Month: August 2018

Senator Nelson: ‘Foolish’ to Deny Russia Targeting Florida

Posted on by SeeUS

U.S. Senator Bill Nelson, under fire from Florida’s Republican governor, isn’t backing down from comments that Russian operatives have penetrated some of his state’s election systems ahead of this year’s crucial election.

During stops in north Florida over a two-day period, the three-term Democrat said that state and local officials need to take Russian meddling as a “serious threat” and that county election supervisors need to make sure they have help to protect their election systems. Russian hackers targeted at least 21 states, including Florida, during the last election.

“It would be foolish to think that the Russians are not continuing to do what they did in Florida in 2016,” Nelson said. “It is unfortunate that some Florida officials are trying to use this for partisan purposes.”

Nelson, while responding to questions from a reporter, said last week that Russians were able to get inside the election systems of “certain counties” and “now have free rein to move about.” He added that “the threat is real and elections officials — at all levels — need to address the vulnerabilities.” But Nelson has declined to go into details, saying the information is classified.

Scott, who is challenging Nelson this fall, has demanded that Nelson provide proof of Russian efforts and has suggested that the senator was either making it up or releasing classified information. Scott is challenging Nelson in this year’s election.

“People need to know the facts and I don’t think he’s been transparent,” Scott said Tuesday.

Later in the day, Scott put out a statement calling Nelson “irresponsible” and said “he is the one who has politicized a serious concern that our supervisors of elections and state officials are focusing on every single day.”

The Scott administration has called on federal authorities to rebut Nelson’s statements. Last week, the Department of Homeland Security put out a statement that the agency had not seen “any new compromises by Russian actors of election infrastructure.” But U.S. Senator Richard Burr, head of the Senate intelligence committee, and Senator Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican who sits on the committee, have declined to either confirm or deny Nelson’s statements.

During his campaign stop in Monticello that attracted a small crowd of Democrats, Nelson was asked about Russian meddling. He noted that both he and Rubio were asked by the Senate intelligence committee to write officials in Florida in early July and warn them.

Nelson maintained that foreign nations have the capability to infiltrate election systems and that the threat of American retaliation is the only thing preventing more aggressive actions.

“You take a sophisticated nation state like Russia or China, they can get into anything,” Nelson said.

While many details of the 2016 hacking efforts have remained murky, an indictment released last month said that Russian operatives sent more than 100 fake emails to elections offices and personnel in Florida. State officials have never acknowledged how many counties were targeted by the Russians.
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Mattis: US needs Space Force to counter Russia, China

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 A U.S. Space Force is necessary to protect American satellites from being targeted by attack weapons in the hands of China and Russia, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Tuesday.

Mattis’comments came days after Vice President Mike Pence announced ambitious plans to create a sixth, separate U.S. military warfighting service by 2020 to ensure American dominance in space.

Speaking during a trip to Brazil, Mattis said repeatedly that the U.S. has no plans to put weapons in space, but he emphasized the vital and growing role that satellites play not just in military operations but in the world economy. 

He recalled China’s use of a ground-based missile to destroy one of its own nonfunctional weather satellites in January 2007, which he suggested was a calculated demonstration to the United States of Chinese capabilities.

“We understand the message that China was sending — that they could take out a satellite in space,” Mattis said in remarks to about 270 military officers and civilians at Brazil’s premier war college. “Since then our intelligence services have watched other nations, including Russia, develop a space attack capability.”

He was responding to a question from an audience member who expressed concern that the planned Space Force could lead to an international arms race in space.

Mattis said the U.S. cannot ignore potential threats to satellites that are crucial to communication, navigation, weather information and other underpinnings of modern life.

“So this is a reality,” he said. “We are not initiating this. We are saying we will be able to defend our satellites in space. At the same time, if someone is going to try to engage in space with military means, we will not stand idly by. We don’t intend to militarize space. However, we will defend ourselves in space if necessary.”

He did not say this meant the U.S. would respond to a satellite attack by attacking the aggressor’s satellites or with any other use of force. But that scenario is one that worries many who have warned that space could become the next global battlefield. The U.S. military has worked on anti-satellite weaponry in the past but has no deployed weapon dedicated to that mission today.

Asked later to elaborate on how the U.S. would respond to an attack on a satellite, Mattis said he preferred to maintain ambiguity.

“I don’t tell adversaries in advance what we will do or what we will not do,” he said. “We will not stand idly by if someone tried to deny us the use of space.” He added: “I wouldn’t read anything more into” his comments.

Mattis’ point about countering the space capabilities of other nations was reinforced Tuesday by the State Department’s top arms control official, Yleem Poblete, speaking in Geneva at the U.N. Conference on Disarmament.

She said that despite Russian claims it wants to prevent an arms race in outer space, Moscow is developing new anti-satellite missiles and has given its forces a mobile laser system. She also voiced suspicion about Russia’s deployment last October of a satellite whose behavior she said was inconsistent with its supposed purpose of conducting in-orbit space inspections. 

“Russian intentions with respect to this satellite are unclear and are obviously a very troubling development,” Poblete said. Russia denies any hostile intent. 

The timing of Mattis’ visit to Brazil, so soon after Pence announced the Space Force plan last Thursday, was coincidental. Mattis’ trip, which includes follow-on stops in Argentina, Chile and Colombia, had been in planning for many months.

In a speech prior to fielding questions from the war college students, Mattis made a detailed pitch for closer U.S.-Brazilian security relations. He noted that Brazil was an ally during World War II; later he visited a monument in Rio to Brazil’s role in the conflict.

He emphasized U.S. interest in partnering with Brazil in space research, an area in which China has shown growing influence in South America. The Chinese operate a space center in the Patagonia region of Argentina.

Brazil’s Alcantara space center is located near the equator, making it advantageous for space launches. The closer a launch is to the equator, the more velocity the rocket gets from the Earth’s rotation. 
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Mattis Says Taliban’s Tactics Endanger Afghan Civilians

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The Taliban’s use of civilian homes in Ghazni as fighting positions is forcing Afghan government forces to move slowly in expelling the insurgents in order to limit civilian casualties, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Tuesday.

Mattis told reporters during a visit to Brazil and Argentina that the fighting in Ghazni was continuing, five days after the Taliban overwhelmed defenses and pushed deep into the city, which is the capital of the province with the same name.

“It looks like many of the enemy have run, but some are in the town, in homes, fighting from inside homes,” he said.

Asked whether the Taliban assault reflected any new capability on their part, Mattis said, “To me it’s simply a continuation of their willingness to put innocent people in harm’s way. There’s nothing new. It’s the usual: endangering civilians. That’s part and parcel of what they’ve done the past 20 years.”

