Libya

Reading selections for the weekend of February 19, 2016.

Reading selections for the weekend of February 5, 2016.

Maged Atiya laments the Egyptian state’s devolution into idiocy. Sam Metz and Abdallah Brahimi explore the potential reasons behind the recent dismissal of Algerian spy chief Mohammed Mediene. Nada Elfeituri examines Libya’s tribal divisions and their role in Libya today.

Valerie Stocker explores the overlook conflict between Libya’s Tebu and Tuareg communities. Hossam Bahgat investigates a secret military trial in Egypt of twenty-six officers accused of plotting a coup with the Muslim Brotherhood to overthrow President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Matt Piotrowski discusses the challenges and implications of falling oil prices on Middle Eastern governments.

With President Barack Obama visiting the Pentagon to assess progress in the U.S.-led air campaign against the self-declared Islamic State, which enters its twelfth month this week, it is a good time to evaluate a main criticism of the air war: not enough bombs are being dropped. Policymakers, retired military officials, and pundits offer a variety of reasons for this lack of airstrikes. Some claim that Washington-created rules of engagement are restricting whole categories of targets (particularly oil convoys heading to Turkey), others that military lawyers conducting collateral damage estimates are prohibiting strikes that might cause unwanted harm, or that there are no U.S. joint tactical air controllers on the ground to call in precision strikes. The arguments these critics make is that an undue concern for civilian casualties is allowing the Islamic State to survive and thrive in parts of Iraq and Syria. This is despite the fact that, according to a U.S. military estimate from May, some 12,500 Islamic State fighters have been killed and 7,655 pieces of their equipment and infrastructure have been damaged or destroyed. Notably, the most recent U.S. intelligence estimate about the size range of the Islamic State remains between 20,000 and 31,500. Meaning, despite killing 12,500 supporters of the group, a comparable number of indigenous or foreign fighters have already replaced them. This is yet another non-state group that the United States will not be able to eliminate with bombs alone. The inherent difficulty with identifying why there have been relatively so few strikes (more on that below) is that the rules of engagement and collateral damage estimate methods are classified. Moreover, the public does not know the process by which targets are being selected, vetted, and approved by the combined joint task force that is running the air campaign. Today, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter noted that the same airstrikes in Syria are conducted “with local forces nominating targets, we then validate those targets." According to every air campaign planner who I have spoken with, if those were U.S. forces nominating the targets, there would be an increase in the overall number, but it still would not be markedly higher. The primary reason for the limit in strikes, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey described during a June 17 hearing before the House Armed Services Committee: “The air power’s limitation is not about forward air controller or U.S. service men and women forward. It’s about the intermingling of a significant number of groups.” The U.S. military still remarkably claims that it does not conclusively believe it has killed even one civilian. On June 5, Lt. Gen. John W. Hesterman III, combined forces air component commander, stated: “We haven’t seen any evidence of civilian casualties so far, but we’ll conscientiously look into it as we do every allegation.” Earlier, U.S. Central Command acknowledged that it had “likely” killed two children in a November airstrike in Syria. There are also five ongoing investigations into claims of civilian casualties, according to Gen. Thomas Weidley, chief of staff for Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve. Meanwhile, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a source that some of these same policymakers and pundits cite when it is convenient for their argumentation, recently estimated that coalition airstrikes had killed 162 civilians, including 51 children and 35 women. Finally, while there are basing access limitations, such as those imposed by the government of Turkey regarding the Incirlik Air Base, there is not a limit in the number of available aircraft. As Gen. Dempsey noted a few weeks ago: “397 strike aircraft and 1,600 pilots…are flying these missions over Iraq and Syria.” That is a robust number comparatively speaking, making it more than the seventeen-day Bosnian strikes in 1995, the opening of the Kosovo air war in 1999, or the 2011 regime change campaign in Libya. In addition, coalition pilots have thus far faced a relatively passive air defense system in Syria, although a Predator drone was shot down over Syria on March 17, and another crashed in Iraq on June 22, though the reason why remains unclear. To put Operation Inherent Resolve in some perspective with recent U.S.