Documentary: Journey In The Danger Zone: Humanizing Iraq

With Isis gone, Adnan Sarwar is returning to Iraq to discover the country afresh, beyond the headlines and wars to meet everyday people rebuilding their lives. Travelling the length of the country from the snowy mountains in the north, he visits oil-rich territories still contested by different factions in the country, cities which bore the brunt of Isis’s reign of terror and the allied bombing raids against them, the country’s capital Baghdad and finally the southern marshes and deserts where he served with the army.

Along the way he makes friends, comes face-to-face with old enemies and asks if the country can ever escape its cycle of violence.

In this episode, Adnan’s journey begins in Kurdistan as he accompanies the Kurdish Peshmerga militia on a very special convoy up to Mount Gara. He is with animal activist Blen Brifkani to witness the release of two brown bears, previously held in captivity, back into the wild. Brown bears are native to the mountains, but hunting and habitat loss mean there are hardly any left – and Blen wants to change that. Leaving Kurdistan, Adnan enters Mosul, which was held for three brutal years by Isis – also known as Daesh.

Nearly 10,000 homes in the city were destroyed by 1,250 airstrikes, Isis bombs and street fighting in the battle to regain Mosul.

He joins British and Iraqi members of a mine clearance team dealing with the terrible legacy left by Isis. Thirty-three mine-clearers have been killed since Isis left and the UN estimates it will take ten tears to remove all the bombs. But alongside the mine-clearing teams Adnan meets someone else trying to reclaim the streets – Al i Baroodi – who offers bike tours around his beloved city. [01]

Watch rare films and TV series in our Documentaries section.

Watch Daily News at Alistair Reign Channels on YouTube.

VIDEO: Kabul Under Siege – America’s Longest War And No End In Sight

“The war is changing from a war against armies to a war against people.” U.S. General John Nicholson, the commander of American forces in Afghanistan. After all these years, a trillion dollars, and 2,400 American lives — Kabul is under siege.

The war in Afghanistan has lasted over 16 years. Now there’s a new plan.

Donald Trump has sent 3,000 more troops to train and assist the Afghan army. But in the Afghan capital you don’t have to go far to see the problems. Kabul is so dangerous, American diplomats and soldiers are not allowed to use the roads. They can’t drive just two miles from the airport to U.S. headquarters. They have to fly.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani rules from the presidential palace that’s occupied the city center for more than a century. The walls around him and the rest of the city have expanded and grown taller over the past three years. Some of the streets turned into tight corridors of 20-foot high concrete barriers.

General John Nicholson told 60 Minutes he’s giving himself two years to deliver major changes. But it’s hard not to be skeptical in a city where the enemy has driven American forces from the roads — into the sky. Nicholson has made securing the capital a priority. He’s ordered more special operations missions inside Kabul to target the Taliban and terrorist networks attacking the city. [01]

Watch rare films and TV series in our Documentaries section.

Watch Daily News at Alistair Reign Channel on YouTube.

YEMEN: Interview With Founder of Mona Relief Humanitarian Aid

Question: Describe your background in Yemen. For example, do you have family there? Where are you from? What were you doing before the war began? How old are you?

Answer: I am Fatik Abdullah al-Rodaini, a Yemeni Journalist and humanitarian worker based in Yemen’s capital of Sana’a. I am a 40-year father of six kids and a husband to a great wife that helps me on all my projects. I have a whole family in Sanaa, a mother, sisters and brothers as well. I have a BA degree in mass media from the mass media faculty, Sanaa University.

I am the founder and CEO of Yemen organization for Humanitarian Relief and Development (MONA Relief). The organization was established in May 2015 as a Sanaa-based Non-governmental organization.

Before working as a humanitarian, I worked as a translator at the office of President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi during 2014-2014. Prior to this job, I worked as the editor of the news website of late president Ali Abdullah Saleh at Yemen’s News Agency Saba during 2007-2012. I started to work with Saba in 1996.