The United States has carried out airstrikes and sent military advisers to aid Afghan forces in the city.
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US Believes Missing Journalist Tice Still Alive After Six Years

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The Trump administration believes missing U.S. journalist Austin Tice, thought to have been captured in Syria six years ago, is still alive.

“We believe him to be alive,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said on the sixth anniversary of his disappearance. “We remain deeply concerned about his well-being, and we are actively working to bring Austin Tice home.”

Nauert declined to provide details about the U.S. conclusion or where Tice is thought to be held, and by whom.

Tice was a 31-year-old freelance photojournalist working for AFP, McClatchy News, The Washington Post, CBS, and other news organizations when he was detained at a checkpoint near Damascus on August 14, 2012.

A former Marine, he appeared blindfolded in the custody of an unidentified group of armed men in a video a month later.

Since then, there has been no official word about whether he is alive or dead.

Earlier this year, the U.S. government announced a reward of $1 million for information about Tice.

Speaking to the Post, his parents said they hoped the Trump administration would open direct talks with the Syrian government to secure his release.

“We really do believe that this administration has a greater commitment to bring people home,” his mother, Debra Tice, said.

With U.S.-Syria relations broken off, Nauert declined to answer directly when asked whether direct talks with Damascus on Tice were possible.

“I can assure you that we’re doing everything that we can to try to bring him home,” she said.
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Sierra Leone Remembers Mudslide Victims

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Sierra Leone’s President Julius Maada Bio on Tuesday joined dozens of survivors of a mudslide that hit Freetown last year to remember the dead.

Around 500 people, many dressed in black and white, gathered in a church in the Regent district, where on August 14, 2017, heavy rains caused the partial collapse of a mountain, leaving a red rock scar looming over the West African capital. At least 312 people were killed and more than 2,000 were left homeless.

“We are here to acknowledge the pain, the trauma of the mudslide tragedy,” said Bio, who took office in April.

He told the crowd, including many who had lost limbs as well as loved ones to the disaster, that a memorial would be built in the disaster zone.

That day last year, heavy rains lashed the slopes left bare by chronic deforestation in Freetown, and huge boulders suddenly detached, rolling onto informal settlements, crushing shacks and enveloping entire households in red mud.

A year on, many residents are still dealing with the aftermath of the tragedy. 

Olivia Cole, who lost her husband and two children in the mudslide, said she was “still in shock when it rains at night, as if memories of the disaster are haunting me.” 

“I’m still living in the disaster zone because the package NGOs and the government gave us was not enough to start a new life somewhere else,” she told AFP at the ceremony.

With the rainy season now in full swing in Sierra Leone, there are fears another landslide could strike Regent, where many residents still live in flood-prone areas.

Bio said better environmental protections were needed — adding he had banned charcoal burning, stone mining and deforestation at Sugarloaf mountain, where the floods turned deadly, “to prevent another disaster from happening.”

In the last 15 years, four major floods have affected more than 220,000 people in Sierra Leone and caused severe economic damage, according to a World Bank report issued in 2017.

Last summer’s was the deadliest yet: 1,141 people were declared dead or unaccounted for, according to official figures.
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Congo Deploys Experimental Ebola Treatment as Cases Rise

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The Democratic Republic of the Congo has started using the experimental mAb114 Ebola treatment to counter the latest flare-up of the virus, health officials said Tuesday, the first time it has been deployed against an active outbreak.

Forty-two people are believed to have died from the hemorrhagic fever in Congo’s 10th Ebola outbreak since the disease was discovered in the 1970s.

In all, there have been 66 cases to date, including 39 confirmed and 27 probable, the health ministry said  Tuesday evening, an increase of nine confirmed cases since Monday.

The outbreak has spread from its epicenter in North Kivu province to neighboring Ituri province after an infected person returned home, Congo’s health ministry said, complicating containment in a region beset by militia violence.

Testing ground

Ebola, which causes fever, vomiting and diarrhea, finds a natural home in Congo’s vast equatorial forests. Continuing flare-ups have made the central African country a testing ground for new treatments against a virus that between 2013 and 2016 killed more than 11,300 people in a West African epidemic.

In an outbreak in western Congo that began in April and was declared over in July, an experimental vaccine manufactured by Merck & Co. Inc. was given to 3,300 people and was considered central in containing the virus when it reached a city.

The mAb114 treatment was developed in the United States by the National Institutes of Health using the antibodies of the survivor of an Ebola outbreak in the western Congolese city of Kikwit in 1995.

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference in Geneva that medics were already treating five patients with mAb114 and that he had been informed they were doing well.

“We will use it as much as needed,” Tedros said. “But use of the molecules is decided by doctor and patient consent.”

Several other experimental treatments have arrived in the regional hub of Beni and are awaiting approval from an ethics committee, including Remdesivir, Favipiravir and REGN3450, REGN3471 and REGN3479, the health ministry said.

Low risk of global spread

Separately, authorities have vaccinated more than 200 health workers and contacts of Ebola patients. He said the risk of international spread was currently considered low even though it poses a high regional risk because of its proximity to the Ugandan border, which is only about 100 kilometers (60 miles) away.

The response is taking place against the backdrop of insecurity caused by dozens of militia groups who regularly kill and kidnap civilians in the region.

“Before I went there I was really worried because of the different nature of the Ebola outbreak in DRC,” Tedros said. “But after the visit I am actually more worried because of what we have observed there firsthand.”

Authorities are reaching out to militia to persuade them to allow access to zones they occupy, he said.
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Freed in Turkey Before Spy Trial, Greek Soldiers Await Flight Home

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Two Greek soldiers facing espionage charges in Turkey are due to fly home early on Wednesday after a provincial court released them, in a ruling Athens said would help to improve strained ties between the two NATO allies.

The soldiers crossed into Turkey in March, in what Greece said was an accident while they were following the trail of suspected illegal migrants.

But a court in the western province of Edirne ordered their detention the same month on suspicion of attempted military espionage.

The same court ruled for their release on Tuesday after they said in a defense statement they had crossed the border by mistake, state news agency Anadolu said. 

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras welcomed the ruling.

“The release of the two Greek officers is an act of justice which will contribute to friendship, good neighbourly relations and stability in the region,” his office said in a statement.

The conditions of their release were not immediately clear, though Greece said it was sending an aircraft to pick them up.

The prime minister’s office said his plane would fly them back to Thessaloniki, where they would be received early on Wednesday by the defense minister.

Long-time regional rivals Turkey and Greece have been at odds over a host of issues from ethnically divided Cyprus to rights in the Aegean Sea.

