Globe Trot: U.S. intel limited in fight against ISIS

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ISIS: When it comes to the U.S. battle against ISIS militants in Iraq and Syria, a basic question arises: How do we know where to strike?

In a piece in the Congressional Quarterly, a handful of security experts and other officials say the U.S. capacity for on-the-ground intelligence has severely declined since the U.S. withdrew ground troops from Iraq in 2011.

Since the article requires a subscription, here are a few salient quotes:

“We’re blind because we have no more assets,” said Paul Horton, a former senior U.S. Army intelligence officer who completed the last of his three tours in Iraq when U.S. combat troops pulled out of the country. “People know we’re leaving. Why should they put their trust in somebody who’s on his way out the door?” said Phillip Lohaus of the American Enterprise Institute on trying to maintain reliable Middle Eastern intelligence contacts in a region that thinks the U.S. doesn’t have a coherent strategy. “They crossed the border into Iraq before we even knew it happened,” said Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., speaking about the swift advance of ISIS from Syria into Iraq.

NIGERIA: In a moving account of her escape from Boko Haram militants, one of the Nigerian schoolgirls abducted from the Chibok village last spring spoke at a Washington, D.C., panel on Friday. Saa, using an alias to protect her identity, told an audience at the Hudson Institute about her ordeal last April when Islamists from Boko Haram raided her boarding school and kidnapped more than 300 girls.

Saa, an 18-year-old Christian, escaped her violent captors with a friend by jumping from a moving truck, and then dragged her injured friend through the dangerous Sambisa forest to safety. Speaking of her kidnappers, Saa said, “I told my friends I would rather die and let my parents have my coffin than to go with them.”

The panel came a day after Nigerian attorney Emmanuel Ogebe told a congressional committee that Boko Haram had used at least one of the kidnapped Chibok girls in a suicide bombing. Most of the kidnapped girls were Christians.

In his testimony, Ogebe also criticized the State Department for claiming Boko Haram hasn’t targeted Americans. The attorney cited a WORLD News Group story that reported American lawyer Veronica Guthrie was in the U.N. building bombed by Boko Haram in Nigeria in 2011.

UKRAINE: As Ukrainian forces grapple with separatists in the east, Ukrainian evangelicals struggle with persecution from the militants taking over cities and towns. The latest issue of WORLD offers a glimpse into how Christians are bearing up under the growing pressure in Ukraine and other countries.

TURKEY: Officials in Turkey reported at least 130,000 people have fled from Syria into Turkey, seeking to escape ISIS.

WORLD has published a list of aid agencies assisting displaced Christians in Iraq.

Jamie Dean

Jamie is a journalist and the former national editor of WORLD Magazine. She is a World Journalism Institute graduate and also previously worked for The Charlotte World. Jamie resides in Charlotte, N.C.