Washington (AFP) - US President Barack Obama on Friday warned Russia they could not "bomb their way" to a peaceful solution in Syria, reiterating his view that propping up President Bashar al-Assad will fail.

Speaking after US and Russian militaries reached a tentative deal to prevent mid-air clashes over Syria, Obama said there had been "no meeting of the minds in terms of strategy."

"They are not going to be able to bomb their way to a peaceful situation inside of Syria," Obama told a joint press conference with visiting South Korean President Park Geun-Hye.

His comments come as Russia steps up its bombing campaign in support of Assad and US officials say as many as 2,000 Iranian and Iranian-backed forces are helping regime troops in an offensive near Aleppo.

Obama said Iran was "just doing more of what they have been doing for the last five years, as is Russia."

"Their basic theory on how to solve Syria has not worked and will not work."

"Their preference originally was -- we will simply send arms and money to Assad and he will be able to clamp down on dissent, and when that didn't work, they directed Hezbollah to come in and prop them up and sent in some of their own military advisers, and that did not work," he said.

"Now the Russians have come in and Iran is going to send more people in, but it's also not going to work because they are trying to support a regime that in the eyes of the overwhelming majority of the Syrian people is not legitimate."

Associated Press Videos
Floods and Mud Strand Los Angeles-Area Drivers

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Rescuers threw ladders and tarps across mud up to 6 feet deep to help hundreds of trapped people from cars that got caught in a roiling river of mud along a major Southern California trucking route, a California Highway Patrol official said Friday in what he and other witnesses described as a chaotic scene.

Amazingly, officials said, no deaths or injuries were reported.

The people rescued from State Route 58, about 30 miles east of Bakersfield, were stranded in a powerful storm on Thursday evening. They were rescued in darkness about 10 hours after the storm hit and taken to three shelters.

"It was terrifying," 51-year-old Rhonda Flores of Bakersfield told The Associated Press on Friday. "It was a raging river of mud. I've never experienced anything like it, ever."

Flores said she, her mother and her stepfather were driving back to Bakersfield from her sister's funeral in Utah when the storm hit out of nowhere.

"It started raining, and it kept raining, the water started to build up and the mud started coming," Flores said from the church where she, her family and about 150 other people sheltered overnight. "The water's rushing by, the mud's rushing by, then pieces of trees started coming by and the water was past our doors."

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In this photo provided by Caltrans, vehicles are stopped in mud on California's Interstate-5 aft …

Flores said the trio was prepared to jump out of the windows if the water got any higher. Luckily, it subsided.

"I'm feeling blessed that we are here," she said.

Sgt. Mario Lopez, a spokesman for the California Highway Patrol, was at the scene as people were being rescued and said it was sheer chaos.

"I've never seen anything like this before," Lopez said. "The whole side of the hill just came down onto State Route 58 ... There's no highway."

The storms unleashed flash flood and debris flows along the 58, the Interstate 5 and in two small mountainside communities, where at least a dozen homes were reported damaged.

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This image taken from video provided by KABC-TV, shows a vehicle stuck along a muddy road in the mou …

Lopez said it will take days to reopen State Route 58, a mile of which is choked with mud between 2 and 6 feet deep. About 200 cars and semi-trucks were trapped in the now-hardened mud, frozen in place at odd angles.

Hundreds of semis were backed up for 10 miles on the freeway at one point Friday because of the closure. Lopez said they would likely eventually be turned around.

Emergency crews were working to dig out head-high mounds of mud from the 58 and Interstate 5, which was also shut down as hundreds of cars were trapped in the mud Thursday.

The affected section of Interstate 5, one of the state's major north-south arteries, carries traffic among steep mountains over a pass rising to an elevation of more than 4,100 feet between the Central Valley and metropolitan Los Angeles.

All lanes of Interstate 5 were reopened shortly after 6 p.m. Friday. Two southbound lanes and the northbound ones were reopened earlier in the day.

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This still frame from video provided by KABC-TV shows vehicles stuck in a muddy road in the mountain …

Lake Hughes, a tiny mountainside community in northern Los Angeles County, also was in the path of Thursday's storm.

Melissa Nuesca said she and her husband had just picked up their two children from school in the Lake Hughes area when they found themselves surrounded by mud and water. They fled their car in pelting rain and hail, climbed onto the roof, and eventually found their way to safety.

"It was really scary," said Nuesca's 11-year-old daughter, Sarah. "Me and my brother both thought we were going to die that night."

Nuesca said the family got out of the car "just in time" after she reassured the children, "We're not going to die."

