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Isis reconciles with al-Qaida group as Syria air strikes continue

September 28, 2014

Isis reconciles with al-Qaida group as Syria air strikes continue, The Guardian, , September 28, 2014

(But we have been told authoritatively that the Islamic State is not Islamic. How, then, could strikes against it possibly be a “war on Islam?” — DM)

Jabhat al-Nusra denounces US-led attacks as ‘war on Islam’, and leaders of group holding meetings with Islamic State.

Kobani strikeA still from a video from a plane camera shows smoke rising after an air strike near Kobani. Photograph: Reuters

Barack Obama said the intelligence community did not appreciate the scale of the threat or comprehend the weakness of the Iraqi army. In an interview on CBS 60 Minutes, he said: “Over the past couple of years, during the chaos of the Syrian civil war, where essentially you have huge swaths of the country that are completely ungoverned, they were able to reconstitute themselves and take advantage of … chaos. And so this became ground zero for jihadists around the world.”

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Air strikes continued to target Islamic State (Isis) positions near the Kurdish town of Kobani and hubs across north-east Syria on Sunday, as the terror group moved towards a new alliance with Syria’s largest al-Qaida group that could help offset the threat from the air.

Jabhat al-Nusra, which has been at odds with Isis for much of the past year, vowed retaliation for the US-led strikes, the first wave of which a week ago killed scores of its members. Many Nusra units in northern Syria appeared to have reconciled with the group, with which it had fought bitterly early this year.

A senior source confirmed that al-Nusra and Isis leaders were now holding war-planning meetings. While not yet formalised, the addition of at least some al-Nusra numbers to Isis would strengthen the group’s ranks and further its reach at a time when air strikes are crippling its funding sources and slowing its advances in both Syria and Iraq.

Al-Nusra, which has direct ties to al-Qaida’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, denounced the attacks as a “war on Islam”, in an audio statement posted over the weekend. A senior al-Nusra figure told the Guardian that 73 members had defected to Isis last Friday alone and that scores more were planning to swear allegiance in coming days.

“We are in a long war,” the group’s spokesman, Abu Firas al-Suri, said on social media platforms. “This war will not end in months nor years, this war could last for decades.”

In the rebel-held north there is growing resentment among Islamist units of the Syrian opposition that the strikes have done nothing to weaken the Syrian regime. “We have been calling for these sorts of attacks for three years and when they finally come they don’t help us,” said a leader from the Qatari-backed Islamic Front, which groups together Islamic brigades. “People have lost faith. And they’re angry.”

British jets flew sorties over Isis positions in Iraq after being ordered into action against the group following a parliamentary vote on Friday.

David Cameron has suggested he might review his decision to confine Britain’s involvement to Iraq alone, but for now the strikes in support of Kurdish civilians and militants in Kobani were being carried out by Arab air forces from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the UAE and Bahrain.

The US was reported to have carried out at least six strikes near the centre of Kobani, where the YPG Kurdish militia is fighting a dogged rearguard campaign against Isis, which is mostly holding its ground despite the jet attacks.

Kobani is the third-largest Kurdish enclave in Syria, and victory for Isis there is essential to its plans to oust the Kurds from lands they have lived in for several thousand years. Control of the area would give the group a strategic foothold in north-east Syria, which would give it easy access to north-west Iraq.

Isis continued to make forays along the western edge of Baghdad, where its members have been active for nine months. The Iraqi capital is being heavily defended by Shia militias, who in many cases have primacy over the Iraqi army, which surrendered the north of the country.

That rout – one of the most spectacular anywhere in modern military history – gave Isis a surge of momentum and it has since seized the border with Syria, menaced Irbil, ousted minorities from the Ninevah plains and threatened the Iraqi government’s hold on the country.

Barack Obama said the intelligence community did not appreciate the scale of the threat or comprehend the weakness of the Iraqi army. In an interview on CBS 60 Minutes, he said: “Over the past couple of years, during the chaos of the Syrian civil war, where essentially you have huge swaths of the country that are completely ungoverned, they were able to reconstitute themselves and take advantage of … chaos. And so this became ground zero for jihadists around the world.”

Categories: Al Qaeda, Islam, Islamic State
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Al Qaeda official warns against Islamic State in new speech

September 27, 2014

Al Qaeda official warns against Islamic State in new speech, Long War Journal, Thomas Joscelyn, September 27, 2014

“We call to restore the rightly-guided Caliphate on the prophetic method, and not on the method of deviation, lying, breaking promises, and abrogating allegiances – a caliphate that stands with justice, consultation, and coming together, and not with oppression, infidel-branding the Muslims, killing the monotheists, and dispersing the rank of the mujahideen,” al Basha says, according to SITE’s translation.

Although al Basha does not mention the Islamic State by name, his description of al Qaeda’s proposed caliphate is intended to undermine al Baghdadi’s claim to power. Al Basha’s reference to “abrogating allegiances” is probably a reference to the oath of allegiance (bayat) that Abu Bakr al Baghdadi swore to Ayman al Zawahiri and then broke.

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A senior al Qaeda official, Muhammad bin Mahmoud Rabie al Bahtiyti, also known as Abu Dujana al Basha, has released a new audio message seeking to undermine the Islamic State, which was disowned by al Qaeda’s general command in February.

Al Basha’s speech was released by al Qaeda’s official propaganda arm, As Sahab, on Sept. 26. It was first obtained and translated by the SITE Intelligence Group.

Al Qaeda’s senior leaders have not directly addressed the Islamic State’s claim to rule over a caliphate stretching across large portions of Iraq and Syria. Instead, they have sought to undermine the Islamic State’s ideological legitimacy in a variety of more subtle ways. (Other parts of al Qaeda’s international network have specifically rejected the Islamic State’s caliphate claim.)

Al Basha does not name the Islamic State, but his speech is clearly aimed at the group and its supporters.

