The Jim Bakker Show

Pessimism pervades Syria talks for peace

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (2R) and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (R) attend the ministerial meeting on Syria in Vienna, Austria, May 17, 2016.

By John Irish and Suleiman Al-Khalidi

VIENNA/AMMAN (Reuters) – Major powers sought at talks on Tuesday to reimpose a ceasefire in Syria and ensure aid reaches besieged areas, with Moscow and Washington deeply divided over the fate of President Bashar al-Assad and violence rumbling around the country.

The aim of the conference, which brings together 17 countries backing the two warring sides, is to convince armed factions and opposition leaders to restart negotiations with the government.

Officials and diplomats said the talks, including the United States, Russia, Iran, European and Middle East powers, were unlikely to lead to major decisions that could change the course of the five-year war that has killed more than 250,000 people.

A surge in bloodshed in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city before the war, wrecked a partial “cessation of hostilities” sponsored by Washington and Moscow from February, which had allowed U.N.-brokered indirect talks that included the warring sides to take place in Geneva.

Those talks collapsed last month after the opposition walked out due to a surge in bloodshed. U.N. special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura hopes to launch a new round of peace talks between the two sides by the end of May.

“We’ll need to see the guarantors of the ceasefire – Russia and the U.S. – putting something down that will really convince the opposition that this process is worthwhile,” a senior Western diplomat involved in the talks said.

“Sadly, I don’t sense that and fear the U.S. will try to impose a text that is excessively optimistic, but for which its implementation will not be possible.”

The Geneva talks aim to end a war that has created the world’s worst refugee crisis, allowed for the rise of the Islamic State group and drawn in regional and global powers.

Washington insists Assad must go but the president, backed by Moscow and Tehran, is fighting for territory and refuses to step down.

AID AND LOGISTICS

A Western official said the meeting, chaired by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, was focusing more on the logistics of expanding and implementing the “cessation of hostilities” and increasing aid deliveries that have been blocked in some areas.

The United Nations said this month that Syria’s government, which has been on the front foot in the war since the military intervention of its ally Russia, was refusing U.N. demands to deliver aid to hundreds of thousands of people.

Describing the talks as serious and engaged, another Western diplomat said one of the key issues was stopping the violence in a way which successfully separated al-Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s wing in Syria, from opposition fighters.

Western and Arab states accuse the Syrian government and Russia of using links between rebels and Nusra as a pretext to launch major offensives against Western and Arab-backed opponents of Assad. Nusra, along with Islamic State, is not party to the ceasefire.

“We must find a way back into the political process … It’s about improving the conditions for the ceasefire and humanitarian aid so as to win the opposition over to negotiate with the regime in Geneva,” German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said ahead of the meeting.

The main Syrian opposition’s High Negotiations Committee has said it would not resume talks until there was progress on the ground.

HNC chief negotiator Asaad al-Zoubi was doubtful about how much the Vienna talks can achieve: “I don’t think there will be results, and if there are any results they will not be sufficient for the Syrian people,” he told Reuters.

“We are used to the fact that Russian and U.S. foreign ministers are taking the world into an unknown direction,” saying they are working against the people not for them.

The group walked out of the Geneva talks. Asked if the HNC would return to another round of talks, al-Zoubi said: “The HNC has said that if aid does not reach everybody, if the sieges aren’t lifted and if a full truce does not happen, there will be no negotiations.”

De Mistura is trying to meet an Aug. 1 deadline to establish a transitional authority for the country that would lead to elections in 18 months as agreed in a December United Nations Security Council resolution.

FATE OF ASSAD

However, the U.S. administration’s failure to convince Moscow that Assad must go is fuelling European and Arab frustration at being sidelined in efforts to end the country’s five-year civil war, diplomats say.

Some diplomats and analysts question whether the United States has misread Russia’s desire to keep Assad in power.

In the past weeks, several hundred civilians have been killed in air strikes and rebel bombardments in Aleppo province alone, while fighting has taken place in other parts of Syria, including Idlib, Deir al-Zor and around Damascus.

As the talks took place, rebel fighters and officials in a besieged Syrian town on the outskirts of Damascus said they believed government forces were preparing an assault after they turned back an aid convoy last week.

Daraya, situated close to a large air base and just a few kilometers (miles) from Assad’s palace, had seen little violence since the cessation of hostilities agreement came into effect.

But, with the truce unraveling across Syria, government forces began shelling the town on Thursday after refusing entry to the first aid convoy it would have ever received. Residents say they are on the verge of starvation.

Known for its peaceful protests in the early days of the uprising against Assad, Daraya has been besieged and regularly bombed since 2012.

“Large convoys of (government) troops are moving from the airport and from Ashrafiyat Sahnaya (the next town south),” said Abu Samer, spokesman for the Liwa Shuhada al-Islam rebel group.

“We are prepared to repel their assault but our main fear is for the civilians besieged in the town who face severe shortages of food.”

A Syrian military source denied rebel accounts of troop deployments, saying nothing had changed in the area.

