Washington (AFP) - Hundreds of conservative Republicans who gathered for the Faith and Freedom Coalition's Road to Majority conference this week in Washington see a conflict raging across the United States pitting their faith and family values against liberal encroachment fueled by President Barack Obama.

Marriage sanctity has been a pillar of that platform, but five months before mid-term elections and 18 months before the 2016 presidential campaign, many Christian conservatives are looking beyond gay marriage to the next battlefronts in a sociopolitical struggle they hope to win at the ballot box.

The far-right movement, whose torch is carried in Congress by the likes of Senator Ted Cruz and on America's backroads by 2012 presidential candidate Rick Santorum, has failed to stem the tide of same-sex marriage rights that has now reached 19 of the 50 US states.

Obama himself recently highlighted the progress, recalling that 10 years ago, "maybe no single issue divided our country more than same-sex marriage."

"In fact, the Republican Party built their entire strategy for 2004 around this issue," and successfully passed amendments banning gay marriage in 11 states," he added.

But hearts and minds have changed, he said, adding "here's a good bet: they're not going to try the same strategy in 2014."

Whatever approach they choose, grassroots conservatives will be courted by Republican 2016 White House contenders, and several potential candidates, including Cruz, Santorum and Senator Rand Paul converged on the convention to firm up their far-right credibility.

"There's a war on Christianity going on and sometimes you're being asked to pay for it," Paul told the crowd Friday, referring to US aid to Pakistan and violent extremists in Syria who have killed or threatened violence against Christians.

But some conceded Obama's prediction that opposing same-sex marriage no longer ensures political victory.

"They are winning the war" over gay marriage, Religious Freedom Coalition chairman William Murray said of the Democrats.

"It's just not an issue that politically can be done anymore," the 68-year-old told AFP, adding that US courts will take the next key steps.

"It's become a Hollywood issue, and I don't know what Hollywood will promote next," he sneered: "polygamy or sex with dogs."

- 'Pro-life generation' -

Young Conservatives Coalition president Chris Malagisi said Republican 20-somethings are more accepting of gay marriage.

"I don't know if social issues will be the primary thing in 2016. Foreign policy seems to be front and center right now," he said.

But if a family values issue rises to the top, Malagisi predicted it would be abortion.

"This is the pro-life generation," he said, citing polls showing young Americans are increasingly anti-abortion.

Lila Rose, president of pro-life advocacy group Live Action, painted the ideological "great battle" in blunt terms: "The culture of death versus the culture of life."

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, recently embroiled in a local scandal that may have dented his presidential ambitions, told the conference he prided himself on being the first pro-life governor of his state since the Supreme Court case upholding abortion rights 1973.

But he stressed the religious-right platform ought to show compassion for the less fortunate.

"From the womb until natural death, we need to be there even for those who stumble and fall," Christie said.

Even Santorum, while insisting "children need mothers and fathers," largely steered clear of the gay-marriage debate, framing the ideological battle in socioeconomic terms.

"We need to be the party of the worker, not just the party of business," he said, in a thinly veiled slight of 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, a wealthy venture capitalist who showed questionable concern for America's struggling lower classes.

"We're not going to win many elections if people don't think we care about them."

Monica Crowley, a talk-radio host and former Nixon administration aide, opened the conference by blasting Democrats for their "24/7 war" against religious freedom and economic liberty.

"Leftists are at war with America, with the American Constitution, with American free-market economics, with American values," she said. "That fundamental transformation is nearly complete."

Religious right looks beyond gay-marriage battle

While they've ceded ground on same-sex rights, conservative Christians are emboldened on at least one other issue.
'Hollywood' agenda

A member of the #BringBackOurGirls Abuja campaign group addresses a sit-in protest at the Unity Fountain in Abuja June 18, 2014. REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde

By Felix Onuah

ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigeria wrapped up its inquiry into the abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls by militants on Friday with little progress to show, reporting almost none had been freed after the initial kidnapping some girls escaped from.

Submitting the final report, Brigadier General Ibrahim Sabo said 219 girls remained at large, a total virtually unchanged since Boko Haram militants stormed their secondary school in northeast Borno state on April 14 to kidnap them.

A total of 57 girls, almost all of whom escaped shortly after the abduction, have been reunited with their families, he added. The kidnapping of the teenage girls taking exams in Chibok village sparked global outrage for its sheer barbarity.

The government's failure to rescue the girls, or protect them before their abduction, has become a political liability for President Goodluck Jonathan ahead of elections next year.