Question: How did you begin your relief efforts?

Fatik: I started working as a humanitarian after the Saudi-led coalition launched a bombing campaign in Yemen in March 2015. I could not stay home or watching while my country was in need of all of us. When the humanitarian situation started to deteriorate because of ongoing war and blockade, I decided to do something to help affected people. My humanitarian work has been focused on saving lives of IDPs and most vulnerable people in Amanat Al-Asimah “Sanaa the capital”, Sanaa the governorate, Amran, Saada, Hodeida, Marib, Dhamar, Mahwit and Hajjah.

Question: What do you do each day and week as part of MonaRelief? Where in Yemen do you work?

Fatik: I am the CEO of MonaRelief and have two main tasks, the office task is focused on daily and weekly communications with donors, international and local aid agencies and people that come to my office and ask for help. I also attend meetings of the UN and international organizations to discuss the situation and coordinate activities in Yemen. Moreover, I network with local organizations and support individual aid initiatives.

The field task: I am the leader of my field crews. I visit cities and areas to distribute and supervise the delivery of aid to the needy people. I also assess where, how, why and to whom aid must be given, besides supervising the performance of the field crews in order to guarantee everything is done in a good way.

You can find more information about our work on our website monareliefye.org; our twitter account @monarelief or @monareliefye; Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/monareliefarbaic, and Flickr http://www.flickr.com/monareliefyemen.

Question: What is your mission with MonaRelief? What other organizations do you work with?

Fatik: My mission to help alleviate the humanitarian crisis and contribute to efforts aimed at serving my people.

Question: Is there a story from your work that stays with you? Why?

Fatik: Yes. The story of a mother and her eight blind sons and daughter who fled the unabated battles between the Saudi-backed forces and Houthi-Saleh forces in the Nihem district in the governorate of Sanaa. This mother and her blind kids fled to the capital where they had no supporter until our organization visited and started to help them. They traveled at night from a mountain to another until they arrived in the capital. The mother is the only supporter of her kids. The war was the worst nightmare to them. It destroyed their farm which they used to live on and the house they used to live in. The father is suffering from a mental illness. She is a great woman. She did not give up.

Question: How has the blockade affected your work? Are the goods that make it through actually helping people living in Yemen?

Fatik: The blockade has affected my work largely. It has been preventing my organization from receiving aid cargoes “mostly food, clothes and medicines” and financial aid sent by foreign donors. We have been unable to receive financial aid through our bank accounts because Yemen was sanctioned and money transfers into it suspended.

Question: What do you want people outside of Yemen to know about life on the ground there? What is the international community getting wrong about Yemen?

Fatik: In a few words, foreigners need to know that Yemen is facing the world’s largest humanitarian crisis and that all basic services are on the brink of total collapse. People in Yemen are dying from hunger and disease outbreaks while people outside Yemen either do not know about us or are just watching.

Question: What can or should other countries do to help?

Fatik: Other countries must do their best to end the war here. This is the first thing every one should think about. Then other countries should mobilize efforts to contain the humanitarian catastrophe and disease outbreaks. Well, media in foreign countries should write more about Yemen professionally.

Question: You work in very difficult situations and with topics that are difficult, what keeps you motivated?

Fatik: My country and people need me. I want to keep the smile on children’s faces. I want to save lives of those who have lost their supporters and hope. I can do something for the needy people and this is what keeps me motivated.

Question: Where do you find hope? What does hope mean to you?

Fatik: I find hope in providing more support to those who need it. At the moment, hope is everything.

Watch rare films and TV series in our Documentaries section.

Watch Daily News at Alistair Reign Channel on YouTube.

SYRIA: Russia Claims Their Airstrikes Have Killed Several ISIS Leaders

The Russian Defense Ministry claims that according to their information, the leader of the Islamic State, Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi has been killed on May 28, 2017, as a result of airstrikes conducted by the Russian warplanes on a southern suburb of the Syrian city of Raqqa.

The Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Oleg Syromolotov, confirmed to the Sputnik News that although the information is still being verified through various channels but he is almost certain that al-Baghdadi had been killed in the airstrikes.

The strikes targeted a meeting of high-ranking Islamic State leaders where al-Baghdadi had reportedly been present. The meeting had been gathered to plan routes for the exit of militants from Raqqa through the so-called “southern corridor.”

Among 30 field commanders and up to 300 militants who were killed in the strike were Emir of Raqqa Abu al-Haji al-Masri, Emir Ibrahim al-Naef al-Hajj who controlled the district from the city of Raqqa to the settlement of es-Sohne and the Islamic State’s head of security Suleiman al-Sawah.

Although al-Baghdadi has not publicly appointed a successor but two of the closest aides who have emerged as his likely successors over the years are Iyad al-Obaidi, his defense minister, and Ayad al-Jumaili, the in charge of security. The latter had already reportedly been killed in an airstrike in April in al-Qaim region on Iraq’s border with Syria.

Thus, the most likely successor of al-Baghdadi would be al-Obaidi. Both al-Jumaili and al-Obaidi had previously served as security officers in Iraq’s Baathist army under Saddam Hussein, and al-Obaidi is known to be the de facto deputy of al-Baghdadi.

It should be noted, however, that the US State Department and the Pentagon have neither confirmed the death of al-Jumaili nor al-Baghdadi. The mainstream media is bending over backwards to prove that al-Baghdadi is still alive and has been hiding in the desert between Raqqa and Mosul with only two of his bodyguards in a pickup truck.

It is not in Washington’s interests right now to confirm the deaths of the Islamic State’s top leaders even if it has received credible reports of their deaths because the US troops and the allied local militias have mounted offensives against the Islamic State’s strongholds of Mosul and Raqqa which have caused colossal loss of human lives.

Conventional munitions and white phosphorous are being used in large quantities against the residents of both cities, and public opinion is swiftly turning against the ill-conceived intervention in Iraq and the illegitimate US interference in Syria on the pretext of waging a war against terrorism.

According to the Russian and regional media, the US Air Force has been showering Raqqa with white phosphorous, and at the same time, the US has provided a safe exit to jihadists to escape through the “southern corridor” to the oil-rich governorate of Deir al-Zor which has been contested between the Syrian government troops, the Islamic State and the US-backed so-called “moderate” militants.

Thus, rather than a genuine war to eliminate terrorism, the US-led war against the Islamic State is turning out to be a scramble for territory in order to Balkanize Syria between the Kurds in the north, the Syrian government in the west along the Mediterranean coast and the US-backed Sunni Arab militants in the energy-rich east.

Therefore, it is not in Washington’s interests to verify the elimination of the Islamic State’s top leadership even if it has received credible reports to the effect because the bogey of al-Baghdadi must be kept alive until the US achieves its strategic objectives in Syria and Iraq.

Excluding al-Baghdadi and some of his hardline Islamist aides, the rest of Islamic State’s top leadership is comprised of Saddam era military and intelligence officials. According to an informative Associated Press report, hundreds of ex-Baathists constitute the top and mid-tier command structure of the Islamic State who plan all the operations and direct its military strategy.

Thus, apart from training and arms that have been provided to the Sunni Arab militants in the training camps located in the Turkish and Jordanian border regions adjacent to Syria by the CIA in collaboration with Turkish, Jordanian and Saudi intelligence agencies, the only other factor which has contributed to the astounding success of the Islamic State in 2013-14 is that its top cadres are comprised of professional military and intelligence officers from the Saddam era.

Notwithstanding, in order to create a semblance of objectivity and fairness, the American policymakers and analysts are always willing to accept the blame for the mistakes of the distant past that have no bearing on the present, however, any fact that impinges on their present policy is conveniently brushed aside.