The aid convoy blocked last week would have been the first delivered since the siege began. But even then it was not allowed to contain food, only medical and other aid, and residents launched an online campaign ahead of the expected delivery with the slogan: “We cannot eat medicine”.

(Additional reporting by Lesley Wroughton and Shadia Nasralla in Vienna and Lisa Barrington in Beirut; writing by Peter Millership; editing by Peter Graff)

World must tackle ‘once in a generation’ refugee crisis

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras meets United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Special Envoy Angelina Jolie at the Maximos Mansion in Athens, Greece, March 16, 2016.

By Lin Taylor

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Global leaders must come together to tackle a ‘once-in-a-generation’ migrant crisis, said U.N. special envoy Angelina Jolie, or risk greater instability that could drive more refugees to Europe.

The United Nations and the declaration of human rights were among the world-changing outcomes of the global refugee crisis after World War Two, Jolie said, adding that the international community is now at a similar pivotal moment.

“I believe this is again that once-in-a-generation moment when nations have to pull together,” the Hollywood actress and director told the BBC.

“How we respond will determine whether we create a more stable world, or face decades of far greater instability.”

Jolie said inaction or uncoordinated efforts that did not address the underlying causes of the crisis would only lead to more conflict and displacement.

“If these things continue to happen, there will be further displacement and more people on the borders of Europe and elsewhere,” she said.

Europe is grappling with its largest migration wave since World War Two, as a traditional flow of migrants from Africa is compounded by refugees fleeing wars and poverty in the Middle East and South Asia.

The U.N. refugee agency has said the number of people forcibly displaced worldwide was likely to have “far surpassed” a record 60 million in 2015, including 20 million refugees, driven by the Syrian war and other drawn-out conflicts.

The Oscar-winning actress argued against closing borders to refugees and migrants.

“If your neighbor’s house is on fire you are not safe if you lock your doors. Isolationism is not strength,” she said.

European Union leaders, alarmed by an influx of one million refugees and migrants into the bloc of 500 million people, struck an accord with Turkey in March that would grant Ankara more money to keep Syrian refugees on its territory.

The deal sealed off the main route by which a million migrants crossed the Aegean into Greece last year, but some believe new routes will develop through Bulgaria or Albania as Mediterranean crossings to Italy from Libya resume.

Jolie, special envoy for the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, said she was disappointed in some politicians for fear-mongering and a “race to the bottom” approach to the refugee crisis.

She said it has led to “countries competing to be the toughest, in the hope of protecting themselves whatever the cost… and despite their international responsibilities.”

When asked about Republican Donald Trump’s U.S. presidential campaign, Jolie said it was divisive.

“America is built on freedom of religion so it’s hard to hear that this is coming from someone who is pressing to be president.”

(Reporting by Lin Taylor @linnytayls, Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters that covers humanitarian news, conflicts, land rights, modern slavery and human trafficking, women’s rights and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org to see more stories)

Anger, fear sweep Turkish border town under attack from Islamic State

Children play inside a devastated house struck by rocket fire from Syria in Turkey's southeastern border town of Kilis

By Humeyra Pamuk

KILIS, Turkey (Reuters) – Turkish shopkeeper Mehmet Baykal knew he had less than 10 seconds to dive under his desk when he heard another rocket being fired from Islamic State-held territory across the border in Syria.

Once a safe haven for tens of thousands of Syrian refugees, this tiny Turkish border town has now become a frontline in its war. So frequent is the rocket fire across what is in effect also NATO’s front line that residents know instinctively how long they have to take cover.

“It feels like a powerful earthquake. The ground shakes with pressure and then it is dust everywhere,” Baykal, 45, who has lived all his life in Kilis, said as he stood on its main shopping street, several of its stores shuttered.

“Kilis never knew what terror was. We opened our homes to those who fled war. But now the war is at our doorstep.”

The town has been hit by rockets from a patch of Syria controlled by Islamic State more than 70 times since January, killing 21 people including children, in what security officials say has gone from accidental spillover to deliberate targeting.

Some houses have been reduced to rubble. Others, their rooms exposed to the open air where walls have collapsed, are still inhabited. Streets are largely deserted and schools are on an informal break as families refuse to send their children.

“I say goodbye to my wife every night before I go to bed, in case I don’t make it to the morning,” said Resul Sezer, whose five-year old granddaughter was killed two weeks ago when a rocket struck the house she was standing outside.

“The talk in the tea house every day is where the rocket might fall today,” he said. “We want the state to do something.”

Turkey, a NATO member, EU aspirant and part of the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, has stepped up retaliatory fire into northern Syria in recent weeks. But security sources say it is difficult to hit the militants, sometimes firing from the back of vehicles, with the heavy artillery stationed on the border.

Coalition air strikes have increasingly targeted militant positions close to the Turkish border and Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said last month that U.S. mobile rocket launchers would soon arrive. But so far there has been no concrete sign of the assistance arriving.

In Kilis, frustration with President Tayyip Erdogan and the ruling AK Party is starting to boil over. Police used tear gas to disperse dozens of residents protesting last month after a rocket attack killed one person and wounded 26.