Rhetoric has recently been ratcheted up on both sides, particularly after the collapse of peace talks in Cyprus in July 2017.

But following a meeting with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of a NATO summit in July, Tsipras said they had agreed to focus efforts on easing tensions in the Aegean.

Turkey has also called on Greece to return eight Turkish commandos who have sought asylum there after commandeering a helicopter to flee Turkey as a coup against Erdogan crumbled in July 2016. Turkey says they were involved, and has demanded they be returned to face trial.

In Brussels, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said he was delighted by news of the Greek soldiers’ imminent release.

“As I said (before) … Turkey has nothing to fear from its European neighbors. We want to see a democratic, stable and prosperous Turkey,” he posted on his Twitter feed.
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Royal Bank of Scotland Pays $4.9B for Crisis-era Misconduct

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Royal Bank of Scotland will pay $4.9 billion to settle U.S. claims that it misled investors on residential mortgage-backed securities between 2005 and 2008, the U.S. Justice Department said Tuesday.

The Justice Department said the penalty was the largest ever imposed on a bank for misconduct leading up to the financial crisis. The bank announced in May that it had reached the settlement in principle.

The government alleges RBS misled investors in underwriting and issuing residential mortgage-backed securities, understating the risks behind many of the loans and providing inaccurate data.

“Despite assurances by RBS to its investors, RBS’s deals were backed by mortgage loans with a high risk of default,” Andrew E. Lelling, U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts, said in a statement.

The Justice Department said that RBS disputes the allegations and does not admit wrongdoing, although the bank said in a statement it was happy to move on.

“There is no place for the sort of unacceptable behavior alleged by the DoJ at the bank we are building today,” RBS Chief Executive Ross McEwan said.

Dividend

In conjunction with the settlement, the bank also said it would be paying out an interim ordinary dividend of 2 pence per share on October 12 to shareholders.

The dividend is the bank’s first since its near-collapse and 45.5 billion-pound ($58 billion) state bailout in 2008.

The DOJ settlement and the resumption of dividends were two of the last big milestones in RBS’s decade-long journey back to normality. The looming Justice Department fine had weighed on the bank’s share price and prevented it from paying out to its shareholders.

Together with hefty cuts made to its investment bank and international business, a return to dividends could help shift the bank’s profile with investors from a risky bet into a safe, predictable value stock.

It also expands the market for future government share sales by enabling a broader array of investors to look at buying the bank’s shares.

Tuesday’s announcement marked the latest in a long-running series of massive settlements struck between the U.S. government and large global banks over conduct leading up to the financial crisis.

On August 1, the Justice Department struck a settlement with Wells Fargo, which agreed to pay $2.09 billion to settle similar claims.
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Russia to Help Restore UN Patrols Near Syria-Israel Frontier

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The Russian military said Tuesday that its forces in Syria will help U.N. peacekeepers fully restore patrols along the frontier with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, reflecting Moscow’s deepening role in mediating between the decades-old foes.

The Russian deployment in the area has also highlighted Moscow’s growing clout in the region, where it seeks to balance the sharply conflicting interests of Israel and Iran.

“The Russian flag is the guarantor of peace and security on that land,” said Lt. Gen. Sergei Kuralenko, speaking to international reporters on a trip to the area organized by the Russian Defense Ministry. He noted that Russian and Israeli officials have maintained regular communications, adding that “operations by Russian military police help ensure the security of Israel.”

Russia has been President Bashar al-Assad’s number one backer against rebels seeking to oust him. Moscow’s military intervention in Syria has turned the tide of the war in his favor, helping his forces recapture key areas from the opposition. Russian military police have been deploying in all areas recaptured from rebels, including on the edge of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, after Syrian government forces regained control of the area last month.

Kuralenko said that the Russian military police have set up four checkpoints on the edge of the demilitarized zone and plan to add another four.

“The Russian military police work in close interaction with the U.N.,” he said, adding that they have set up a hotline with the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) and held regular meetings to coordinate their actions.

He noted that a top priority for the Russian military police is to help clear mines left by militants. He said Russian forces have inspected the demilitarized zone and adjacent areas to help UNDOF map safe routes.

“We are offering all possible assistance to the U.N. mission to allow it to resume its operations in the demilitarized zone in full,” Kuralenko said, adding that the Russian military police will be ready to leave once the U.N. mission fully takes charge.

Syria’s defense minister, Gen. Ali Ayoub, meanwhile met with Maj. Gen. Francis Vib-Sanziri, the commander of the U.N. Disengagement Observer Force, UNDOF, to discuss the situation in the Golan Heights, state news agency SANA said.

SANA said the officials discussed coordination between the Syrian government and the U.N. command on the deployment of peacekeepers along the cease-fire line. The two sides also discussed an agreement for reopening the Quneitra gate, which would allow Syrians living in the Israeli-occupied part of the Golan Heights to cross into Syria, it said.

The U.N. peacekeepers first deployed in the area in 1974 under a deal to separate Syrian and Israeli forces after Israel occupied the Golan Heights in the 1967 war, but they were driven away by al-Qaida-linked militants in 2014.

Kuralenko said most U.N. facilities in the area were heavily damaged during fierce fighting between al-Qaida and Syrian government forces.

“The main problem is a large number of explosive objects left,” he said. “We see our mission not only in clearing mines, but also in training local personnel. We are helping train Syrian military engineers so that they can do the job themselves.”

By deploying its forces along the Syrian-Israeli frontier, Moscow has sought to assuage Israeli concerns about the Iranian presence in Syria.

Israel has repeatedly said it will not allow Iran, or its proxy Hezbollah militia, to establish a permanent presence in postwar Syria. Moscow, which has played a delicate diplomatic game of maintaining friendly ties with both Israel and Iran, warned that it would be unrealistic to expect Iran to fully withdraw from Syria.

But in a bid to accommodate Israel’s security interests, Moscow announced two weeks ago that it struck a deal with Tehran to keep its fighters 85 kilometers (53 miles) from the Golan.

While Russia and Iran have teamed up in Syria to shore up Assad’s government, their interests don’t always converge.

Iran is loath to surrender any of its hard-won gains in Syria, but it can’t afford a falling out with Moscow amid the continuing tensions with the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. Washington’s withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal has made ties with Russia even more important for Tehran.
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Ruble Slump Hits Russians’ Wallets, Not Their Support for Putin

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Alexei Nikolayev, one of more than 56 million Russians who re-elected President Vladimir Putin in March, is already counting the likely cost of a weaker ruble: less spending power abroad, higher prices at home and

another round of belt tightening.