In the case of the creation of the Islamic State, for instance, the US policy analysts are willing to concede that invading Iraq back in 2003 was a mistake that radicalized the Iraqi society, exacerbated sectarian divisions and gave birth to an unrelenting Sunni insurgency against the heavy handed and discriminatory policies of the Shi’a-dominated Iraqi government.

Similarly, the war on terror era political commentators also “generously” accept the fact that the Cold War era policy of nurturing al-Qaeda and myriads of Afghan so-called “freedom fighters” against the erstwhile Soviet Union was a mistake, because all those fait accompli have no bearing on their present policy.

The corporate media’s spin-doctors conveniently forget, however, that the creation of the Islamic State and myriads of other Sunni Arab jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq has as much to do with the unilateral invasion of Iraq back in 2003 under the Bush Administration as it has been the legacy of the Obama Administration’s policy of funding, arming, training and internationally legitimizing the Sunni Arab militants against the secular Syrian government since 2011-onward in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings in the Middle East region.

In fact, the proximate cause behind the rise of the Islamic State, al-Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham, Jaysh al-Islam and numerous other Sunni Arab militant groups in Syria and Iraq has been the Obama Administration’s policy of intervention through proxies in Syria.

The border between Syria and Iraq is highly porous and poorly guarded. The Obama Administration’s policy of nurturing militants against the Assad regime in Syria was bound to have its blowback in Iraq, sooner or later. Therefore, as soon as the Islamic State consolidated its gains in Syria, it overran Mosul and Anbar in Iraq in early 2014 from where, the US had withdrawn its troops only a couple of years ago in December 2011.

And now, the wretched inhabitants of those regions are once again in the line of fire from the Islamic State’s suicide blasts and car bombings, on the one hand, and the US-backed artillery shelling, aerial bombardment and white phosphorous, on the other. [01]

Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and Middle East regions, neocolonialism and petroimperialism.

Watch rare films and TV series in our Documentaries section.

Watch Daily News at Alistair Reign Channel on YouTube.

Documentary: Libya’s Migrant Hell – A Deeply Powerful Plea

Ross Kemp, investigative-journalist turns his attention to the deadliest migrant route in the world. The 1,000 miles of Libyan desert, a journey more dangerous than the sea, followed by the treacherous Mediterranean crossing from Tripoli to Italy in rubber boats unfit for purpose. Three thousand people make this journey every week. Twelve die each day.

In Ross Kemp: Libya’s Migrant Hell, he tracks the route with his usual brawn studded with the occasional fleck of emotion. This is not nuanced film-making, but somehow that feels right for an issue so huge, horrifying and urgent; a bit of plain-spoken directness feels welcome.

This video has been removed to make space for new videos. We have a wide variety of films to watch in the Video section.

Beginning in the Sahara, where threats include smugglers, Isis training camps, armed militias and kidnappers, Kemp intercepts a truck rammed with 22 people.

“We are running for our lives,” one man explains. Later, he joins 30 men and women on a 350-mile desert stretch to the next handover point: a seven-hour journey travelling 70 mph in 45C heat.

Instantly sweating like a pig in his headscarf, Kemp declares: “I don’t think I could do it, that’s for sure.”

Watch rare films and TV series in our Documentaries section.

Watch Daily News at Alistair Reign Channel on YouTube.

Documentary: Iraq Uncovered – Ramita Navai Investigates Abuses

Ramita Navai visits the ravaged towns and provinces recently recaptured from the Islamic State by Iraqi forces only to find citizens terrorized by another faction — their liberators. — “I Was Not Prepared for the Level of Killing,” said Ramita Navai.

Frontline correspondent Ramita Navai makes a dangerous and revealing journey inside the war-torn country of Iraq, investigating allegations of abuse of civilians by powerful militias.

“The black flags of the Islamic State are coming down in Mosul, prisoners are being released, citizens freed.”

At least that is what the television media has been reporting lately.