“Where is the state?” said Omer Ciloglu, an AKP supporter and party member, standing in what was left of his third-floor apartment after the building was hit by a rocket.

“Nobody from the state called me. Nobody told me ‘do not leave your hometown, we are with you’. Instead they say do not gather, do not protest,” he said.

EVEN PRISONERS WANT OUT

Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu say Turkey is taking every necessary measure to secure its border, a promise echoed by Kilis mayor Hasan Kara.

“This is hardly Turkey’s problem alone,” Kara told Reuters in his office in Kilis. “Unless this bog of terrorism is dried up…this problem will continue to hit Kilis but it will also strike other capitals in Europe too,” he said.

Turkey has long pushed for creation of a safe zone in northern Syria but the idea has found little support from Western allies. The United States and Turkey have for months been discussing a military plan to drive Islamic State from the border but there has been little concrete sign of progress.

Earlier in Syria’s war, Turkey, eager to see President Bashar al-Assad toppled, faced criticism from Western allies for failing to prevent foreign fighters crossing its border and joining what would become Islamic State. But, as well as the threat to its border, Turkey has been hit by a spate of suicide bombings blamed on the militant group this year.

Erdogan said last week Turkey was making necessary preparations to clear the area across the border from Kilis and that it would not refrain from taking steps on its own if it was unable to get the support it wants from allies.

Lawmakers from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) have warned of ‘serious security lapses and breaches of the border’ in Kilis and the surrounding area, calling for the town to be declared part of a ‘terror zone’.

“For the first time, the war is spilling over to Turkey with Kilis coming under attack,” said CHP MP Ozturk Yilmaz, who was abducted by Islamic State with other officials when he was Turkey’s Consul General in the Iraqi city of Mosul in 2014.

“If this continues, we could see Gaziantep, Urfa or other cities going through this with Turkey’s national security seriously at stake.”

Hundreds of Syrians are thought to be among the tens of thousands of people who have fled Kilis over the past few months.

“We already lived through this once and now it’s happening again,” said Mohammed, a 23-year old refugee from Aleppo who is planning to leave to join relatives in the central Turkish city of Konya, far from the border.

(Additional reporting by Gulsen Solaker in Ankara; Writing by Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Ralph Boulton)

How Russia allowed homegrown radicals to go and fight in Syria

File photo of Russian President Putin, Defence Minister Shoigu and FSB Director Bortnikov watching events to mark Victory Day in Sevastopol

By Maria Tsvetkova

NOVOSASITLI, Russia (Reuters) – Four years ago, Saadu Sharapudinov was a wanted man in Russia. A member of an outlawed Islamist group, he was hiding in the forests of the North Caucasus, dodging patrols by paramilitary police and plotting a holy war against Moscow.

Then his fortunes took a dramatic turn. Sharapudinov, 38, told Reuters that in December 2012 Russian intelligence officers presented him with an unexpected offer. If he agreed to leave Russia, the authorities would not arrest him. In fact, they would facilitate his departure.

“I was in hiding, I was part of an illegal armed group, I was armed,” said Sharapudinov during an interview in a country outside Russia. Yet he says the authorities cut him a deal. “They said: ‘We want you to leave.'”

Sharapudinov agreed to go. A few months later, he was given a new passport in a new name, and a one-way plane ticket to Istanbul. Shortly after arriving in Turkey, he crossed into Syria and joined an Islamist group that would later pledge allegiance to radical Sunni group Islamic State.

Reuters has identified five other Russian radicals who, relatives and local officials say, also left Russia with direct or indirect help from the authorities and ended up in Syria. The departures followed a pattern, said Sharapudinov, relatives of the Islamists and former and acting officials: Moscow wanted to eradicate the risk of domestic terror attacks, so intelligence and police officials turned a blind eye to Islamic militants leaving the country. Some sources say officials even encouraged militants to leave.

The scheme continued until at least 2014, according to acting and former officials as well as relatives of those who left. The cases indicate the scheme ramped up ahead of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics because the Russian authorities feared home-grown militants would try to attack the event.

The six Russian militants and radicals identified by Reuters all ended up in Syria, most of them fighting with jihadist groups that Russia now says are its mortal enemies. They were just a fraction of the radicals who left Russia during that period. By December 2015, some 2,900 Russians had left to fight in the Middle East, Alexander Bortnikov, director of the FSB, the Russian security service, said at a sitting of the National Anti-terrorist Committee late last year. According to official data, more than 90 percent of them left Russia after mid-2013.

“Russian is the third language in the Islamic State after Arabic and English. Russia is one of its important suppliers of foreign fighters,” said Ekaterina Sokiryanskaya, a senior analyst for International Crisis Group, an independent body aimed at resolving conflicts.

“Before the Olympics, Russian authorities didn’t prevent departures and a big number of fighters left Russia. There was a very specific short-term task to ensure security of the Olympics … They turned a blind eye on the flow of radical youth” to the Middle East.