Al Basha sets forth al Qaeda’s goals, saying the group is dedicated “to the oneness of Allah … as we call to disbelieve the tyrant and disavow polytheism and its people.” Al Basha says al Qaeda seeks “to establish the absent Shariah and empower this religion.”

It is often claimed, wrongly, that al Qaeda is interested only in attacking the West, or carrying out mass casualty attacks. But the organization has repeatedly stated that its jihadists seek to create societies based on their radical version of sharia law. Al Qaeda wants to build Islamic emirates, or states, based on this sharia. It is for this reason that most of al Qaeda’s resources since its founding have been devoted to waging insurgencies against governments in the Muslim-majority world that it deems to be corrupt.

Imposing sharia and creating Islamic emirates are steps to al Qaeda’s ultimate stated goal, which al Basha explains.

“We call to restore the rightly-guided Caliphate on the prophetic method, and not on the method of deviation, lying, breaking promises, and abrogating allegiances – a caliphate that stands with justice, consultation, and coming together, and not with oppression, infidel-branding the Muslims, killing the monotheists, and dispersing the rank of the mujahideen,” al Basha says, according to SITE’s translation.

Although al Basha does not mention the Islamic State by name, his description of al Qaeda’s proposed caliphate is intended to undermine al Baghdadi’s claim to power. Al Basha’s reference to “abrogating allegiances” is probably a reference to the oath of allegiance (bayat) that Abu Bakr al Baghdadi swore to Ayman al Zawahiri and then broke.

Al Qaeda-allied jihadists have argued against the Islamic State’s caliphate claim, saying it was imposed on Muslims and even jihadists without consultation. And this is a theme in a Basha’s speech.

In al Qaeda’s ideological schema, the caliphate can be resurrected only after respected jihadists give it their seal of approval. Al Baghdadi’s organization has tried to impose its caliphate throughout much of Iraq and Syria, frequently fighting with other jihadist organizations, including the Al Nusrah Front, al Qaeda’s official branch in Syria. Leading jihadist ideologues have criticized Baghdadi’s caliphate on this basis, as well as for other reasons.

Al Basha warns against “extremism,” which, ironically enough, is one of al Qaeda’s key charges against the Islamic State. In Syria and elsewhere, al Qaeda has been attempting to portray itself as a more reasonable jihadist organization. Because the Islamic State refuses to consult with other Muslims and jihadist groups, not just in creating a caliphate, but also in other matters, al Qaeda accuses the group of pursuing an extremist path. Of course, al Qaeda is extremist by any reasonable standard, and has spilled more Muslim than non-Muslim blood throughout its existence. Still, because of the Islamic State’s excessive violence, particularly in Syria, al Qaeda has been marketing itself as a more mainstream jihadist organization.

Al Basha addresses the jihadists’ rank and file, urging them to avoid joining the Islamic State and subtly encouraging Baghdadi’s fighters to defect from his army. Al Basha openly worries that the jihad in Syria has been squandered because of the infighting between the groups opposed to Bashar al Assad’s regime. Al Qaeda blames the infighting on the Islamic State.

“I address my speech and my advice to my brothers on the frontlines in Sham [Syria] among those who have been deceived by slogans and titles, to use your heads and have insight, and to weigh the matters fairly,” al Basha says. “Rescue the ship of jihad, and reach it before it deviates from its course and settles on the path of the people of desires. Strive to turn off the sedition and restore cohesion among the mujahideen.”

At the end of his audio speech, al Basha addresses those jihadists who disapprove of al Qaeda’s understated response to the Islamic State’s caliphate claim. Al Basha says that he and others wanted to defend al Qaeda emir Ayman al Zawahiri’s reputation against the Islamic State’s slanders, but Zawahiri ordered them not to.

“The Sheikh [Zawahiri] ordered his brothers to be silent and not protect his honor,” al Basha says. “He considered that out of concern for the benefit of this Ummah [Muslim community], and a hope that Allah will fix the condition, and that the sedition will be suppressed.”

Al Qaeda’s leaders and branches have repeatedly urged the jihadists in Syria to reconcile. However, their efforts have been fruitless.

Veteran al Qaeda leader

Al Basha has taken on a more prominent and public role for al Qaeda in recent years. In December 2013, he argued that jihad is necessary to implement sharia law in Egypt. In late August he issued a statement urging followers to strike American and Israeli interests in support of Muslims in Gaza.

Although al Basha was not initially a public persona for al Qaeda, he was well-known to US counterterrorism officials for years. In January 2009, the US Treasury Department designated al Basha as an al Qaeda terrorist, noting that he was Zawahiri’s son-in-law. Al Basha was located in Iran at the time.

Treasury found that he “served on an al Qaeda military committee and provided military training that included urban warfare tactics for al Qaeda members.” Among other duties, al Basha “drafted training manuals for al Qaeda as well as a book on security that was used as a template for al Qaeda’s surveillance operations.”

Al Basha is a longtime member of Egyptian Islamic Jihad as well as al Qaeda, and was reportedly involved in al Qaeda’s 1995 bombing of the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Zawahiri tasked al Basha with moving members of Zawahiri’s family to Iran after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

 

Categories: Al Qaeda, Caliphate, Iraq war, Islam, Islamic State, Jihad, Syria war
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Stop Denying the Obvious: Islam is a Problem

September 27, 2014

Stop Denying the Obvious: Islam is a Problem, Gatestone Institute, Geert Wilders, September 26, 2014

To defeat IS we should do more than just bomb its strongholds in the Middle East; we should no longer turn a blind eye to the violent nature of Islam. We should demand that those who settle in our countries cast aside values incompatible with ours. There is a huge problem — also in our countries – cause by the violent exhortations of Islam. Only when we face this truth will we be able to win this war we are in.

Although the majority of Muslims are moderate, thousands of innocent civilians all over the West have fallen victim to terrorists inspired by Islam. IS has announced that every citizen of the West is a target.

