U.S. slams Iraq, Syria with new airstrikes

War planes strike more than 25 times, hitting IS militants and the oil infrastructure they control, military officials say.
Details

London (AFP) - Do you lock them up, or try to rehabilitate them? Britain has taken a hard line on citizens returning from fighting in Syria and Iraq, but anti-extremism groups and experts say more good might come from trying to help them.

An estimated 500 Britons have travelled abroad to become jihadists, many with the Islamic State organisation, and about half have returned, according to government sources.

The problem of what to do with them faces many Western governments, but Britain, which has suffered several Islamist attacks and fears the returning fighters will wreak bloody havoc on home soil, is clear on its response.

"ISIL is a proscribed organisation so these people are guilty of a criminal offence," said Defence Secretary Michael Fallon.

"And if we can get them into the courts on their return that's what we will do."

The British authorities say they refer about 50 people a week to "de-radicalisation programmes", where their mental health can be assessed and they can be offered help with issues such as housing, employment and education.

These are only open to those who have not yet left the country, however.

The security services are drawing on experience from the war in Afghanistan, where a number of western Islamists went to Kabul and some returned home to commit bloody attacks.

But many experts argue that the programmes should be accessible to returning jihadists who might help prevent others following in their path.

View gallery

Turkish Kurds watch the Syrian town of Kobani from near the Mursitpinar border crossing, on the Turk …

- Fighters 'feel trapped' -

Britain has stepped up prevention measures, including surveillance of flights in and out of Istanbul -- a key transit point -- and by confiscating passports of suspected jihadists before they leave.

Prime Minister David Cameron and his interior minister have expressed their desire to withdraw British citizenship from Islamist fighters, although international human rights conventions prohibit making a person stateless.

Of the 250 or so jihadists who have returned, more than 60 have been arrested and 16 have so far been charged -- raising questions about what has happened to the others.

Contacted by AFP, Scotland Yard highlighted the "significant increase" in arrests linked to Syria and the prevention measures, but stayed silent on the returning fighters.

While some jihadists are seen as a threat, others become disillusioned with the realities of fighting in Syria.

According to the British press, five Britons, three French, two Germans and two Belgians want to return home after complaining that they ended up fighting other rebel groups rather than Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

They are currently prisoners of the IS group.

In total, between 30 and 50 Britons want to return but fear they face jail, according to researchers at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) at King's College London, who have been contacted by one of the jihadists speaking on the group's behalf.

Hanif Qadir, the founder of the Active Change Foundation, an anti-extremism organisation, said British fighters must be given an opportunity to come home.

"At the moment there is nothing put in place by the British government to allow a corridor for them to return," he told AFP, adding that he was "in discussions" with the government about how to bring people back "in a controlled way".

Professor Peter Neumann of the ICSR has urged a compulsory programme for all returning fighters, a position also backed by opposition Labour leader Ed Miliband.

"The people we have been talking to... want to quit but feel trapped because all the government is talking about is locking them up for 30 years," he told the Daily Telegraph.

Qadir, who himself went to Afghanistan in 2002 to join a group affiliated with Al-Qaeda before becoming disillusioned, says returning fighters could be an asset.

"If we have a young man or a young girl that has gone to Syria and realised and saw the truth and the hypocrisy, I'm quite confident that they will be able to help us to prevent other men and women from going abroad," he said.

Related Video

U.K. struggles with issue of returning jihadists

Experts suggest an alternative to Britain's hard line on citizens who joined groups fighting in Syria and Iraq.
About 250 have come back

Vladimir Putin may be looking for a wider conflict than the one he is involved in in the Ukraine at the moment, as the Russian President postures to show that his country is the biggest and strongest superpower, at least militarily speaking, in the world.

During some lunchtime banter between Putin and his counterpart from New Zealand, Prime Minister John Key, at an international summit earlier in the year, the two world leaders joked, if that’s even possible, about nuclear war.

As Key recalled, according to a Sydney Morning Herald report, he joked with Putin and the Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, asking him, “How long would it take a missile to get out from Moscow to NZ?”

Medvedev replied, “Don’t worry, I’ll let you know before it happens.”

That was probably the last time world leaders spoke about a nuclear war in jest, as the reality of that possibility has changed on the ground over the last few months.

As Putin finds himself at loggerheads with the West, following his invasion of the Ukraine, he has mentioned Russia’s 5,000 nuclear warheads on at least three occasions recently, and by all accounts, he wasn’t joking.

For example, last Thursday night, when Putin was en route to a 50 nations summit, the annual Asia-Europe Meeting in Milan.

“He’s again threatened the West with nuclear weapons,” says John Besemeres, a Russia expert at the ANU.

According to Besemeres, Vladimir Putin has some kind of fantasy when it comes to nuclear war.