-led air campaigns, see the chart below. Understand that these are all distinct military operations with their own objectives, combination of coalition partners, and rules of engagement, and that this data is challenging to compile. However, for a military campaign that allegedly intends to inflict a “lasting defeat” on the dispersed and large militant army that is the Islamic State, there is a relatively limited—though understandable given the concern of civilian casualties—number of bombs being dropped each day. STRIKE SORTIES/WEAPONS RELEASES BY AIR CAMPAIGN Total Days Total Sortie Missions Total Strike Sorties Percent Strike Sorties Total Weapons Releases Average Strike Sorties Per Day Average Bombs Dropped Per Day Iraq 1991 43 120,000 42,000 35% 265,000 976 6,163 Bosnia 1995 17 3,515 2,470 70% 1,026 145 60 Kosovo 77 38,004 14,112 37% 28,018 183 364 Afghanistan 76 20,600 6,500 32% 17,500 86 230 Iraq 2003 26 41,000 15,500 38% 27,000 596 1,039 Libya 2011 210 25,944 9,700 37% 7,642 46 36 Iraq/Syria 361 16,164 3,837 24% 15,245 11 43

Issandr El Amrani argues that a strong, stable Libya would not solve the migration problems in the Mediterranean. The editors at the Middle East Research and Information Project urge for a humanitarian corridor for foreign nationals and Yemenis to escape Yemen. Arash Reisinezhad discusses how recent advances in Tikrit are a victory for Iran.

Read the full text of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the framework agreement between the P5+1, the European Union, and Iran regarding the Iranian nuclear program. Aron Lund considers the strategic value of Idlib to Syria’s anti-Assad rebels. One female Libyan blogger from Benghazi shares her thoughts on finding justice in an increasingly fragmented country.

My intern, Alex Decina, wrote this terrific post on the current state of play in Libya. I hope you find it interesting and useful.Last Thursday could have been an important day for Libya. It could have marked the beginning of the end of the brutal civil war that has rocked the country for several months. It could have been the day divergent factions came together in spite of their political differences to form a unity government, one that could bring Libya forward. Since last week, the country’s two competing governments—the General National Congress (GNC) in the western city of Tripoli and the House of Representatives (HoR) in the eastern city of Tobruk—and their respective allies have been meeting in Morocco for what the United Nations hopes is the final phase of negotiations. If they can put this conflict behind them, Libya might see light at the end of what has been a very dark tunnel. While these negotiations show more promise than previous talks in Ghadames and Madrid, and the UN remains optimistic as it tries to push forward a unity government, they will likely still fail. The rival parties have shown time and again they are not above prolonging Libya’s violence to vie for political leverage and complete supremacy over each other. Without significant pressure, they will avoid resorting to compromise as a political solution.Take the House of Representatives, which has turned to the West in the midst of these negotiations and presented itself as a vanguard against the so-called Islamic State. Along with regional allies such as Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, it has called on the international community to lift the arms embargo and provide the HoR-aligned General Khalifa Hifter with weapons and support to fight the Islamist militias. They present Hifter—a well-established military figure who fought both for and against the late Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi in the course of his career before spending a number of years living comfortably in Northern Virginia—as the man to whom the West must turn if it does not want to face ISIS on its own doorstep. This is, however, an attempt to mislead the international community. If Hifter and the HoR can achieve international backing, they will gain a significant advantage over their political opponents and avoid having to compromise at the negotiating table altogether.Since last June, the two competing governments have fought for control of Libya and its oil supply, yet both of these governments lack legitimacy. The Islamist-dominated General National Congress, whose mandate expired last February, extended its rule by its own authority and refused to step down. The secular and federalist HoR was elected in June 2014 with a remarkably low turnout—only eighteen percent of the electorate voted and polling was not even conducted in parts of the country due to security concerns. As the political dispute deteriorated into violent conflict, the two governments engaged with each other militarily by means of proxies and allies. Hifter and his affiliated militias, from Zintan and elsewhere, have fought on behalf of the HoR in Operation Dignity, a