Region

BAGHDAD — Iraqi Defence Minister Khaled Al Obeidi said on Tuesday that the Iraqi military has started rebuilding after its near total collapse last summer but that the effort is still in its initial phase.

“We are still in the early stages; some of them are known to you, and some remain a secret,” Obeidi said in a televised address on the national holiday Armed Forces Day.

Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi has sacked several dozen commanders and told Obeidi to lead a probe into corruption within the Iraqi military after Islamic State seized vast swathes of territory from Iraqi security forces last summer.

Since then the hardline militants have been pushed out of several districts around Baghdad and near the Iranian border.

Shiite militias, Kurdish peshmerga forces and US-led air strikes have played a leading role in IS’ military reverses, but the Iraqi army will be needed in the campaign to recapture and hold the remaining territory under its control.

“Changing some military leaders will be the first step towards building a strong army and we will make changes in the entire military pyramid down to the last soldier,” Obeidi said on the national holiday commemorating the 94th anniversary of modern Iraqi military’s founding.

Rampant corruption was seen as one of the main reasons why the Iraqi army failed to stop IS in battle. Many units were short of weapons or had soldiers listed on paper who were not actually present in the field.

Currently, several Iraqi security officials estimate the number of functioning military forces at between seven and nine divisions. They caution even those divisions are not all operating at full strength.

The Iraqi army had at least 14 divisions on paper before IS toppled the north’s biggest city of Mosul and soldiers deserted en masse.

Obeidi also vowed on Tuesday that the Iraqi forces would soon retake the lands they lost in northern Salahuddin and Nineveh provinces. Obeidi highlighted the importance of Mosul.

“We will liberate it with the hard efforts of our armed forces, volunteers and with the aid of our allies.”

Earlier in the day, Abadi and Obeidi placed a garland of flowers at Baghdad’s Monument to the Unknown Soldier.

ANKARA — The world is losing its ability to prevent conflicts and the lack of "effective leadership" has led to the worst displacement situation since World War II, the UN refugee chief warned Tuesday.

Antonio Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said in Ankara that the twin crises in Iraq and Syria had created a serious displacement situation and the world showed no effective leadership to address the challenges.

"The Syria and Iraq mega-crises, the multiplication of new crises and the old crises that seem never to die have created the worst displacement situation in the world since World War II," Guterres said in an address to the annual meeting of Turkey's ambassadors stationed abroad.

Over the last year, more than 13 million people have been displaced by the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, he said.

Meanwhile, the crisis deepened in South Sudan spreading across the border into Chad while the situation aggravated in Libya and a new crisis emerged in Ukraine, he added.

"What this shows is that the international community has largely lost its capacity to prevent conflicts and solve conflicts," said Guterres.

"This is a world where indeed unpredictability and impunity are rules of the game. This is a world where there is no effective leadership.”

"This is a world where conflicts multiply and the old ones are not solved and the result is, of course, a dramatic impact from the humanitarian point of view."

Guterres said in June that the number of people driven from their homes by conflict and crisis has now topped 50 million for the first time since World War II.

However, he praised Turkey's "generous open-door policy" to accept refugees fleeing Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime and Islamist militants.

Turkey, a vocal critic of the regime in Damascus, is home to 1.7 million Syrian refugees — some of them are settled in camps near the border but many more are scattered throughout the country.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said the government spent $5 billion on refugees alone and lamented that the international community's contribution stood at a "modest level" calling for "genuine partnership and burden-sharing”.

PARIS — Verging on full-blown civil war, Libya may pose an even greater threat to Europe than jihadists in Iraq and Syria, yet the international community has few tools to help resolve the crisis.

Three years after NATO intervened to help overthrow Muammar Qadhafi's regime, two rival governments claim his mantle and a rash of heavily armed militias fight for territory and oilfields.

Hopes for a diplomatic solution are fading, say analysts, but the stakes are extremely high, particularly for southern Europe.

Most of the 200,000 migrants who braved the Mediterranean crossing to Europe last year came from Libya, the UN said last month, and security risks are multiplying.

"The West is distracted with Syria and Iraq, but arguably Libya is the greatest threat," said Richard Cochrane, a senior analyst at IHS Country Risk in London.

"The jihadists — who are in the same mould as the Islamic State — have got a firm foothold and we're only expecting that to grow.

"There is nothing stopping fighters using Libya as a conduit to get to Europe. It is a training ground right on Europe's front door."