The mud covered their car, solidifying inside and filling up the front seat up to the dashboard.

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In a photo provided by Robert Rocha, cars on a road are stopped because of flooding, with some stuck …

Los Angeles County Fire Department Capt. Keith Mora said the agency 14 people and eight animals in the Lake Hughes area, some from atop cars. Many more were able to walk to safety after waiting out the flood on top of their own vehicles, he said.

Sheriff's deputies checked on the occupants of nearly 800 homes in the area to make sure everyone inside was safe, the department said in a statement.

At least a dozen homes in the area were damaged by the mud flows, said Kerjon Lee, a spokesman for Los Angeles County Department of Public Works.

He said more than that could be damaged, but crews had to bust through blocked roads before they could get an exact count.

The county department was going to have to move some 300,000 cubic yards of debris, the sheriff's statement said.

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This still frame from video provided by KABC-TV shows vehicles stuck in a muddy road in the mountain …

Bill Wells, a local rancher, was walking through the area looking for his livestock on Friday morning.

"I think my livestock was swept away and penned against the fence. I think they're all dead," said Wells, who was near tears.

Further north, a fresh round of flash flooding on Friday afternoon stranded about 100 vehicles on Highway 166 west of Cuyama, a remote sparsely populated community about 50 miles north of Santa Barbara.

But the vehicles, including a school bus, were able to start moving again and weren't expected to need rescuing, Santa Barbara County fire spokesman Dave Zaniboni said.

The thunderstorms were powered by a low pressure system pulling in moisture from the south. As much as 1.45 inches of rain fell in a quick span of time near where the most intense flooding occurred.

National Weather Service meteorologist Robbie Munroe said it's too early to say whether the storm was connected to the El Nino phenomenon that experts say has formed in the Pacific Ocean.

Historically, he said, an El Nino brought on by a warming of Pacific Ocean waters doesn't usually bring heavy rain to Southern California before November. This El Nino has been forecast to bring above-average precipitation to Southern California during January, February and March.

___

Associated Press reporters Christine Armario, Sue Manning and John Rogers contributed to this report from Los Angeles, and Raquel Dillon contributed from Lake Hughes, Calif.

The author was deputy director and acting director of the CIA from 2000 to 2004 and currently teaches at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

It’s been three weeks of watching Vladimir Putin begin to make his mark on the situation in Syria. Although it’s still early days, we can already see hints of how his moves are complicating U.S. calculations, changing the force balance in Syria and dividing the region.

Syria holds grave risks for anyone who touches it, Putin’s situation does not yet feel like the “quagmire” U.S. officials have asserted he is heading into. To be sure, outsiders like Putin can always get sucked into civil wars, but for now he is deploying small numbers — several thousand military personnel and several dozen combat aircraft and other weaponry — which he can easily withdraw, if need be. Putin is projecting the image of a realist who knows how to use power. His argument is simple: A weaker Assad regime would leave little standing in the way of an Islamic State takeover. So we have watched him maneuver to give Assad some breathing space; Putin’s first moves have been to alleviate pressure on Syria, bombing mostly the regime’s non-IS opponents, and coordinating with Iran, which is carrying the burden of ground combat support for Assad.

But the limited nature of Putin’s first steps and his calm justifications don’t mean the U.S.-led coalition likes much of what’s at play — and certainly not the human rights abuses of Putin’s barrel-bombing ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. And lest we think Putin simple: He is motivated by more than shoring up his ally and protecting his country’s Mediterranean naval base at Tartus. Russians remember all too well the denouement of the Balkan crisis in the late 1990s, when NATO operations knocked out their Serbian ally, Slobodan Miloševic, and fashioned a settlement that left Moscow no voice. Putin is determined that such a settlement not take place again; and he surely realizes one is inevitable in the region. Even if he could prop up Assad for a while, the dictator will never again rule all of Syria. Putin knows this and is betting that his military presence — “facts on the ground” in diplomatic parlance — will assure him an influential seat in the eventual bargaining over the future of Syria.

Looming over all this is the Islamic State, with its firm hold on a large chunk of Syria. The conventional view is that Putin wants to destroy all other opponents of the Assad regime in Syria, leaving the West with an awful choice between Assad and the Islamic State. But it should come as no surprise if Putin eventually goes after the IS — Putin’s problem with Islamic extremists may be even larger than America’s. He has this sobering prospect to consider: About 2,400 Russians are known to be fighting within the ranks of IS. Should they return, they may join the ranks of Russia’s ballooning Islamic population, much of which is concentrated in the rebellious Caucasus and is growing at the same rate as the country’s Slavic population is shrinking. (Russia is likely to be about 13 percent Muslim by 2030, according to the Pew Research Center.) So get ready: The U.S. may someday have to respond to a Putin proposal to mount a coordinated attack on the Islamic State.