Moscow is now fighting Islamic State and other militant groups in Syria that the Kremlin says pose a threat to the security of Russia and the world. The Kremlin has justified its campaign of air strikes in Syria by saying its main objective was to crush Islamic State.

Russian authorities deny they ever ran a program to help militants leave the country. They say militants left of their own volition and without state help. Officials, including FSB director Bortnikov and authorities in the North Caucasus, have blamed the departures on Islamic State recruiters and foreign countries who give radicals safe passage to Syria and elsewhere.

Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, told Reuters: “Russian authorities have never cooperated or interacted with terrorists. No interaction with terrorists was possible. Terrorists get annihilated in Russia. It has always been like that, it is like that and it will be in the future.”

The Foreign Ministry said claims that Russian law enforcement agencies had helped militants were “without grounds.” It said the agencies take various measures to prevent militants from leaving and to bring to account those who come back. It added that Russia has opened hundreds of criminal cases relating to Russian citizens fighting in Syria, and that therefore it was “absurd” to believe officials had facilitated the departure of militants from Russia.

The Interior Ministry declined to comment, saying the FSB was in charge of the issue. The FSB in Dagestan declined immediate comment.

MUTUAL BENEFIT

Allowing militants to leave Russia was convenient for both radicals and the authorities. In the mainly Muslim North Caucasus region, the two sides had fought themselves to a stalemate.

The Islamist groups, fighting to establish a Muslim state in the region, were exhausted after years on the run and had failed to score any significant victories against security forces. The authorities were frustrated because the militants – holed up in remote mountain hideouts or protected by sympathizers – still eluded arrest.

Then from 2013 Islamists began threatening to attack the Sochi Olympics, posting videos of their threats online. An attack would embarrass Putin at an event meant to showcase Russia; Moscow ordered a crackdown.

A retired Russian special forces officer with years of battlefield experience in the North Caucasus told Reuters that the federal authorities put pressure on local officials to curb insurgency ahead of the Sochi games. “They told them before the Olympics that no failures would be forgiven and those who failed would be fired. They tightened the screws on them,” he said.

The initial approach to Sharapudinov came from a political official in the militant’s home village of Novosasitli in Dagestan, a region in the North Caucasus. The official, who has since retired, became the liaison between Sharapudinov and Russian security services. He confirmed Sharapudinov’s account to Reuters.

It took Sharapudinov several months to decide whether to take up the offer of a deal. He eventually chose to trust the local official, whom he had known since childhood.

According to Sharapudinov, the intermediary took him to the town of Khasavyurt, where a high-ranking local FSB official was waiting. Though Sharapudinov had been given guarantees about his safety, he remained suspicious, he said. So he took along a pistol and a grenade in his pocket, despite a condition that he should come unarmed.

Sharapudinov had never previously tried to leave Russia, even clandestinely, because he thought he might be caught or shot. And leaving Russia openly would have been impossible because he was on a wanted list on suspicion of being involved in a bombing. If caught and convicted, he faced eight years to life in prison.

But now, according to Sharapudinov, the FSB officer said he was free to leave Russia and that the state would help him go.

“They said: ‘Go wherever you want, you can even go fight in Syria,'” Sharapudinov told Reuters in December. He recalled that the Olympics came up in the negotiations. “They said something like, ‘to let the Olympics pass without incidents.’ They didn’t conceal they were sending out others as well,” he said.

NEW NAME

Sharapudinov had his own reasons for leaving Russia. There were tensions between him and the local emir, who was also the commander of the militant group to which he belonged. When Sharapudinov told his mother of the FSB’s offer, she tearfully asked him to take it, he said, because she did not want him to be a fugitive any longer.

The plan required the involvement of more state machinery: Sharapudinov needed a new passport to leave Russia, according to the former local official who acted as a go-between.

“Since he was on the wanted list, they couldn’t send him out otherwise,” the former official told Reuters.

Sharapudinov said he was handed a new passport when he arrived at the Mineralnye Vody airport in southern Russia in September 2013, where he was escorted by an FSB employee in a silver Lada car with darkened windows. Along with the passport he got a one-way ticket to Turkey.

Sharapudinov showed Reuters the passport that he said had been supplied by the Russian state. It had a slightly different name and date of birth to those recorded for Sharapudinov on an official list of wanted militants. The photograph showed Sharapudinov, who had a beard when he was interviewed for this article, as shaved. He said he had got rid of his beard for the new passport.

While Reuters was unable to confirm the provenance of the passport, neighbors of Sharapudinov and the former official who acted as a go-between confirmed his identity and his story of how he got the document. Sharapudinov asked that the name in the passport, which he uses as his new identity, not be published.

North Caucasus security officials deny that Islamist radicals were intentionally helped out of the country, but agree their absence helped to solve security problems in the region. “Of course, the departure of Dagestani radicals in large numbers made the situation in the republic healthier,” said Magomed Abdurashidov from the Anti-terrorist Commission of Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan.

A security services officer who took part in negotiations with militants from Novosasitli confirmed that a few fighters “laid down arms and came out” from hiding before later traveling to Syria. “Since they disarmed we stopped prosecuting them,” he said.

