Iraqi Forces Begin Advance into Fallujah

Iraqi counterterrorism forces began advancing on Fallujah from the south this morning, but have encountered strong resistance from the Islamic State, which is defending the approach with snipers and mortar shelling. Iraqi forces had been holding their position outside the neighborhood of al-Shuhada since last Wednesday. The Fallujah offensive was criticized over the weekend by Shia militia leaders, who said it is poorly organized and accused the government of removing key forces for retaking the city and redeploying them to positions near Mosul.

The Islamic State is executing civilians as they try to flee the city, including shooting people trying to swim across the Euphrates River to safety. Other routes out of Fallujah have been made too dangerous with the placement of defensive traps. Despite the dangers, approximately 18,000 people have fled to nearby camps in the past two weeks, the Norwegian Refugee Council. In another illustration of the Islamic State’s brutality, Iraqi forces discovered a mass grave containing approximately 400 bodies in Saqlawiya, northwest of Fallujah. The dead included members of the military and civilians, many of whom had been killed by being shot in the head.

Another series of bomb attacks hit targets in Baghdad, killing at least 24 people today.

Violence Between Rebels and Assad Regime Escalates in Aleppo

Clashes between rebels and Assad regime forces intensified in Aleppo over the weekend. At least 32 people were killed in a series of nearly 50 airstrikes targeting rebel-held neighborhoods of the city yesterday. Rebels responded by increasing the shelling of government neighborhoods, killing approximately 20 people, according to state media reports. The violence continues an escalation that began last week.

Assad regime forces are also pressing east, approaching the Islamic State-held Taqba Dam. The new offensive, occurring simultaneously with a push from U.S.-backed rebel forces from the west, is in effect creating a pincer movement trapping Islamic State forces in the Manbij pocket along the Turkey-Syria border.

Headlines

• Five people, including three Jordanian intelligence officers, were killed in a terrorist attack at the Baqaa Palestinian refugee camp north of Amman; no group has claimed credit for the attack.

• At peace talks in Kuwait today, the parties to the war in Yemen agreed to release all detained children, according to U.N. Yemen envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed.

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted to accepting more than $1 million in campaign contributions in 2001 disclosed in an ongoing fraud trial in France, saying the funds were used for official travel and the promotion of Israeli interests; Netanyahu and his wife have come under renewed scrutiny recently for their spending of public funds.

• The U.S. military disclosed four airstrikes that it carried out in Yemen in recent months, including one in May that killed four suspected members of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

• The Iranian government says that a $10-billion deal with Airbus that has been nearly complete since April is still pending U.S. approval; the United States is considering whether the deal violates remaining sanctions because more than 10 percent of the components of the planes being purchased are manufactured in the United States.

Arguments and Analysis

“No Safe Refuge: Asylum-Seekers and Refugees Denied Effective Protection in Turkey” (Amnesty International)

“This briefing focuses on people’s treatment within Turkey, and shows that — contrary to what is required under EU and international law — Turkey does not provide effective protection to the asylum-seekers and refugees on its territory. First, asylum-seekers do not have access to fair and efficient procedures for the determination of their status. Turkey’s two-year old asylum system is still in the process of being established, and is not capable of coping with individual applications made by hundreds of thousands of asylum- seekers. Second, asylum-seekers and refugees do not have timely access to what are known as ‘durable solutions.’ The UN Refugee Agency — UNHCR — has identified three such solutions for addressing refugee crises: repatriation (when safe to do so) to countries of origin, integration in host countries, and resettlement to third countries. Because Turkey denies full refugee status to non-Europeans, and because the international community is failing to take a fair share of the world’s displaced people, asylum-seekers and refugees in Turkey do not have adequate access to either of the two relevant durable solutions. Third, asylum-seekers and refugees in Turkey are denied access to means of subsistence sufficient to maintain an adequate standard of living. With state authorities not meeting people’s basic needs — in particular shelter — combined with the significant barriers that people experience in achieving self-reliance, Turkey is not providing an environment where asylum-seekers and refugees can live in dignity. This briefing exposes as a fiction the assumption that Turkey is safe for asylum-seekers and refugees.”

“The Law of Revenge: Deadly Hatred Among the Anti-IS Alliance in Iraq” (Christoph Reuter, Der Spiegel)

“The roughly 30 Sunni villages surrounding Tuz Khurmatu are completely empty today. Where houses stood until just a few months ago, there are ruins today. Or, in the case of the village of Hweila, there is nothing left at all. It was bombed and flattened down to knee level, with just a bit of re-bar, some piles of rubble and bits of concrete pillars sticking out above the undulating grass. It is silent but for the sound of crickets and a few birds. Clumps of flowers reveal where yards once were. It is as though IS [the Islamic State] has set in motion a distinctly Iraqi machinery of barbarism, one which can also function just fine without the jihadist group. But the fact that the Hashd militias are now going after the Kurds in Tuz may have less to do with a carefully considered plan and more to do with internal rivalries within the groups. For roughly the last six months, the Iraqi state has been almost completely insolvent. The price of oil is too low to continue financing the state amid rampant corruption in the country. In Tuz Khurmatu, construction has stopped on a new hospital and school and the hollow structures stand empty. Even the Shiite militias, who had been able to pay substantial salaries until now, are no longer able to buy their fighters’ loyalty with money alone. So they have been trying to outdo each other with brutality.”

-J. Dana Stuster

AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/Getty Images