BackSteven Sotloff beheading video spurs calls for global response to ISIS
US lawmakers urge Obama to step up efforts to forge a broad coalition of nations that would take on Islamic State in both Iraq and Syria
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Washington: A video showing the beheading of a second American journalist by Islamic State (ISIS) brought fresh calls for an international alliance to combat the extremist group as well as renewed condemnation of its barbarism.
The recording posted online on Tuesday shows the execution of captured freelance journalist Steven Sotloff by the militant Sunni group that controls a swath of eastern Syria and northern Iraq. Journalist James Foley was beheaded in a video released last month.
“I’m back, Obama," a masked fighter says in the latest video, obtained by the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks jihadist activity. “I’m back because of your arrogant foreign policy toward the Islamic State, because of your insistence on continuing your bombings."
The recording, which President Barack Obama’s administration judged authentic, ends with another prisoner kneeling in an orange jumpsuit — just as Sotloff was shown at the end of the recording on Foley’s killing. The captive in the new video is identified as David Cawthorne Haines, a British citizen.
US lawmakers responded to the video by urging Obama to step up efforts to forge a broad coalition of nations that would take on Islamic State in both Iraq and Syria. Obama, speaking on Wednesday in Tallinn, Estonia, on his way to a summit of Nato members, said the US will continue to lead a “regional and international effort against the barbaric" vision of Islamic State. Secretary of state John Kerry is expected to visit the Middle East to seek support.
‘Despicable, barbaric’
“There is a growing awareness internationally that we have to form an unprecedented international program of cooperation," Representative Ed Royce of California, the Republican chairman of the house foreign affairs committee, said on a conference call with reporters on Tuesday.
Some Obama administration officials have said they and Obama are wary of expanding the direct US military role. Doing so risks assisting the extremists’ efforts to portray the conflict as part of a centuries-old war against Islam by Christian crusaders and Jews, according to six officials who asked for anonymity to discuss internal policy deliberations.
Additional US troops are being sent to Iraq, where a militant offensive has seized major towns since early June, to protect our diplomatic facilities and personnel in Baghdad, which will bring the total providing such security to about 820, the Pentagon said in a statement last night.
Cameron’s comment
Obama approved a state department request to add about 350 troops to the security contingent deployed to Baghdad earlier this year, the White House said in a statement. “These additional forces will not serve in a combat role," the statement said.
In Tallinn, Obama said that US airstrikes have halted Islamic State advances in Iraq, while acknowledging that it will take time to “degrade and destroy" the militant movement.
UK Prime Minister David Cameron, calling Sotloff’s murder “despicable and barbaric," said Islamic State terrorists “speak for no religion. They threaten Syrians, Iraqis, American and British people alike and make no distinction between Muslims, Christians or any other faith."
American intelligence agencies analyzed the new video and “reached the judgment that it is authentic," Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council, said on Wednesday in an e-mailed statement.
‘Evil alliance’
An international effort is required in part because “most of the suicide bombers and most of the most aggressive fighters" of Islamic State are “foreign fighters" that “come from all over the world," Brett McGurk, the deputy assistant US secretary of state for Iraq and Iran, said on Tuesday in an interview on CNN.
SITE said it confirmed the authenticity of the videotaped execution.
The masked executioner appears to be the same UK citizen who was seen in the video of Foley’s beheading.
“We take this opportunity to warn those governments that enter this evil alliance of America against the Islamic State to back off and leave our people alone," the man in black says as he stands over Haines.
A US official said Islamic State’s decision to release the video just as Americans returned to work after the Labour Day three-day weekend suggests its relative political sophistication and underscores that it has fighters from western Europe and the US who are familiar with work routines.
Videos’ goal
The official, who requested anonymity to discuss intelligence information, said evidence indicates that Sotloff was executed last month, when many Americans and Europeans were on vacation, and that the video of his murder was withheld until Tuesday to maximize its impact.
The official said that given Islamic State’s political acumen, the group probably doesn’t expect the murders of Foley and Sotloff and the threat against Haines to change US or UK policy, and that the videos are partially intended to terrorize residents and leaders of Syria, Iraq and other predominantly Muslim nations that the group seeks to incorporate in its proclaimed caliphate.
Asked if the US had evidence that Sotloff, 31, had been executed some time ago, Rear Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, told reporters on Tuesday, “I don’t know anyone had definitive knowledge one way or another."
Sotloff, who was from Miami, worked as a journalist in Libya and spoke fluent Arabic, according to a former colleague. He was kidnapped near Aleppo, Syria, on 4 August, 2013. He had reported for publications including Time magazine and the Christian Science Monitor.
‘Grieving privately’
“Being butchered in front of camera simply for being a reporter is pure barbarism," Joel Simon, executive director of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, said in a statement. The murders of Sotloff and Foley, 40, “are war crimes, and those who committed them must be brought to justice swiftly," he said.
Sotloff’s relatives are “aware of the video and awaiting authentication," Barak Barfi, a spokesman for the family, said in an e-mailed statement before the US released its analysis of the recorded killing. “They are grieving privately."
Nancy Gibbs, Time’s editor, said in a statement on the magazine’s website that Sotloff “gave his life so readers would have access to information from some of the most dangerous places in the world."
‘Barbaric cruelty’
While Obama has authorized limited airstrikes against Islamic State in Iraq for humanitarian purposes and to protect US personnel, he said last week that “we don’t have a strategy yet" to extend the fight into Syria. The US backs what it calls moderate rebels seeking to overthrow Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, even as Islamic State has made greater headway against Assad’s forces.
Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in an e-mailed statement on Tuesday that American airpower, employed “in coordination with reliable partners on the ground," should be “aggressively pursued both in Syria and Iraq."
Senator Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat who’s also on the Armed Services panel, said in a statement that America must go after Islamic State “right away because the US is the only one that can put together a coalition to stop this group that’s intent on barbaric cruelty."
Some Democrats have joined Republicans in faulting Obama for failing to act more aggressively.
“I’ve learned one thing about this president, and that is he’s very cautious — maybe in this instance too cautious," Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who heads the Senate intelligence committee, said 31 August on NBC’s “Meet the Press." BLOOMBERG
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