full of innocent civilians. According to the U.S. Air Force, American planes didn’t drop any bunker busting bombs during these missions.

“The BLU-118, BLU-121 or BLU-122 warheads or the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator have not been used in the Liberation of Mosul campaign,” Kiley Dougherty, the head of media operations for U.S. Air Force’s Central Command told War Is Boring by email. “ In fact, these weapons have not been used at all in support of Operation Inherent Resolve.”

Inherent Resolve is the Pentagon’s nickname for the campaign against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

The Mosul operation is not the Pentagon’s first experience with tunnels. During the Vietnam War, the Viet Cong insurgents famously dug wide-ranging subterranean mazes throughout South Vietnam.

In the 1970s, North Korea dug at least four large tunnels under the Demilitarized Zone to sneak spies and commandos into the South. The top American command on the peninsula created a “tunnel neutralization team” to assess and seal the passages.

Underground bunkers and cave complexes were features in the first Gulf War in 1991, the intervention in Afghanistan in 2001 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The Pentagon has taken note of Egyptian and Israeli efforts to stop Palestinian and other militants from digging under their borders.

In December 2001, the American commandos famously tried to flush out Osama Bin Laden and his cohorts from the Tora Bora caves near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Massive B-52 bombers pounded the mountains, but could only keep the terrorists hunkered down.

“Entire lines of defense were immolated by cascades of precisely directed 2,000-lb. bombs,” U.S. Army historians wrote in 2005. “But the depths of the caves and extremes of relief limited their effectiveness considerably.”

Air Force MC-130 special operations transports dropped 15,000 pound “Daisy Cutter” bombs, but couldn’t uproot the militants. The Al Qaeda leader eventually slipped across the border to settle near the Pakistani city of Abbottabad.

The last Daisy Cutter bomb explodes on a training range in Utah in 2008. U.S. Air Force photo

Within two years, the Pentagon had flown similar missions in Iraq. Despite the bombardment, on Dec. 13, 2003, a team of regular and elite U.S. troops found long-time Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein very much alive in a makeshift bunker outside the city of Tikrit.

By November 2015, tunnels again appeared as a factor in the fight against Islamic State. Faced with deadly American air strikes, the terrorists had literally gone to ground.

“In November 2015, when Kurdish forces entered Sinjar, Iraq, … they found that ISIL had adapted to air attacks by building a network of tunnels that connected houses,” U.S. Army analysts explained in a February 2016 report, using a common acronym for Islamic State.

“The sandbagged tunnels, about the height of a person, contained ammunition, prescription drugs, blankets, electrical wires leading to fans and lights, and other supplies.”

War Is Boring obtained this and other Army reviews of enemy tactics through the Freedom of Information Act.

But by the time the terrorist tunnels became an issue in Iraq and Syria, the U.S. Air Force had replaced the Vietnam-era Daisy Cutters. Instead, American crews had access to a number of newer specialized bombs.

Shortly after the Tora Bora debacle, American fliers received the first BLU-118s. Pentagon weaponeers cooked up the 2,000 pound thermobaric bombs specifically to blow up caves and tunnels.

Thermobaric warheads create massive, fireball-like explosions. If you can get one into a bunker or other confined space, the blast will bounce off the walls for an even more devastating effect.

In 2005, the Pentagon bought improved BLU-121s with a new delay fuze. This meant the bomb could bury itself deeper inside a tunnel before going off, causing maximum damage. Crews can fit both weapons with laser guidance kits for precise attacks.

And then there are bunker-busters such as the BLU-122 and GBU-57. These bombs have specialized features to break through reinforced sites, deep underground. Only the B-52 and B-2 bombers can carry the 30,000 pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator.

Sailors on the carrier USS ‘Dwight D. Eisenhower’ prepare bombs for strikes on Islamic State in October 2016. U.S. Navy photo

All of these weapons are great for attacking remote caves or isolated, underground military bases. They’re not necessarily good for attacking small tunnels in urban areas.