But Nikolayev, 56, a graphic designer who enjoys foreign travel and imported wine, blames the West, not Putin, for the pain and has no regrets about voting for a politician he sees as the right man to guide Russia through trubled times.

“It’s painful and it’s unpleasant, but it won’t change my politics,” Nikolayev said of the ruble shedding 10 percent of its value against the dollar since the end of July, driven down largely by new U.S. sanctions on Russia. “In fact, as strange as it may sound, it will only strengthen my convictions. They [the West] are trying to break Russia.”

Nikolayev’s view that Putin is not to blame is held widely among Russians, according to Stepan Goncharov, a sociologist at the Levada Center pollster.

“People don’t really understand the dynamics behind it and the president, traditionally, is safe from criticism,” Goncharov told Reuters.

The narrative in Russia that the ruble’s slide is the result of a Western plot has direct echoes with Russian ally Turkey, whose lira currency slid to a record low Monday. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that his country is the target of an economic war and that Turkey will boycott some U.S. imports in retaliation.

In Russia, the falling ruble causes pain for some. The price of imported goods is likely to rise. Foreign vacations have also become more expensive.

Irina Turina, a spokeswoman for the Russian Travel Industry Union, said travel agents saw demand for package holidays fall 10 to 15 percent last week because of the ruble’s volatility.

“People who have not yet paid in full for their holidays are rushing to pay off the rest even if they have no obligation to do so,” Turina told Reuters, saying people were worried that the outstanding balance would be recalculated according to a higher, less favorable exchange rate.

“People who have not yet bought package holidays are also pausing for thought,” she said. “It’s not just about paying for your holiday. You need spending money once you get there, and people take dollars.”

​’Nothing is forever’

Nevertheless, early and anecdotal signs suggest many Russians, long inured to a volatile national currency, are stoic, even defiant, in the face of a falling ruble.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said last week that the sanctions on Russia had nothing to do with Moscow’s behavior in places like Ukraine or Syria but were motivated by a U.S. need to keep economic rivals down.

That view finds favor with many Russians who have listened via state TV and taken in the Kremlin’s anti-Western rhetoric for years.

Other Russians were simply sanguine about a ruble drop that has taken few by surprise because they have seen worse before.

“Nothing is forever; things will change somehow,” said Moscow resident Gennady Tsurkan. “Everything will always change for the better. I think that these days are not far off, I believe that.”

The fall in the ruble is much less severe than the currency crisis after 2014, when an economic slump coincided with the fallout from Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea.

Since that time, Russian companies have reduced their foreign borrowing, the state has cut the amount it needs to raise on Western debt markets, and the country imports fewer goods that it needs to pay for in dollars.

Putin’s still-high approval rating has slipped in the past few months, but pollsters put that down to an unpopular proposed pension reform, not the weakness of the ruble.

Pollsters say while the ruble’s weakness may fuel an emerging sense of discontent among some Russians that was sparked by the pension reform, it is unclear if it will lead to protests or influence a political landscape that Putin has bestrode for over 18 years.

“If it does have an effect, it will be an indirect one, magnifying discontent over falling living conditions,” said Levada Center’s Goncharov.

Nikolayev, the Putin-supporting graphic designer, was philosophical:

“It’s like sunshine or snow. I can’t influence it. Maybe I’ll have to drink a different kind of wine. Or maybe I’ll have to buy one instead of two pairs of shoes. It’s painful, but not that painful.”
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Nigeria’s Acting President Orders Overhaul of Controversial Police Unit

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Nigeria’s acting president has ordered the overhaul of a police unit following allegations of human rights violations, his spokesman said Tuesday, as the government seeks to burnish its security record ahead of February’s presidential election.

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo is temporarily head of state while President Muhammadu Buhari, who plans to stand for re-election, takes a 10-day holiday in Britain.

Buhari came to power in 2015 on pledges to make Nigeria safer but violent crime remains endemic, a jihadist insurgency continues in the northeast, and security forces are regularly accused of acting with impunity.

Osinbajo instructed the head of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) to reform the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) and ordered an independent investigation after “persistent complaints and reports” that bordered on “allegations of human rights violations,” a presidency statement said.

The unit — responsible for tackling serious crime such as armed robbery, kidnapping and cattle rustling — has been dogged by allegations of abuses for years, although the NPF has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

An NPF spokesman said a statement would be issued.

Last year, a social media campaign called for SARS to be disbanded as people shared stories, photographs and videos of alleged mistreatment.

The upper house of parliament voted in December 2017 to investigate SARS and, in the same month, the police inspector general announced that the unit would be reorganized. The findings of the inquiry have yet to be announced.

Last week, Osinbajo fired the head of the secret police, the Department of State Security (DSS), in the wake of a blockade of parliament by its agents.
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As Forgiveness Sweeps Ethiopia, Some Wonder About Justice

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Ethiopia has released thousands of prisoners as a new prime minister reverses decades of security abuses. No one knows how many were tortured.

But some of those torture victims are now talking openly — to the media, to their relatives and to their friends — about what happened to them after they were jailed, in many cases for protesting against the government.

Their stories raise a hard question for the government: How will it address the injustices committed by security forces behind prison walls?

Since coming to power in April, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, 41, has made peace with Eritrea, ended a state of emergency, freed political prisoners, and announced plans to sell shares in state-owned firms to promote growth and create jobs.

Abiy acknowledges that many prisoners suffered abuses, which he has denounced as acts of “state terrorism.”

He has not, however, announced plans to investigate abuses committed by the security forces or set up a process for victims to seek redress. But he has preached forgiveness.

“I call on us all to forgive each other from our hearts. To close the chapters from yesterday, and to forge ahead to the next bright future through national consensus,” Abiy said in his inaugural address.

Rights groups that have documented the torture — from psychological torment to the use of water and ceiling hooks — say there must now be a greater focus on justice.

“Despite all the reforms, there have yet to be any detailed commitments regarding investigations into abuses or justice for victims,” said Maria Burnett of Human Rights Watch.

Since late 2015, when protests against ethnic marginalization and inequality began, tens of thousands of people were detained, according to Human Rights Watch.

The attorney general’s office and government spokesman Ahmed Shide did not respond to calls and messages requesting comment.

‘We need help’

Those who spent years imprisoned and were recently released say they are cautiously hopeful.

“I never expected such changes were possible as long as the EPRDF [ruling coalition] remained in power. But even now we don’t know what will come of all this,” said Keyfalew Tefera, 33, who says his legs were amputated in a prison hospital after security forces shot him in 2006 when he was passing by a student protest.

Keyfalew, who studied plant science before he was detained, says his suffering should not be forgotten.