“It seems like a mastubatory fantasy he can’t go without. These are references that haven’t been heard since the era of the Soviet Union, and even then it wasn’t this overt.”

Fortunately, according to Peter Jennings, the former head of strategy at the Australian Defense Department, it’s not likely that Russia has any nuclear weapons pointed at Australia or New Zealand.

“There is a low probability that Russian nuclear weapons are aimed at Australia, with one possible exception,” says Jennings.

That exception would be the joint U.S..- Australian satellite tracking bases at Pine Gap and Nurrungar.

“That would be the joint facilities. The joint facilities are the only thing that may be relevant to the US ability to launch an attack on Russia,” he said.

Besemeres summary of the situation says it all, as he lays down the possibility of a nuclear threat from Vladimir Putin against Australia, “Putin’s Russia is heading towards a police state internally and a rogue state externally. It’s a very worrying combination.”

Lagos (AFP) - Nigeria is expected to be declared Ebola-free on Monday, just three months after fears that the virus could spread like wildfire through Africa's most populous nation.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is preparing to announce that Nigeria has not had a confirmed case of Ebola for 42 days -- or two incubation periods of 21 days -- just as it did for Senegal on Friday.

The achievement is being welcomed, with no end in sight to the disease that has claimed more than 4,500 lives this year, most of them in west Africa, and mounting fears about cases around the world.

Close attention is being paid to how Nigeria, with an under-funded and ill-equipped health system, managed to contain the virus, as specialists look for a more effective response to control its spread.

But there were warnings against any premature celebration, with complacency still a risk and luck considered to have played a part in containing the outbreak.

- Monitoring, awareness -

Eight people died out of 20 confirmed Ebola cases in Nigeria, with all infections traced back to a single source -- Liberian finance ministry official Patrick Sawyer, who arrived in Lagos on July 20.

View gallery

Nigerian health officials takes the body temperature of an Ukrainian worker on the MV Pintail cargo …

Many feared the worst when Sawyer died on July 25 in a private hospital in Nigeria's biggest city, which is home to more than 20 million people, with poor sanitation and inadequate health facilities.

Doctors were on strike at the time over pay and conditions in the public health sector, where many state hospitals lack running water, let alone soap and other basic equipment.

Yet the doomsday scenario of rapid spread among a 170-million-strong population, devastating Africa's leading economy and oil producer, did not materialise.

"Nigeria acted quickly and early and on a large scale," John Vertefeuille, from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told AFP.

"They acted aggressively, especially in terms of contact-tracing."

Key to the response was an existing plan for a mass outbreak of polio, which was adapted to Ebola, as well as a rapid appeal for foreign help.

The Ebola Emergency Operations Centre (EEOC) prioritised contact-tracing and twice-daily monitoring of those at risk, with experts aware that every Ebola case is in contact with about 50 people.

In all, nearly 900 people were monitored in Lagos and the oil city of Port Harcourt, where one contact of Sawyer travelled after slipping surveillance, going on to infect another doctor.

View gallery

Two children recovering from Ebola virus wait at an Ebola treatment centre in the Hastings area of F …

Some 1,800 people were trained to trace and monitor those at risk, as well as decontaminate infected places and care for the sick, said the head of the EEOC, Faisal Shuaib.

- Luck, concerns -

Luck cannot be discounted in Nigeria's first brush with Ebola. Sawyer was taken straight to hospital after arriving from Monrovia visibly ill, keeping him off Lagos' teeming streets.

Doctors also prevented him from discharging himself into an area of the city frequented by tens of thousands of people with a bus station that serves the entire country.

The EEOC in the early days of the outbreak highlighted concerns such as a lack of personal protective equipment for medics, which could have had serious implications in any rapid spread.

Public health campaigns, including a giant electronic billboard warning about Ebola just outside the hospital where Sawyer died, have helped raise awareness.

Airports and seaports have introduced compulsory screening on arrival and departure; temperature checks and hand sanitiser use for the public are now the norm.

Greater knowledge about Ebola is likely to help in reporting any new cases, said epidemiologist Chukwe Ihekweazu, who runs the Nigeria Health Watch website.

But he warned Nigeria against celebrating its Ebola-free status.

"It's premature when you see the situation in west Africa right now. There's still a lot to do. It's not the right time to celebrate," he said.

Vertefeuille admitted that there was "no equal level of preparedness everywhere in the country" but still said Nigeria was better equipped to deal with any future Ebola cases.

Isolation centres have now been identified in most Nigerian states, while six laboratories have been accredited by the WHO to conduct Ebola tests, said Shuaib.

But concerns remained, not least about funding.

Vertefeuille said the federal authorities had been slow to match state government funding for the outbreak, which would be vital for tackling any new cases.

Related Video