He said there were cases over a few years but that it had nothing to do with the Sochi Games. He said the security services did not help anyone leave. “If no measures are being taken against them, according to law, they have same rights as every Russian citizen,” he said. “They could get an international passport and leave.”

The security services officer said he did not know Sharapudinov’s case.

SUDDENLY DISAPPEARED

When Sharapudinov got to Syria, he said, Islamic State was on the rise but did not control much territory. He joined a rebel group called Sabri Jamaat with other fighters from Russia and post-Soviet states. They were based in Al Dana near Aleppo, and Islamic State controlled neighboring territory.

According to Sharapudinov, the two groups were friendly toward each other. Later, Sabri Jamaat pledged allegiance to Islamic State, though Sharapudinov said that by that time he had quit fighting and left Syria. He declined to say whether he had seen other Dagestani radicals in Syria.

Reuters independently found details of five other militants who left Russia in similar circumstances to Sharapudinov. The five are either dead, in jail or still in Syria and unreachable.

Relatives, neighbors and local officials gave accounts of what happened to the men. The five shared some common threads: They were all from Dagestan, and Russian authorities had reason to deny them travel documents and prevent them from leaving the country. But according to relatives and local officials, in each case the authorities made their passage possible.

One of the five other militants who left Russia was Magomed Rabadanov from the village of Berikey. A local police officer in the village said that in 2014 his orders were to keep a close eye on Rabadanov and other suspected radicals as part of a new security policy established before the Sochi Olympics.

He said he was told to put potential radicals on a watch list and to telephone them once a month. “If they didn’t pick up, we had to find them,” the officer said in his office, showing a Reuters reporter Rabadanov’s profile on his computer monitor. The police officer said that during preparations for the Olympics, Rabadanov was listed as a person “with non-traditional Islamic beliefs, Wahhabism” – the school of Sunni Islam known for its strict interpretation of the faith.

At one point, Rabadanov had been detained for keeping explosives at his home, according to his father, Suleiban Rabadanov, but had been released shortly afterwards and placed under house arrest instead.

Despite being under such restriction, Rabadanov was able to leave Russia: He passed through passport control at a Moscow international airport along with his wife and his son in May 2014, his father and the local police officer said. He later turned up in Syria, his father said. Government officials had no comment on Rabadanov.

Suleiban Rabadanov said he received a message on Jan. 2, 2015, from someone who said his son had been killed fighting with Islamic State militants against Kurdish forces near the Syrian town of Kobani, on the border with Turkey.

The father of another militant also said his son was allowed to leave Russia as part of a deal with the authorities. The former official who acted as the go-between in Sharapudinov’s case said two other militants were helped to get passports.

Residents and officials in Dagestan said that once Russian militants arrived in Syria they encouraged others from their home communities to join them. From the village of Berikey, which has a population of 3,000, some 28 people left for areas of the Middle East controlled by Islamic State, according to the local police officer. He said 19 of the 28 were listed in Russia as radicals.

In a police station near Berikey, a Reuters reporter saw a computer file on dozens of suspected militants. The file was entitled “Wahs,” an abbreviation the police use for “Wahhabis.”

Some pictures showed groups of bearded young men from Berikey and nearby villages, posing with guns. The officer said the photographs, found or received online, showed the men in Syria and Iraq.

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(Edited by Richard Woods, Simon Robinson and Christian Lowe)

EU border agency says migrant arrivals in Greece drop 90 percent

A group of migrants and refugees who stayed in Idomeni makeshift camp walks through a field in attempt to cross the Greek-Macedonian border near the village of Evzoni, Greece,

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The number of migrants arriving in Greece dropped 90 percent in April, the European Union border agency said on Friday, a sign that an agreement with Turkey to control traffic between the two countries is working.

The agency, Frontex, said 2,700 people arrived in Greece from Turkey in April, most of them from Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq, a 90 percent decline from March.

Under the EU’s agreement with Turkey, all migrants and refugees, including Syrians, who cross to Greece illegally across the sea are sent back.

In return, the EU will take in thousands of Syrian refugees directly from Turkey and reward it with more money, early visa-free travel and faster progress in EU membership talks.

In Italy, 8,370 migrants arrived through the longer and more dangerous route from northern Africa, Frontex said. Eritreans, Egyptians and Nigerians accounted for the largest share.

There was no sign migrants were shifting from the route to Greece to the central Mediterranean route, Frontex said. The number of people arriving in Italy in April was down 13 percent from March and down by half from April 2015.

That particular statement was contested by the Norwegian Refugee Council, an Oslo-based humanitarian agency. It cited Thursday’s announcement by Italian coastguards that they had helped rescue 801 people, including many Syrians, from two boats heading from Northern Africa to Italy.

“This might be a first sign of Syrian refugees now choosing the much more dangerous route across the Mediterranean from Northern Africa to Italy, in search of protection in Europe,” said Edouard Rodier, Europe director at the council.