Western diplomats have been shuttling frantically between the elected government — which has been driven into refuge in the remote east — and the Islamist-backed militia alliance that has seized most of the capital Tripoli.

So far, UN attempts to bring the two sides to the negotiating table have been in vain.

"Even if they get them to talk, they wouldn't achieve anything," said Geoff Porter, head of the US-based North Africa Risk Consultancy.

"Both sides think they stand a strong chance of military victory, each feels they have enduring support from external supporters, and both feel they have been done a severe injustice by the other party and would be betraying their followers if they backed down."

'Let's not dream' 

Some neighbouring countries such as Niger and Chad have called for military intervention to stem the tide of jihadists, refugees and weapons spilling over their borders.

But these hopes are unlikely to be met.

"A NATO-style operation? Let's not dream," a French government source told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"We are not going to restart the idea that we can show up, drop a few bombs and it brings democracy and national unity."

An intervention force would have to be massive to make any dent on the chaos engulfing Libya.

"Anything short of a full-scale peacekeeping force would be highly vulnerable," said Cochrane. "They would be stuck in compounds and repeatedly hit by morale-sapping IED (improvised explosive device) attacks."

Making matters worse is the fact that Libya has also become the theatre of a proxy war between regional powers.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates oppose the Islamist militias, seeing them as the military arm of the Muslim Brotherhood that they have tried to eradicate in their own countries.

Qatar, and less overtly Turkey, have supported the other side.

"Regional powers are acting as spoilers," said Cochrane. "Rather than helping with mediation, they are supplying arms."

This is one area in which Western diplomacy could be effective, pushing these external forces to reduce their military support.

Back where it started 

But the harsh reality is that Libya may be doomed to a prolonged and bloody conflict.

"The informal consensus from Libyans and their neighbours is that the Libyans are going to fight until they get tired of fighting," said Porter.

That is something which Algeria — which went through its own brutal insurgency in the 1990s — knows all too well.

Resigned to a long period of unrest on its eastern flank, it opposes any international intervention in Libya, fearing it will only make matters worse.

The ultimate, tragic irony is that Libya may end up right back where it started before Qadhafi was toppled and killed in 2011.

"There are two possible scenarios for a political solution," said Porter.

"One is that the Libyans acquiesce to some kind of federalism — sharing power and resources.”

"But the other is that a new strongman emerges who can bring the various warring tribes and factions to heel — who would rule in much the way Qadhafi did."

A powerful winter storm began striking across the Middle East on Tuesday, bringing a bitter cold to Syrian refugees huddled in Lebanon and blanketing Cairo in a sandstorm.

In Lebanon, officials said they expected a snowstorm to strike Tuesday night in the Bekaa Valley, where hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria's civil war live, many in tents.

Outside some makeshift tents near the Lebanese town of Anjar, some refugees collected wood or cleaned their wood-burning stoves in anticipation of the storm, while others placed sandbags at the base of their tents to help anchor the shelters and protect against potential flooding.

The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, said it would "keep vulnerable refugees as warm as we can" in Jordan, which also hosts many who fled the war in Syria.

In Egypt's capital, Cairo, a sandstorm engulfed the city Tuesday afternoon, blocking out the sun as rush-hour afternoon traffic began.

In Israel, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat said major roads leading in and out of the city would be closed to prevent a repeat of the chaos that occurred during a 2013 snowstorm, when hundreds of cars were stranded on highways near Jerusalem's entrance. As temperatures began to fall, anxious Israelis flooded supermarkets, stocking up on food.

Strong waves from the Mediterranean Sea also lashed Lebanon, Syria and Israel. Syria's state news agency SANA reported that the country's two main ports in Tartous and Latakia had been closed as winds of up to 74 kilometres per hour caused waves more than five metres  high.

In the Lebanese capital, Beirut, residents walked along the seaside promenade to snap photographs of waves slamming into the seawall and sending frothy water flowing across the pavement. Tuesday night, wind and rain caused delays at the city's airport.

BEIRUT — The newly elected head of Syria's key opposition National Coalition on Monday ruled out taking part in a Russian-led bid for new talks to end the Syrian conflict.

Khaled Khoja, who was elected early on Monday to head the opposition grouping, said Moscow's proposal was impossible.

"The dialogue with the regime that Moscow is calling for is out of the question," he said at a news conference in Istanbul, where the coalition is based.

