Month: April 2019

Kurdish Syrian forces have asked the Syrian government for protection against a Turkish attack in a flashpoint town, triggered by a shock US decision to withdraw forces from the country which left them exposed.

Syrian troops erected the national flag in the outskirts of Manbij – the first time it has flown in the northern town for more than six years.

“The aim is to ward off a Turkish offensive,” said Ilham Ahmed, a senior Kurdish official. “If the Turks’ excuse is the (Kurdish militia), they will leave their posts to the government.”

A statement released earlier by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) said they had invited government forces to the town, as they are “obliged to protect the same country, nation and borders."

Kurdish YPG fighters still based there are part of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance battling Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil). The town has been governed for the last two years by the Manbij Military Council, which is allied to the SDF.

It is the first major concession by the Kurds to the Bashar al-Assad regime since the YPG seized control of vast swathes of north and east Syria and created an area of self-rule and one which analysts called a major turning point.

Until last week the YPG had the support of the US, which had helped them stave off a threatened offensive by Turkey and Turkish-backed Syrian rebels and hold territory wanted by the Syrian regime.

A number of Syrian troops arrived in the area early Friday morning and deployed between YPG and Turkish-backed forces west of Manbij. 

A Syrian army spokesman said in a televised statement that all Syrians must “join efforts to preserve national sovereignty” and “defeat all invaders”, with reference to Turkey.

The US-backed coalition had a number of special forces stationed in the city, where they have a base. It is understood they will withdraw in the next few days.

It is unclear of local residents will react to regime forces returning to the city.

"No one knows what to think as the regime has not yet arrived," one resident of Manbij, who declined to be named, told the Telegraph. "Anyone with any connection to the revolution will probably try to leave soon, maybe for areas controlled by Turkey in the Euphrates Shield."

The town of some 100,000 people fell to moderate rebel fighters in the summer of 2012 before it was overrun by Isil jihadists in 2014. It was then captured by SDF in an anti-Isil offensive in 2016.

The Kurds have used the cover of the war to carve out an autonomous state in northeastern Syria. However, their project seems increasingly under threat as Assad’s regime looks to reclaim the whole of Syria.

Kurdish officials have told The Telegraph they would rather try their luck in negotiations with the regime than risk an all-out assault from neighbouring Turkey, which considers the YPG a terrorist group and has watched Kurdish expansion with growing concern.

“The YPG accepts drinking the poison to stop a massacre. Do you prefer your people to be massacred by a brutal dictator like (Turkish president Recep Tayyip) Erdogan or be protected by a brutal dictator like Assad?” tweeted Kamal Chomani, a non-resident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy.

Russia, which has long called for the withdrawal of US troops “illegally” in Syria, welcomed the news on Friday, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov describing the development as a "positive step" that could help "stabilise the situation."

Speaking in frank terms on Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw 2,000 troops from Syria, Jeremy Hunt, Foreign Secretary, today said the US president “makes a speciality of talking in very black and white terms about what’s happening in the world.”

"We have made massive progress in the war against Daesh (Arabic acronym for Isil), but it’s not over and, although they have lost nearly all the territory they held, they still hold some territory and there is still some real risk," Mr Hunt told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

During a visit to Iraq this week, Mr Trump declared an end to the US role of being the world’s "policeman".

Arab leaders have in recent days taken steps to rehabilitate the brutal Assad regime, with the UAE and Bahrain announcing they are to reopen embassies that had been shut since the beginning of the civil war.

Belgian riot police used tear gas and water cannon on Sunday to disperse thousands of people protesting in Brussels against a UN migration pact.

Demonstrators held aloft banners bearing slogans including "Our people first" and "We have had enough, close the borders."

The protest outside the European Union headquarters in Brussels was organised by Flemish Right-wing parties and had initially been banned, but the ban was overturned this weekend by Belgium’s high court, which cited the right to protest. 

A minority of the estimated 5,500 demonstrators became violent when they were asked to disperse and began throwing paving stones, street furniture and and firecrackers at security forces near the European Commission building.

Police responded with tear gas and water cannon.

A counter-demonstration of around 1,000 people took place peacefully in the centre of the Belgian capital, organised by Left-wing groups and non-governmental organisations in favour of the non-binding UN migration pact.

The Right-wing New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), the biggest party in parliament, pulled its ministers from the ruling coalition last week after Charles Michel, the prime minister, refused its demand that he not sign the UN migration compact in Marrakesh.

That leaves Mr Michel, who belongs to the liberal Mouvement Reformateur party, at the helm of a minority government with five months to go before legislative elections.

The UN pact aims at creating a global approach to migration and was initially supported by all four parties in Belgium’s coalition. 

But the N-VA reversed its position in October and later voted against it, along with the far-Right Vlaams Belang party.

Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s far-Right National Rally, and Steve Bannon, a former advisor to US president Donald Trump, denounced the UN pact at an event in Brussels last weekend.

“The country that signs the pact obviously signs a pact with the devil,” Ms Le Pen said.

The UN pact was agreed in July by all 193 UN members except the US, but only 164 formally signed it at a meeting last Monday in Morocco.

Critics say the deal could increase immigration to Europe.

Ten countries, mostly in formerly Communist Eastern Europe, have pulled out of the pact.

With a record 21.3 million refugees globally, the UN began work on the pact after more than one million people arrived in Europe in 2015, many fleeing civil war in Syria and poverty in Africa.

Pope Francis on Sunday voiced his support for the agreement and urged the international community to show "responsibility, solidarity and compassion" in dealing with migrants. 

Francis stressed the pact was designed to secure "safe, ordered and regular migration." 

The deal is expected to be ratified at UN headquarters in New York on December 19.