Even out in the open, fliers generally need powerful sensors or help from troops on the ground just to spot subterranean sites from the air. Though laser and GPS-guided bombs can strike within feet of a specific target, tunnel entrances might not be much larger than a person’s shoulders.

On top of that, in a densely packed city, any errant bombs have a greater chance of hitting unintended targets. A tunnel network under a house or apartment block presents a particularly problematic situation.

Add a thermobaric warhead to the mix and the results could be even more disastrous. There are reports Islamic State turned to human shields to ward off air strikes and Baghdad’s own thermobaric rocket launchers and artillery.

“We have seen many instances in the past where Daesh have used human shields in order to try and facilitate their escape,” Dorrian noted in his press conference. “Right now they’re using human shields to make the Iraqi Security Forces’ advance more difficult.”

The Pentagon would have run into similar hurdles when hitting the terror group’s tunnels in Mosul. By using conventional bombs, American crews might have had a harder time hitting the mark, but could better avoid unnecessary collateral damage. At the same time, this dynamic no doubt serves to reinforce the value of tunnel networks to the Islamic State.

And any assault on the group’s de facto Syrian capital in Raqqa will likely turn up more tunnels.

“Over time, adversaries of the U.S. and its allies have repeatedly shown that they are extremely adept at their use of this type of environment,” U.S. Army experts declared in a review of Hezbollah’s use of tunnels during Israel’s incursion into Lebanon in 2006.

“[This] consequently presents a situation in which, despite the U.S.’s technological superiorities, a threat could potentially gain an advantage over the U.S. and achieve victory.”

Thankfully, so far, Islamic State’s tunnels have only delayed Baghdad’s troops and their American partners.

    • Fear of Russia, Tiny Estonia Trains Citizens for War Skills

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    In part from Free Beacon:

    The service, known in Estonia as Kaitsepolitseiamet or “Kapo,” produces an Annual Review summarizing trends and internal threats to Estonia. The 2015 Annual Review, released last week, includes sections on cyber security, preventing international terrorism, and fighting corruption, among other issues.

    However, the first page of the report makes it clear what the service considers the top threat to Estonian and European security: “In the context of Russian aggression, the security threat arising from a weakening of the European Union is many times greater than that arising from the refugees settling in Estonia.”

    “This is the most important point,” Martin Arpo, Kapo’s deputy director general, told the Washington Free Beacon. “For Estonia, the report is a reminder: let’s think about real security threats, and not imaginary ones. The migration crisis is bringing focus away from real threats not only in Estonia but in Europe, as well. The only hope for Putin to fulfill his ambitions is that Europe and NATO are split or have controversies inside. The refugee crisis is really the only serious topic that can bring these controversies.”

    The first page of the report references the Gerasimov Doctrine, a vision of war through non-military means published by Russian Chief of General Staff Valeriy Gerasimov in early 2013. More here.

    ****

    Spooked by Russia, Tiny Estonia Trains a Nation of Insurgents

    Members of the Estonian Defense League set off for a patrol competition near the town of Turi in central Estonia. The events, held nearly every weekend, are called war games, but they are not intended to be fun. James Hill for The New York Times

    NYT’s/TURI, Estonia — Her face puffy from lack of sleep, Vivika Barnabas peered down at the springs, rods and other parts of a disassembled assault rifle spread before her.

    At last, midway through one of this country’s peculiar, grueling events known as patrol competitions, she had come upon an easy task.

    Already, she and her three teammates had put out a fire, ridden a horse, identified medicinal herbs from the forest and played hide-and-seek with gun-wielding “enemies” in the woods at night.

    By comparison, this would be easy. She knelt in the crinkling, frost-covered grass of a forest clearing and grabbed at the rifle parts in a flurry of clicks and snaps, soon handing the assembled weapon to a referee.