Meanwhile, the U.S., having abandoned its training program for new anti-IS rebels, has reportedly substituted a plan to shuttle more weapons to existing anti-regime groups in Syria. Given that this will increase their punch against pro-Assad forces directly supported by Moscow, the result could be another complication the U.S. does not need: an escalating proxy war with Russia — something the two countries have managed to avoid since the end of the Cold War.

The U.S. and its allies have also had a long, indecisive debate on establishing a “no-fly” safe zone patrolled by allied aircraft, which would give rebel fighters and refugees a haven from Assad’s air force. But Putin’s surprise intervention is demonstrating, once again, that in foreign affairs, no decision is a decision in itself, and hesitation can be the worst choice of all.

The real loser in the last three week’s events, though, is Syria. The conflict is more polarized than ever, the few moderate groups are taking heavy losses, and the flow of refugees could reach 4.27 million by the end of the year according to the U.N. (up from 100,000 in 2012).

And of course, though all politics may be local, geopolitics never is. Russia’s intervention is roiling the entire region. Sunni Arabs worry that Putin’s alliance with Shiite Iran gives Tehran new clout; Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, is so far the only nation forcefully speaking out against Russia. Meanwhile, Egypt, the world’s largest Arab nation, has actually endorsed the Russian intervention, in part because Cairo faces a strong IS-linked insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula.

On top of it all, Iraq is flirting with the idea of asking Russia to help with the IS threat there. Some Iraqi officials think American assistance has been too qualified and hesitant, whereas Russia’s comes with fewer strings attached. Russia has been coy about whether it would go into Iraq. It could reach targets there via its naval assets and, with aerial refueling, its Su-24 and Su-34 aircraft. But Putin may judge it too costly to establish actual bases as he did in Syria, or too risky to operate so close to U.S. forces.

But risk? That’s a pastime Putin seems to enjoy.

October 16, 2015

From 2014 through the February/March Nigerian military surge, Boko Haram was using advanced weapons systems and tactics to conquer and hold territory in northeastern Nigeria. At one point the insurgent group had control of a territory about the size of Belgium.

This has changed. Former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan increased military efforts in the region by deploying Nigeria’s 7th Division and 72nd Mobile Strike Force to the northeast along with a group of South African-led military contractors from Specialized Tasks, Training, Equipment, and Protection (STTEP). While maintaining Nigerian troop deployments since his election, current President Muhammadu Buhari has made Nigeria’s military partnership with neighboring countries and the resulting Joint Multi-National Task Force a priority. The STTEP contract has apparently ended.

This increase in direct military action may have forced Boko Haram underground, and allowed the Nigerian government to retake much of its territory. However, the government has been unable to exercise control and governance over the ostensibly recovered territory. Far from defeated, Boko Haram has yet again shown its flexibility and sophistication by shifting tactics and returning to the more asymmetric fighting strategy it had been using for years.

In fact, there was an overall decrease in Boko Haram related violence and deaths since January. However, over the last four weeks, there has been a significant resurgence in violence. Since giving up territorial control, Boko Haram has made much greater use of suicide attacks. It is safe to say that the group will continue to use this tactic as it is so hard to defend against. In most cases, the bombers appear to be women. Why women would participate in Boko Haram’s fight remains unclear, but female suicide bombers have been seen in Iraq and Afghanistan. Traditional female dress provides suicide bombers with excellent cover and concealment in Muslim territories like northeastern Nigeria.

At least as worrying is the increased geographical spread in Boko Haram attacks. In the past few weeks there have been a number of attacks in Chad and Niger. Recently, Boko Haram has also attacked targets in the capital of Nigeria, Abuja, and in Kogi State. These venues are further south than Boko Haram’s typical area of operations. More Nigerians outside of the northeast could be facing Boko Haram attacks for the first time.

There is little evidence that Boko Haram faces recruiting difficulties. Its brew of religious extremism fed by widely felt grievances against the Nigerian system remains as potent as ever. As such, it is unlikely that Boko Haram can be destroyed by force alone. Nevertheless, should the day come that Boko Haram is defeated, the Nigerian government must be able to provide the people of northeastern Nigeria with much better administration and governance to prevent another group from filling the void left by Boko Haram. For a start, the Buhari administration should move visibly against security service abuses. Buhari should also seek assistance in overhauling the police, the courts, and the jails.