military campaign mounted against Libya’s Islamist threat. Hifter intends to purge Libya of what he sees as its “malignant disease,” consisting not only of the Salafists in Libya’s east, but also the GNC and all of its allies. The GNC’s allies include the Misrata militias—which are more anti-Qaddafi and revolutionary than Islamist in nature and are by no means controlled by the GNC—to fight on its behalf in the west as well as Islamist militias in Benghazi to fight in the east.In pursuit of international recognition, Hifter has sought to conflate his enemies with the new ISIS threat, and, to be fair, the GNC has not made that a difficult task. By depending on enigmatic Islamist groups, the GNC has made itself susceptible to Hifter’s unfair categorization. Although the GNC did not create the complex network of Islamist fighters that exists in Benghazi today—and certainly does not control it—it has lubricated various Benghazi militias financially and used them to buffer its western strongholds in Tripoli and Misrata, keeping the bulk of Libya’s fighting in the east. To this end, GNC Prime Minister Omar al-Hassi’s government has provided direct financial support to a number of Benghazi-based Islamist militias including Libya Shield One, the February 17 Martyrs Brigade, and the Libyan Revolutionaries Operations Room, paying them anywhere from 1,500 to 3,000 Libyan dinar per fighter per month—roughly $1,000 to $2,000. These GNC-affiliated militias and a handful of others united under the Benghazi Revolutionaries Shura Council (BRSC) to build a coalition against Hifter’s Operation Dignity. Despite being mysterious and difficult to follow, these are not the same groups that have been joining ISIS since last November. Under the direction of Ansar al-Sharia Libya (which is not affiliated with the GNC, but is the BRSC’s dominant group), the umbrella organization refused to pledge support or allegiance to ISIS last October. They did not resist ISIS’s invitation out of a sense of morality or scruples, but rather a desire not to share their local Libyan patronage networks with a larger international actor. Regardless of any differences between the various groups, it serves Hifter well to paint Libya’s entire Islamist landscape with the same brush and thus try to stave off political compromise with the GNC at any cost.Though there have been a handful of failed UN-backed negotiations to bring the factions together, the threat of ISIS provides a new impetus for the competing sides to come to an agreement. ISIS has been in Libya for several months now, but with recent developments from an attack against the HoR in al-Qubbah that left forty-two dead to attacks against the GNC in Misrata, Sirte, and Tripoli—including a hotel bombing in January that attempted to assassinate Prime Minister Hassi—the group’s presence is felt by both governments now more than ever. Beyond this, by attacking oil fields in al-Ghani, al-Zoueitina, Bahi, and Mabruk, ISIS is doing lasting damage to Libya’s oil infrastructure and thus presenting the Libyan governments with a difficult choice: come to a compromise, knowing that neither entity will have the control over Libya’s oil they each envisage for themselves, or continue the conflict, which would award ISIS with breathing space to destroy the country so no one can have it. While the GNC and the HoR compete for control of Libya’s future, they are vested in just that—Libya’s future—albeit for less than altruistic reasons, no doubt. ISIS has demonstrated that it seeks to tear down that future, and as such the disparate sides have a common enemy to unite them.If ISIS’s recent attacks were not enough, new developments have also driven the GNC and its allies to the table. The GNC can no longer rely on the chaos in the east that until now has protected it. The situation in Benghazi has changed and the Islamist militias that controlled the entire city last October only hold two neighborhoods and a small portion of the city’s outskirts as of February—at least according to prominent activists and reporters covering the conflict on Twitter. Moreover, Hifter’s recent gains have precipitated a shake-up in the Benghazi Revolutionaries Shura Council. While Ansar al-Sharia Libya may have indeed joined ISIS since the death of its previous leader, it is unclear what remains of the other militias in the coalition. Energized by military successes in the east, Hifter is preparing to move his fight westward toward Misrata and has already launched an offensive to “liberate” Tripoli. While the Misrata brigades are certainly a force to be reckoned with in Libya, they do not want this fight and as such have come to the negotiating table. The absence of prominent Misrata leaders from previous talks had given the GNC (and the HoR for that matter) an excuse to hold out for a better bargaining position. With threats coming from Hifter and ISIS alike, the GNC can no longer afford to be obstinate.The HoR, in turn, is driven to the negotiating table by the fact that the United States and the United