    A team loaded and removed cartridges from rifle magazines in a timed test. James Hill for The New York Times

    “We just have to stay alive,” Ms. Barnabas said of the main idea behind the Jarva District Patrol Competition, a 24-hour test of the skills useful for partisans, or insurgents, to fight an occupying army, and an improbably popular form of what is called “military sport” in Estonia.

    The competitions, held nearly every weekend, are called war games, but are not intended as fun. The Estonian Defense League, which organizes the events, requires its 25,400 volunteers to turn out occasionally for weekend training sessions that have taken on a serious hue since Russia’s incursions in Ukraine two years ago raised fears of a similar thrust by Moscow into the Baltic States.

    Estonia, a NATO member with a population of 1.3 million people and a standing army of about 6,000, would not stand a chance in a conventional war with Russia. But two armies fighting on an open field is not Estonia’s plan, and was not even before Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, said European members of NATO should not count on American support unless they pay more alliance costs.

    Since the Ukraine war, Estonia has stepped up training for members of the Estonian Defense League, teaching them how to become insurgents, right down to the making of improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.s, the weapons that plagued the American military in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another response to tensions with Russia is the expansion of a program encouraging Estonians to keep firearms in their homes.

    The Jarva competition entailed a 25-mile hike and 21 specific tasks, such as answering questions of local trivia — to sort friend from foe — hiding in a bivouac deep in the woods and correctly identifying types of Russian armored vehicles. On a recent weekend, 16 teams of four people had turned out, despite the bitter, late fall chill. The competition was open to men, women and teenagers.

    Ms. Barnabas and her three teammates had spent the night hiding in a nest lined with pine needles and leaves on the forest floor, while men playing the occupying army stomped around, firing guns in the air and searching for them. Contestants who are found must hand over one of the 12 “life cards” they carry, which detracts from their final score.

    “It’s cold and you lie on the ground, looking up at the stars and hearing shooting and footsteps nearby,” said Ms. Barnabas, a petite woman who is also a coordinator for the league in her day job. She was swathed in a few layers of long underwear and camouflage.

    “It wasn’t so bad because we slept cuddled together,” she said, flirtatiously, of her female team. The footsteps came and went, and the women stayed quiet. “They didn’t find us.”

    A team demonstrated its first-aid skills during the competition. Members bring their rifles and rucksacks packed with camping comfort foods like salami, Snickers bars and Gatorade, as well as first-aid kits.

    Encouraging citizens to stash warm clothes, canned goods, boots and a rifle may seem a cartoonish defense strategy against a military colossus like Russia. Yet the Estonians say they need look no further than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to see the effectiveness today, as ever, of an insurgency to even the odds against a powerful army.

    Estonia is hardly alone in striking upon the idea of dispersing guns among the populace to advertise the potential for widespread resistance, as a deterrent.

    “The best deterrent is not only armed soldiers, but armed citizens, too,” Brig. Gen. Meelis Kiili, the commander of the Estonian Defense League, said in an interview in Tallinn, the capital.

    A team of military cadets won the competition. James Hill for The New York Times

    The number of firearms, mostly Swedish-made AK-4 automatic rifles, that Estonia has dispersed among its populace is classified. But the league said it had stepped up the pace of the program since the Ukraine crisis began. Under the program, members must hide the weapons and ammunition, perhaps in a safe built into a wall or buried in the backyard.

    For the competitions, members bring their rifles and rucksacks packed with camping comfort foods like salami, Snickers bars and Gatorade, as well as first-aid kits.

    But why bother with the stocking caps, the hidden ammunition and the rucksacks if, under Article 5 of the NATO charter, the United States is obliged to send the full might of its military hurtling into Estonia in an attack?

    The Estonian government says that ignores Article 3, which stipulates that each member should also prepare for individual defense. But skeptics cite another reason: fears that the United States and Europe might not have the stomach for a confrontation with Russia, even though they are currently building up their military presence in the Baltics. That would leave Estonia to fend for itself.