70% of Dutch Muslims consider the religious rules of Islam more important than the secular laws of the country where they are living.  Survey, December 2013,  by Prof. Ruud Koopmans, Humbolt University, Berlin

A military alliance, led by the United States, is currently bombing the forces of the Islamic State [IS] in Iraq and Syria. Many European nations, such as the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands and others, are participating in this offensive. IS, however, is not just a threat to the Middle East, but also to our own countries. The presence in IS’s ranks of hundreds of Muslims born in the West, carrying Western passports, is a huge domestic security risk. Whether we like it or not, war has also come to our streets.

And whether we like it or not, Islam has everything to do with it. “No religion condones the killing of innocents,” President Obama recently said. David Cameron added about the IS terrorists: “They claim to do this in the name of Islam, that is nonsense, Islam is a religion of peace. They are not Muslims, they are monsters.”

The sad thing is that, while they are, indeed, monsters, they are also Muslims. No matter what Obama and Cameron say, IS and other terrorist groups draw inspiration from Koranic verses, such as sura 47:4: “When ye meet the unbelievers, smite at their necks and when ye have caused a bloodbath among them bind a bond firmly on them.”

Although the majority of Muslims are moderate, thousands of innocent civilians all over the West have fallen victim to terrorists inspired by Islam. On 9/11, 2001, Mohamed Atta and his accomplices flew planes into New York’s twin towers. In March 2004, Jamal Zougam, a Moroccan-born Spanish citizen, and his friends bombed four commuter trains in Madrid. In November 2004, Mohammed Bouyeri, a Dutchman of Moroccan origin, slit the throat of Islam critic Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam. In July 2005, Hasib Hussain and three other homegrown British suicide killers assassinated 52 civilians on the London public transport system. In March 2012, Mohammed Merah, a Frenchman of Algerian descent, mowed down a rabbi and three children in front of a school in Toulouse. In April 2013, the Chechen brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, killed three onlookers at the Boston marathon with pressure cooker bombs. In May 2013, Michael Adebolayo, a British citizen of Nigerian descent, decapitated soldier Lee Rigby in the streets of London. Last May, Mehdi Nemmouche, a French citizen of Algerian origin, murdered four people at the Jewish Museum in Brussels.

Atta, Zougam, Bouyeri, Hussain, Merah, Tsarnaev, Adebolayo, Nemmouche, they were all Muslims, most of them carrying Western passports. It is dangerous to deny a reality because it is discomforting. Bombing IS in Syria and Iraq, while refusing to see the problems at home, will have disastrous consequences.

There is much discussion about the support among Muslim populations in the West for IS and similar organizations waging jihad and aiming to impose Islamic Sharia law on our societies. A survey conducted by ICM Research last July found that 16% of all inhabitants of France and 7% of the inhabitants of the United Kingdom have a favorable view of IS. In May 2013, a survey by Ahmed Ait Moha of Motivaction, an Amsterdam research institute, found that 73% of Dutch Muslims regard Dutch Muslims who fight in Syria as heroes, compared to only 3% of indigenous Dutch. Last December, a survey by Prof. Ruud Koopmans at Humboldt University in Berlin revealed that over 45% of German Muslims and 70% of Dutch Muslims consider the religious rules of Islam to be more important than the secular laws of the country where they are living.

Every day, I can feel the cold shadow of Islam. Next November, it will be exactly ten years that I have been living under permanent police protection. Wherever I go, armed policemen go with me to protect me against Islamic groups who have vowed to assassinate me because they disagree with my opinion that Islam is not a religion of peace. Today, ten years later, IS has announced that every citizen of the West is a target.

To defeat IS we should do more than just bomb its strongholds in the Middle East; we should no longer turn a blind eye to the violent nature of Islam.  We should demand that those who settle in our countries cast aside values incompatible with ours.

Last week, I proposed in the Dutch Parliament that we ask an oath of all people from Islamic countries who wish to be members of our society. In the oath they have to explicitly distance themselves from Sharia law and the violent verses in the Koran. Those who do not want to take the oath are no longer welcome. They should leave our country at once. This measure forces us to see the reality which Obama, Cameron and other Western leaders refuse to see: there is a huge problem – also in our countries – caused by the violent exhortations of Islam.

Only when we face this truth, we will be able to win the war we are in.

Categories: Islam, Islamic State
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Behind Islamic State’s Battlefield Gains, Battle-Hardened Chechens

September 27, 2014

Behind Islamic State’s Battlefield Gains, Battle-Hardened Chechens, Global Security Org via VOA, Mike Eckel, September 26, 2014

“I think that’s a reason why the Islamic State has been as successful as they’ve been,” said Bill Roggio, founder of the Long War Journal, a website that tracks jihadi groups.

“The fighters from the Caucasus, they have experience in fighting professional militaries, the Russians, they’ve been doing guerrilla warfare for decades and this experience is translating to the battlefield,’ he said. ‘They tend to be tactically proficient.”

“These aren’t the guys that go around occupying someone’s villa then sitting around by the swimming pool eating Snickers bars. They are hard fighters,” said Richard Barrett, senior vice president at the Soufan Group, a New York-based security consulting group.

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Among the legions of foreign fighters who have turned the Islamic State into the world’s most dangerous terrorist organization, the Chechens stand out.

They crow on YouTube videos about battlefield successes, wave Arabic language flags referencing the war-torn Russian region, and in some cases, sport striking red beards.

In all, hundreds of fighters from Russia’s North Caucasus, where Chechnya is located, and other Russian-speaking regions are believed to be fighting in Syria and Iraq, alongside the Islamic State and al-Qaida-linked groups like the Al-Nusra Front.

The Chechens aren’t the largest group among the thousands of foreigners in Syria, but they may be playing an outsized role, as many, battle-hardened by years fighting Russian forces, help spearhead the Islamic State’s sweeping successes through Syria and Iraq, experts said.

This bodes poorly not only for U.S. efforts to roll back the Islamic State in the near term, but also could mean a new cycle of violence is looming for Russia’s long-troubled North Caucasus.

And this may be an indication why the U.S. State and Treasury departments on Wednesday slapped new financial sanctions on several top Chechens, and the military units they lead.