"We can't sit at the same table as the regime... except in a negotiating framework intended to achieve a peaceful transition of power and the formation of a transitional body with full powers," he said.

Russia, a key ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, has been trying to relaunch peace talks that would include meetings between delegates of the regime and the fractured opposition.

It has invited 28 opposition figures, including members of the tolerated domestic opposition as well as individual coalition members, to Moscow later this month.

Among them are Hadi Al Bahra, whom Khoja succeeded on Monday, and two other previous coalition chiefs, Moaz Al Khatib and Abdel Basset Sida.

It remains unclear whether the Coalition will seek to ban those of its members who have been invited from attending the talks in Moscow.

‘Brotherhood influence declining’ 

Khatib visited Russia last year for discussions and has recently established his own movement, though he remains a member of the coalition.

Several opposition groups are expected to meet in Cairo this month to form a unified front, according to opposition sources, although a timetable and list of participants has not been made public.

Khoja’s comments were the first since he was elected with backing from both secular and moderate Islamist blocs.

He is the first member of the Turkmen minority elected to the post and is seen as more independent than his predecessor, who had strong ties to Saudi Arabia.

Coalition member Samir Nashar said Khoja’s win showed a “decline in the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood”, which had backed his rival Nasr Hariri.

Khoja secured 56 votes, six more than Hariri. The election took place in Istanbul.

The National Coalition is the internationally recognised representative of Syria’s uprising, but is often accused of being out of touch with reality on the ground in the nearly four-year war.

Riven by conflict

It has also been riven by conflict between its regional backers, including arch-rivals Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

Turkey has also vied for influence, including by backing the Muslim Brotherhood bloc in the coalition.

Khoja has lived in exile in Turkey for decades, after leaving Syria in the 1980s following two stints in prison.

But despite his ties to Turkey, his candidacy was not backed by Ankara.

Nashar, who is close to Khoja, expressed hope that “the new leadership will work to return the Syrian revolution to the right path”.

Nashar, who has been critical of Islamist forces in the coalition, also hoped that Khoja would strive to “build a national front committed to the revolution... and establish a pluralist civil state in Syria without exclusion or marginalisation”.

Khoja has a history of opposition activism, and was a founding member of the Syrian National Council, a key component of the coalition.

He served as the National Coalition’s representative in Turkey before being elected president.

Born in Damascus in 1965, Khoja studied first in Libya after going into exile before settling in Turkey. He graduated in medicine from the University of Izmir in 1994.

RAMALLAH — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Sunday he was discussing with Jordan plans to resubmit to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) a resolution calling for the establishment of a Palestinian state that failed to win enough votes last week.

Jordan remains a member of the UNSC while several other countries with revolving membership were replaced over the new year.

The Palestinians hope these states will be more sympathetic to their resolution demanding an Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories and independence by 2017, although the veto-wielding United States would be all but certain to vote 'No' again, as it did on December 30.

"We didn't fail, the UN Security Council failed us. We'll go again to the Security Council, why not? Perhaps after a week," Abbas told officials at a cultural conference in the West Bank city of Ramallah, the Palestinian seat of self-rule government.

“We are studying it, and we will study this with our allies and especially Jordan... to submit the resolution again, a third time or even a fourth time.”

In the UN vote on Tuesday, the Palestinian draft received eight votes in favour, including France, Russia and China, two against and five abstentions, among them Britain. Australia joined the United States in voting against the measure.

But any resubmission would face almost certain failure. The US has veto power as one of the council’s five permanent members and has pledged to block Abbas’ plan, calling it one-sided and unproductive.

Abbas signed onto 20 international conventions the next day, including the Rome statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), giving the court jurisdiction over crimes committed on Palestinian land and opening up an unprecedented confrontation between the veteran peace negotiator and Israel.

In retaliation for the move to the ICC, Israel announced on Saturday that it would withhold 500 million shekels ($125 million) in monthly tax funds that it collects on the Palestinians’ behalf, in a blow to Abbas’ cash-strapped government.

“Now there are sanctions — that’s fine. There’s an escalation — that’s fine... but we’re pushing forward,” Abbas said.

SANAA — A large blast damaged a building belonging to Yemen's Shiite Muslim Houthi militia in a western district of the capital Sanaa early on Monday, but there were no fatalities, a police source and witnesses said.