Indigenous rights groups have warned they are rapidly running out of time to save one of the world’s most vulnerable Amazonian tribes before far-Right Brazilian president-elect Jair Bolsonaro is sworn into office on 1 January.

Human rights organisation Survival International is lobbying the Brazilian government to map out and protect the land of the uncontacted Kawahiva tribe.

The Kawahiva are hunter-gatherers based in the territory of Rio Pardo, in Brazil’s southern Amazonian region. The Brazilian indigenous affairs agency, FUNAI, estimates that there are over 100 such isolated tribes across the country.

Survival also demands increased policing in and around the tribal territory, to avoid what…

Local members of Germany’s ruling Christian Democrats have quit in protest at Angela Merkel’s chosen successor winning the race to lead the party.

Just a day after the CDU appeared to end weeks of infighting by voting in Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, known as "mini Merkel", delegates at the party’s congress told The Sunday Telegraph of a wave of resignations among rank and file members.

Victory for Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer is seen by many as a failure of the party to learn from the mistakes of Mrs Merkel, and a missed opportunity to regain ground on the Right on key issues such as immigration.

Party delegates from several regions of Germany confirmed that members left the CDU after Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer defeated pro-business figure Frierdich Merz by a mere 35 of the 999 delegate votes on Friday. One prominent party figure confirmed that “very many” of the party rank and file had quit.

The contest, which sets the stage for the CDU to maintain its moderate edge after Mrs Merkel steps down in 2021, laid bare divisions that have been simmering inside the CDU over Ms Merkel’s refugee policies and her perceived anti-business instincts.

In her victory speech on Friday, Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer – often referred to simply as AKK – stressed that the party now needed to come together.

But many delegates at the conference were left deflated by what they see as a vote for the continuation of policies that have lost the party millions of voters to the populist AfD and the Greens in recent months.

Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer was tapped by Ms Merkel to take over the powerful role of party general-secretary in February, a move widely interpreted as positioning her to become Chancellor.

During campaigning the 56-year-old made it her mission to convince people she wasn’t the mini-Merkel, as the German press have labelled her. Nonetheless Mr Merz, who hasn’t been in frontline politics for over a decade, represented the clearest break with the Merkel era. He repeatedly harangued the party hierarchy for failing to stop the rise of the AfD.

“The CDU had a chance to change its course and it didn’t take it,” Urban Lanig, a delegate from southern state of Baden-Württemberg, said on Saturday. Seven people have left his local party chapter in the past 24 hours, he said.

Describing AKK’s policy positions as “a cheap imitation of the Social Democrats,” Mr Urban said the CDU would continue its tailspin in popularity under its new leader.

Carsten Linnemann, head of the powerful CDU trade association, told The Sunday Telegraph that “many people are very disappointed and it’s going to take time for them to get over it. Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer needs to now set her own tone and give the party a clear profile that distinguishes it from the opposition.”

Others talked down the significance of the resignations.

“There have been threats of resignations in our local chapter, but I wouldn’t take it too seriously,” a delegate from the north said. “These things happen when you have a new party leader.”

North Korea has vowed not to unilaterally give up its nuclear weapons unless the US reciprocates by removing its own nuclear threat to Pyongyang, in a blunt statement that casts fresh doubt on whether the current impasse in disarmament talks can be resolved. 

The lengthy rebuke of Washington’s “hostile” policy towards the reclusive regime was delivered by the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Thursday. 

It accused the US of “high-handed practices and pressure” and offered one of the clearest explanations to date of how North Korea views the denuclearisation process. 

At an unprecedented summit in Singapore in June, Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump, the US president, reached an agreement in vague terms to “work towards the complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula.”

Talks have since stalled as the two sides have failed to agree on the definition of denuclearisation or on how to move forward. 

“When we refer to the Korean Peninsula, they include both the area of the DPRK [North Korea] and the area of South Korea where aggression troops, including the nuclear weapons of the US, are deployed,” the KCNA commentary clarified. 

“When we refer to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, it, therefore, means removing all elements of nuclear threats from the areas of both the north and the south of Korea and also from surrounding areas from where the Korean Peninsula is targeted,” it said.

American nuclear weapons were deployed in South Korea from 1958 to 1991 but now Washington supports Japan and South Korea using bombers and submarines based elsewhere. It also maintains 28,500 American troops in South, which could be a potential sticking point in disarmament negotiations. 

The regime’s statement denounced Washington’s policy since the Singapore summit as “misguided”, saying that it was “aghast” at Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state’s assertion that Pyongyang had “committed itself to the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation of North Korea.”

It added: “The US must have a clear understanding of the phrase, denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula, and study geology in particular, before it is too late.”

The latest missive from Pyongyang jars with the more optimistic soundings from Seoul in recent months about Kim’s willingness to cooperate. 

However, it also validates warnings from North Korea analysts and experts, who have consistently argued that Kim Jong-un will not voluntarily relinquish his nuclear arsenal, which he views as both a security guarantee and as giving him a stronger hand in diplomatic negotiations. 

“It has always said this. Some people wanted to delude themselves into believing otherwise. But North Korea is nothing if not consistent,” tweeted Vipin Narang, an associate professor of political science at MIT. 

Writing in NK News, Andrei Lankov, a professor at Kookmin university in Seoul, described the KCNA dispatch as simply “an honest admission of Pyongyang’s real intentions.”

“This statement might have come as a shock to the few remaining nuclear optimists…However, a more unbiased observer should not be surprised at all,” he wrote. 

“North Korea has never had the slightest intention to surrender their nuclear weapons. They saw what happened in Iraq and, more importantly, in Libya, and have long believed that without nuclear weapons they will become vulnerable to both a foreign invasion and a local revolution.”