Category Archives: Military

After Hillary Left State, More Classified Emails Exchanged

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About to have HSS? It is a looming disease….Hillary Saturation Syndrome. Sheesh

Clinton emailed classified info after leaving State: report

NewYorkPost: Hillary Clinton continued sending classified information even after leaving the State Department, The Post has exclusively learned.

On May 28, 2013, months after stepping down as secretary of state, Clinton sent an email to a group of diplomats and top aides about the “123 Deal” with the United Arab Emirates.

But the email, which was obtained by the Republican National Committee through a Freedom of Information Act request, was heavily redacted upon its release by the State Department because it contains classified information.

The markings on the email state it will be declassified on May 28, 2033, and that information in the note is being redacted because it contains “information regarding foreign governors” and because it contains “Foreign relations or foreign activities of the United States, including confidential sources.”

The email from Clinton was sent from the email account — hrod17@clintonemail.com— associated with her private email server.

The email’s recipients were Deputy Secretary of State William Burns, diplomat Jeffrey Feltman, policy aide Jake Sullivan, diplomat Kurt Campbell, State Department chief of staff Cheryl Mills, and Clinton aide Huma Abedin.

The “123 Deal” was a 2009 agreement between the United Arab Emirates and the US on materials and technological sharing for nuclear energy production.

“Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information was so pervasive, it continued after she left government,” Republican National Committee research director Raj Shah told The Post. “She clearly can’t be trusted with our nation’s security.”

Clinton is believed to have sent 2,101 emails that contained at least some classified information.

The Trump campaign said the latest revelation about Clinton’s email habits is more proof she can’t be trusted with national security.

“Hillary Clinton’s secret server jeopardized our national security and sensitive diplomatic efforts on more than 2,000 occasions, and shockingly, it now appears her reckless conduct continued even after leaving the State Department. Hillary Clinton’s terrible judgment shows she cannot be trusted with our national security,” said Jason Miller, Trump’s senior communications advisor, in a statement.

What was the ‘123 Deal’?

 While the purpose of multilateral negotiations with Iran is to reduce proliferation concerns, successful talks may in fact accelerate nuclear plans in the Gulf states and Jordan.

In April 2009, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia famously told U.S. special envoy Dennis Ross that “if [the Iranians] get nuclear weapons, we will get nuclear weapons.” Such comments suggest that leaders in Riyadh and other Gulf capitals will closely study any deal reached with Iran, whether on or after the expiration of current nuclear talks next Monday. The message out of the kingdom, delivered repeatedly and recently in Washington by former intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal, is that whatever Tehran gets, Gulf Arabs will want. U.S. wishes aside, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and perhaps even Jordan could make as plausible a case as Iran for building nuclear power plants. And from their perspective, if Iran is going to be allowed to enrich uranium and retain its nuclear-capable missiles — as they believe likely given Washington’s reported approach to the negotiations thus far — why shouldn’t they be permitted to acquire similar capabilities?

THE UAE’S NUCLEAR CALCULUS

The first challenge to even limited diplomatic success with Iran would likely come from Abu Dhabi, the lead sheikhdom of the United Arab Emirates. Despite having around 10 percent of the world’s oil, the UAE also has the region’s most advanced plans for domestic nuclear power. Its first two nuclear facilities are under construction and due to start up in 2017 and 2018, respectively. Abu Dhabi obtained the reactors from South Korea, but in order to secure access to U.S. technology, material, and equipment, it also agreed to forgo uranium enrichment by signing a so-called “123 Agreement” at Washington’s behest.

Yet the UAE’s continued commitment to eschew enrichment is hardly guaranteed. For one thing, the 123 Agreement itself may give Abu Dhabi an out. The “123” refers to the section of the 1954 Atomic Energy Act that regulates U.S. nuclear cooperation with foreign countries. Depending on how one reads the “Agreed Minute” attached to that section, if Washington and its P5+1 partners (Russia, China, France, Britain, and Germany) reach a deal with Iran, the UAE may have cause to renegotiate its enrichment rights. Of particular note is this passage from the Minute: “The fields of cooperation, terms and conditions accorded…shall be no less favorable in scope and effect than those which may be accorded from time to time to any other non-nuclear weapons state in the Middle East in a peaceful nuclear cooperation agreement.”