“If this continues, the EU-Turkey deal is not only a failure, but may also result in more deaths at sea,” he said in an statement emailed to Reuters.

(Reporting by Robert-Jan Bartunek in Brussels and Gwladys Fouche in Oslo,; editing by Philip Blenkinsop, Larry King)

Russia tops agenda for White House visit by Nordic leaders

By Roberta Rampton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The leaders of Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Iceland will be treated to the pomp of a White House state visit on Friday, a summit where Russia’s military aggression will top the agenda.

President Barack Obama will welcome the leaders for talks focused on pressing global security issues, including the crisis in Syria and Iraq that has led to a flood to migrants in Europe.

Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region in 2014 alarmed Russia’s Nordic and Baltic neighbors. With NATO considering ways to try to deter further Russian aggression, the White House wants to show support for its northern European allies.

“It is a way of sending a signal that the United States is deeply engaged when it comes to the security of the region, and we will be actively discussing what steps we can collectively take to improve the situation,” said Charles Kupchan, Obama’s senior director for European affairs.

Kupchan declined comment on specific measures the White House hopes to emerge from the summit.

Obama will be limited in what he can promise by the political calendar, given that his second and final term ends next year on Jan. 20. Americans are set to hold presidential elections on Nov. 8.

The visit will culminate in a star-studded state dinner in a tent with a transparent ceiling, with lighting, flowers and ice sculptures evoking the northern lights.

Pop star Demi Lovato, known for her support of liberal causes, will perform after guests enjoy a main course of ahi tuna, tomato tartare, and red wine braised beef short ribs.

Obama is expected to laud the humanitarian and environmental accomplishments of his guest nations, who have been key supporters of an international deal to curb climate change that the White House sees as a key part of Obama’s legacy.

“The president has often said, ‘Why can’t all countries be like the Nordic countries?'” Kupchan said.

(Reporting by Roberta Rampton)

Turkish artillery, U.S. -led coalition jets pound Islamic State in Syria

By Humeyra Pamuk

KILIS, Turkey (Reuters) – Turkish artillery pounded Islamic State targets in northern Syria overnight and the U.S.-led coalition carried out air strikes, killing 28 militants near a Turkish border town repeatedly hit by rocket fire, Turkish military sources said.

The artillery strikes near Kilis, north of the Syrian city of Aleppo, started at about 8 p.m. (1700 GMT) and ended in the morning, the sources said. Intelligence reports had suggested the militants were preparing attacks, they said.

The air strikes destroyed a two-storey building used by the militants as a base, along with 11 fortified defensive positions, they said. The Turkish and coalition operations targeted an area about 10 km (6 miles) south of the border.

Turkey’s armed forces have stepped up attacks on Islamic State in Syria in recent weeks after rockets fired by the group repeatedly landed in Kilis, in what appeared to be a sustained and deliberate assault. More than a dozen hit the town last week alone.

Gunfire and occasional blasts from across the border could be heard on Wednesday from a hill in Kilis, which is home to more than 100,000 Syrian refugees.

Abdullah Karasu, a Kilis resident who works in a packaging firm, said he came to the hill every day to watch the action on the other side of the border, partly because it was a safer place to be than in the town center.

“I am not going to work anymore because the office is closed due to the rockets,” he said, standing with his son. Fewer rockets had landed in Turkey over the past three days, perhaps because of the military response, he said.

“But I doubt it’s finished … This silence is ominous. It’s almost as unnerving as the rockets landing,” he told Reuters.

NATO member Turkey was initially a reluctant partner in the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State and faced criticism in the earlier stages of the Syrian war for failing to stop foreign fighters crossing its borders and joining the militant group.

But it has suffered several attacks blamed on the radical militant group, including two suicide bombings in Istanbul this year. Those attacks targeted foreign tourists, killing a total of 16 people, most of them German and Israeli.

President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that Turkey’s armed forces had killed 3,000 Islamic State fighters in Syria and Iraq, where Turkish soldiers are training local forces to fight the insurgents. He did not give a time frame.

(Additional reporting by Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Louise Ireland)

Killings, Kidnappings and burnout; the hazards of aid work

Red Cross workers assist a collapsed migrant after he crossed Greece's border with Macedonia, in

By Katie Nguyen

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – You’re an aid worker speeding back to base after a long, cold day questioning people who have fled fighting about what they need to survive. Out of nowhere a girl runs into the road and is knocked over by your driver.

Within minutes, your four-wheel drive is surrounded by bystanders. First they shout, then they start banging windows and rocking the vehicle. Before long they prise open the car door and pull your driver out. Some are armed. What do you do?

It’s perhaps the toughest dilemma aid workers face during their brief stint in war-torn “Badistan” – in reality, a training camp in the grounds of a golf course near Gatwick Airport where they are confronted with mass casualties, a minefield and gun battles in various role-play scenarios.

The three-day course run by security risk management company, International Location Safety (ILS), is one of scores aimed at mitigating the risks of working in the field where aid staff kidnappings have quadrupled since 2002.