This piece first appeared in CFR's blog Africa in Transition here.

(The National Interest)

A migrant family walks to a registration center at a Croatia-Slovenia border crossing in Lendava, Slovenia October 17, 2015. REUTERS/Antonio Bronic

By Aleksandar Vasovic and Marja Novak

OPATOVAC, Croatia/LJUBLJANA (Reuters) - Migrants streaming across the Balkans reached Slovenia on Saturday, diverted overnight by the closure of Hungary’s border with Croatia in the latest demonstration of Europe's disjointed response to the flow of people reaching its borders.

Hungary’s right-wing government declared its southern frontier with Croatia off limits to migrants, blocking entry with a metal fence and razor wire just as it did a month ago on its border with Serbia.

Croatia began directing migrants west to Slovenia, which said hundreds had arrived already and more were on their way.

Slovenia said they would be registered before continuing their journey to Austria and Germany, the preferred destination of the vast majority, many of them Syrians fleeing war.

But their movement had slowed visibly, with dozens of buses lined up at Serbia’s border with Croatia through the night and into Saturday as Croatian police controlled their entry, a Reuters reporter said. Slovenia suspended rail traffic with Croatia, saying it needed "complete control" over the flow.

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Migrants enter a bus at a Croatia-Slovenia border crossing in Lendava, Slovenia October 17, 2015. RE …

Aid agencies are concerned about backlogs of migrants building in the Balkans, battered by autumn winds and rain as temperatures drop before winter.

Hungary said it had reinstated border controls on its frontier with Slovenia, effectively suspending Europe’s Schengen system of passport-free travel though it said it was acting within the Schengen rules. Both Slovenia and Hungary are part of the Schengen Area while Croatia is not.

A government spokesman said Budapest had taken the step because “migrants appeared” on the Slovenian side of the border.

Hungary says it is duty-bound to protect the borders of the European Union from the tide of migrants, most of them Muslims who Hungary says threaten the prosperity, security and "Christian values" of Europe.

With several other ex-Communist members of the EU, Hungary opposes a plan by the bloc to share out 120,000 refugees among its members. That is only a small proportion of the 700,000 migrants expected to reach Europe’s shores by boat and dinghy from North Africa and Turkey this year, many of them fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

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Migrants are seen inside a bus at a Croatia-Slovenia border crossing in Lendava, Slovenia October 17 …

"DOMINO EFFECT"

Hungary dismissed as insufficient a proposal at an EU summit on Thursday to give Turkey three billion euros ($3.4 billion) in aid and the prospect of easier travel visas and "re-energized" talks on joining the bloc if it helps stem the flow of migrants across its territory.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, one of Europe’s most vociferous opponents of immigration, wants the formation of a joint force to protect the borders of Greece, where most migrants arrive across the Aegean Sea from Turkey before heading north through Macedonia and Serbia. Without that, his government said it was left with no choice but to seal the border.

In Germany, a government official who declined to be named said the Hungarian border measures did little to solve the problem. "The measures run counter to our efforts to establish EU solidarity," the source said.

Slovenia, a small country of two million people, says it will allow in as many migrants as it is able to register and accommodate and put the army on standby to aid the effort.

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Migrants walk to the border with Hungary after arriving by train at Botovo, Croatia October 16, 2015 …

“At the moment there are no problems and no need to use the army but it is right to have such a plan if needed,” Interior Ministry state secretary Bostjan Sefic told a news conference.

The first migrants of this new wave through Slovenia reached Austria on Saturday afternoon, police said. More were expected later in the day, with some 1,800 on board one train in Croatia that would stop at the Slovenian border.

Both Ljubljana and Zagreb say they will not restrict the flow so long as Austria and Germany keep their doors open. Otherwise, Croatian Interior Minister Ranko Ostojic warned of a "domino effect" of shuttered borders and migrant backlogs.

"It will be a lot of trouble for all countries and I cannot predict what will happen in this situation," Ostojic, speaking in English, told reporters at a migrant camp in the eastern Croatian village of Opatovac.

“They are risking their lives and nobody is able to stop this flow ... without shooting.”

(Additional reporting by Fedja Grulovic in BERKOSOVO, Serbia, Marton Dunai in ZAKANY, Hungary, Krisztina Than in BUDAPEST, Francois Murphy in VIENNA and Paul Carrel in BERLIN; Writing by Matt Robinson; Editing by Gareth Jones)