“I think that’s a reason why the Islamic State has been as successful as they’ve been,” said Bill Roggio, founder of the Long War Journal, a website that tracks jihadi groups.

“The fighters from the Caucasus, they have experience in fighting professional militaries, the Russians, they’ve been doing guerrilla warfare for decades and this experience is translating to the battlefield,’ he said. ‘They tend to be tactically proficient.”

“These aren’t the guys that go around occupying someone’s villa then sitting around by the swimming pool eating Snickers bars. They are hard fighters,” said Richard Barrett, senior vice president at the Soufan Group, a New York-based security consulting group.

Caucasus calm

After two wars waged by Russia since 1994, the North Caucasus has become relatively stable, free of all-out war and major terrorist attacks.

Poverty, unemployment, corruption and rights abuses still plague the region.

Despite Russian successes in killing leading Chechen militants— Shamil Basayev, Ibn al-Khattab, Abu Hafs al-Hudani, Abu al-Walid, Doku Umarov— the insurgents have not given up, regrouping under a new leader reportedly based in Dagestan, immediately to the east of Chechnya.

Many of those fighters joined the fight in Syria early on, as the uprising that began in 2011 morphed into a chaotic civil war.

Some of the less experienced ones may have been encouraged to gain battlefield experience in Syria by the then-head of the Chechen insurgent network, Doku Umarov, according to Barrett.

Umarov, who founded an organization known as the Caucasus Emirate in 2007, died in August 2013, possibly after being poisoned.

Omar the Chechen

Among those experienced fighters traveling to Syria was Tarkhan Batirashvili, whose nom de guerre is Omar al Shishani.

Batirashvili, an ethnic Chechen, grew up in a remote part of the former Soviet republic of Georgia, and served in the Georgian army, even reportedly battling the Russian armed forces during the August 2008 war.

According to the Treasury Department, Batirashvili this year became a senior military commander for the Islamic State and a member of the Shura Council— a top consultative body to the Islamic State leadership, including al-Baghdadi.

The group Batriashvili used to lead, the Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar (Army of Emigrants and Supporters), or the Muhajireen Brigade, was among two groups sanctioned by the Treasury Department on Wednesday.

Batirashvili “has assumed a very prominent military command role within IS’ Syria-based operations, with him likely being the most senior operational military commander in Syria,” said Charles Lister, a well-regarded analyst and a visiting analyst with the Brookings Doha Center think-tank, said in an email interview.

“The large majority of IS’ most high-profile offensives on the Syrian side of the border have been connected in some way or another with (his) leadership,” he said.

Among the successes Batriashvili has been credited with, or claimed credit for, was the Aug. 2013 seizure of the Minigh airport near Aleppo, which reportedly featured multiple suicide bombers.

Then there’s Murad Margoshvili, known as Muslim al Shishani, who reportedly served in the air defense division of the Soviet army in Moldova and fought alongside a key leader in the Chechen terrorist circles more than a decade ago.

Margoshvili, who heads a Chechen regiment called Junud al Sham, was one of a dozen individuals hit with State Department sanctions Wednesday. Like Batirashvili, he is notable for having a long red beard.

Elaborately produced videos showing Margoshvili training fighters have been circulating in recent weeks on some YouTube channels.

Another video published Sept. 2 showed Arabic-speaking fighters standing near a Russian fighter jet seized at a Syrian airbase, threatening to liberate the Caucasus from Russian control. The video is subtitled in Russian.

Chechen rifts

The Chechen cause in Syria is not monolithic; different groups have different loyalties, experts said.

And Chechens traditionally have strong identification with their clans or extended family networks, which makes rivalries and turf wars common, at home or abroad.

In Syria, Batirashvili’s decision to pledge allegiance to the head of the Islamic State created a rift among Chechen units, experts said.

Fighters with his former unit, the Muhajireen Brigade, retained their loyalties to the Caucasus Emirate, which had ties to Al-Qaida dating back more than a decade. Lister argued that could strengthen the Caucasus Emirates’ links to Al-Qaida in the long-term.

“I’m sure the Russians are as worried about that as anybody,” Barnett said. “Blowback is always possible. As the Islamic State gets knocked back by the U.S., there’s more of a likelihood that these fighters will be pushed back into other regions” like the Caucasus.

“If history is any judge, you don’t take threats from a group like this, that has shown the capacity to do major attacks in the past, you don’t take these threats lightly,” Roggio said.

Categories: Chechens, Islamic State
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We Don’t Need to Ally with Terrorists to Defeat ISIS

September 26, 2014

We Don’t Need to Ally with Terrorists to Defeat ISIS, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, September 26, 2014

(OK, but assuming that the defeat of the Islamic State is our goal, how is that to happen? Clearly, we will not go to war with Islam. Yet. — DM)

isis-431x350

Allying with terrorists to defeat terrorists is counterproductive. The Muslim world will always have its Jihadists, at least until we make a serious effort to break them which we won’t be doing any time soon. But we can at least stop making the problem worse by arming and training our own enemies.

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The big foreign policy debate now is whether we should ally with Sunni or Shiite Jihadists to defeat ISIS.

The pro-Iranian camp wants us to coordinate with Iran and Assad. The pro-Saudi camp wants us to arm the Free Syrian Army and its assorted Jihadists to overthrow Assad.

Both sides are not only wrong, they are traitors.

Iran and the Sunni Gulfies are leading sponsors of international terrorism that has killed Americans. Picking either side means siding with the terrorists.

It makes no sense to join with Islamic terrorists to defeat Islamic terrorists. Both Sunni and Shiite Jihadists are our enemies. And this is not even a “the enemy of my enemy” scenario because despite their mutual hatred for each other, they hate us even more.

The 1998 indictment of bin Laden accused him of allying with Iran. (Not to mention Iraq, long before such claims could be blamed on Dick Cheney.) The 9/11 Commission documented that Al Qaeda terrorists, including the 9/11 hijackers, freely moved through Iran. Testimony by one of bin Laden’s lieutenants showed that he had met with a top Hezbollah terrorist. Court findings concluded that Iran was liable for Al Qaeda’s bombing of US embassies. Al Qaeda terrorists were trained by Hezbollah.