The perils of the job came under scrutiny in November when a court in Oslo found the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) guilty of gross negligence and awarded damages to a former employee abducted by gunmen from a Kenyan refugee camp in 2012.

It was the first case of its kind to reach a court judgment, igniting debate over whether aid agencies would become more risk-averse as a result.

“There has been an increasing bunkerisation of aid workers who operate out of compounds and are restricted in where they go,” said ILS Managing Director George Shaw.

“It does worry me that it will continue to happen. But that would be a lack of understanding of what the (NRC) ruling means. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do high-risk programs. It means we should do high-risk programs safely.”

NO SUCH THING AS RISK-FREE

Michael O’Neill, a former director of global safety and security at Save the Children International and now deputy chair of INSSA, an international NGO safety and security group, said the NRC case made it clear that organizations could do better.

“It’s not enough just to write (a security risk management system) down on paper. It’s not enough just to say it’s there,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “If it can happen to NRC, then who among us is not vulnerable at some level?”

Convening the first World Humanitarian Summit on the biggest issues facing the delivery of relief, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called on warring parties to respect and protect aid workers, as well as the wounded and sick, from attack.

The summit in Istanbul later this month comes as leading aid officials warn of ever-increasing humanitarian needs due to crises ranging from Syria’s conflict to climate change.

The year 2013 was the worst for aid workers with 460 killed, kidnapped or seriously wounded, according to Humanitarian Outcomes which has collected data on the topic since 1997.

Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan and Syria have gained a reputation for being most dangerous for aid workers, with the majority of attacks over the past decade or so occurring there.

Afghanistan alone accounted for 27 percent of those attacks between 2005 and 2014. But Somalia, with fewer aid workers, has seen an even higher rate of violence against humanitarians.

National staff are by far the most vulnerable. In 2014, they accounted for 90 percent of victims, roughly in proportion to their numbers in the field, Humanitarian Outcomes said.

REDUCING THE THREATS

Few believe all risks can be eliminated, but many agree that one of the most important ways to lessen them is to get the support of locals.

Too often aid workers are targeted because they are no longer perceived to be neutral. Wouter Kok, a security adviser for Medecins Sans Frontieres, said assuring all sides in a conflict of the agency’s impartiality is key to its security approach.

“We have to get back to that independence,” said Kok, who works for the Dutch arm of the medical charity.

“What we’ve seen in the last 10 to 20 years is that belligerents have tried to use humanitarian aid to win hearts and minds, and sometimes organizations have allowed themselves to be used,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Understanding the nuances of a conflict, the local culture and people’s motivations, together with strong negotiating skills, are also critical to mitigating risks, experts said.

Big organizations are increasingly aware that aid programs need to be designed with security in mind, INSSA’s O’Neill said. “Good programming and good security go hand in hand.”

For example, poorly designed food distributions can quickly turn ugly. But seeking the input of local communities, giving people a clear idea of what they will receive and setting up a complaints table away from the lines are some ways to reduce the risk, he said.

Caring for the mental health of aid workers is an overlooked but crucial aspect of keeping them safe, said Sara Pantuliano, director of humanitarian programs at the London-based Overseas Development Institute.

“The one thing that is forgotten the most is the levels of stress and trauma aid workers experience, and that is particularly true for local staff because they often have family affected by this crisis,” Pantuliano said.

“I think people don’t even raise the issue of being under stress or the threat of burning out or needing a proper break, needing to recuperate, because they may be accused of not being fit for the job,” she added.

For more on the World Humanitarian Summit, please visit: http://news.trust.org/spotlight/reshape-aid

(Reporting by Katie Nguyen; editing by Megan Rowling and Ros Russell. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, property rights and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org to see more stories)

German ‘godfathers’ reunite Syrian families

By Joseph Nasr

BERLIN (Reuters) – Three days after an emotional reunion with his younger son in Berlin, a 71-year-old Syrian handed a bar of olive oil and laurel soap, a hand-made wall hanging and a box of pistachio sweets to a 56-year-old German he had never met before.

The gifts were from Aleppo, the city devastated by five years of war which he and his elder son had been able to leave thanks to the German, engineer and father of four, Martin Figur.

Figur is one of the “Godfathers for Refugees”, matched with the family by a non-profit organization of the same name that seeks sponsors to help Syrians already in Germany to bring their relatives here.

“During the war, the Germans – government and people – have shown they are closer friends of the Syrian people than the Arabs,” the Syrian father told Figur at their meeting, which was witnessed by Reuters. He declined to give his name to protect relatives still living in the fiercely contested city.

Tight border controls across Europe, stricter asylum rules, and an EU-Turkey deal to clamp down on migrant sea crossings to Greece have left many Syrians in Germany struggling for ways to help relatives still in their homeland make it to safety.

The arrival of more than a million migrants into Germany last year prompted the German government to tighten asylum rules, including a two-year ban on family reunions for those granted limited refugee status, making the situation worse.Martin Keune, the owner of an advertising agency, founded Godfathers for Refugees last year after two Syrian asylum seekers he was housing begged him to help them bring in their parents.

