Jordan’s King Abdullah vows ‘relentless’ war against Isis

(The Guardian)- Jordan’s King Abdullah has vowed a relentless war against Islamic State on their own territory, a day after Isis released a video showing a captured Jordanian pilot being burned alive.

“We are waging this war to protect our faith, our values and human principles and our war for their sake will be relentless and will hit them in their own ground,” state television quoted Abdullah as saying.

Abdullah cut short a trip to the US on Wednesday to rally support for tougher strikes again

Earlier, government spokesman, Muhammad al-Momani, described the jihadi group as an “evil that can and should be defeated”.

“We are talking about a collaborative effort between coalition members to intensify efforts to stop extremism and terrorism to undermine, degrade and eventually finish Daesh,” he said, using an Arabic acronym for Isis.

The strong words came against a background of concern that after an initial backlash to satisfy calls for revenge, popular opposition to the campaign may grow in the kingdom.

It emerged on Wednesday that the United Arab Emirates suspended its air attacks against the Islamic State in Syria after the capture of the pilot, Muadh al-Kasasbeh.

US officials confirmed that the UAE, one of the four Arab states in the anti-Isis coalition, had ceased its participation because of concerns over a lack of contingency plans to rescue downed aircrew.

The New York Times reported that the UAE, shocked by Kasasbeh’s capture, is demanding that the US improve its search-and-rescue efforts, including the use of V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, in northern Iraq, closer to the battleground, instead of basing the missions in Kuwait. The country’s pilots will not rejoin the fight until the Ospreys are put in place in northern Iraq, the paper said.

The UAE, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain joined the coalition when attacks began in September. All have flown sorties against Isis targets, but in the absence of any statistics in US military communiques and silence in their own capitals, most observers believe their participation has been largely symbolic.

Across the Middle East, religious and political leaders offered angry denunciations of Isis on Wednesday.

The head of Sunni Islam’s most respected seat of learning, Egypt’s Al-Azhar, described the militants as enemies of God and the prophet Muhammad, saying they deserved the Qur’an-prescribed punishment of death, crucifixion or the chopping off of their arms.

“Islam prohibits the taking of an innocent life,” Al-Azhar’s grand sheikh, Ahmed al-Tayeb, said in a statement, adding that by burning the pilot to death, the militants violated Islam’s prohibition on the mutilation of bodies, even during wartime.

In Qatar, the International Association of Muslim Scholars, headed by prominent cleric, Youssef al-Qaradawi, and linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, called the burning of Kasaesbeh a criminal act.

“The Association asserts that this extremist organisation does not represent Islam in any way and its actions always harm Islam,” it said.

Saudi king, Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, called the pilot’s killing a “heinous crime which contradicts the tolerance of our noble religion,” the Saudi state news said.

Just before dawn on Wednesday, Jordan hanged a jailed Iraqi militant whose release had been demanded by Isis before it burned Kasasbeh to death.

The Jordanian authorities also executed another senior al-Qaida prisoner sentenced to death for plots to wage attacks against the pro-western kingdom in the past decade.

Sajida al-Rishawi, the Iraqi female militant, was sentenced to death for her role in a 2005 suicide bomb attack that killed 60 people. Ziyad Karboli, an Iraqi al-Qaida operative who had been convicted in 2008 for killing a Jordanian, was also executed at dawn.

The executions were confirmed by government spokesman, Mohammed al-Momani. The prisoners were executed in Swaqa prison, a large facility 70km (45 miles) south of the capital, Amman, a security source said. The executions of three other convicted terrorists were also scheduled for Wednesday.