    A member of the team that placed second sank to the ground to recuperate after crossing the finish line. James Hill for The New York Times

    Whatever the reason, training for underground warfare is going ahead here, where partisans are still glorified for fighting the Nazis and Soviets in World War II.

    “The guerrilla activity should start on occupied territory straight after the invasion,” General Kiili said. “If you want to defend your country, we train you and provide conditions to do it in the best possible way.”

    Members of the community also take part in the drills.

    The competition to identify edible and medicinal herbs, for example, was run by a high school biology teacher. The fire department staged a competition to put out a small blaze in a barrel. A horseback-riding school for children tested moving a “wounded” colleague by horse.

    Jaan Vokk, a retired corporal with the Estonian Army, ran the competition to identify armored vehicles on a slide show on his laptop. “Sometimes it feels like they are getting us ready for something,” he said ominously, while quizzing a teenage girl in camouflage to identify Russian tanks.

    The girl was ready, rattling off the names as pictures flashed on the computer screen — “T-72 main battle tank, BTR-80 armored personnel carrier” — and earning a nearly perfect score.

    “Partisan war is our way,” Mr. Vokk said. “We cannot equal their armor. We have to group in small units and do a lot of destruction of their logistics convoys. We needle them wherever we can.”

    Mr. Vokk served with the army in Afghanistan, where, he said, he gained an appreciation for the effectiveness of I.E.D.s.

    “They scared us,” he said. “And a Russian is just a human being as well. He would be scared.”

    Terrifying Immigration Numbers, and Court Decision

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    Hundreds of Migrants Pitch Tents on Paris Streets as Calais Camp Shuts

    (REUTERS) – The number of migrants sleeping rough on the streets of Paris has risen by at least a third since the start of the week when the “Jungle” shanty town in Calais was evacuated, officials said on Friday.

    Along the bustling boulevards and a canal in a northeastern corner of Paris, hundreds of tents have been pitched by migrants – mostly Africans who say they are from Sudan – with cardboard on the ground to try and insulate them from the autumn chill.

    While the presence of migrants there is not new, it has grown substantially this week, Colombe Brossel, Paris deputy mayor in charge of security issues, told Reuters.

    “We have seen a big increase since the start of the week. Last night, our teams counted 40 to 50 new tents there in two days,” Brossel said, adding there was now a total of 700 to 750.

    This means there are some 2,000-2,500 sleeping in the area, up from around 1,500 a few days before, she said.

    “It’s not a huge explosion in numbers but there is a clear increase,” she said. “Some of them come from Calais, others from other places.”

     migrants Paris JOEL SAGET/AFP/Getty

    After years as serving as an illegal base camp for migrants trying to get to Britain, the “Jungle” at Calais was finally bulldozed this week and the more than 6,000 residents of the ramshackle camp near the English channel were relocated to shelters around France. More here.

    Sessions: ‘Critical alert,’ 817,740 illegals crossed last year

    In a bid to put the issue of illegal immigration back into the presidential debate, outspoken critic Sen. Jeff Sessions on Monday issued a “Critical Alert” warning of a potentially historic surge of over the border.

    “We are simply overwhelmed,” his statement said. In it he estimated the Fiscal Year 2016 illegal crossings at 817,740.

    “There is a crisis at our southwest border — one that in many ways exceeds the crisis we saw just two years ago, one that further undermines the integrity of our immigration system, but one that the most of the media has elected to ignore,” said Sessions, an advisor to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

    • U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is currently detaining more than 40,000 aliens, with internal predictions indicating that the number could reach 47,000 in the coming months.
    • In fiscal 2016, the U.S. Border Patrol apprehended 408,870 illegal aliens at the southern border; a number 23 percent higher than in fiscal 2015.
    • Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, was quoted as saying just half of illegals are caught crossing the border.
    • Calculating illegal entries based on that formula, 408,870 illegal aliens evaded detection in fiscal 2016, for a total of approximately 817,740 illegal entries into the United States last year.