Keune was inspired by the story of his wife’s Jewish uncle, who survived the Holocaust thanks to a British couple who adopted him while the rest of his family were sent from Berlin to the Nazi death camp in Krakow, Poland, where they perished.

At Berlin’s Schoenefeld airport on Saturday, the Syrian father’s younger son Mohannad, who has been in Germany since 2006, held back tears as he greeted his father and brother.

“You look exhausted, but healthy and you are breathing and that is the most important thing,” he said, pressing his hand on his father’s arm.

DESPERATE

Mohannad, 36, came to Germany ten years ago on a cultural exchange program and had been trying to reunite his family since 2012.

“When I started looking into laws on family reunions, I became desperate,” he said.

His net monthly salary at a Berlin-based charity for refugees is less than the minimum of 2,160 euros ($2,460.24) the authorities say a sponsor must earn to bring in just one family member. That is about the average net salary in Germany.

Since March 2015, the Godfathers’ group has found sponsors for 103 Syrians, two-thirds of whom are already with family members in Berlin. The rest are waiting to receive two-year residency permits at German consulates in Lebanon and Turkey.

The association can only sponsor Syrians who have at least one close family member, such as a spouse, a child, a parent or a sibling, who has been in Germany for at least one year.

It relies on crowd funding and donations from its 2,200 members to raise the 800 euros a month it needs for each Syrian. This covers rent, health insurance, and a 400-euro stipend, equal to what the government pays unemployed Germans.

The godfathers do not fund the Syrian newcomers directly but take on legal liability for their living costs for five years even if in the meantime they apply for asylum and are granted full refugee status.

Figur signed a “Declaration of Commitment” at the Foreigners’ Registration Office in Berlin accepting liability for Mohannad’s father, brother as well his mother, who is still in Aleppo.

Germany took in some 1.1 million migrants last year, and of the more than 470,000 asylum applications filed over that period the largest group were Syrians, making up 35 percent.

The influx has fueled the rise of the anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany (AfD), which entered three state parliaments in elections in March by luring voters angry with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s welcoming approach toward refugees.

“I can only encourage people to make contact with refugees, because only then will their attitudes change,” said Figur, a Catholic, commending Merkel’s courage in the refugee crisis.

A ceasefire in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and its main commercial center before the war, has held since last week, making it easier for father and son to leave by land to Lebanon and on to Germany, a 20-hour journey.

They know they are lucky and hope mother, daughter and grandson – who have stayed behind at the wish of the son-in-law – will be able to join them soon in Berlin.

They described the gifts to Figur as a gesture of gratitude for “helping strangers”.

“Martin Figur helped us even though he did not know us,” said Mohannad’s brother, 38, pointing at his “godfather” with a smile. “And this is what I want to do in the future, help others.”

($1 = 0.8705 euros)

(Editing by Philippa Fletcher)

Syrian government forces battle of rebels near Aleppo

A general view shows a damaged street with sandbags used as barriers in Aleppo's Saif al-Dawla district, Syria

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syrian government forces and their allies clashed with insurgents near Aleppo on Monday and warplanes launched more raids around a strategic town Islamist rebels seized last week, a monitoring group said.

The capture of Khan Touman was a rare setback for government forces in Aleppo province in recent months, and for allied Iranian troops who suffered heavy losses in the fighting.

Warplanes continued to strike around the town on Monday, and had carried out more than 90 raids in the area since Sunday morning, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Al Manar television, run by Damascus’s Lebanese ally Hezbollah, said troops had destroyed a tank belonging to insurgents and killed some its occupants.

Khan Touman lies just southwest of Aleppo city, which is one of the biggest strategic prizes in a war now in its sixth year, and has been divided into government and rebel-held zones through much of the conflict.

Russia’s military intervention last September has helped President Bashar al-Assad reverse some rebel gains in the west of the country, including in Aleppo province.

The Observatory said warplanes struck rebel-held areas of the city early on Monday, and rebels fired shells into government-held neighborhoods, despite a Russian-announced extension of a truce encompassing the city of Aleppo.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, hosting a meeting of Assad’s opponents in Paris, said Syrian government forces and their allies had bombarded hospitals and refugee camps.

“It is not Daesh (Islamic State) that is being attacked in Aleppo, it is the moderate opposition,” he said.

Ayrault said Monday’s meeting would call on Russia to put pressure on Assad to stop the attacks, adding that humanitarian aid must be allowed to reach those in need.

“Talks must resume, negotiations are the only solution,” he said on radio RTL, ahead of a meeting of ministers from the United States, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Britain. Also attending was Riad Hijab, chief coordinator of the main Syrian opposition negotiating group.

The surge in bloodshed in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city before the civil war, wrecked a February “cessation of hostilities” agreement sponsored by Washington and Moscow. The deal excluded Islamic State and al Qaeda’s Syrian branch, the Nusra Front.

Peace talks in Geneva between government delegates and opposition figures, including representatives from rebel groups, broke up last month without significant progress.

(Reporting by John Davison in Beirut and Geert De Clercq in Paris; Editing by Dominic Evans)

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