WASHINGTON: Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is looking to the Middle East and North Africa for broader contributions and new ideas to fight Islamic extremism as the Trump administration fleshes out its counterterrorism strategy.
His trip to the region, which began with his departure Monday night, includes stops with longstanding allies Saudi Arabia and Israel, and new partners like Djibouti.
As the administration enhances its efforts, Mattis has made a point of consulting counterparts around the world. His goals include expanding the American-led coalition against the Daesh group in Iraq and Syria, but also combatting Al-Qaeda, whose Yemen branch is posing particular worry as it uses ungoverned spaces in the Arab world’s poorest country to plan attacks on the United States.
In announcing Mattis’s trip, the Pentagon said last week he would be discussing ways to “defeat extremist terror organizations.”
Mattis is starting his travels Tuesday in Riyadh, where he is expected to meet senior Saudi leaders. Saudi Arabia is leading a coalition that is fighting Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen. The coalition’s airstrikes began two years ago but haven’t driven the Houthis from the capital and large parts of Yemen they still control.
The Trump administration is considering providing intelligence, aerial refueling and other military assistance to the United Arab Emirates, which is helping the Saudis. The UN says some 50,000 civilians have been killed or wounded in the three-year stalemate.
Worries about Daesh aren’t limited to Syria and Iraq. Its influence has spread to Libya and elsewhere in North Africa. Mattis told a Pentagon news conference last week that he hoped to bring as many other nations as possible into the administration’s new strategy, which involves diplomatic and other non-military features. He said that plan was still in “skeleton form,” though it was being “fleshed out.”
The Middle East’s landscape is getting more complicated.
Syria’s alleged chemical weapons attack on April 4 prompted a US cruise missile strike, temporarily slowing the pace of Washington’s air campaign against Daesh in northern Syria.
And a US airstrike April 11 killed 18 fighters associated with a US-supported Syrian rebel group. Central Command said the US strike was misdirected.
Also last week, US forces in Afghanistan struck a Daesh stronghold near the Pakistani border with the 11-ton “mother of all bombs,” the largest US non-nuclear bomb ever used in combat.
The Middle East is familiar turf for Mattis, a Marine veteran of the Iraq war who rose to four-star rank. He finished his military career as head of Central Command, which directs US military operations across the Middle East and Central Asia.
On his weeklong trip, Mattis also is scheduled to visit Egypt and Qatar, the small Arab country that hosts the US military’s main Mideast air operations center. It will be his first trip to these countries since taking office in January. He also will make a brief stop at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa, which the US uses to fly sensitive drone missions over Somalia and Yemen. Mattis visited Iraq in February on his first trip to the Middle East as Pentagon chief.
Pentagon’s Mattis discussing war aims in Mideast this week
Pentagon’s Mattis discussing war aims in Mideast this week
Fledgling radio station aims to be ‘voice of the people’ in Gaza
- The electricity crisis is one of the most serious and difficult problems in the Gaza Strip, says Shereen Khalifa Broadcaster
DEIR EL-BALAH: From a small studio in the central city of Deir El-Balah, Sylvia Hassan’s voice echoes across the Gaza Strip, broadcast on one of the Palestinian territory’s first radio stations to hit the airwaves after two years of war.
Hassan, a radio host on fledgling station “Here Gaza,” delivers her broadcast from a well-lit room, as members of the technical team check levels and mix backing tracks on a sound deck. “This radio station was a dream we worked to achieve for many long months and sometimes without sleep,” Hassan said.
“It was a challenge for us, and a story of resilience.”
Hassan said the station would focus on social issues and the humanitarian situation in Gaza, which remains grave in the territory despite a US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas since October.
“The radio station’s goal is to be the voice of the people in the Gaza Strip and to express their problems and suffering, especially after the war,” said Shereen Khalifa, part of the broadcasting team.
“There are many issues that people need to voice.” Most of Gaza’s population of more than 2 million people were displaced at least once during the gruelling war.
Many still live in tents with little or no sanitation.
The war also decimated Gaza’s telecommunications and electricity infrastructure, compounding the challenges in reviving the territory’s local media landscape. “The electricity problem is one of the most serious and difficult problems in the Gaza Strip,” said Khalifa.
“We have solar power, but sometimes it doesn’t work well, so we have to rely on an external generator,” she added.
The station’s launch is funded by the EU and overseen by Filastiniyat, an organization that supports Palestinian women journalists, and the media center at the An-Najah National University in Nablus, in the occupied West Bank.
The station plans to broadcast for two hours per day from Gaza and for longer from Nablus. It is available on FM and online.
Khalifa said that stable internet access had been one of the biggest obstacles in setting up the station, but that it was now broadcasting uninterrupted audio.
The Gaza Strip, a tiny territory surrounded by Israel, Egypt, and the Mediterranean Sea, has been under Israeli blockade even before the attack on Oct. 7, 2023, which sparked the war. Despite the ceasefire, Israel continues to strictly control the entry of all goods and people to the territory.
“Under the siege, it is natural that modern equipment necessary for radio broadcasting cannot enter, so we have made the most of what is available,” she said.