**The documentary “Frontline: Iraq Uncovered” goes where most American media do not anymore, i.e. outside the studio and into the battlefields of Iraq, it finds a different story.**

Ramita Navai visits the ravaged towns and provinces recently recaptured from the Islamic State by Iraqi forces only to find citizens terrorized by another faction — their liberators.

Error

This video doesn’t exist

British Iranian journalist Ramita Navai goes on the ground and shows how the involvement of Shiite Muslim militia in the fight against the Islamic State has incited a new round of sectarian violence.

Watch rare films and TV series in our Documentaries section.

Watch Daily News at Alistair Reign Channel on YouTube.

AR News Channel: CJTF War On Terror Updates Via Baghdad

Get your news straight from the source. This playlist contains Pentagon press briefings from U.S.-led Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve via teleconference from Baghdad, Iraq. Military spokesperson provides updates on their active operations to defeat terrorist occupation in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.

The window will open to the latest video, and play through to the last. You can always fast forward and rewind. Each video varies in length from 30:00 min up to 1:30 hours.

Alistair Reign News Channel: CJTF-OIR Pentagon Press Briefings.

Alistair Reign Playlists bring you the news from the source. Watch, listen, learn and stay informed.

Watch rare interviews and news reports in our Documentaries section.

Watch Daily News at Alistair Reign News Channel on YouTube.

IRAQ: Kurdish Female Warriors Combat Terrorist Fighters

The Zeravani are a Specialized Branch of the Kurdish Peshmerga Army.

EXCLUSIVE CONTENT: Female Zeravani soldiers conduct several training exercises near Bnaslawa and Erbin, Iraq in August 2016. Includes archived and current interviews with Kurdistan’s Women Warriors.

Learm more about these female fighters in my article Girls Who Escaped ISIL Are Speaking Out And Fighting Back in our World News section.

Watch rare interviews and news reports in our Documentaries section.

Watch Alistair Reign News Channels on YouTube

Transcript: 60 Minutes – Interview With King Abdullah of Jordan

The following is a script from “The King” which aired on Sept. 25, 2016. Scott Pelley is the correspondent.

The bombs in New York and New Jersey last week brought the specter of terror home, again. It seems no country is safe, but there is one that is beating fearsome odds. ISIS burned through Syria and Iraq until it hit a firewall, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The king, Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein, is holding the front and sheltering millions of refugees despite his struggling economy, no oil wealth and precious little water. If the king can keep his balance, Jordan may prove that an Arab state can remain peaceful, tolerant, and modern. The arsonists torching the Middle East hope to see him fail.

This is not war. These are Jordanian forces sharpening theiredge on a make-believe town. Some of their weapons are antique. Attack helicopters designed originally for Vietnam. Surplus-armored cars that they found online. Jordan can’t afford the arsenals of its neighbors. Skill is its advantage. And, to hone it, they switched in training from blanks to live ammunition.

Watch this documentary, The King in our Documentaries section.

This is the soldier who ordered the switch. He’s the former head of Special Forces. He is Abdullah II, the king of Jordan.

Abdullah became king in 1999 on the death of his father who ruled 47 years. We met the 54-year-old at his palace in Amman. He knows ISIS by its Arabic acronym, Daesh. But whatever you call it, he says the West doesn’t realize it’s in a Third World War.

Why live ammo we shouted? “Everyone uses blanks, makes no sense,” he yelled. There’s no sense in anything less than lethal because no king of Jordan has ever known peace.

Scott Pelley: This is the mosque that you built in honor of your father….

King Abdullah II: Yeah. I think this is the challenge that we’ve had over the past several years where people look at, you know, is it Iraq this year or Syria next year? Well, what about Libya? What about– Boko Haram or Shabaab in Africa? We have to look at it from a global perspective.

Scott Pelley: All of these things need to be attacked at the same time. You can’t concentrate on Syria one year and then deal with Boko Haram in another?