While Shiite and Sunni Jihadists may be deadly enemies to each other, they have more in common with each other than they do with us. Our relationship to them is not that of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” That’s their relationship to each other when it comes to us. In these scenarios we are the enemy.

The pro-Saudi and pro-Iranian factions in our foreign policy complex agree that we have to help one side win in Syria. They’re wrong. We have no interest in helping either side win because whether the Sunnis or Shiites win, Syria will remain a state sponsor of terror.

It’s only a question of whether it will be Shiite or Sunni terror.

Our interest is in not allowing Al Qaeda, or any of its subgroups, to control Syria or Iraq because it has a history of carrying out devastating attacks against the United States. We don’t, however, need to ally with either side to accomplish that. We can back the Kurds and the Iraqi government (despite its own problematic ties) in their push against ISIS in Iraq and use strategic strikes to hit ISIS concentrations in Syria. We should not, however, ally, arm or coordinate strikes with either side in the Syrian Civil War.

Both the pro-Saudi and pro-Iranian sides insist that ISIS can’t be defeated without stabilizing Syria. But it doesn’t appear that Syria can be stabilized without either genocide or partition. Its conflict is not based on resistance to a dictator as the Arab Springers have falsely claimed, but on religious differences.

Helping one side commit genocide against the other is an ugly project, but that would be the outcome of allying with either side.

Stabilizing Syria is a myth. The advocates of the FSA claimed that helping the Libyan Jihadists win would stabilize Libya. Instead the country is on fire as Jihadists continue to fight it out in its major cities.

Even if the FSA existed as an actual fighting force, which it doesn’t, even if it could win, which it can’t, there is every reason to believe that Syria would be worse than Libya and an even bigger playground for ISIS. The FSA enthusiasts were wrong in Egypt and Libya and everywhere else. They have no credibility.

The pro-Iranians claim that helping the Syrian government will subdue ISIS, but Assad hasn’t been able to defeat the Sunni Jihadists even with Russian help. The Syrian army and its Hezbollah allies are still struggling despite having an air force, heavy artillery and WMDs. Not only shouldn’t we be allying with Shiite terrorists who have killed plenty of Americans over the years, but it would be extremely stupid to ally with incompetent terrorists. Allying with the FSA or Assad makes as much sense as allying with ISIS.

The difference is that ISIS at least seems to be able to win battles.

Some pro-Iranian wonks claim that if we don’t get Assad’s approval for air strikes, he will shoot down Americans planes. That’s about as likely as Saddam Hussein returning from the dead to audition for American Idol. Assad didn’t even dare shoot down Israeli planes who were buzzing his palace. The odds of him picking a fight with the United States Air Force are somewhere between zero, nil and zilch.

We don’t need Assad’s permission to hit ISIS targets in Syria and, in one of the few things that this administration is doing right, we aren’t asking for it. Unless Assad experiences a bout of severe mental illness, he isn’t going to fight us for the privilege of losing to ISIS. Not even Saddam was that crazy.

The big potential problem in this war is mission creep. That’s why we should avoid committing to any overarching objectives such as stabilizing Syria. Unfortunately that is exactly what Obama has done.

It’s not our job to stabilize Syria and short of dividing it into a couple of majority states in which the Sunni and Shiite Arabs, the Kurds, the Christians and maybe even the Turkmen get their own countries, it’s not a feasible project. We have the equipment and power to pound ISIS into the dirt when its forces concentrate in any area. We can send drones to target their leaders. If Assad or the FSA want to provide us with intel, we can use it as long as we don’t begin working to help them fulfill their own objectives.

We need to remember that we are not there for the Syrians or Iraqis; we’re there for ourselves.

After September 11 we learned the hard way the costs of letting enemy terrorists set up enclaves and bases. But we also learned the hard way the costs of trying to stabilize unstable Muslim countries.

Al Qaeda, in its various forms, will always find sanctuaries and conflicts because the Muslim world is unstable and widely supportive of terrorism. For now this is a low intensity conflict that denies the next bin Laden the territory, time and manpower to stage the next September 11. We can do this cheaply and with few casualties if we keep this goal in mind.

This isn’t nation building. It’s not the fight for democracy. All we’re doing is terrorizing the terrorists by using our superior reach and firepower to smash their sandcastle emirates anywhere they pop up.

Allying with terrorists to defeat terrorists is counterproductive. The Muslim world will always have its Jihadists, at least until we make a serious effort to break them which we won’t be doing any time soon. But we can at least stop making the problem worse by arming and training our own enemies.

Categories: Iraq war, Islam, Islamic State, Obama, Syria, Syria war
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ISIS Baghdad March: Is Islamic State Targeting The Iraqi Capital?

September 26, 2014

ISIS Baghdad March: Is Islamic State Targeting The Iraqi Capital? International Business Times, , September 26, 2014

(How difficult might it be for the IS, et al, to move more troops into already occupied places near Baghdad, consolidate them there, and then send them to take Baghdad? The Iraqi armed forces have functioned poorly in the past and might well not put up a successful defense.

Were the IS to take Baghdad, what might the “coalition of the willing” do about it? Air strikes on a city of more than 7,216,040, many of them civilians, seem unlikely. In any event, civilian deaths would not likely concern the IS more than they concerned Hamas, and would provide gruesome photos welcomed for propaganda purposes.– DM)

cop car in MosulFighters of the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, celebrate on a police vehicle along a street in the city of Mosul, June 23, 2014. Reuters

ISIS has been circling Baghdad for years. The Islamic State carried out 641 operations in Baghdad last year, up from 371 operations in 2012, including car bombs, armed assaults and assassinations, according to the Institute for the Study of War.

The multi-nation campaign against ISIS might have prodded the militants to refocus their efforts in Iraq, where the Islamic State has many strategic territories near Baghdad . . .