“I’m still a prisoner. I left half my body in there, I have no legs,” he said, in an interview in a friend’s living room.

His mother and father died during his 12 years in prison. “I don’t consider myself free.”

Another former prisoner, Mesfin Etana, 43, spent 16 years behind bars for alleged membership in the Oromo Liberation Front, a group removed from the government’s banned list of “terrorist” groups in June.

No evidence against him was produced by authorities, he said, but after six years in prison, a court gave him a life sentence.

He told Reuters that he was repeatedly stripped naked and sexually humiliated by warders during a five-month stint at Maekelawi, a detention center shut down after Abiy took office.

He cannot afford treatment for health problems that are mainly related to torture. It is not only physical injuries he is confronting.

Before Mesfin’s arrest in 2002, he was a trader and shop owner and was preparing to marry his fiancée, Zinash.

He was released on July 4. One of the first things he did was call Zinash, to find she had married another man at her family’s insistence.

“It was very sad,” he said of their conversation.

He was happy to be alive, but without earnings from his business, his family had fallen into poverty.

“We don’t want revenge, but we need help,” he said.

“We would be happy if the government returned what we used to have,” he said, adding that he felt justice was important to prevent the country from “going backward.”

Past crimes

Due process for victims will require overhauling the institutions that failed Ethiopians in the past, some argue.

“A lot of work needs to be done because the judiciary has been disgraced,” said lawyer Wondimu Ebsa, who represented hundreds of prisoners and opposition leaders in trials he decried as a mockery of justice.

Many of his clients have been freed but they are struggling. “They don’t have money for food, they can’t get work,” he said. “So many of them are living in worse conditions than they were in prison.”

Ethiopia’s constitution requires the state to compensate torture victims, he said, because the government failed to protect them from harm.

Concerns that past crimes may be papered over were raised by an encounter in Zimbabwe earlier this month that went viral on social media.

Former prime minister Hailemariam Desalegn, who resigned in February and was in Harare observing elections, met Ethiopia’s exiled former Marxist dictator, Mengistu Haile Mariam.

During Mengistu’s 17 years in power, millions of Ethiopians died of famine amid “Red Terror” purges. In 2007, he was sentenced in absentia to life in prison, but Zimbabwe declined to extradite him.

“This photo [of Hailemariam and Mengistu] … is confounding,” Ethiopian law professor Awol Allo wrote on Twitter. “It is fantastic that our government is talking about love, forgiveness, & reconciliation but does that mean we are prepared to give a free-for-all, no-questions-asked, amnesty?”
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Sudanese Hit by Bread Shortages as Currency Crunch Escalates

Posted on by SeeAF

Bread shortages have hit Sudan, with wheat traders blaming a foreign currency crisis for shortages of the staple that have left people lining up for hours outside bakeries.

Sudan’s economy has been struggling since the south seceded in 2011, taking with it three-quarters of its oil output and depriving it of a crucial source of foreign currency.

The crisis has deepened over the past year as a black market for U.S. dollars has effectively replaced the formal banking system after the Sudanese pound was devalued, making it more difficult to import essential supplies such as wheat.

A doubling of the price of bread in January triggered demonstrations after the government eliminated subsidies, although so far there was no sign of protests this time.

At Banet neighborhood in the town of Omdurman, in Khartoum, dozens of people stood in a long line outside the Modern Bakery.

“This is unbearable,” said 53-year-old Abdullah Mahmoud, a day laborer, who said he had been lining up for two hours for bread. “I had been here since the morning and I still don’t have any bread.”

Fatima Yassin, 36, in a queue for women, said: “Everything is expensive and bread is not available. We have a difficult life and the government doesn’t care about us.”

Similar queues were seen in other cities near the capital.

Sudan imported 2 million tons of wheat in 2017, the government said in December, compared with 445,000 tons produced locally.

One Khartoum bakery owner, Ahmed Saleh, said he had had no flour since Monday.

“We stopped working since yesterday because we did not get our share of flour,” he told Reuters.

Black market

Any flare-up over shortages could prove tricky for the government. In January, authorities arrested a prominent opposition leader and confiscated newspapers to try to stop unrest from spreading.

Only last week, Sudan’s ruling party announced that it would back any new bid by President Omar al-Bashir, to run again in the 2020 election, a move that would require a constitutional amendment.

Government officials were not immediately available to comment on the crisis.

But the Khartoum state governor, Abdel-Rahim Mohammed Hussein, said in remarks carried by state news agency SUNA on Monday that the state would receive its share of wheat supplies in the “next couple of days”, without elaborating.

Private sector wheat traders, who were given responsibility for imports by the government at the start of this year, blamed the flour shortages on the foreign currency shortages.

One trader said that businessmen were increasingly being forced to buy foreign currency at a higher rate on the black market to finance imports.

“At the same time, the government sets the sale price for flour at an unreal dollar rate,” one trader told Reuters. “We cannot sell flour at a loss,” he added.

The price of the Sudanese pound had been declining since the beginning of the year after the government devalued the currency to 18 per U.S. dollar, more than double its peg of 6.7 pounds to the dollar.

The pound, which has since been devalued further and is now officially set at 29 pounds to the dollar, was trading at 40 pounds to the dollar on the black market on Tuesday.

 

 
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Bridge Collapses in Italy During Heavy Storm, Crushing Cars

Posted on by SeeEU

A bridge over an industrial area in the Italian city of Genova partially collapsed during a sudden and violent storm on Tuesday, leaving vehicles crushed in the rubble below.

Italian media reported that there were deaths, but Maria Luisa Catalano, a police official in Genoa, said that authorities were still involved in rescue efforts and did not yet know the number of victims or injured.

 

The disaster occurred on a highway that connects Italy to France and other vacation resorts on the eve of a major Italian holiday on Wednesday, Ferragosto, and traffic would have been heavier than usual as many Italians traveled to beaches or mountains.

 

The transport minister, Danilo Toninelli, called the collapse “an enormous tragedy.”

 

The private broadcaster Sky TG24 said that a 200-meter section of the Morandi Bridge collapsed over an industrial zone. Firefighters told The Associated Press that there are concerns about gas lines.

 

Photos published by the ANSA news agency on its website showed a huge gulf between two sections of the bridge.

 

Video captured the sound of a man screaming: “Oh god, oh, god.” Other images showed a green truck that had stopped just meters (yards) short of the gaping hole in the bridge.

 

Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said some 200 firefighters were responding to the accident.

 

“We are following minute by minute the situation for the bridge collapse in Genoa,” Salvini said on Twitter.