More important, if the UAE decides that pursuing enrichment — whether alone or with its Gulf partners — is in its interest, it would not need to ask Washington to renegotiate the 123 Agreement. Instead, it could simply abandon U.S. nuclear cooperation altogether and obtain the technological help it needs elsewhere. Whether it takes either route will depend on Crown Prince Muhammad bin Zayed, the effective ruler of Abu Dhabi, whose admiration for America is matched only by his disappointment with the Obama administration’s policies. Already infuriated when Washington allowed the initial euphoria of the “Arab Spring” to distract it from Iran, he is now said to be livid at the prospect that Tehran’s quasi-nuclear status will be confirmed by an agreement not worth, in his mind, the paper it is written on.

UAE officials have never stated publicly that they would pursue enrichment if Iran is permitted to do so. Yet it is uncertain whether they are silent because they do not plan to do so or because they do not wish to tip their hand.

SAUDI MINDSET

Saudi Arabia’s plans for nuclear power lag behind the UAE’s but are even more ambitious — sixteen plants are to be built over the next twenty years. Although the kingdom has nearly a quarter of the world’s oil reserves, its rapidly growing energy demand could drain much of its oil exports unless it finds ways to reduce consumption. Switching to an alternative fuel source for electricity generation and increasing energy efficiency are the two most promising routes.

The kingdom’s ambition will stretch its capabilities, however. So far it has only one nuclear institution up and running, the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy (KA-CARE). Despite the organization’s civilian-sounding name, a U.S. official noted last month that the kingdom’s perceived nuclear intentions were not straightforward or obvious, and that KA-CARE’s recent leadership transition could also be cover for a policy change.

OTHER GULF PLANS

Kuwait’s tentative nuclear moves have slowed of late, but they have not stopped. In 2009, the government formed the Kuwait National Nuclear Energy Committee (KNNEC). In addition, economic feasibility studies and site surveys have been conducted, and students have been sent abroad for specialist education. Although much of the nascent program was cancelled after the 2011 nuclear accident in Japan, KNNEC’s activities were transferred to the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research, and there are plans to set up a nuclear research and training facility.

Qatar has investigated the viability of domestic nuclear power as well. In 2008, it announced that it was not proceeding with any such plans, yet two years later it raised the prospect of a regional nuclear project. Doha has also signed a cooperation agreement with Russia’s state-owned Rosatom nuclear corporation.

For its part, Jordan persists in talking ambitiously of nuclear power plans. In September, it signed an agreement with a Rosatom subsidiary aimed at reaching a final construction contract within two years. The projected power plant would cost $10 billion, with half being paid by Russia. Jordan also has plans to mine domestic uranium deposits and is working with South Korea on a project to build a small research and training reactor.

MISSILES, CENTRIFUGES, AND PAKISTAN

One of the clearest signals of how Gulf leaders view Iran diplomacy was Saudi Arabia’s decision to show off two of its nuclear-capable missiles at a military parade in April. The weapons were acquired from China in the 1980s but had hitherto never been put on display, so the timing was conspicuous. Gulf Arabs believe that Washington’s intended nuclear deal with Tehran is unlikely to include limits on the regime’s arsenal of long-range missiles capable of being modified to carry a nuclear warhead. UN Security Council Resolution 1929 (2010) called for Iran to halt work on nuclear-capable missiles, but there is no indication it has done so.

Pakistan’s potential proliferation role remains troubling as well. Among the dignitaries at the Saudi parade last spring was Pakistan’s military chief Gen. Raheel Sharif (who, it should be noted, paid an official visit to Washington earlier this week). Even if the Obama administration hopes that an Iran deal will squash the prospect of Riyadh borrowing or buying nuclear warheads from Pakistan, it must also consider the distinct possibility that the Saudis will ask Islamabad for enrichment technology. Pakistan currently operates the P-2 centrifuge, equivalent to Iran’s IR-2m, which is causing so much concern because of its higher efficiency compared to Iran’s more numerous IR-1.

Saudi Arabia — along with the UAE — has been associated with Pakistan’s enrichment program since as early as the 1980s. This included hosting controversial nuclear scientist A. Q. Khan, who was placed under house arrest ten years ago when revelations emerged about his nuclear trading with Iran, Libya, and North Korea. Well before his detainment and subsequent release, Khan was a frequent visitor to the kingdom — a 1998 brochure commemorating Pakistan’s first nuclear tests contained photos of him meeting former Saudi defense minister Prince Sultan, as well as the late Sheikh Zayed of Abu Dhabi, Crown Prince Muhammad’s father and founder of the UAE. And in 1989, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed — then the UAE minister of information and now foreign minister — visited Pakistan’s enrichment plant at Kahuta outside Islamabad.