King Abdullah II: Well, the prime example, it’s as you see certain military successes in Syria and Iraq against Daesh, the leadership, they’re telling their fighters either, “Don’t come to Syria or Iraq,” or moving their command structure to Libya. And so are we going to wait to get our act together to concentrate on Libya? And then, you know, do we wait a year or two to start helping the Africans deal with Boko Haram or Shabaab? So we’ve got to get ahead of the curve because they’re reacting much quicker than we are.

Scott Pelley: The American strategy in Syria and Iraq, as you know, is to use U.S. air power and to train forces on the ground to fight the battle. That has not worked. How do you move forward from here?

King Abdullah II: I think the problem with the West is they see a border between Syria and Iraq. Daesh does not. And this has been a frustration, I think, for a few of us in this area with our Western coalition partners, for several years. You know, the lawyers get into the act and say, “But there’s an international border.” And we say, “For God’s sake, ISIS doesn’t work that way.” So if you’re looking at it and want to play the game by your rules, knowing that the enemy doesn’t, we’re not going to win this.

Watch this documentary, The King in our Documentaries section.

Jordan says it has flown more than 1,000 missions against ISIS in Syria in coordination with the U.S. last year, pilot Muath Kasasbeh was captured. ISIS put him in a cage and made a video as they burned him alive. At the time, Abdullah had two terrorists in jail.

Scott Pelley: Within hours of that video you hanged two convicted terrorists here in Jordan. What does that tell us about you?

King Abdullah II: I think they had to understand that there was no messing around with Jordan. And a lot of those that were involved in killing Muath in that video and those that were responsible for detaining him and processing him through his captivity have been taken down since.

He’s taking down each and every one in the video.

Scott Pelley: You’re going to hunt them down.

King Abdullah II: They have been hunted down, quite a lot of them, and those that are still involved if it takes us another 50 years we will get them.

Those are the rules of his neighborhood. Abdullah reigns over a desert the size of Indiana. To his west, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, north, Syria’s civil war, east, ISIS in Iraq, and south, severe fundamentalist Islam in Saudi Arabia.

It is a collision of tribes and religions not confined by borders. Drawn with a British T-square and crossed by American tanks. In 1990, King Hussein warned George Bush to stay out of Iraq. In 2003, the son of the king gave the son of the president the same advice.

Scott Pelley: It seems like American presidents think they know this region better than you.

King Abdullah II: They seem to understand us better than we know each other. And as a result you can see the train on the track coming to the, to the wreck and we do advise that, if we keep going that way, it’s pretty obvious to some of us what’s going to happen. And you know, you can only express your views as much and as emotionally as you can.

Scott Pelley: You’re frustrated by that.

King Abdullah II: The ethnic makeup of the region is pretty glaringly obvious for us that live in the region, that advisers and think tanks in the West seem to know us better than we supposedly know ourselves. I mean, Syria, when it started, everybody was saying six months. And I said, “Look, you know, if you’re saying six months, I’m saying six years.” We’re in for the long haul, not only in Syria and Iraq, but for the whole region and for the world, unfortunately.

Scott Pelley: But isn’t there gonna have to be a Western army of some kind on the ground in order to take the territory?

King Abdullah II: Enablers. Enablers. Because, at the end of the day, you can’t have Western troops walking down the street of Syrian cities and villages. At the end of the day, you need the Syrians to be able to do that.

Watch this documentary, The King in our Documentaries section.

We (60 Minutes) were on the Syrian border in 2014 as the king’s soldiers reached out to refugees. He welcomed them even though there were already more than two million Palestinian refugees who’ve been in Jordan for decades.

Scott Pelley: Why did you allow nearly a million and a half Syrians to come into your country?

King Abdullah II: Well we really didn’t have much choice. I mean they were flooding across the border, being shot by the Syrian regime. And you know Jordan has always been a place that opens it arms to refugees from many countries, unfortunately. But then it got to a point where, you know, we’re now at 20 percent increase of our population. And the huge burden on our country we’re in dire straits.