 

The Morandi Bridge was inaugurated in 1967. It is 90 meters (yards) high, just over a kilometer (about three-quarters of a mile) long, with the longest section between supports measuring 200 meters (yards).

 

The bridge is a main thoroughfare connecting the A10 highway that goes toward France and the A7 highway that continues north toward Milan.

 

ANSA said that authorities suspected that a structural weakness caused the collapse on Tuesday.
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Man Arrested After Hitting Pedestrians with Car Near British Parliament

Posted on by SeeEU

Police in London say a man crashed a car into a group of pedestrians and cyclists before hitting a set of barriers outside of Britain’s Houses of Parliament on Tuesday, causing a number of injuries.

Authorities said officers arrested the male driver of the car on suspicion of terrorist offenses. They said there were no other people in the car, and that they did not find any weapons. They put his age as being in his late 20s.

“It certainly appears to be a deliberate act, but what the motivation is we can’t say,” London Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu told reporters.

Basu said the suspect is not cooperating with police as they try to establish both the man’s identity and motive.

He said that based on what investigators know so far, the suspect does not appear to be someone who was previously known to British counterterror or intelligence agencies.

President Donald Trump reacted to the incident on Twitter, saying “Another terrorist attack in London…These animals are crazy and must be dealt with through toughness and strength!”

The London Ambulance Service said it treated and transported two people to a hospital, and that neither had injuries that were life-threatening. Basu later said one of the people was being treated for serious injuries, while the second had been released from the hospital. A third person was treated at the crash site.

The area around the crash was closed off, as was a subway station close to the parliament grounds. Parliament is not currently in session.

Last year, a man drove a car into pedestrians on nearby Westminster Bridge, killing four people there before stabbing to death a police officer outside parliament. Police shot that attacker dead.
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Survey: Vienna Tops Melbourne as World’s Most Liveable City

Posted on by SeeEU

Vienna has dislodged Melbourne for the first time at the top of the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Global Liveability Index, strengthening the Austrian capital’s claim to being the world’s most pleasant city to live in.

The two metropolises have been neck and neck in the annual survey of 140 urban centers for years, with Melbourne clinching the title for the past seven editions. This year, a downgraded threat of militant attacks in western Europe as well as the city’s low crime rate helped nudge Vienna into first place.

Vienna regularly tops a larger ranking of cities by quality of life compiled by consulting firm Mercer. It is the first time it has topped the EIU survey, which began in its current form in 2004.

At the other end of the table, Damascus retained last place, followed by the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, and Lagos in Nigeria.

The survey does not include several of the world’s most dangerous capitals, such as Baghdad and Kabul.

“While in the past couple of years cities in Europe were affected by the spreading perceived threat of terrorism in the region, which caused heightened security measures, the past year has seen a return to normalcy,” the EIU said in a statement about the report published on Tuesday.

“A long-running contender to the title, Vienna has succeeded in displacing Melbourne from the top spot due to increases in the Austrian capital’s stability category ratings,” it said, referring to one of the index’s five headline components.

Vienna and Melbourne scored maximum points in the healthcare, education and infrastructure categories. But while Melbourne extended its lead in the culture and environment component, that was outweighed by Vienna’s improved stability ranking.

Osaka, Calgary and Sydney completed the top five in the survey, which the EIU says tends to favor medium-sized cities in wealthy countries, often with relatively low population densities. Much larger and more crowded cities tend to have higher crime rates and more strained infrastructure, it said.

London for instance ranks 48th.

Vienna, once the capital of a large empire rather than today’s small Alpine republic, has yet to match its pre-World War I population of 2.1 million. Its many green spaces include lakes with popular beaches and vineyards with sweeping views of the capital. Public transport is cheap and efficient.

In addition to the generally improved security outlook for western Europe, Vienna benefited from its low crime rate, the survey’s editor Roxana Slavcheva said.

“One of the sub-categories that Vienna does really well in is the prevalence of petty crime … It’s proven to be one of the safest cities in Europe,” she said.
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As 5-Year Anniversary of Rabaa Massacre Looms, Egypt Comes Under Fire

Posted on by SeeEA

As the five-year anniversary of Egypt’s Rabaa massacre comes Tuesday, some human rights groups say the country has not done enough to address the human rights issues demonstrated in the killing.

The Rabaa massacre was an attack in Cairo on supporters of ex-President Mohamed Morsi who were conducting a sit-in in the nation’s capital. A month earlier, Morsi had been ousted in a military coup.

On July 3, 2013, current general-turned-president Abdel Fattah el-Sissi led the coup against Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected civilian president. According to the Human Rights Watch, 817 civilians were confirmed killed, but it is likely that at least a thousand died.

“The Egyptian authorities’ repeated failure to respect the rights of protesters, and their failure to hold anyone accountable for mass murders, has contributed to an environment in which the security forces feel empowered to violate human rights with absolute impunity,” Najia Bounaim, North Africa Campaigns director for Amnesty International, said in a statement. 

The Egyptian government is currently conducting a mass trial against 739 people involved in the protest, including members of the Muslim Brotherhood — a Morsi-allied group since banned in the country — and journalist Mahmoud Abu Zeid, also known as “Shawkan.” The charges range from murder to “illegal gathering.”

“My brother is being held without charges in prison,” Zeid’s brother, Mohamed, told Egyptian news outlet Mada Masr. “He was detained during the dispersal of Rabea, and his detention has been renewed since then. My brother never held a gun. He was simply doing his job.” 

In July, an Egyptian court referred 75 of the defendants for a death sentence, requiring approval from the country’s highest Islamic law official, grand mufti Shawki Allam. Their sentences are currently subject to an appeal. Zeid was not among those sentenced.

In a statement, Amnesty International alleged that prosecutors had “failed to submit evidence establishing the individual responsibility” for individual defendants.

“This can only be described as a parody of justice. It casts a dark shadow over the integrity of Egypt’s entire system of justice and makes a mockery of due process,” Bounaim said. 

The Egyptian parliament passed a law granting immunity to members of the nation’s armed forces selected by el-Sissi for actions undertaken between July 3, 2013, to Jan. 10, 2016, including the Rabaa massacre.