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The Islamic State may be refocusing its sights on Baghdad after the extremist group overran an Iraqi military base and executed 300 soldiers Sunday amid ongoing U.S. airstrikes aimed at weakening the militants’ infrastructure and resources, according to military analysts. Other targeted attacks in recent weeks also suggest the militants are plotting against the Iraqi capital more than three months after international leaders first warned of the group’s aspirations to take Baghdad.

The base attack came days after the militant group also know as ISIS launched 14 mortar rounds during a foiled attempt to break into the Adala Prison in northern Baghdad. ISIS also launched an attack earlier this month in Baghdad’s Iskan neighborhood that likely targeted the offices of the political group and militia, the Badr Organization, according to the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C.

“This attack is very significant. It is the first infantry-like, complex, and penetrating attack in Baghdad city by ISIS since the fall of Mosul in June of this year,” the think-tank wrote on its website. “ISIS likely carried out the attack to release some of the pressure it is facing as a result of the recent U.S. air campaign targeting its positions. The attack also signifies that, despite the heightened defenses of Baghdad in the aftermath of the fall of Mosul, ISIS is still able to carry out attacks in an area where it is unlikely to have active sleeper cells.”

It’s unclear if the U.S. airstrikes in Iraq have accomplished the Obama administration’s stated mission to “degrade and destroy” ISIS. Some military analysts and U.S. critics have said the Obama administration needs to send ground troops to Iraq to wipe out ISIS, while others have said the airstrikes have successfully managed to slow down the militant group’s advances.

“The U.S. has made it pretty much impossible to undertake the large-scale mobile operations that ISIS was doing earlier in the summer,” Michael Knights, who specializes in military and security affairs in Iraq for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said. “It has changed the nature of the beast.”

But ISIS’ goal of taking most of western and central Iraq hasn’t changed since the airstrikes, said Bill Roggio, a senior fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington who specializes in Iraq. While Baghdad might be out of their reach, other territories remain vulnerable, Roggio said.

“They are just continuing their operations,” he said in a telephone interview. “The airstrikes haven’t stopped them for continuing to do what they have been doing all along, which is take control of territory.”

ISIS has been circling Baghdad for years. The Islamic State carried out 641 operations in Baghdad last year, up from 371 operations in 2012, including car bombs, armed assaults and assassinations, according to the Institute for the Study of War.

ISIS gained international prominence in June when it seized northern cities such as Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s hometown, and Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, and began holding mass executions of Iraqi soldiers. At the time, military analysts predicted the Sunni militants had their sights on Baghdad. Obama responded by sending 300 military advisers to Iraq to share intelligence with Iraqi soldiers. More recently, the Obama administration began offensive airstrikes against ISIS territories near Baghdad last week in its latest effort to pushback the militant group. At the same time, the U.S. began airstrikes against the Islamic State and other militant groups in Syria.

The multi-nation campaign against ISIS might have prodded the militants to refocus their efforts in Iraq, where the Islamic State has many strategic territories near Baghdad, Knight said.

“Most of the people who watch Iraq say if ISIS is going to punch, it’s going to be in the Baghdad area,” he said in a telephone interview. “I have been surprised that it hasn’t happened … They are well positioned for that.”

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Megyn Kelly Grills State Dept’s Marie Harf After Obama Invokes Anti-American Islamic Cleric

September 26, 2014

Megyn Kelly Grills State Dept’s Marie Harf After Obama Invokes Anti-American Islamic Cleric, You Tube, September 26, 2014

(How difficult must it be to find a prominent Islamic scholar who has not issued a fatwa encouraging the killing of Americans?  The one chosen for Obama’s remarks at the UN, Bin Bayyah who issued such a fatwa, appears to have become rather an embarrassment. — DM)

 

 

 

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CURL: Obama’s breathtaking naivete at the United Nations

September 25, 2014

CURL: Obama’s breathtaking naivete at the United Nations, Washington Times, Joe Curl, September 24, 2014

Obama's ToastPhoto by: Pablo Martinez Monsivais. President Barack Obama raises his glass to toast during a luncheon hosted by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2014, at the United Nations headquarters. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

Simply believing something doesn’t make it so. The president’s desire for a world in which nations talk openly about their true feelings, perhaps share a good cry together, and sing kumbaya around the campfire, is the height of naivete.

So is this passage of his speech: “… the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam. Islam teaches peace. Muslims the world over aspire to live with dignity and a sense of justice. And when it comes to America and Islam, there is no us and them, there is only us.”

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ANALYSIS/OPINION:

President Obama on Wednesday delivered a speech at the United Nations filled with his usual soaring rhetoric of global collectivism and the importance of “international norms.” But the president also displayed a shocking naivete about global affairs, religion, Islam — a Pollyannaish interpretation on the state of the world and America’s role in it.

Although Mr. Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize just eight months into office, the president made his annual trip to the ineffectual world council to deliver a call to war. “Ladies and gentlemen, we come together at a crossroads between war and peace, between disorder and integration, between fear and hope.”

Of course he waxed poetic about “climate change” and the promise of “the children,” but the president was forced to devote the bulk of his speech to what he called the “heart of darkness” and the “cancer of violent extremism.”

He said upon opening his remarks that “the shadow of world war that existed at the founding of this institution has been lifted.” He couldn’t be more wrong. A true man of peace worthy of the Nobel Prize, Pope Francis, said just the opposite this month in remarkably astute comments to commemorate the anniversary of World War I.

“Even today, after the second failure of another world war, perhaps one can speak of a third war, one fought piecemeal, with crimes, massacres, destruction,” the pope said, summing up the conflicts in Ukraine, Iraq, Syria, Israel, Gaza and much of northern Africa, including Libya and Tunisia, not to mention Somalia.

To Mr. Obama, there’s no global conflict of ideology, just “pervasive unease in our world.” To him, the strife is merely the “failure of our international system to keep pace with an interconnected world.” And to him, “it is one of the tasks of all great religions to accommodate devout faith with a modern, multicultural world.”