Kingdom have ignored its calls for support. Without much in the way of international backing, the “internationally recognized government” went to Morocco kicking and screaming. Just after the last phase of negotiations, the HoR elevated Hifter as its army chief. The HoR knows very well that this is unpalatable for its Misrata and GNC opponents, but it remains unclear if this move was trying to derail the talks or simply gain additional leverage. Perhaps seeing himself as a political piece and trying to avoid being cast into irrelevance, Hifter has denounced the efforts to form a unity government with “leaders of extremist movements,” saying, “The UN and Europe cannot oblige [the HoR] to sit at the table with terrorists.” His resistance to compromise will surely continue; his career depends on it.It might be tempting to back Hifter and his army to respond to a growing regional threat, especially as ISIS’s atrocities in Libya, from the beheading of twenty-one Egyptian Christians to last week’s kidnapping of twenty medical workers in Sirte, continue to dominate headlines. Some countries have already begun to take the bait. The Italian government announced it is prepared to deploy five thousand troops to North Africa, and Canada is considering expanding its military operation against ISIS to Libya. Thus far, the United States has declined to support any Libyan operations, and while some will surely see this as a failure of leadership, the Obama administration remains adamant. And it should. If Hifter continues to violently dismantle revolutionary Islamist militias he will only strengthen ISIS’s draw in Libya. And if he is enabled by U.S. support to continue moving his ground forces into Libya’s west, the fighting that will ensue may very well dwarf the current conflict. By choosing sides, the United States may again find itself taking up the heavy mantle of legitimizing a government, delegitimizing its political opponents, and defeating (or supporting the defeat of) its military opponents, many of whom have no ambitions outside of Libya and pose no direct threat to the United States. Rather than Western intervention and total victory, compromise needs to define Libya’s future. The ongoing talks will likely fail, and even if they are to succeed in forming a unity government, it would still be naïve to call the formation of such an alliance a lasting victory in the fragile political ecosystem that is Libya. But it cannot be said that the HoR, the GNC, and their allies did not have a real chance to turn from several months of brutal fighting toward compromise, dialogue, and peace.

Read Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s full interview with Der Spiegel. Ishak Ibrahim takes a closer look at the threats facing Coptic Christians in Libya. Sara Obeidat argues that war is not the best way for Jordan to exact vengeance for Moaz al-Kasasbeh.

Significant Developments Egypt. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi announced an agreement to jointly build Egypt’s first nuclear power plant on Tuesday during Putin’s first visit to Egypt in over ten years. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki stated that, “[the United States] support[s] peaceful nuclear power programs as long as obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, to which Egypt is a signatory… are fully met.” Meanwhile, an Egyptian court ordered the release of the two remaining Al Jazeera journalists in custody today. The announcement followed the publication this week of a previously undisclosed opinion by Egypt’s highest appeals court criticizing the journalists’ earlier conviction as baseless. Egyptian-born Canadian journalist Mohamed Fahmy was ordered to pay the equivalent of $33,000 as a condition for being released on bail, while Baher Mohamed, an Egyptian national, was released on bail on his own recognizance. ISIS. The White House confirmed on Tuesday the death of Kayla Mueller, an American aid worker who had been held hostage by ISIS. A spokesman for ISIS claimed that Jordanian airstrikes in Syria last week were responsible for her death, though officials in Washington and Amman said the cause of death was unclear. Jordan continued to ramp up its airstrikes against ISIS in retaliation for the killing of its pilot, Moaz al-Kasasbeh, last week. Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates launched its first airstrikes against ISIS targets in Syria since December after being notified by United States Central Command officials that additional rescue helicopters had been deployed to Erbil, Iraq, to be closer to the zone of combat. Iran. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif met on the sidelines of the annual international security conference in Munich this weekend but did not reach an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program. Kerry told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that it will be “impossible” to extend nuclear negotiations with Iran beyond June 30 if the “outlines of the agreement” and a political framework have not been agreed on in the next few weeks. Zarif echoed Kerry’s sentiments, announcing on Sunday from Munich that Iran also prefers to avoid an extension of the talks. Zarif said that “sanctions are a liability; you need to get rid of them if you want a solution…We need to seize this opportunity. It may not be repeated.” U.S. Foreign Policy Israel. Prominent Democrats including Vice President Joe Biden, Senator Patrick Leahy, and members of the Congressional Black and Hispanic Caucuses were joined today by almost half of the Jewish Democrats in Congress in announcing that they will not attend Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s scheduled March 3 address to Congress. President Barack Obama on Monday defended his decision not to meet with Netanyahu during the upcoming Washington visit, saying it was “important for [the United States] to maintain these protocols, because the U.S.-Israeli relationship is not about a particular party.” Netanyahu responded by saying his decision to speak to Congress about Iran’s nuclear program is not because he “seeks confrontation with the president, but [is in order to] fulfill [his] obligation to speak up on a matter that affects the very survival of [Israel].” ISIS. President Barack Obama proposed legislation to Congress yesterday that would grant the administration a three-year Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) to fight ISIS. Obama’s proposal would allow the deployment of ground troops for Special Operation commandos and rescue missions but would not authorize U.S. soldiers to conduct “enduring offensive ground combat operations.” The legislation would also repeal the 2002 war authorization that gave former president George W. Bush the authority to invade Iraq. However, the proposed legislation would not affect the separate 2001 AUMF authorizing military operations against al-Qaeda following the September 11 attacks. The administration currently uses those authorities to justify U.S. efforts to combat ISIS. Meanwhile, in preparation for an anticipated spring offensive to retake Mosul, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters backed by coalition airstrikes retook three strategic corridors into the city on Monday. According to a commander of the Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve, “this most recent Peshmerga operation is yet another example of how Daesh can be defeated militarily using a combination of well-led and capable ground forces.” Elsewhere Yemen. The United States closed its embassy in Yemen on Tuesday in the wake of the Yemeni government collapsing after a coup by Houthi militants last Friday. Other Western countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany, and France followed, announcing they would also close their embassies. U.S. officials cited security concerns as the reason for the embassy closure. Many obsevers, however, saw the U.S. move as an effort to put political pressure on Yemen’s new Houthi-led interim government to negotiate a power-sharing agreement, noting that embassy remained open during more volatile times in Yemen’s capital. That sentiment was echoed by a Yemeni Foreign Ministry official, who stated that “the closure does not necessarily mean the security situation is bad, but it could mean the foreign missions want to exercise or put more pressure on the Houthis.” UN Special Envoy to Yemen Jamal Benomar warned last night that Yemen was “on the brink of a civil war.” Tunisia. Tunisian authorities on Monday arrested over thirty extremists who were allegedly planning attacks on civilian and military sites in Tunisia. According to Mohammad Ali Aroui, spokesperson for the Interior Ministry, the militants planned to target the Interior Ministry and two National Guard posts. He added that many of those arrested had travelled to Syria to fight. Libya. UN peace talks resumed yesterday in Ghadames near the Algerian border, led by UN Special Envoy Bernardino Leon. UN officials said yesterday’s talks aimed to secure a deal on a unified government, a ceasefire, and on removing armed militias from Libya’s main cities. Meanwhile, Libyan special forces announced Monday that they had retaken Benghazi’s main military base from Islamist fighters. The special forces are backed by troops led by Heneral Khalifa Haftar, who supports the internationally recognized parliament, led by exiled Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni. Bahrain. Bahrain’s Information Affairs Authority (IAA) announced on Monday that it decided to suspend the activities of a new Saudi news channel, Alarab, hours after it went on the air on February 1. The IAA cited “technical and administrative reasons” for the suspension, but it also accused Alarab of failing to “take account of efforts aimed at stemming the tide of extremism and terrorism throughout the region and the world.”Alarab had interviewed Khalil Marzook, the deputy leader of the Shia opposition party al-Wefaq, which is openly critical of the Bahraini regime before its activities were suspended.    