“It seems that fostering an environment of impunity and a disrespect for international laws, the Egyptian constitution and the basic tenants of justice, are the objective,” Bounaim said.
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White House, Omarosa, and Security Worries Over Secret Tapes

Posted on by SeeUS

The scandal is continuing between President Donald Trump and former aide and reality-show star Omarosa Manigault Newman who is going public with recordings of conversations she had with the president and his chief of staff. Manigault Newman says she secretly recorded the audio, raising questions about possible security breaches at the White House. VOA White House correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has the latest.
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Zimbabwe Holds Breath as Presidential Poll Challenge Delays Inauguration

Posted on by SeeAF

Zimbabwe is at a tense standstill, as the presidential inauguration has been delayed due to the opposition’s legal challenge to the July 30th election results. This was the country’s first election without Robert Mugabe on the ballot, and analysts are not entirely sure what to make of this moment in Zimbabwe’s history. VOA’s Anita Powell has more from Johannesburg.
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Global Concerns Rise as Turkey’s Lira Dips Again

Posted on by SeeEU

Turkey’s currency, the lira, continues to slide as the country’s central bank failed to halt the decline Monday. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused the United States of purposely trying to damage his country’s economy. More from VOA’s Bill Gallo.
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Reports of Election Site Hacking Rankle Florida Officials

Posted on by SeeUS

Child’s play or a signs of a serious security problem in one of the nation’s swing states?

That’s the question confronting Florida election officials who are pushing back against reports that an 11-year-old hacked a replica of the state’s election website.

Multiple media outlets over the weekend reported that children at a hacking conference in Las Vegas were able to easily hack into a version of the website that reports election results to the public. An 11-year-old boy got into Florida’s site within 10 minutes, while an 11-year-old girl did it in 15 minutes, according to the organizers of the event called DEFCON Voting Machine Hacking Village.

State officials contend there’s no way that the replica used by hackers is an actual representation of the state’s website. 

“This was a mock site with likely very few, if any, security measures in place,” said Sarah Revell, a spokeswoman for Secretary of State Ken Detzner. “It is not a real-life scenario and it offers a wholly inaccurate representation of the security of Florida’s elections websites, online databases and voting systems that does not take into account the state-of-the-art security measures the Florida Department of State has in place to prevent any possible hacking attempts from being successful.”

Florida’s election website that displays results is not connected to the actual local election systems responsible for tabulating votes. Instead, on election night supervisors upload unofficial results to state officials through a completely different network.

Still if someone was able to manipulate the website it could create confusion and sow doubts about the actual results once they were announced. Investigators in May found evidence of a cyberattack on a Tennessee county’s elections website from a computer in Ukraine, which likely caused the site to crash just as it was reporting vote totals during a primary.

Nico Sell, one of the organizers of the event, told PBS Newshour on Sunday that the replicas used at the conference were accurate representations.

“The site may be a replica but the vulnerabilities that these kids were exploiting were not replicas, they’re the real thing,” the television network quoted her. “I think the general public does not understand how large a threat this is, and how serious a situation that we’re in right now with our democracy.”

Mark Earley, the elections supervisor in Leon County who is a cybersecurity liaison between state and local officials, questioned how outsiders could obtain the security protocols used by Florida if they weren’t already behind the system’s firewalls. He said that all this “hacking noise” and “misinformation plays into the hands of the folks who are trying to undermine democracy.”

Jeff Kosseff, a lawyer and assistant professor at the United States Naval Academy Cyber Studies Department, said states are struggling with election security threats. He said they should work with outsiders in order to see if there are flaws in their systems.

“All states should look at this as a wake-up call,” Kosseff said. “What were the shortcomings identified and how they can fix it.  I don’t think it should be an adversarial.”

The reports of hacking into Florida’s website that reports election results coincide with a dust-up between U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson and Gov. Rick Scott over possible Russian meddling in other parts of the state’s election system.

Nelson last week said Russians were able to get inside the election systems of “certain counties” and “now have free rein to move about.” He added that “the threat is real and elections officials — at all levels — need to address the vulnerabilities.”

The senator has not provided any more details, saying that additional information is classified. Scott has demanded that Nelson provide proof of his claims. Last Friday two Republicans who are on the Senate intelligence community declined to confirm or deny Nelson’s statements.

Russian hackers targeted at least 21 states, including Florida, ahead of the 2016 election and breached the voter registration system in at least one, Illinois, investigators say. An indictment released last month said Russian operatives sent over 100 fake emails to elections offices and personnel in Florida as part of the hacking effort. State officials have never acknowledged how many counties were targeted by the Russians.
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Analysts: Trade Wars Not Good for Anyone

Posted on by SeeUS

Tariffs imposed on goods imported from China, Europe and other parts of the world could hurt American consumers and small businesses more than help them. Analysts point out that in today’s global economy, most manufacturers produce parts and import others to make a final product. Tariffs imposed on Chinese electronic parts have already forced a U.S. TV factory to close down, and there are concerns that U.S. farmers could lose big markets overseas. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has more.
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Bill Asks Pentagon to Examine More Options for Stopping N. Korean Missiles

Posted on by SeeUS

A bill signed by President Donald Trump on Monday asks the Pentagon to pursue more options for defeating U.S.-bound North Korean missiles by using radar and more missiles to spot and shoot down inbound threats.

The National Defense Authorization Act gives the Pentagon $716 billion, with almost $10 billion going to the Missile Defense Agency to fund the expansion of missile defenses, emphasizing the need to stop any North Korean or Iranian attacks.

The military is already exploring whether the United States can add another layer to defenses to those already in place for intercepting incoming missiles in flight, Keith Englander, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency’s director for engineering, said at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, last week.

The Missile Defense Agency’s head, Lieutenant General Samuel Greaves, has said he wants to integrate the Aegis Combat System into the current ICBM defenses of the U.S. homeland. The Aegis system, mainly found on ships, could be fitted with the Standard Missile 3 Block IIA (SM-3 IIA) interceptors that are being developed in a joint venture between Raytheon Co and Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd.

The Lockheed Martin-made Aegis system is currently deployed aboard 36 U.S. Navy ships, as well as at the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Hawaii.

If given the new mission, the ships could patrol the Pacific Ocean and augment the network of Ground-Based Midcourse Defense interceptor missiles in Alaska and California that protect the nation from intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) attacks.

This is one of several avenues the Pentagon is studying to knock down inbound missiles. These include shooting the missile down soon after takeoff, stopping it in space as it flies above the Earth’s atmosphere, and killing it soon after it re-enters the atmosphere before hitting its target.

Growing concern

Concern about U.S. missile defenses has grown with the escalating threat from North Korea. Last year, North Korea conducted about a dozen missile tests, including the launch of a suspected ICBM that could hit the U.S. mainland and the test of a purported hydrogen bomb.

North Korea and the United States are struggling to agree on how to bring about the North’s denuclearization, after Kim vowed to work toward that goal at a landmark summit in June in Singapore with Trump.

The potential new defenses must first be tested to make sure the intercepting missile can take out what could be an ICBM fired by Pyongyang.