The Obama administration appears to believe it can stop the proliferation of nuclear technology to Gulf allies by having suppliers insist on extremely tough inspection regimes such as that used for Iran. Yet long-time Gulf partners are unlikely to appreciate being told that they will be treated in the same manner as Iran, with its long track record of violating obligations to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Moreover, it is by no means clear that all potential suppliers of enrichment technology — such as Pakistan — would impose such tough restrictions on Gulf states. In short, if an Iran deal is reached and Gulf leaders dislike it, preventing the proliferation of nuclear technology in the region will be a considerable challenge.

Simon Henderson is the Baker Fellow and director of the Gulf and Energy Policy Program at The Washington Institute. Olli Heinonen is a senior fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center and a former deputy director-general for safeguards at the IAEA. Previously, they coauthored Nuclear Iran: A Glossary of Terms, a joint publication of the Institute and the Belfer Center.

Russia Moves Air Defense, MiGs, bombers to Crimea

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Russian Anti-Access and Area Denial (A2AD) Range: August 2016

ISW: Russia has altered the security balance in the Black Sea, Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East by establishing large anti-access/area-denial (A2AD) exclusion zones. Russia’s power projection in these regions has been further extended by the deployment of the S-400 air defense system to Crimea in August 2016 and to Syria in November 2015. Advanced air defense systems create A2AD “bubbles” that prevent Russia’s opponents from establishing air supremacy in strategically significant theaters. The Baltic States, much of Ukraine and the Black Sea, northern Poland, Syria and parts of Turkey fall under Russian A2AD bubbles created by S-300 and S-400 air defense systems. Russia operates advanced air defense not only within its own territory, but from sites in Syria and occupied Crimea, as well as cooperatively through the Joint Air Defense Network in Belarus and Armenia. Russia can use these systems to impede the ability of the U.S. to defend its NATO allies by disrupting the ability of US air forces to access conflict zones in the event of a crisis.

DefenseWorld: Russian advanced bombers and jet fighters have been shifted to bolster Aerospace Forces Fleet in Crimea.

The Su-34 bombers have been moved to Crimean Peninsula as a part of snap combat readiness inspection, whereas MiG-39 and MiG-31 fighter jets have been relocated to mainland Russia.

The MiG-29SMT and MiG-31BM have been relocated to bases in Krasnodar Krai and Rostov Oblast, Western military district spokesman Igor Muginov said.

The Aerospace forces of Central and Western military districts have been relocated to bases in Southern military district as a part of snap combat readiness inspection, Russian Defense Ministry’s report was quoted by Sputnik News Saturday.

Fighter jets and bomber aircraft, as well as military transport and attack helicopters will perform a flight over a distance of 500 to 2,500 kilometers.

Snap combat readiness inspections are running across Russia’s Southern, Western and Central military districts, as well as the Northern Fleet, Aerospace Forces and Airborne Troops on August 25-31 on order of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

The inspection also includes military exercises of Russian fleets in Black and Caspian Seas, relocation of airborne troops and marines and maneuvers of S-300 and S-400 air defense systems.

This large-scale snap inspection does not pose threat to anyone and is being conducted in line with the country’s international obligations, Russian Envoy to NATO said.

“It the inspection can not threaten anyone by any means. I will stress that NATO is familiar with this practice. For our country, with its size, it is one of the most optimal ways to ensure the battle readiness of the army,” Grushko said.

72 Mass Graves Documented in Iraq

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AP documents 72 mass graves in territory freed of IS

HARDAN, Iraq (AP)— Peering through binoculars, the young man watched as Islamic State extremists gunned down the handcuffed men and then buried them with a waiting bulldozer. For six days he watched as IS filled one grave after another with his friends and neighbors.

The five graves arranged at the foot of Sinjar mountain hold the bodies of dozens of minority Yazidis killed in the Islamic State group’s bloody onslaught in August 2014. They are a fraction of the mass graves Islamic State extremists have scattered across Iraq and Syria.

In exclusive interviews, photos and research, The Associated Press has documented and mapped 72 of the mass graves, the most comprehensive survey so far, with many more expected to be uncovered as the Islamic State group’s territory shrinks.