    Sessions said the border crisis demands a new president and approach to reforming immigration starting with a closed border.

    *****

    In part from Breitbart: Border Patrol Agent and NBPC President Brandon Judd spoke exclusively with Breitbart Texas and condemned the leadership of the Border Patrol’s parent agency, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), for allegedly “keeping this information secret” ahead of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

    “We are at breaking point. We have the highest number of illegal aliens in custody in history in Border Patrol’s RGV Sector and this information has been kept from the American public,” said Agent Judd. “The talk of amnesty has once again created pull factors and encouraged people from all over the world to cross Mexico and then cross our porous southern border to illegally enter the U.S. We are simply overwhelmed.” (See CBP’s response below.)

    Agent Judd told Breitbart Texas that Americans should vote their conscience, but they should do so with all of the information available. “This is an issue of the federal government restricting crucial information from the public ahead of a presidential election and it is unacceptable. Americans deserve to know the truth. Our Border Patrol agents deserve for Americans to know what they are really facing. Too many Border Patrol agents have given their lives and left loved ones to grieve for CBP leadership to play these types of political games ahead of such an impactful election.”

    Agent Cabrera said CBP were in fact concealing the gravity of the current border crisis. “One side in this coming election is downplaying illegal immigration and concealing this information only serves to help that agenda,” said Agent Cabrera.

    Breitbart Texas reached out to the RGV Sector PIO for the Border Patrol and did not receive a response, though not much time was given to the agency. (See update below. A strong denial of the agents’ claims was issued by CBP to Breitbart Texas after publication.)

    Historically, CBP, Border Patrol’s parent agency, has had to correct false assertions and denials. Perhaps the most glaring example occurred in June 2014 when an official CBP Twitter account directly accused this reporter of publishing a false report, only to later admit the report was accurate and true.

    CBP has released numbers indicating near-record apprehensions; however, the assertions from the agents in the NBPC pertain to people who illegally entered the U.S. and are currently in custody in Border Patrol facilities. Agent Judd stated, “There is a significant difference between apprehension numbers and numbers in custody in our facilities. These record numbers in custody indicate that these are people who are not voluntarily returning. This indicates that these people will, under current policy, be released into our communities and given amnesty. This record number of people currently in detention is significant because the RGV Sector is dealing with the Gulf and Los Zetas cartels. This means our agents are busy babysitting record numbers in facilities instead of patrolling the border and stopping these murderers, kidnappers, and drug smugglers.” More here.

    *****

    Judge rebukes administration over few admissions for Syrian Christian refugees

    FNC: A federal judge has rebuked the Obama administration over the lack of Syrian Christians being admitted from the war-zone, calling it a “perplexing discrepancy” that only 56 of 11,000 Syrian refugees to the U.S. in fiscal 2016 were Christian.

    The rebuke came in a Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals opinion on a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by The Heartland Alliance’s National Immigrant Justice Center – a liberal human rights group that advocates for immigrants and asylum-seekers — seeking information on certain terror groups.

    As first reported by attorney and former FEC member Hans von Spakovsky for The Daily Signal, while the court found in favor of the government, Judge Daniel Manion addressed the refugee issue and took aim at the Obama administration over how few Christians had been admitted to the U.S.

    “It is well‐documented that refugees to the United States are not representative of that war‐torn area of the world. Perhaps 10 percent of the population of Syria is Christian, and yet less than one‐half of one percent of Syrian refugees admitted to the United States this year are Christian,” he wrote.

    According to government figures, of the almost 11,000 Syrian refugees admitted to the United States in fiscal 2016, only 56 were Christian.

    RELATED: ‘GROSS INJUSTICE’: OF 10,000 SYRIAN REFUGEES TO THE US, 56 ARE CHRISTIAN

    “To date, there has not been a good explanation for this perplexing discrepancy,” Manion noted.