In a previous spending bill, Congress mandated that the Missile Defense Agency perform an intercept test with the SM-3 IIA missile against an ICBM by the end of 2020.

Last year, Reuters reported that the Pentagon was investigating adding a missile defense layer under the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system.

In May 2017, the Missile Defense Agency held its first live-fire test of the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense against a simulated ICBM, and hailed the successful intercept as an “incredible accomplishment.”
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Far From Dead: Tens of Thousands of IS Fighters Linger in Iraq, Syria    

Posted on by SeeUS

The Islamic State terror group may be far more resilient, stronger and dangerous than U.S. officials have been willing to let on, boasting a fighting force in Iraq and Syria that comes close to what it fielded at its peak.

After four years of bombings, the elimination of key IS leaders, and other U.S. and coalition backed efforts, there are still anywhere from 28,600 to 31,600 IS fighters in Iraq and Syria, according to information given by the Defense Department to the lead inspector general for Operation Inherent Resolve and Operation Pacific Eagle–Philippines.

At the group’s height in 2015, U.S. intelligence officials estimated the terror group had about 33,000 fighters in Iraq and Syria, for a time, bolstering its numbers by bringing in thousands of foreign fighters every month.

Yet the new estimates suggest after spending $14.3 billion on more than 24,000 airstrikes, the U.S.-led coalition has managed to achieve only mixed results. While the Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate that spanned part of Iraq and Syria is no more, the U.S.-led effort has done little to erode IS’s overall might.

Thousands of IS fighters in Iraq & Syria

Instead, the inspector general’s quarterly report, citing Defense Department figures, shows IS may now be able to boast more than 17,000 fighters in Iraq.

Another 13,100 to 14,500 IS fighters are active in Syria, the report said, of which only 4,000 to 6,000 “remained in the U.S. military’s areas of operation in northeastern Syria.” The rest appear to be operating in areas controlled by the Syrian regime and its Russian and Iranian allies.

“Taken at face value, the U.S. government is saying ISIS has the same number of fighters in Iraq and Syria today as when the bombing campaign began,” said Thomas Joscelyn, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, using an acronym for the terror group.

“They are saying that ISIS was able to replace its entire force structure despite fighting multiple adversaries in both countries,” he added, noting the Pentagon’s 2017 claim that the bombing campaign and other efforts had killed 70,000 IS fighters.

VOA reached out to the Defense Department for more information on the estimates of IS fighters in the inspector general report. A spokesman said the department was looking into the matter.

There are concerns, internally, that the numbers may be at least misleading. A senior defense official told VOA it is possible the estimates could include fighters as well as family members or others with strong connections to IS, though not necessarily capable themselves of taking up arms or conducting terror attacks.

IS discipline ‘intact’

But the U.S. may not be alone in putting the number of IS fighters in Iraq and Syria in the tens of thousands. A new United Nations report Monday, based on intelligence from member states, estimated there are “between 20,000 and 30,000 [Islamic State] individuals, roughly equally distributed between the two countries.”

According to the UN report, those numbers include “a significant component” of the thousands of foreign terrorist fighters who flocked to Iraq and Syria to join the self-declared caliphate, warning they are not breaking rank.

“Despite the damage to bureaucratic structures of the so-called ‘caliphate,’ the collective discipline of ISIL is intact,” the report continued, using another of the terror group’s acronyms. “Although he is reported to have been injured, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi remains in authority.”

Many U.S. military and counterterrorism officials, especially of late, have been reluctant to share intelligence on the number of IS fighters, calling such estimates, at best, an imperfect science. They also have tried to focus on the control of territory and on capabilities as more precise measures of the terror group’s strength.

‘Hiding in onesies and twosies’

But the new estimates for the number of IS fighters in Iraq and Syria stand in stark contrast to what some officials have previously said publicly.

“You know, they are out in remote, sparse areas, or they are hiding in onesies and twosies amongst the population,” then Operation Inherent Resolve spokesman, Col. Ryan Dillon told VOA during a briefing this past April when asked about the IS presence in Syria.

“Any of the ISIS elements that the Iraqi Security Forces have encountered or found in Iraq, they have not exceeded four people at any one time,” he added at the time. “So that goes to show, potentially, a snapshot of what ISIS looks like when they don’t hold territory.”

“They’re really in the disarray,” French Brig. Gen. Frederic Parisot, director of civil-military operations for the coalition, told Pentagon reporters last month (July), estimating only “a few hundred” IS fighters were likely left.

 

The largest public estimate of the number of IS fighters in Syria came July 31, when the coalition’s deputy commander, strategy and support, British Maj. Gen. Felix Gedney, said it’s likely more than 1,000 IS fighters were holed up in Hajin, near the Iraqi border, describing it as the “last remaining pocket of ISIS-held territory east of the Euphrates River.”

Islamic State still a potent threat

Still, few officials, even those citing a shrinking number of IS fighters in Iraq and Syria, have been willing to downplay the threat, or the difficulty of eliminating the terror group.

“I won’t make any predictions about timing or anything on that. It will be done when it’s done,” U.S. Central Command’s Gen. Joseph Votel told Pentagon reporters last week when asked about the coalition’s push into the last bastions of IS control in Syria. “Like most of our fights against ISIS, I expect that this will be a difficult one.”

“There is hard fighting ahead. That’s all there is to it,” U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis warned a day earlier. “I don’t declare victory until it’s in the rearview mirror.”

Yet the new inspector general report is just one of several that suggest it could be some time before victory can be declared in Iraq and Syria, or elsewhere.

U.S. counterterrorism officials told VOA last week the IS province in Afghanistan, known as IS-Khorasan, has more than 1,000 fighters, almost double what the terror group had at this time last year two decapitation strikes and the use of the largest non-nuclear bomb in the U.S. arsenal on a suspected IS cave and tunnel complex.

Another report, published this month by the Combatting Terrorism Center at West Point, estimated there are also “approximately 6,000 Islamic State fighters in Africa today, spread over a total of nine Islamic State ‘cells.’” 

Even in places like the Philippines, where the IS presence has been beaten back, a couple hundred fighters continue to hold on, supported in part by criminal gangs that specialize in drugs and money laundering, according to U.S. defense officials.

“ISIS is in the process of a largely successful transition to a networked terrorist organization, albeit evoking more of a global consciousness than al-Qaida,” according Nicholas Glavin, formerly a researcher at the U.S. Naval War College’s Center on Irregular Warfare and Armed Groups.

“This illustrates the mounting challenge faced by our partners in Iraq and Syria to deliver ISIS an enduring defeat,” Glavin said.​
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