The IS group and the radicalized extremist movement is the “enemy of our time” and Canadian fighter pilots have been “superb” in their bombing missions against them, Canada’s top soldier says.
."There’s no question that the potential for the spread of militarized radicals, no matter where they come from, that’s a very dangerous threat vector," Gen. Jonathan Vance, the chief of defense staff, told Canada's The Star in an exclusive interview.
"They can grow. They can, as we’ve seen with IS, they can get their hands on funds. Imagine if they are so well-equipped that they become difficult to fight on the ground, which they can. There are weapons that are easy to buy in the world."
Canadian elite commandos exchanged fire with IS in a day-long battle this week fighting alongside Kurdish Peshmerga fighters near the IS-controlled city of Mosul after IS launched its biggest offensive for 18 months.
U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter warned of the threat posed by the IS group during a surprise visit to Afghanistan today, Reuters reports.
Carter met troops at a U.S. base near Jalalabad in Nangarhar Province.
"We are seeing little nests of [IS] spring up around the world, including here in Afghanistan ... but I will say that that is a threat that we track very closely," Carter said.
U.S. Army General John Campbell, who leads international forces in Afghanistan, estimated that there are around 1,000-3,000 IS militants in Afghanistan.
EU heads of state and government have vowed to engage in an "uncompromising fight against terrorism," and are calling for wide-ranging countermeasures, AP reports.
"Crucial" measures include the implementation of systematic and coordinated border checks to know who is coming and going. EU leaders also said they would rapidly review proposals by the EU executive to clamp down on the illicit sale of firearms, especially high-powered semiautomatic weapons.
EU heads of state and government have vowed to engage in an "uncompromising fight against terrorism," and are calling for wide-ranging countermeasures, AP reports.
"Crucial" measures include the implementation of systematic and coordinated border checks to know who is coming and going. EU leaders also said they would rapidly review proposals by the EU executive to clamp down on the illicit sale of firearms, especially high-powered semiautomatic weapons.
Is Russia Calling The Shots In Syria?
As the United States and world powers gather again in an attempt to end Syria's civil war, Russia appears to be calling the shots, AP reports.
AP notes that:
Nations meeting Friday in New York and the U.N. will essentially be negotiating a Russian plan for a "political transition," based on the Syrian government's consent and with no clear reference to President Bashar Assad's departure.
...
In many ways, the parameters of the international mediation were framed early on in Syria's war by disagreements between Washington and Moscow. Russia prevailed in many of these disputes.
Russia's military intervention in Syria "appears to be providing the key leverage" for world powers to secure and enforce a peace, AP writes.
As President Barack Obama said earlier this month, rebels who join the process could enjoy "pockets of cease-fire" where they no longer face Syrian or Russian bombs.
Moscow -- Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's strongest ally -- has backed the UN's push for local ceasefires between the Syrian government and rebel fighters, and has supported efforts by the UN's special envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, to find a political settlement to the Syrian crisis.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in October that Russia had "actively encouraged the sides to the Syrian conflict to actively agree on humanitarian pauses, local ceasefires."
Earlier this month, a rare ceasefire deal in the al-Waer district of Homs saw hundreds of Syrians, including rebel fighters, leave the last rebel-held area of the city -- following a major offensive to the north of Homs by Syrian government forces backed by Russian air strikes.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said on December 16 that it and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent had delivered aid to thousands of people in al-Waer following the ceasefire.
While some residents of al-Waer expressed anger at the deal, there was also "profound relief," the Guardian reported.
Russian President Putin has discussed the Syrian crisis and terror financing with the permanent members of the Russian Security Council, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said according to TASS.
German authorities say a man who was detained at a refugee center in the western town of Unna yesterday on suspicion of ties with the IS group denies membership in the organization and has been released after the authorities could not prove that he was, AP reports.
The man, a 31-year-old Syrian, had been accused on an Arabic-language website of having worked for IS.
Russia's Foreign Ministry has once again accused Turkey of involvement in illegal shipments of IS oil.
The ministry said that "not all countries are conscientious about their obligations to stop IS funding, the largest volume of IS oil exports go through Turkey," RIA Novosti reports.
Some Muslims in France are taking the government to court, accusing it of illegal acts in the name of preventing another terror attack, Reuters report.
Following the November 13 attacks in Paris that killed 130 people, France declared a state of emergency giving authorities extra powers to conduct raids and place people under house arrest. France has since carried out hundreds of police raids on homes, mosques, hotels and restaurants.
But at least 20 complaints have been filed since the state of emergency was declared, mostly alleging that the government has acting illegally in placing people under house arrest for reasons that are not justified.
Iran's Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, has called on the international community to "join hands to put into effect an immediate end to the bloodshed" in Syria.
Zarif made his comments in an opinion piece in The Guardian today, hours before the UN and the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) -- a group of Western and regional states overseeing the Syrian peace process -- meet in New York.
Iran is a staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whom the United States and other countries say must step down.
But Zarif criticized the "preconditions" that he said were hampering a political solution in Syria and which he said "do not represent the wishes of the Syrian people; rather, they reflect the agendas of outside actors."
Russian President Putin made a similar argument in a press conference yesterday.
Zarif implicitly criticized Saudi Arabia, saying that "those who have denied their own population the most rudimentary tenets of democracy, such as a constitution and elections, are now self-declared champions of democracy in Syria."
The Iranian foreign minister also criticized those he said were "sponsoring terrorists," repeating an argument that Moscow has made that the West has differentiated between "good" and "bad" terrorists:
Indeed, it is alarming that some are oblivious to how bands of villains such as [IS] or al-Qaeda’s multiple incarnations and reincarnations are a common threat to all of us, including their patrons. It is delusional to believe that sponsoring these terrorists, directly or through their newborn ideological siblings, can ever be an asset or leverage to achieve even short-term political objectives. Yet those who support militant extremism are not only continuing to do so, but they sponsor terror with impunity. They even use their political patronages and web of lobbyists to seek to legitimize such assistance, and its recipients, by differentiating between “good terrorists” and “bad terrorists”.
While terrorism "has no religion, no nationality or ethnic background," Zarif said that it has "backers with known addresses and horrific agendas."