Ruslan Trad interviews Abu Ibrahim al-Raqqawi, a Raqqa-based Syrian activist fighting both the Assad regime and ISIS. Kevin Jackson investigates a jihadist caliphate that existed prior to ISIS. Read a translation of the initial draft constitution of Libya, published in December 2014.

Significant Developments CIA Torture Report. Official reaction in the Middle East to the release yesterday of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on torture has been muted so far, with protests concentrated primarily on social media. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei yesterday said that the report revealed the United States to be a “symbol of tyranny against humanity.” ISIS and al-Qaeda eagerly decreed that the report showed the United States’ hypocrisy, with Dutch jihadist Israfil Yilmaz writing: “They call us monsters? Slap yourself, read some of the @CIA torture reports and wake up.” Yemen’s legal advisor Nazeeh Alemad said the publication of the report “makes no difference” as “people here [in Yemen] are not looking for more proof of torture [...] they deal with it as a fact.” He added, “what makes a difference is what happens here, not some report published over there.” Secretary of State John Kerry had urged Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein to delay the publication of the report, Kerry warning that its release would have adverse foreign policy implications for the United States’ “ongoing efforts aginst ISIL and the safety of Americans being held hostage around the world.” Yemen. U.S. hostage Luke Somers was killed on Saturday night by militants affiliated with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) during a rescue attempt by an American Special Operations team. A South African hostage, Pierre Korkie, was also killed. Nasr bin Ali Al-Ansi, a top AQAP commander in Yemen, blamed President Obama today for the death of the two hostages, describing the rescue attempt as an “execution order” and warning the president that al-Qaeda would “continue to put the lives of all Americans in danger inside and outside of America […].” Earlier in the week, Al-Ansi denounced the act and promotion of beheading prisoners as “barbaric” and “not acceptable whatever the justifications are” in response to a reporter questioning whether al-Qaida was mirroring ISIS’ tactics. Israel-Palestine. Thousands of Palestinians marched to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s headquarters in Ramallah today as part of the funeral procession of senior Fatah official Ziad Abu Ein. He died yesterday after inhaling tear gas and a violent altercation with Israeli security forces during a protest in the West Bank to mark International Human Rights Day. Abbas called Abu Ein’s death “an intolerable crime in every sense of the word.” However, the autopsy report on the cause of death was interpreted differently by Israeli and Palestinian forensic experts today. According to the Israeli forensic expert today, the cause of death was a stress related heart attack. The Palestinian expert, Dr. Saber al-Aloul, determined that Abu Ein died of violence and not natural causes, due to wounds and bruises on his teeth, neck, tongue and windpipe. A spokesperson for the Palestinian government, Ehab Bessio, stated earlier: “Today, based on the autopsy results, we hold the Israeli government accountable for the murder of Ziad Abu Ein.” Israel. Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni announced yesterday that they intend to run on a joint ticket in the upcoming March 17 Israeli elections in an effort to deny Benjamin Netanyahu a fourth term as prime minister. Herzog leads Israel’s center-left Labor Party, which currently has 15 seats in the 120-member parliament. Livni, who was dismissed as justice minister by Netanyahu last week, leads the centrist Hatnua party, which has six seats in parliament. Livni and Herzog are proposing to rotate in the role of prime minister, with Herzog serving the first two years of the term and Livni taking over for the second two. U.S. Foreign Policy ISIS. Secretary of State John Kerry testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, where he requested that Congress refrain from banning the use of ground forces to fight ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Kerry stated that “the president has been crystal clear that his policy is that U.S. military forces will not be deployed to conduct ground combat operations […], [but] it doesn’t mean that we should pre-emptively bind the hands of […] our commanders in the field in responding to scenarios […] that are impossible to foresee.” Iraq. Unspecified allies in the U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS pledged on Monday to send 1,500 military troops to support American military advisors in Iraq. American officials declined to identify the countries contributing the additional forces. The United States has already guaranteed to send 3,000 soldiers to train and advise Iraqi and Kurdish troops. The new pledge would bring the total number