(This image released by the the Mass Graves Directorate of the Kurdish Regional Government shows a human skull in a mass grave containing Yazidis killed by Islamic State militants in the Sinjar region of northern Iraq in May, 2015. An analysis by The Associated Press has found 72 mass graves left behind by Islamic State extremists in Iraq and Syria, and many more are expected to be discovered as the group loses territory. (Kurdish Mass Graves Directorate via AP)

 Go here for the 28 pictures from the AP photo essay.

In Syria, AP has obtained locations for 17 mass graves, including one with the bodies of hundreds of members of a single tribe all but exterminated when IS extremists took over their region.

For at least 16 of the Iraqi graves, most in territory too dangerous to excavate, officials do not even guess the number of dead. In others, the estimates are based on memories of traumatized survivors, Islamic State propaganda and what can be gleaned from a cursory look at the earth.

Still, even the known numbers of victims buried are staggering — from 5,200 to more than 15,000.

Satellites offer the clearest look at massacres such as the one at Badoush Prison in June 2014 that left 600 inmates dead. A patch of scraped earth shows the likely site, according to exclusive photos obtained by the imagery intelligence firm AllSource Analysis and shared with AP.

On Sinjar Mountain, Rasho Qassim drives daily past the mass grave in Hardan that holds the bodies of his two sons.

The sites are roped off and awaiting the money and the political will for excavation. The evidence they contain is scoured by wind and baked by sun.

“We want to take them out of here. There are only bones left. But they said ‘No, they have to stay there, a committee will come and exhume them later,'” said Qassim, standing at the flimsy protective fence.

IS made no attempt to hide its atrocities. But proving what United Nations officials and others have described as an ongoing genocide will be complicated as the graves deteriorate. The Islamic State group targeted the Yazidis for slaughter because it considers them infidels. The Yazidi faith has elements of Christianity and Islam but is distinct.

“There’s been virtually no effort to systematically document the crimes perpetrated, to preserve the evidence,” said Naomi Kikoler, who recently visited for the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. The graves are largely documented by the aid group Yazda.

Through binoculars, Arkan Qassem watched it all. His village, Gurmiz, overlooks Hardan and the plain below. When the jihadis swept through, everyone in Gurmiz fled up the mountaintop. Then Arkan and nine other men returned with light weapons, hoping to defend their homes.

The first night, a bulldozer’s headlights illuminated the killing of a group of handcuffed men. Then the machine plowed over their bodies.

Over six days, the fighters killed three more groups — several dozen each, usually with hands bound. Once, the extremists lit a bonfire, but Arkan couldn’t make out its purpose.

Two years later, the 32-year-old has since returned home, living in an area dotted with mass graves.

“I have lots of people I know there. Mostly friends and neighbors,” he said. “It’s very difficult to look at them every day.”

Nearly every area freed from IS control has unmasked new mass graves, like one found near a stadium in Ramadi. The graves are easy enough to find, most covered with just a thin coating of earth.

“They are beheading them, shooting them, running them over in cars, all kinds of killing techniques, and they don’t even try to hide it,” said Sirwan Jalal, the director of Iraqi Kurdistan’s agency in charge of mass graves.

No one outside IS has seen the Iraqi ravine where hundreds of prison inmates were killed. Satellite images of scraped dirt along the river point to its location, according to Steve Wood of AllSource. His analysts triangulated survivors’ accounts and began to systematically search the desert according to their descriptions of that day, June 10, 2014.

The inmates were separated by religion, and Shiites had to count off, according to accounts by 15 survivors gathered by Human Rights Watch.

“I was number 43. I heard them say ‘615,’ and then one ISIS guy said, ‘We’re going to eat well tonight.’ A man behind us asked, ‘Are you ready?’ Another person answered ‘Yes,’ and began shooting at us with a machine-gun,” according to the Human Rights Watch account of a survivor identified only as A.S. The 15 men survived by playing dead.

Justice has been done in at least one IS mass killing — that of about 1,700 Iraqi soldiers who were machine-gunned at Camp Speicher. On Aug. 21, 36 IS militants were hanged for those deaths.

But justice is likely to elude areas still under IS control, even when the extremists film the atrocities themselves. That’s the case for a natural sinkhole outside Mosul that is now a pit of corpses. And in Syria’s Raqqa province, where thousands of bodies are believed to have been thrown into the al-Houta crevasse.

Hundreds of mass graves are believed to be in areas that can only be explored when fighting stops. So far, at least 17 are known, in the list put together from AP interviews with activists, fighters and residents in former IS strongholds.