    The numbers are disproportionate to the Christian population in Syria, estimated last year by the U.S. government to make up roughly 10 percent of the population. Since the outbreak of civil war in 2011, it is estimated that between 500,000 and 1 million Christians have fled the country, while many have been targeted and slaughtered by the Islamic State.

    Manion qualified his remarks by saying that his point “is not to suggest that any refugee group is more or less welcome: quite the contrary” but warned the Obama administration against failing to provide states with enough data on the people coming in.

    In the case, the NIJC was requesting the identities of Tier III terrorist organizations, which are not publicly available. The administration argued that Tier III terrorist organizations “tend to be groups about which the U.S. government does not have good intelligence, making it essential that [DHS] be able to obtain information about them during screening interviews that are as focused and complete as possible.”

    Manion noted that potential ties to a Tier III organization like a Christian militia may be why the government is not letting in as many Christians, but that it was impossible to tell since the information is not publicly available.

    “It is at least possible that incidental affiliation with some Christian militia could lead an immigration officer to deny entry to Syrians on this basis. That would be a dubious consequence,” he wrote.

    A State Department spokesperson told FoxNews.com in September that religion was only one of many factors used in determining a refugee’s eligibility to enter the United States.

    UNESCO Denies Jerusalem Israel History in Vote

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    Jerusalem (AFP)- Israel recalled its ambassador to UNESCO for consultations Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced, after a second resolution accused of denying the Jewish connection to Jerusalem.

    The Israeli ambassador to the UN body, Carmel Shama Hacohen, told public radio that “we are studying the possibility of breaking all contact with UNESCO”.

    Despite what an Israeli official called long efforts to get the resolution amended or dropped, the heritage committee, made up of 21 member states, adopted the text proposed by Kuwait, Lebanon and Tunisia.

    The resolution refers throughout to the Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al-Sharif religious complex, without using the Israeli name “Temple Mount,” according a copy seen by AFP.

    The 14-hectare (35-acre) rectangular esplanade at the southeastern corner of the Old City is the third holiest site in Islam and the most holy in Judaism. More here.

    Related reading: The First Temple – Solomon’s Temple

    UNESCO approves new controversial resolution on Jerusalem

    PARIS (AP)— The U.S. Ambassador to UNESCO condemned as “inflammatory” a resolution approved Wednesday by UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee on the status of conservation of the Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls — a document that Israel says denies Judaism’s deep ties to the holy site Temple Mount.

    In Wednesday’s secret ballot, the international body agreed to retain the site on the list of endangered world heritage and criticized Israel for its continuous refusal to let the body’s experts access Jerusalem’s holy sites to determine their conservation status. The document refers to the Jerusalem site that Jews called Temple Mount only by its Arab name — a significant semantic decision also adopted by UNESCO’s Executive Board last week that triggered condemnation from Israel and its allies.

    “This item should have been defeated … These politicized and one-sided resolutions are damaging the credibility of UNESCO,” U.S. Ambassador Crystal Nix Hines said in a statement to The Associated Press. “These resolutions are continuously one-sided and inflammatory.”

    The resolution was passed by the World Heritage Committee’s 21 member countries. Ten countries voted for, two against, 8 abstained and one was absent. Neither Israel, the U.S. nor Palestine is on the World Heritage Committee.

    Israel suspended ties with UNESCO earlier this month over a similar resolution.

    Elias Sanbar, the Palestinian ambassador to UNESCO, fired back at those upset with the resolution, which was sponsored by his delegation.

    “What Israel wants, in fact, is to put politics in religion. This is the most dangerous thing that is happening now in UNESCO,” Sanbar told the AP. “They are politicizing religion and this is very dangerous.”

    The resolution is the latest of several measures at UNESCO over decades that Israelis see as evidence of ingrained anti-Israel bias within the United Nations, where Israel and its allies are far outnumbered by Arab countries and their supporters.

    The site in Jerusalem has been on UNESCO’s endangered list since 1982.