"We are ... pained that the schoolgirls remain in captivity," Sabo said in a statement. "The hostage situation that this represents is obviously delicate."

The Chibok kidnapping and other increasingly bloody attacks by Boko Haram have underscored Abuja's inability to stamp out the militant group, which aims to carve out a radical Islamist state in the mostly Muslim north.

In what could raise the ire of Jonathan's critics, Sabo recommended the findings of the fact-finding group appointed by the president remain confidential for national security reasons.

Sabo also seemed to try to deflect expected criticism from the government.

"For the Chibok schoolgirls, little will be achieved through finger-pointing," he said in his statement.

"Getting the girls out, and safely, too, is by far more important than the publicity generated by the blame game that has tended to becloud the issue."

The attack shocked Nigerians, even as they have grown used to hearing about atrocities in an increasingly bloody five-year-old Islamist insurgency in the north.

From being a religious movement opposed to Western culture - Boko Haram means "Western education is a sin" in the northern Hausa language - the sect has emerged as a well-armed insurrection with a growing thirst for blood.

This week at least 14 people, including small children, died when a bomb tore through a venue where fans had gathered to watch a World Cup soccer match. [ID:nL5N0OZ1MN]

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, although Islamic militants are widely suspected.

13 shot dead after attacking police in west China

BEIJING (AP) — Police in China's restive western region shot dead 13 assailants who rammed a truck into a police office building and set off explosives in an attack Saturday that also wounded three officers, state media said.

The Tianshan website said in a one-line report that no civilians were hurt in the attack in Kashgar prefecture in Xinjiang's southwest. Officials in the region contacted by phone either said they were unclear about the situation or refused to comment.

Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the German-based group World Uyghur Congress, said he called several residents in the Yecheng area who described hearing rapid gunfire, likely from police, before an explosion rang out. He said that authorities quickly placed the county under martial law and started rounding up people in a nearby market.

"It's undeniable that the armed police are using excessive force to deal with the unrest in the region. Why did they need to shoot them dead on the spot?" Dilxat Raxit said. "If they just injured them they would still have a chance to be put through the legal process."

It was the latest in a series of attacks pointing to growing unrest in the sprawling region of Xinjiang, where the native Muslim Uighur (pronounced WEE-gur) people want more autonomy from Beijing. Last month, a market bombing killed 43 people in Xinjiang's capital, Urumqi.

Chinese authorities have blamed the attacks on extremists bent on overthrowing Beijing's rule. The government says the assailants have ties to Islamic terrorist groups abroad, but provides little direct evidence.

The government has sought to stem the attacks by handing down heavy punishments to people authorities say organized, led and participated in terrorist groups, committed arson, murder, burglary or illegally manufactured explosives. Earlier this month, China executed 13 people in Xinjiang for such crimes.

Uighur activists say public resentment against Beijing is fueled by an influx of settlers from the Han majority in the region, economic disenfranchisement and onerous restrictions on Uighur religious and cultural practices. China says it has made vast investments to boost the region's economy and improve living standards.

Putin orders forces in the Urals on combat alert

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday ordered military forces in central Russia on combat alert as well as a drill of airborne troops, a day after Ukraine ordered a cease-fire with pro-Russian rebels.

NATO said earlier this week that Russia has resumed a military build-up on the border with Ukraine where pro-Russian separatists have been fighting government forces for weeks in a conflict that has left about 300 people dead and displaced over 34,000.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko ordered his forces to cease fire Friday and halt military operations for a week, the first step in a peace plan he hopes will end the fighting that has killed hundreds. The Kremlin dismissed the plan, saying it sounded like an ultimatum and lacked any firm offer to open talks with insurgents.

The combat alert in the central military district, which encompasses the Volga region and the Ural mountains but not western Russia, will last until next Saturday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said, quoted by Russian state news agencies.

Some 65,000 troops will take part in military drills accompanying the combat alert, according to head of Russian General Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov, including several thousand troops of an airborne division which will be moved from a city 200 kilometers (124 miles) east of Moscow where they are stationed to the Ural mountains.

Russia's combat alert was ordered on the first day of the cease-fire in Ukraine, which was nonetheless marked by more fighting along the border.

The Ukrainian Border Guard Service reported overnight attacks on two border posts in the Donetsk region, which left three troops injured, hours after the cease-fire was announced. One of the posts, Vyselky, was attacked with mortar and sniper fire for half an hour, the border guards said.

An attack on another border post, Izvaryne, immediately before the cease-fire left six men injured, the border guard service said.