Some of the worst are in Deir el-Zour province. There, 400 members of the Shueitat tribe were found in one grave, just some of the up to 1,000 tribesmen believed to have been massacred by IS, said Ziad Awad, the editor of the local publication, The Eye of the City, who is documenting the graves.

“This is a drop in an ocean of mass graves expected to be discovered in the future in Syria,” said Awad.

___

Butler reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Balint Szlanko and Salar Salim in Irbil, Iraq; Sinan Salaheddin in Baghdad; Zeina Karam and Philip Issa in Beirut, and Maya Alleruzzo in Cairo contributed to this report.

****

al Jazeera: After more than a decade of instability, parts of Iraq still lie in shambles, with several forces and groups fighting for control of large parts of the country.

Supported by air strikes from US-led coalition warplanes, the Iraqi government and Kurdish forces have been trying to take territory from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) armed group.

Currently, Mosul is ISIL’s only stronghold in the country, after suffering a number of territorial losses over the past few months.

ISIL has been losing territory not only in Iraq, but also in Syria, as this map of the Syrian civil war shows.

iraq civil war map isil isis kurds ypg

Generational terror by Hamas and Islamic State

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 DailyMotion

HuffingtonPost: Five children appear to shoot prisoners to death in a new video released by the self-described Islamic State.

The video identifies the kids as British, Egyptian, Kurdish, Tunisian and Uzbek, and the location as the ISIS-controlled province of Ar-Raqqa in Syria, according to a translation by SITE Intelligence, a terrorism analysis firm.

The Huffington Post is not providing the video here to avoid promoting the extremist group’s propaganda.

The Islamic State has a well-documented history of recruiting children into its ranks and enlisting them in brutal acts. As of February, CNN reported the group had eulogized 88 child soldiers killed in battle, the vast majority of them from Syria and Iraq.

A July story in Der Spiegel details the harrowing ordeal of two adolescent Iraqi brothers captured by ISIS and placed in a juvenile military training camp. They described being trained in the use of guns and other weapons, and beaten to harden them for combat. On one occasion, a fighter at the front demonstrated beheading on a real captive.

The brothers, who escaped after one of them was brutally beaten for secretly calling his mother on a mobile phone, said they found it easier to adjust to the violent lifestyle after they took certain pills they were given. The drug might have been fenethylline (sold under the brand name Captagon), a stimulant popular with ISIS that fosters energy and feelings of strength and invincibility.

There are currently 1,500 male children serving ISIS in Iraq and Syria, according to estimates cited by Der Spiegel. In the face of a U.S.-led campaign of airstrikes, the group escalated its use of children in propaganda videos in 2015, an expert told the German news source.

Away from its home base, the Islamic State appears to be laying the groundwork for juvenile forces as well. ISIS operatives who have taken over parts of Afghanistan can be seen in a November documentary by PBS’s “Frontline” instructing young children how to use weapons and kill those they consider infidels.

Related reading: Hamas Child Soldiers

JPost: In documentary presented to the UN, Hamas appears to acknowledge that it is breaking international law by training and indoctrinating child soldiers.

The documentary, called “Children’s Army of Hamas, funded by the Israel-based Center for Near East Policy Research (CNEPR), in association with the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, showed that the Gaza-based terror organization was breaking international laws by training children to fight in combat roles.

Hamas Interior Minister Fathi Hamad makes references to the indoctrination of children, appearing to acknowledge they are being trained to fight.

From Clarion:

While one reads off threats to the Kurdish people, sneering that their Western allies are incapable of helping them, the others stand ready to pull the triggers, which each eventually they do.

The executions, which most likely took place in Raqqa, the Islamic State’s de facto headquarter, were preceded and followed by other executions. The first set, carried out by masked men in brown uniforms, shows the beheadings of four men of the Syrian opposition (and one shooting).

The last set of executions are carried out by elderly people on Syrian government officials, who are killed by gunshot.

The child executioners are each thought to be from a different country:  the United Kingdom, Egypt, Turkey, Tunisia and Uzbekistan.

WARNING: The following clip from the video of the children executing the Kurdish prisoners is extremely graphic.

Video here.

 

Germany: Merkel, What the Heck?

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Cant make this up, and it is an attitude and policy that is infectious especially with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

German army wants security checks for recruits after admitting more than 60 Isil suspects in its ranks

German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen (CDU) speaking with soldiers 

Telegraph: The German army has said it wants tougher security checks on recruits after admitting that more than 60 Islamists are suspected of infiltrating its ranks.