of military advisors to 4,500. Meanwhile, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi requested that the United States provide additional air power and heavy weaponry during a meeting with U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel on Tuesday. Hagel was visiting Baghdad to discuss the military progress against ISIS. While We Were Looking Elsewhere Israel-Syria. Syria’s Armed Forces General Command confirmed Sunday that Israeli warplanes earlier in the day struck at least two areas near Damascus, including the international airport. The Syrian Army stated that the attack “proves Israel’s direct involvement in supporting terrorists in Syria,” while Syrian and Iranian foreign ministers called it an act of “aggression.” Israeli officials neither confirmed nor denied reports of the attacks, though Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said Tuesday that Israel “will not allow red lines to be crossed that endanger Israel’s security.” Syria did not retaliate, but called on UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to impose sanctions on Israel. Iran. A UN Panel of Experts report on Iran alleges that Qassem Soleimani, leader of the military Quds force, has been photographed in Iraq where he is allegedly providing assistance to militants fighting ISIS. The Quds force is the international branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Soleimani’s presence in Iraq is a violation of an international travel ban and asset freeze imposed upon him by the UN Security Council since 2007. Under this resolution, UN member states must prevent blacklisted individuals from entering their state. Iraqi diplomats have not respondent to questions. Syria. António Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, announced on Tuesday that the number of Syrian refugees to be resettled in third countries outside the region will double. The pledge comes after twenty-eight countries pledged to accept over 60,000 refugees and eleven more states agreed to investigate the possibility of expanding their current resettlement programs. Meanwhile, the UN World Food Program announced on Monday that it will resume its food voucher program for Syrian refugees after its online campaign raised $80 million. The funds raised will enable the UN to sustain the program from mid-December until January. However, UN emergency aid coordinator Valerie Amos warned on Monday that without further large contributions from donors, the World Food Program would be “lurching from month to month.” Bahrain. Two deadly bombs exploded in Bahrain in less than twenty-four hours earlier this week. The first explosion killed a policeman in Damistan, a village southwest of Manama, the Bahraini capital on Monday. The second explosion detonated on Tuesday in Karzakan, southwest of Mananma, killing a Bahraini national and injuring another civilian. Bahraini Foreign Minister Khalid al-Khalifa held Hezbollah responsible for making the bombs used in the attack on Monday, and called the explosions a “terrorist act.” Bahrain’s main Shia opposition group Al-Wefaq publicly distanced itself from the attack. Libya. UN Special Envoy to Libya Bernardino Leon announced on Monday that the UN would postpone talks to end the political crisis in Libya until next week. The talks, which were scheduled to begin on Tuesday, have been deferred to give the two rival political factions a longer opportunity to construct a compromise. The internationally recognized government exiled in Tobruq, and Libya Dawn, the armed groups allied with the self-declared Islamist-affiliated authority in Tripoli led by Omar Hassi, refused on Sunday to include the other party in discussions with the UN. Palestine. The 122 members of the Assembly of State Parties of the International Criminal Court (ICC) awarded the Palestinian delegation “observer status at their annual meeting on Monday. The move is mostly symbolic and gives Palestine the same status as the United States which is not a signatory. Palestinian ambassador Riyad H. Mansour said that the Palestinians “want to strengthen [their] presence in international fora, […] not only in the General Assembly.” Qatar. High-level officials from the Gulf states arrived in Doha on Tuesday for the start of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) meeting in Qatar. The diplomats included Saudi Crown Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud and Vice President of the United Arab Emirates Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum. This meeting was scheduled after Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates reinstated their ambassadors in Qatar last month. U.A.E. A court sentenced eleven people to prison terms between three years and life for attempting to establish an al-Qaeda affiliate group in the United Arab Emirates. They were also charged for joining al-Qaeda affiliate groups al-Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham in Syria. Four defendants were acquitted, and the accused denied all charges brought against them.