Ukraine's Defense Ministry reported two attacks on the quarters of a missile unit in the village of Avdiyivka. Kiev said men armed with automatic rifles and grenade launchers attacked the base at 11 p.m. — one hour after the cease-fire was announced — prompting the army to respond. The rebels left in the morning, the defense ministry said.

Washington (AFP) - American veterans have watched the lightning advance of Sunni extremists in Iraq with anguish, prompting them to wonder if their sacrifices in combat were for nothing as the country plunges into sectarian bloodshed.

Until recently, US military officers have pointed to the outcome of a troop "surge" in Iraq in 2007 as a relative success, believing American forces had bolstered security in the country and weakened militants linked to Al-Qaeda.

But events of recent days have filled veterans like John Nagl, a retired army officer who served in Anbar province in 2003, with "anger, bitterness, sadness, unhappiness."

Nagl blames the result on President Barack Obama's administration for failing to push to keep US troops in Iraq after 2011, and the Shiite-led Iraqi government for alienating Sunni citizens.

"This was entirely predictable," Nagl said.

"A bunch of my friends and Iraqis died to give Iraq a chance to be free and stable and multiethnic," he told AFP.

"And both the Iraqi government and the American government made gross errors, preventable errors that laid waste to all of those sacrifices."

View gallery

Iraq War Veterans Against the War, protest outside the White House in Washington DC on March 19, 201 …

The US war in Iraq claimed the lives of 4,478 Americans, and 32,242 troops were wounded in the conflict.

Nagl, who served in the US Army's 1st Infantry Division, has been thinking of the 23 soldiers in his battalion who were killed in combat, and others who came home seriously wounded.

Among them is a friend who lost an eye and the use of one leg and arm in the second battle of Fallujah.

"Every day, he lives with the reminder of what it cost to retake Fallujah from the insurgents we ceded it to in 2004," he said.

"And now the insurgents have it back, are you ****ing kidding me?"

Veterans tend to take pride in their service but disagree about whether staying in Iraq would have made a difference, and a growing number question the decision to invade in the first place.

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Wounded veteran Army Chief Warrant Officer 5 (Ret.) Gary Linfoot, paralyzed in a 2008 helicopter cra …

An April survey of veterans showed 50 percent say the Iraq war was not worth fighting and 44 percent say the average Iraqi does not appreciate their service in the country.

But 87 percent said deploying to Iraq made them feel "proud," according to The Washington Post-Kaiser poll.

- Trying to reassure veterans -

Senior military leaders have tried to reassure troops and veterans that their efforts were not in vain, despite the grim news coming out of Iraq.

"Like many of you, I was disappointed at how quickly the situation in Iraq deteriorated as well as the rapid collapse of many Iraqi units," General Martin Dempsey, the military's top-ranking officer, wrote on his Facebook page.

But the general said he was "proud of what we, along with our Iraqi and coalition partners accomplished."

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A single rose lays on the headstone of a fallen serviceman on Veteran's Day at Arlington Nationa …

"We provided the Iraqi people a historic opportunity for a better future. Nothing will diminish that accomplishment," he said.

Paul Hughes, a former army colonel who served in Iraq, said it was wrenching to follow events in Iraq.

"It's heartbreaking," said Hughes, now a senior adviser at the US Institute for Peace.

"No soldier wants to look back at their service and the sacrifices made and find that it was all for naught."

But he doubted events would have turned out much differently if Washington had left a small force in place instead of withdrawing three years ago.

The Shiite-led government in Baghdad bears the ultimate responsibility for what has taken place, he said, as it had alienated the Sunni population and paved the way for the Islamist militant offensive.

And Hughes was skeptical of any US military intervention now, saying it would amount to taking sides in a sectarian conflict.

"It's not clear what the political objective would be for any military action there," he said.

Major Andrew Rohrer wrote on his Facebook page that the sectarian tensions were "an Iraqi problem that we never could have fixed in a hundred years."

While American veterans argue about where to pin the blame for what has gone wrong in Iraq, and how Washington should respond, they all view recent events with a degree of despair.

Nagl, author of a book on counterinsurgency warfare, said the prospect of extremist sanctuaries in Iraq that could serve as launching pads for terror attacks on the West called into question 13 years of war that had been aimed at preventing just such an outcome.

"This is really bad," said Nagl, headmaster at The Haverford School for boys in Pennsylvania.

And as depressing and surreal as the news might be out of Iraq, Nagl said: "I can't stop watching."