    UNESCO’s World Heritage Site list is known throughout the world for its work in highlighting sites of historic and cultural significance, and endangered global heritage.

       

    Related reading: US lawmakers urge UNESCO panel to reject text erasing Jewish ties to Temple Mount

    Senators, Congressmen call on World Heritage Committee to vote against ‘yet another attempt to rewrite history’

    ****

    It’s time to disband UNESCO

    Rubin/AEI: On October 13, 2016, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), a body charged with protecting and defending culture and cultural heritage, voted on a resolution denying Jewish ties to the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism. The good news, as UN Watch noted, is that the resolution passed with only a plurality 17 countries abstaining. Normally, anti-Israel resolutions pass with overwhelming majorities.

    Still, the resolution is itself so toxic that it delegitimizes UNESCO and raises questions about its continued existence. In effect, UNESCO has become so polluted by political hate, that it has embraced a resolution that advances a counterfactual narrative completely at odds with the archaeological, cultural, and historical record. It is one thing to criticize Israel and Israeli politics, but it’s quite another to suggest that there is neither Jewish history nor legitimate ties to Jerusalem. That’s akin to saying Hagia Sophia in Istanbul was never a church or that Cordoba cathedral was never a mosque. In effect, rather than advance cultural preservation, UNESCO is laying the ground work for ethnic and sectarian cleansing.

    Among the countries voting for the UNESCO resolution were China, Brazil, Russia, South Africa, and Mexico. In effect, they demonstrate how easy it is to abet hatred and anti-Semitism so long as the money coming from Arab states and Iran is right. Again, diplomatic opposition to Israeli policies is no excuse, as UNESCO is supposed to be a cultural institution. The abstainers, however —among them France, India, Argentina, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine, Greece, and Italy — really are no better. After all, at issue is a clear matter of historical fact. Only six countries — the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, Lithuania and Estonia — opposed the resolution.

    Organizations form for good reasons. Few foresaw how the UN Human Rights Commission (later the UN Human Rights Council) would transform itself into a body to launder and excuse the worst human rights violations. When the UN founded the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the organization genuinely hoped they could resettle Palestinian refugees in Arab countries within a few years and disband; its founders never would have believed UNRWA would become a mechanism to launder money for terrorists and hide their weaponry. UNESCO is simply the latest organization that has outlived its utility and now threatens more harm than good. The UN General Assembly and Security Council are valuable as places for countries to meet and discuss common problems, but outgoing UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has been far more interested in traveling and grandstanding than repairing the internal rot that infuses the organization over which he presides.

    Already, some UN diplomats are scrambling to paper over the UNESCO resolution and, feeding from the trough of bloated UN salaries, why shouldn’t they? But sometimes, when gangrene sets in, the best recourse is amputation. It’s time to let UNESCO fade into the dustbin of history and allow a new organization — perhaps one less beholden to politics and therefore outside the formal mechanisms of the UN — assume the responsibility to protect cultural heritage.

     

    How is This not a War Crime in Syria Due to Russia and Assad?

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    Both John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov know what Russia is doing in Aleppo is a war crime.

    Reuters: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry voiced concern to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday about renewed fighting and air strikes in the Syrian city of Aleppo after a break of several days, the State Department said.

    Lavrov and Kerry discussed the situation in Syria in a phone call and agreed that experts from several countries meeting in Geneva would continue searching for ways to resolve the Aleppo crisis, the State Department and Russia’s Foreign Ministry said.

    Lavrov told Kerry the United States must fulfil its obligation to separate moderate opposition groups from “terrorists” in Syria, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. More here.

    Leaflets dropped in Aleppo:  “If you don’t evacuate you will be eliminated. Everyone has abandoned you, no one will help you”

    **** Hezbollah to stay in Syria until ‘apostate project’ defeated

    BEIRUT (AP) — Fighting returned to Syria’s Aleppo Sunday after a cease-fire to allow rebels and civilians to leave the city’s besieged eastern districts expired with no evacuations.