Most of them are in Jordanian towns, looking for work, driving up rents, 160,000 Syrian kids are in Jordan’s schools.

Scott Pelley: What’s the breaking point for your people?

King Abdullah II: About a year or two years ago. Unemployment is skyrocketing. Our health sector is saturated. Our schools are really going through difficult times. It’s extremely, extremely difficult. And Jordanians are just have had it up to here. I mean we just can’t take it anymore.

They’ve had it with unemployment near 15 percent. And, that’s the “official” rate. It’s probably higher. There are more than nine (9) million people living in Jordan, and half are under the age of 24.

King Abdullah II: If anything keeps me up at night, it’s giving the younger generation an opportunity at life. And on the flip side of that, if radicalization is going to imbed itself anywhere in the world or in this region it’s going to be disenfranchised youth. And so if young people in this country are not going to have an opportunity because of the pressure on the economy again, that’s my concern.

He showed us his concern at a multimillion dollar campus built to be his new military headquarters. The king, who drives his own car by the way, took this campus away from the generals and converted it to a citadel of software—a business park for technology. Imagine these logos on the Pentagon.

King Abdullah II: II: I believe the world has a stake in the Jordanian economy, because we are the success story of stability in the region. If there wasn’t a Jordan, we would have had to have created one. So I think the story of Jordan is bigger than the borders of our country.

Watch this documentary, The King in our Documentaries section.

His borders began in 1916 when Abdullah’s great-great grandfather led the revolt depicted in the movie “Lawrence of Arabia.” The king traces his bloodline directly to the Prophet Muhammad. Islamic extremists, he told us, are outlaws that the faith has dealt with before.

Scott Pelley: When you do interviews in Arabic on this subject, you call ISIS the Khawarij. What does that mean?

King Abdullah II: Well in Islam us traditional Muslims it is not our right to call people heretics. God decides at the end of the day. The jihadists take it upon themselves to call the rest of us heretics, us Muslims, you’re in a completely different and worse category. And so in our traditional history, the outlaws, the Khawarij, appeared, really, in the early part of Islam.

Scott Pelley: They were a sect that splintered from Islam in the first century.

King Abdullah II: Yes. And they did horrible atrocities. And as a result the Muslim communities rose up against them and exterminate them. So they appear throughout history from time to time. And they always meet their end. But as extremists throughout all of our religions you know, they appear from time to time.

Scott Pelley: Well, in the United States, many people ask, “What has gone wrong with Islam?”

King Abdullah II: Well, so if you look at the spectrum and understand that 90 percent of us are traditionalists and have an affinity for Christianity, Judaism, I mean we’re all the three monotheistic religions, us being the younger one, and that our faith decrees the understanding of Judaism and Christianity, then we understand where we all are. It’s that misperception with the takfiri jihadists, that’s where the fight is. And they represent probably two percent of Sunni Islam. That’s where the problem is. And if we’re being pushed into the corner through Islamophobia, that’s where the danger is, where we as allies, are not understood.

Scott Pelley: Your concern is that, if Islamophobia takes even greater hold, Muslims who are not radicalized today will be forced into that corner.

King Abdullah II: Well, they’re going to feel isolated. They’re going to feel marginalized. They’re going to feel that, victimized. Which is exactly what ISIS, al-Qaeda want. I mean, you know, why fly two aircrafts into the Twin Towers in New York? It’s to create hatred from the West towards Islam so that you can panic the majority of Muslims to feel that they’re victimized and push them over into the extremist camp.

Pressure on the king is rising. That explosion, an ISIS bomb in June, killed seven Jordanian soldiers. Abdullah closed the Syrian border. In 2014, it looked like this.

Now, with the crossing closed, only the long arm of the U.N. is lifting aid over the line to nearly 100,000 trapped refugees. Jordan says that ISIS has infiltrated the camp on the Syrian side. But, even so, the kingdom has just agreed to set up food and water distribution for those who are stranded.

