Islamic State Faces Assaults on Mosul and Palmyra

The Iraqi military has reportedly begun its offensive to retake Mosul from the Islamic State. The attack has started with Iraqi forces moving west from their base in the the Makhmour area, about 40 miles south of Mosul, to recapture four towns from the Islamic State. The attack was supported by U.S. airstrikes and Kurdish peshmerga forces, and the military is reportedly discussing the next advance to retake Qayyara with Shia militias. Kurdish forces say they are bracing for Islamic State counterattacks.

In Syria, Assad regime forces have launched their attack on the Islamic State-held city of Palmyra, which militants captured last May. Yesterday, it was reported that government troops had seized the high ground near the city, and state media claimed today that the assault force had entered the city. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the Islamic State set up loudspeakers to tell the remaining 15,000 civilians in Palmyra to flee the regime’s advance.

Turkey Claims to Have Alerted Belgium to Suicide Bomber

Investigators in Brussels are searching for two men who participated in Tuesday’s attacks that killed 31 people. One of the suspects abandoned a bomb at the airport where two suicide bombers detonated their explosives, and the second was seen helping the subway bomber carry his bomb. Those suspects have not been identified, and reports now suggest that Najim Laachraoui, the bombmaker in the Paris attacks, was one of the suicide bombers at Zaventem Airport. According to his lawyer, Paris attacker Salah Abdeslam says he did not know in advance about the Brussels attacks, and Belgian prosecutors said yesterday that a note written by one of the suicide bombers suggests that the men may have rushed their plans to action because police were getting too close to finding them. The head of Europol said they are stepping up efforts to assess 5,000 people suspected of being radicalized in Europe and traveling to fight in Syria. He did not specify how many have returned, and European authorities are facing criticism after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said yesterday that his government had alerted Belgium to one of the suspects, Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, who was deported from Turkey in June 2015. Turkey says they identified Bakraoui as a foreign fighter to Belgian authorities.

Headlines

• U.N. Yemen envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed announced yesterday that the ceasefire in Yemen will be implemented on April 10, a week before peace talks begin on April 18 in Kuwait; the ceasefire will allow “safe, rapid and unhindered” humanitarian access, he said.

• Turkish jets carried out airstrikes on 11 Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) targets in northern Iraq yesterday, according to the Turkish military; it is the third bombing run Turkey has conducted since a PKK splinter group attacked Ankara on March 13.

• Rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, have condemned Egypt’s latest crackdown on non-governmental organizations; in recent weeks, NGO workers have had their travel restricted and assets frozen and the government has threatened to shut down organizations receiving foreign funds or that lack certain permits.

• Four major aid organizations — the UNHCR, Medicins Sans Frontieres, the International Rescue Committee, and the Norwegian Refugee Council — have withdrawn from providing assistance under the new EU-Turkey refugee agreement, which they say is a violation of refugees’ human rights.

• A Lebanese soldier was killed by a roadside bomb near the flashpoint city of Arsal, near the Syrian border.

Arguments and Analysis

“What to Do about Brussels?” (Joshua Hersh, The New Republic)

“In the terror attacks that have ripped across Western Europe in recent years, a certain menacing figure has cropped up time and again: the violent Islamic extremist, often of North African origin, who spent time with the Islamic State in Syria and returned home bent on wreaking havoc on his European homeland. These are the hallmarks of the modern terrorist, of the murderous suicide bombers who blew themselves up outside a soccer stadium and restaurants in Paris. This figure is likely to emerge again, in the investigation of those who, most recently, detonated their charges inside the main international airport and a metro station in Brussels. But when I spent time late last year in Molenbeek — the neighborhood of Brussels where many of these homegrown terrorists grew up and lived, and where Abdeslam was finally captured last week after four months on the run — I kept hearing about the two men who drove through the night to ferry Abdeslam back from Paris. ‘That could have been me,’ a young resident told me one day, rather nonchalantly.”

“Why Turkey’s authoritarian descent shakes up democratic theory” (Jason Brownlee, Monkey Cage)

“The example of Turkey under premier-then-president Recep Tayyip Erdogan presents a potentially theory-busting specimen of a highly developed democracy going authoritarian. Despite recent market uncertainty, Turkey is now significantly more affluent than Argentina was 40 years ago and its political trajectory carries global implications. The more Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) pull their economically vibrant country toward autocracy, the bleaker the outlook for democracy in similar or less favorable circumstances.”

-J. Dana Stuster

AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/Getty Images