The Houthis, who control large swathes of Yemen and are regarded as enemies by Sunni militants including those in Al Qaeda's Yemeni wing, sealed off the area soon afterwards to prevent access to it, said local residents.

The explosion left a hole in the wall of the building, which was used as a base by the Houthis, witnesses told Reuters.

Photographs posted on Yemeni social media accounts, which could not be immediately verified, showed the front of a building in which the windows had been blown out and bricks were missing from around the door.

Turmoil in Yemen accelerated in September after the Houthis seized control of Sanaa and expanded into central and western parts of the country, leading to direct fighting between them and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in some areas.

A series of bomb attacks by AQAP in recent weeks have struck Houthi targets, including a guesthouse in which four people were killed on Sunday and a street celebration in which 26 were killed on Wednesday.

BENGHAZI, Libya/ATHENS — A Libyan warplane from forces loyal to the internationally recognised government bombed a Greek-operated oil tanker anchored off the coast, killing two crewmen in an escalation of hostilities between factions vying to rule the country.

Military officials said the vessel had acted suspiciously after a warning not to enter port and said it was suspected of transporting Islamist militants to Derna, the eastern port city where the ship was at anchor when it was hit on Sunday.

State oil firm NOC said it had leased the ship to carry fuel for power generation to Derna from Brega, an oil port to the west. The vessel was damaged, but none of the 12,600 tonnes of heavy oil leaked out, the Athens-based operator Aegean Shipping Enterprises Co. said.

Greece condemned the "unprovoked and cowardly" attack that killed one Greek and one Romanian crew member and wounded two others and said it had contacted the UN envoy for Libya and the European Union about the incident.

"The Greek government will take all the necessary actions towards Libyan authorities, despite the unrest, so that light is shed on the tragic incident, the attackers identified and punished and the families of the victims reimbursed," it said.

The strike on the Liberian-flagged vessel ARAEVO was part of increasingly chaotic violence in Libya which has two parallel governments: The officially recognised one, which has been pushed out of the capital, and the administration run by a faction known as Libya Dawn that seized Tripoli last summer.

Each side has appointed its own officials to run NOC and the oil ministry, leading to confusion over who controls what.

After a special meeting of the Arab League in Cairo, the head of Libya's elected parliament called on Arab states to intervene to protect the country's oil installations.

Fighting for control of oil assets has slashed Libya's oil output to 380,000 barrels per day from the 1.6 million bpd produced before a civil war ousting of Muammar Qadhafi in 2011.

The NOC office in Tripoli, where the rival government is now in control, said it had informed authorities of the vessel's plans. It said the incident would impact "negatively" on incoming tankers to Libya's ports

But Ahmed Bu Zayad Al Mismari, a spokesman for the internationally recognised government's general chief of staff, said: "The NOC in Tripoli did not inform us...The tanker may have been involved with terrorists or it may have been taken over at sea by terrorists so that is why we bombed it."

Since the war that ended Qadhafi’s four-decade rule, rival nationalist, Islamist, tribal and regionalist forces have battled for power. But the conflict has coalesced around two loosely aligned factions.

The government and elected parliament which have been pushed out of Tripoli to Tobruk, an eastern port town some 150km from the Egyptian border, has allied itself with ex-rebel forces in Zintan, near Tripoli, and a former Qadhafi army general, Khalifa Haftar, who is conducting a campaign against Islamists.

Tripoli is now controlled by a self-declared government set up by forces allied to the city of Misrata, reinstating a former parliament and taking over ministries.

RIYADH — Three Saudi guards including a top commander were killed on Monday in a rare attack and suicide bombing by "terrorists" on the kingdom's border with Iraq, the interior ministry said.

Four attackers were also killed in the clash, two in suicide blasts.

No group claimed responsiblity for the clash, but Saudi Arabia is among countries that have joined the US-led coalition carrying out air strikes against jihadists from the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria and Iraq.

"A border patrol in Suwayf, in the northern Arar region, came under fire by terrorist elements," an interior spokesman said in a statement carried by the official SPA news agency.

As security forces killed one assailant, another "detonated an explosive belt he was carrying", killing himself and two guards and wounding another, the ministry said.

In a later statement, the ministry said a total of three guards were killed, including General Odah Al Balawi. Saudi media had reported that a senior commander of the border guard was among the dead.

Two assailants were shot dead and two detonated belts of explosives, the ministry said.