After obliterating that mock town, with his former unit, the king whispered to us, “God, I miss my old job.” The crown of a prince was lighter when he only had to deal with ancient armor.

He told the men, “Our equipment and vehicles are lacking. We will develop them as soon as we can.”

“Long live the king!” They yelled. “Long live the king.”

You wonder how the kingdom has lived so long with peril on every side. But maybe that’s the key. Treacherous borders are like live rounds in training, they raise the stakes. Jordan endures because the price of failure is much too high.

Watch this documentary, The King in our Documentaries section.

Watch Alistair Reign News Channels on YouTube

Documentary: Part 1: The King – Part 2: New Cold War – Part 3: Picasso Portfolio

Abdullah became king in 1999 on the death of his father who ruled 47 years. King Abdullah II of Jordan sat down with Scott Pelley of 60 Minutes, and discussed how Islamophobia plays into the strategy of Islamic extremists.

Pelley met the 54-year-old at his palace in Amman. He knows ISIS by its Arabic acronym, Daesh.

But whatever you call it, he says the West doesn’t realize it’s in a Third World War.

Scott Pelley, is the Anchor and Managing Editor of CBS Evening News, Correspondent for 60 Minutes. Nicole Young, Amjad Tadros and Katie Kerbstat are the producers.

Read the transcript from Scott Pelley’s Interview With King Abdullah of Jordan.

Part One: The King

Error

This video doesn’t exist

Part Two: The New Cold War

President Obama’s nuclear strategy says that while the threat of all-out nuclear war is remote, the risk of nuclear attack somewhere in the world has actually increased. 60 Minutes decided to take a close look at how that attack might occur and found both the U.S. and Russia are developing nuclear weapons that make the once unthinkable decision to use them “less difficult.”

Reporting by David Martin.

Part Three: Picasso Portfolio

Pablo Picasso’s former electrician, 77-year-old Pierre Le Guennec and his wife Danielle, came forward with a trove of 271 never-before-seen Picasso pieces. The revelation of the existence of these works stunned the art world and the Picasso heirs. The Le Guennecs say they were a gift from the master. But were they? Whitaker finds a fascinating story befitting a painter who was probably the greatest artist of the 20th Century.

Reporting by Bill Whitaker, 60 Minutes correspondent.

Read the transcript from Scott Pelley’s Interview With King Abdullah of Jordan.

Watch rare interviews and news reports in our Documentaries section.

Watch Alistair Reign News Channels on YouTube

(18+) Documentary: Impact of Violent Extremists on Children Worldwide

The United Nations released a report in June, 2016, identifying 20 conflict situations affecting children of war. Read the UN report “Children in Conflict” on pdf in our research section.

Watch rare interviews and news reports in our Documentaries section.

Watch Alistair Reign News Channels on YouTube

Alistair Reign News Channel: Pentagon Briefings and Military News

Get your news straight from the source. UPDATED DAILY – this playlist contains the U.S. State Department daily press briefings, NATO news updates on the war against terrorism, and other related press statements from United Nations world leaders.

This is a continuous news feed that is updated regularly. The window will open to the latest video, and play through to the last. You can always fast forward and rewind. Each video varies in length from 2:00 min up to 1:30 hours.

Alistair Reign News Military Channel: Pentagon Briefings and Military Events.

Alistair Reign Playlists bring you the news from the source Watch, listen, learn and stay informed.

Alistair Reign News Military Channel: IRAQ AT WAR.
Alistair Reign News Military Channel: YEMEN AT WAR.
Alistair Reign News Military Channel: SYRIA AT WAR.
Alistair Reign News Military Channel: Pentagon Briefings And News.
Alistair Reign News Military Channel: Saudi’s Crimes Against Humanity.
Alistair Reign Colour of War Channel: Humanity Helping Humans.

🔝

Watch rare interviews and news reports in our Documentaries section.