He asked delegates from nations across the world to mull this “central question of our global age: Whether we will solve our problems together, in a spirit of mutual interest and mutual respect, or whether we descend into the destructive rivalries of the past.”

His answer? “It’s time for a broader negotiation in the region in which major powers address their differences directly, honestly, and peacefully across the table from one another, rather than through gun-wielding proxies.”

Simply believing something doesn’t make it so. The president’s desire for a world in which nations talk openly about their true feelings, perhaps share a good cry together, and sing kumbaya around the campfire, is the height of naivete.

So is this passage of his speech: ” … the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam. Islam teaches peace. Muslims the world over aspire to live with dignity and a sense of justice. And when it comes to America and Islam, there is no us and them, there is only us.”

But Islam and the holy Koran on which Muslim militant groups like al Qaeda and the Islamic State base their actions do call for the extermination of all who do not follow Islam, do demand that followers kill anyone who leaves the religion, do subjugate women. For the record, the Koran contains more than 100 verses that call Muslims to war with nonbelievers.

Mr. Obama said in his speech that “all people of faith have a responsibility to lift up the value at the heart of all great religions: Do unto thy neighbor as you would do — you would have done unto yourself.” But that is not a cornerstone of Islam. Militant Muslims have a very different belief: “Fight in the name of your religion with those who disagree with you.” And that edict comes straight from their holiest book.

To the president, that ideology “will wilt and die if it is consistently exposed and confronted and refuted in the light of day.” Again, the callowness is astounding. While he urged the world, “especially Muslim communities,” to reject the ideology that underlies al Qaeda and the Islamic State, nothing will change the fact that cold-blooded killers are determined to destroy the West, wipe all infidels from the face of the earth and build a new caliphate based on strict adherence to Shariah law (which leans heavily toward beheadings, lashings, stonings).

The president let loose some passing platitudes — “right makes might,” “the only language understood by killers like this is the language of force” — but in the end Mr. Obama still labors under the delusion that the Islamic State group and its ilk have “perverted one of the world’s great religions.” He still rejects “any suggestion of a clash of civilizations” — despite al Qaeda’s and Islamic State’s express declaration of war against western civilization (and anyone who is not Muslim).

In the end, Mr. Obama said: “No external power can bring about a transformation of hearts and minds,” which means America is powerless. The only solution in this multicultural world is sharing our true feelings honestly with those who not only fundamentally disagree with us, but vow to do us harm.

Exactly a year ago, Mr. Obama said this at the U.N.: “Together, we’ve also worked to end a decade of war.” But the worldwide war on terrorism does not end when the U.S. president decides it is so, it ends when the enemy is defeated.

While he says “peace is not merely the absence of war, but the presence of a better life,” he really should say only this: “We didn’t start this war, but we will end it.”

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Obama Praises Muslim Cleric Who Backed Fatwa on Killing of U.S. Soldiers

September 24, 2014

Obama Praises Muslim Cleric Who Backed Fatwa on Killing of U.S. Soldiers, Washington Free Beacon, , September 14, 2014

Barack ObamaPresident Barack Obama addresses the United Nations General Assembly / AP

Patrick Poole, a reporter and terrorism analyst who has long tracked Bin Bayyah, expressed shock that the Obama administration would endorse the cleric on the world stage.

“It is simply amazing that just a few months ago the State Department had to publicly apologize for tweeting out it’s support for Bin Bayyah, only to have Barack Obama go before the leaders of the entire world and publicly endorse Bin Bayyah’s efforts,” Poole said.

“It seems that nothing can stop this administration’s determination to rehabilitate Bin Bayyah’s image, transforming him from the Islamic cleric who issued the fatwa to kill Americans in Iraq and calling for the death of Jews to the de facto White House Islamic mufti,” he said.

This type of mentality has contributed to the administration’s foreign policy failures in the region,” Poole said.

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President Barack Obama favorably quoted and praised on Wednesday in his speech before the United Nations a controversial Muslim cleric whose organization has reportedly endorsed the terror group Hamas and supported a fatwa condoning the murder of U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

Obama in his remarks offered praise to controversial cleric Sheikh Abdallah Bin Bayyah and referred to him as a moderate Muslim leader who can help combat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s (ISIL or ISIS) radical ideology.

However, Bin Bayyah himself has long been engulfed in controversy for many of his views, including the reported backing of a 2004 fatwa that advocated violent resistance against Americans fighting in Iraq.

This is not the first time that the Obama administration has extoled Bin Bayyah, who also has served as the vice president of a Muslim scholars group founded by a radical Muslim Brotherhood leader who has called “for the death of Jews and Americans,” according to Fox News and other reports.

The State Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau (CT) was forced to issue multiple apologies earlier this year after the Washington Free Beacon reported on its promotion of Bin Bayyah on Twitter.

“This should not have been tweeted and has since been deleted,” the CT Bureau tweeted at the time after many expressed anger over the original endorsement of Bin Bayyah.

However, it appears that Obama and the White House are still supportive of Bin Bayyah, who, despite his past statements, is still hailed by some as a moderate alternative to ISIL and al Qaeda.

“The ideology of ISIL or al Qaeda or Boko Haram will wilt and die if it is consistently exposed, confronted, and refuted in the light of day,” Obama said before the U.N., according to a White House transcript of his remarks.

“Look at the new Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies—Sheikh bin Bayyah described its purpose: ‘We must declare war on war, so the outcome will be peace upon peace,’” Obama said, quoting the controversial cleric.

Concern over the administration’s relationship with Bin Bayyah started as early as 2013, when outrage ensued after he was reported to have met with Obama’s National Security Council staff at the White House.

While Bin Bayyah has condemned the actions of groups such as Boko Haram and ISIL, he also has taken controversial positions against Israel.

He issued in 2009 a fatwa “barring ‘all forms of normalization’ with Israel,” according to a Fox report on the White House meeting.