Saudi news website Sabq reported that Odeh commanded the border guards in the northern region.

The statement said the four were "trying to cross the Saudi border", but it did not clarify in which direction.

Saudi Arabia's top religious body, the Council of Senior Ulema, condemned the attack and reiterated its support for the government in its fight against extremist groups including IS and Al Qaeda.

The head of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, Abdullatif Al Zayani, also condemned "the terrorist attack on the northern border of Saudi Arabia".

In July, three shells fired from inside Iraq hit the Arar area, without causing any casualties.

In 2013, Iraqi Shiite group Jaish Al Mukhtar claimed it had fired six mortar rounds into a remote area of northeastern Saudi Arabia as a "warning" to the kingdom.

Securing the frontier 

Saudi Arabia shares a more than 800-kilometre border with Iraq and has recently stepped up efforts to secure the frontier.

In September, the kingdom inaugurated a multi-layered fence, backed by radar and other surveillance equipment, along its northern borders.

In November, Riyadh announced it had expanded a buffer zone along the border by 20 kilometres.

The kingdom's participation in the US-led campaign of air strikes against IS in Syria has drawn threats of retaliation from the jihadists.

In a purported audio recording released on social media networks last month, IS leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi warned Saudi leaders they would see "no more security or rest".

Last month, Riyadh said it had arrested 135 suspects for "terrorism" offences.

The authorities said they had arrested three IS supporters for shooting and wounding a Dane in November.

A week after that attack, a Canadian was wounded in a stabbing while he shopped at a mall in Dhahran on Saudi Arabia's Gulf coast. Police arrested a Saudi suspect.

And in November, Saudi Arabia also blamed IS-linked suspects for killing seven Shiites, including children, in the kingdom's oil-rich Eastern Province.

TRNOVI, Bosnia-Herzegovina — The long-bearded man burst into the mosque's yard and pinned Selvedin Beganovic to the ground. Shouting "Now I will slaughter you!" he plunged a knife three times into the imam's chest and fled.

It was no random attack: Beganovic has suffered seven assaults blamed on Muslim extremists in the past year — with three just last month.

The apparent reason for the jihadi wrath? Beganovic uses his pulpit to tell the faithful in predominantly Muslim Bosnia they have no business fighting in Syria or Iraq. And he vows to keep preaching the message no matter how many times extremists try to silence him.

"That is not our war," the imam told The Associated Press in his small northwestern town. "Our jihad in Bosnia is the fight against unemployment. The care for our parents who have small pensions. The care for the socially jeopardised."

Some 150 Bosnians have joined Islamic militants in Syria or Iraq, officials estimate, with many fighting for the Islamic State (IS) group. All are apparently members of a small community that follows an ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam. Last month, a court in Bosnia charged a man believed to be the spiritual leader of the group with recruiting Bosnians to fight with Islamic militants in Syria and organising a terrorist group.

Beganovic, who preaches every week to a full mosque, tells his followers that groups like IS are spreading a "perverted version of Islam".

"When did [the Prophet] Muhammad ever behead anyone?" he said. "When did he take a knife and slaughter an innocent journalist?"

Of Islam's 99 names for God — including The Mighty and The Avenger — the ones Beganovic likes most are The Exceedingly Merciful and The Exceedingly Gracious.

"That is what we teach our children here," he said.

Dragan Lukac, the director of federal police, blamed fighters returning from Syria's front lines for the attacks against Beganovic, which include severe beatings and knife slashes to the face, shoulders and hands. Investigators are still hunting for the attacker in last week's knife assault.

"Every person who comes back from that front line is a danger," said Lukac. "These people are able to perform attacks on citizens, on property, on state institutions."

Militant Islam was all but unknown to Bosnia's mostly secular Muslim population until the 1990s Balkans wars when Arab mercenaries turned up to help the outgunned Bosnian Muslims fend off Serb attacks. These fighters, many of whom settled in Bosnia, embraced a radical version of Islam that Bosnia's official Islamic community opposes.

The community's leader, Husein Kavazovic, has repeatedly warned Bosnians not to fall for extremist rhetoric aimed at pulling them into the fight in Syria.

"Our job is to keep repeating, to keep warning that this is evil and cannot be justified," he said.

That's exactly what Beganovic has been doing — at the risk of his life.

"These are dangerous people," he said. "Their place is in a mental institution."