    As rebels and pro-government forces battled in the contested city’s southern countryside, a pro-opposition media outlet circulated footage of a powerful and hard-line Islamist rebel coalition announcing that the campaign to break the government’s siege of the city’s east would begin “within hours.”

    Jaish al-Fatah commander Ali Abu Adi al-Aloush told the Qasioun News Agency that “zero hour has drawn near,” and that militants and kamikaze fighters had begun moving toward Aleppo. It was unclear when the interview was recorded.

    A second northern Syrian rebel coalition meanwhile warned civilians in Aleppo to stay away from government positions around the contested city.

    Meanwhile in Lebanon, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah cast the insurgency against Syrian President Bashar Assad as a facade designed to weaken Iran’s regional access and make “changes to the map”, vowing to stay in the country until it could “defeat the apostate project.”

    Nasrallah in a speech Sunday afternoon said the Syrian rebellion is “not about the fall of the regime, but about targeting the axis of resistance,” a reference to the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah alliance. Assad has long provided a corridor for Iranian weapons shipments to the Lebanese militant group which grew out of the resistance to the Israeli occupation of Lebanon’s south between 1982 and 2000. Thousands of Hezbollah fighters are on the ground in Syria in defense of Assad’s government and senior commanders in Iran’s powerful Republican Guard are in advisory positions.

    Government artillery shelled the strategically important village of Khan Touman, which overlooks the highway connecting Aleppo and government-held cities in the center of the country, the activist-run Shahba Press reported Sunday. Rebels led by al-Qaida-linked militants took the town from government forces in a surprising advance last May, dealing a setback to the joint Russian-Syrian campaign to expel rebels from Aleppo.

    The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group reported incremental advances for pro-government forces against al-Qaida-linked Fatah al-Sham Front militants in the city’s southern countryside.

    Al-Manar TV, run by Hezbollah, broadcast footage of tanks and fighters advancing under heavy fire along a ridge reportedly in the Aleppo countryside.

    A spokesman for the Nour el-Din al-Zinki rebel faction in Aleppo said an operation to break the government’s siege of the rebel-held eastern districts of Aleppo was “coming.”

    Yasser al-Yousef clarified rebels would not target civilians in Aleppo’s government-held districts, but warned of collateral damage from the anticipated operations.

    The escalations follow the conclusion of a three-day cease-fire arranged by the Russian and Syrian military commands to allow rebels and civilians to leave eastern Aleppo. No evacuations were seen during the period.

    The fighting around Aleppo ran in parallel with renewed clashes further away from the city between Turkish-backed opposition forces and Syrian Kurdish forces over territory formerly held by the Islamic State group. The activist-run Aleppo Media Center said Turkish forces struck over 50 Kurdish positions on Sunday alone. The U.S. has backed both the Turkish-backed forces and the Syrian Kurdish forces in the area, though it has clarified that it does not support the Syrian Kurdish forces that have come under Turkish attack in the Aleppo countryside.

    The Turkish military intervened in the Syrian war in August this year under orders from Ankara to clear the border area of Islamic State fighters and U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces linked to Turkey’s own outlawed Kurdish insurgency. The Turkish government considers both to be terrorist groups.

    To the country’s south, a 24-truck convoy arrived at the formerly besieged town of Moadamiyeh, in the suburbs of Damascus, to deliver food, winter clothes, lamps, and medical supplies.

    The convoy was the first to reach Moadamiyeh since a deal was made to restore the government’s authority over the former bastion of rebel strength and support. The government recently granted safe passage out to some 2,000 rebels and civilians.

    Local resident Mahmoud, who did not give his name out of security concerns, said the materials would be distributed Monday.

    He said locals have been able to move freely in and out of Moadamiyeh for the first time in years and that the prices of goods were cheaper in areas that were under government control.