Additionally, the notorious 2004 fatwa permitting armed resistance against U.S. military personnel in Iraq reportedly stated that “resisting occupation troops” is a “duty” for all Muslims, according to reports about the edict.

Patrick Poole, a reporter and terrorism analyst who has long tracked Bin Bayyah, expressed shock that the Obama administration would endorse the cleric on the world stage.

“It is simply amazing that just a few months ago the State Department had to publicly apologize for tweeting out it’s support for Bin Bayyah, only to have Barack Obama go before the leaders of the entire world and publicly endorse Bin Bayyah’s efforts,” Poole said.

“It seems that nothing can stop this administration’s determination to rehabilitate Bin Bayyah’s image, transforming him from the Islamic cleric who issued the fatwa to kill Americans in Iraq and calling for the death of Jews to the de facto White House Islamic mufti,” he said.

This type of mentality has contributed to the administration’s foreign policy failures in the region,” Poole said.

“This is a snapshot of why this administration’s foreign policy in the Middle East is a complete catastrophe,” he said. “The keystone of their policy has been that so-called ‘moderate Islamists’ were going to be the great counter to al Qaeda. But if you take less than 30 seconds to do a Google search on any of these ‘moderate Islamists,’ you immediately find they are just a degree or two from the most hardcore jihadis and have little to no difference when it comes to condoning violence.”

A White House official said that the president’s remarks speak for themselves and declined to add anything further.

Categories: Iraq war, Islam, Islamic State, Jihad, Obama, Syria war
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The “Khorasan Group”, New Name, Old Threat

September 24, 2014

The “Khorasan Group”, New Name, Old Threat, Center for Security Policy, Kyle Shideler, September 24, 2014

There has been an attempt to try to separate out elements of Al Qaeda, into Core, and affiliates, and in the case of the Khorasan group, small units within affiliates. Or for that matter to disassociate ISIS from Al Qaeda, as ISIS being “too brutal”, when the reality is that ISIS hasn’t engaged in any tactic that Al Qaeda didn’t institute first.

This is a misguided attempt to convince people that what we face is a series of minor groups, and that the enemy who attacked us on 9/11 is broken, and/or on the run. The reality is we face an overarching enemy, a Global Islamic Movement – which is how they identify themselves – operating in accordance with a knowable strategic doctrine that we are not addressing.

That doctrine is Shariah law. It is the same law that ISIS is instituting in its territory, and the same one that Jabhat al Nusra and several of the other Syrian groups would institute in Syria if they prove successful in defeating Assad.

Until we are prepared to discuss the conflict in ideological terms, we will forever be playing “whack-a-mole” with a never ending series of “new” threats.

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Recent media coverage has been bombarded by revelations of a “new terror threat“, “more dangerous than ISIS”, the Khorasan Group.

Khorasan refers to the historical area under the Islamic Caliphate that corresponds to Iran/Afghanistan/Pakistan and the subcontinent, and the Khorasan Group, according to intelligence officials speaking to the media, consists of a relatively small (between fifty and a hundred) group of veteran Al Qaeda fighters from the Afghanistan/Pakistan region. These fighters are said to include a number of highly skilled bomb makers and other operatives, led by Muhsin al-Fadhli, a native Kuwaiti, and long time Al Qaeda insider, who specializes in financing and facilitation. Jihadist social media is hinting that Al-Fadhli may have been killed in the first round of U.S. bombing.

Khorasan Group’s mission, supposedly, has been to find jihadists with western passports who have travelled to Syria, train them, and reinsert them into the West to conduct spectacular attacks of the kind that Al Qaeda is famous for.

Khorasan Group operates in and among Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, and there’s been lively debate in the counterterrorism community over whether its really worthwhile distinguishing between Jabhat al-Nusra and Khorasan group at all. This is significant because Jabhat al-Nusra, despite being Al Qaeda, is deeply intertwined with the Syrian rebels at-large, and they are widely supported by these rebels, including those that the Obama strategy calls for arming and training to fight ISIS. For their part, Jabhat al Nusra hasn’t made the distinction, claiming they were the recipient of U.S. bombings.

It’s entirely plausible that intelligence suggested that this Khorasan group was preparing an imminent attack, and even if they weren’t, they are definitely enemies of America and a legitimate target.

But the extra hype about this specific group, and separating them out as somehow different or more threatening than Jabhat al Nusra, and Al Qaeda proper, has more to do with attempting to limit the negative reaction from rebels within Syria, and to distract Americans from the reality that in Syria there really are few good guys, with a possible exception of the Kurdish forces, who aren’t really receiving support. That strategy has already failed, with multiple Syrian rebel groups complaining about the strikes against Jabhat al Nusra, includingone group expected to be the core of the force the U.S. intends to train to send against ISIS.

There has been an attempt to try to separate out elements of Al Qaeda, into Core, and affiliates, and in the case of the Khorasan group, small units within affiliates. Or for that matter to disassociate ISIS from Al Qaeda, as ISIS being “too brutal”, when the reality is that ISIS hasn’t engaged in any tactic that Al Qaeda didn’t institute first.

This is a misguided attempt to convince people that what we face is a series of minor groups, and that the enemy who attacked us on 9/11 is broken, and/or on the run. The reality is we face an overarching enemy, a Global Islamic Movement – which is how they identify themselves – operating in accordance with a knowable strategic doctrine that we are not addressing.

That doctrine is Shariah law. It is the same law that ISIS is instituting in its territory, and the same one that Jabhat al Nusra and several of the other Syrian groups would institute in Syria if they prove successful in defeating Assad.

Our enemy knows that you can not defeat an opponent you do not name. They do not say that their war is with the U.S. Army,  the 75th Ranger Regiment, or the 5th Special Forces Group. They say plainly and openly, that their war is with America, and the allies of America, and more importantly, that it is an ideological war, based on a conflict between belief systems which are irreconcilable.

Until we are prepared to discuss the conflict in ideological terms, we will forever be playing “whack-a-mole” with a never ending series of “new” threats.

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