In a draft amendment seen by German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, senior Bundeswehr officials said all applicants should be screened by the intelligence services for jihadist links before they begin basic training.

And they disclosed that 64 Islamists are already feared to have embedded themselves within the armed forces, along with 268 right-wing extremists and six left-wing extremists.

Terrorists are attracted to the army because they can use the training to plot future terror attacks in Germany, the document added.

“The German army trains all of its members in the handling and usage of weapons of war,” it said, “[terrorists] could use those skills acquired in the army to carry out well-prepared acts of violence at home or abroad.”

**

The proposals would lead to a major overhaul of the country’s recruiting policy as under the current system soldiers are only checked for Islamist ties once they have enlisted.

They would  also require an extra 90 military officials to be hired in order to carry out a further 20,000 checks per year.

The reforms, which would cost an estimated 8.2 million euros (£6.9m) per year, are expected to be approved by German commanders next week, Welt am Sonntag reported.

A Defence Ministry spokesman said the government was still in the process of debating the law, which if approved would come into force in July 2017.

Germany is on high alert following a spate of deadly attacks last July, two of which were claimed by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil).

On July 18 an Afghan refugee attacked passengers with an axe on a regional train in southern Germany, injuring four people before he was shot by police.

Officials said they found an Isil flag in the 17-year-old’s room and it later emerged that he had pledged allegiance to the group in a video posted online.

A week later, on July 25th, a Syrian refugee blew himself up in the southern town of Ansbach, killing himself in the blast and wounding 12 others.

**

When police raided his flat they found violent videos, bomb making materials and a message on his mobile phone in which he said he carried out the attack on behalf of  Isil leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Thomas de Maziere, the German Interior Minister, has already called for tougher security measures which would include a ban on the burka and legal reforms that would make it easier to deport terror suspects.

He is also in favour of a Europe-wide proposal to force the developers of encrypted messaging services such as Telegram to hand over data to the security services.

Telegram has attracted controversy in the past for being popular among Isil fighters, who use the network to trade weapons and plot attacks while remaining anonymous.

Well there is more….Merkel is out of her mind…

Merkel ‘Underestimated’ Migrant Challenge: Vice Chancellor

Newsweek: German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said in an interview on Saturday that Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives had “underestimated” the challenge of integrating a record migrant influx.

08_28_germany_01 Immigrants are escorted by German police to a registration center, after crossing the Austrian-German border in Wegscheid near Passau, Germany, October 20, 2015. Reuters

Gabriel is also leader of the Social Democrats (SPD)—the junior coalition partner in Merkel’s government—and his comments come as campaigning gets underway for a federal election next year and for regional elections in Berlin and the eastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

Hundreds of thousands of migrants flocked to Germany from the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere last year. Concerns about how to integrate them all into German society and the labor market are now rife and support for the anti-immigrant party Alternative for Germany (AfD) has grown.

“I, we always said that it’s inconceivable for Germany to take in a million people every year,” Gabriel said in extracts of an interview with broadcaster ZDF released on Saturday.

The head of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees told newspaper Bild am Sonntag that Germany took in less than one million migrants last year and said he expected a maximum of 300,000 refugees to arrive in Germany this year.

At a separate news conference on Sunday, Gabriel said: “There is an upper limit to a country’s integration ability.”

He said Germany had 300,000 new schoolchildren due to the migrant influx and added that the country could not manage to integrate so many into the school system every year because there would not be enough teachers.

In the ZDF interview, Gabriel also criticized Merkel’s catchphrase “Wir schaffen das,” meaning “We can do this,” which she adopted during the migrant crisis last summer and has repeatedly used since.

Merkel used the phrase at a news conference she held in late July after a spate of attacks on civilians in Germany, including two claimed by the Islamic State militant group (ISIS), that have put her open-door migrant policy in the spotlight. Her popularity has slipped since those attacks.

Gabriel said repeating that phrase was not enough and the conservatives needed to create the conditions for Germany to be able to cope, adding that the conservatives had always blocked opportunities to do that.

Merkel’s migrant policy also drew criticism from Markus Soeder, a senior member of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party to Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU).

“Even with the best will in the world, we won’t manage to integrate so many people from totally different cultures,” Soeder told German magazine Der Spiegel.

Soeder said Germany needed to send several hundred thousand of refugees back in the next three years rather than bring their families here.

The CSU tends to talk tougher on immigration than the CDU and the two allies have often been at odds over how to respond to the migrant influx.