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Misunderstanding al Qaeda

September 26, 2014

Misunderstanding al Qaeda

The threat remains—and spreads.Oct 6, 2014, Vol. 20, No. 04 •

By THOMAS JOSCELYN

via Misunderstanding al Qaeda | The Weekly Standard.

 

On Tuesday, September 23, the U.S. government announced that a new bombing campaign was under way in Syria. The Obama administration had been building the case for airstrikes for weeks. The president and his surrogates repeatedly highlighted the threat posed by the Islamic State (often called the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL), which has captured large swaths of territory across Iraq and Syria. Unexpectedly, the administration announced that American missiles had also struck something called the “Khorasan group,” which was in the final stages of planning attacks in the West. The group may even have been close to striking inside the United States.

Above, Muhsin al Fadhli; below, a September 23 bombing run

Above, Muhsin al Fadhli; below, a September 23 bombing run

NEWSCOM

Widespread confusion ensued. The press wondered aloud, “What is the Khorasan group?” It is a “new” terrorist organization, some reported. It is an “al Qaeda offshoot,” others claimed. All of the following descriptors were used of the group: “little-known,” “shadowy,” “mysterious,” “previously unknown.”

But you have heard of the Khorasan group before. It is, to put it simply, al Qaeda.

Ayman al Zawahiri, the head of al Qaeda, ordered trusted operatives from Afghanistan, Chechnya, Iran, Pakistan, Yemen, and North Africa to relocate to Syria. Some of the al Qaeda operatives involved are so notorious that U.S. counterterrorism officials have tracked them, off and on, for more than a decade.

Zawahiri tasked his men with plotting mass-casualty attacks in the West. And, al Qaeda reasoned, Syria offered distinct advantages over other prospective launching pads. Until the U.S.-led military intervention, al Qaeda’s terrorists had established safe havens inside the country that allowed them to set up laboratories and bomb-making factories for testing new explosive devices. Western counterterrorism defenses have made it difficult for al Qaeda to get bombs on board planes and well-trained operatives in place to carry out their missions. So the terrorists are seeking undetectable explosives, like the underwear bomb that nearly took down a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day 2009.

The number of Western foreign fighters inside Syria today is unprecedented, providing al Qaeda with a deep pool of recruits. Many Western fighters have gone off to fight for Jabhat al Nusrah, al Qaeda’s official branch in Syria. Al Qaeda was sorting through these fighters looking for dedicated and skilled jihadists like the members of the Hamburg cell that produced the kamikaze pilots responsible for attacking New York and Washington on 9/11. Syria also offers a geographic advantage. It is much easier for al Qaeda recruits to travel to and from Syria than, say, the remote regions of Afghanistan and northern Pakistan. Indeed, American and European counterterrorism authorities are already attempting to track hundreds of fighters who have returned to the West from Syria.

It is easy to see why Ayman al Zawahiri and his subordinates decided to establish a new base of operations in Syria. Why, then, did U.S. officials and reporters have such a hard time, at first, explaining that the airstrikes targeting the Khorasan group were really just part of our long war against al Qaeda?

The confusion is no accident. The way President Obama, his subordinates, and some U.S. intelligence officials think and talk about al Qaeda is wrong.

On September 24, national security adviser Susan Rice appeared on NBC’s Today show. Citing the airstrikes against the Khorasan group and ISIL in Syria and other recent developments, host Matt Lauer asked a commonsensical question, “What happened to the days when the administration was able to say it felt confident that we had dealt a crippling blow to al Qaeda and Islamic militants?”

Rice responded, “Well, Matt, understand what we’ve been saying. We have been focused for many years, as you know, on al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, what we call al Qaeda core. And that element of al Qaeda, which is the one that hatched the 9/11 plot and executed it, has been substantially degraded and doesn’t at this stage pose nearly the same type of threat that it used to.”

She continued, “What has happened, though, over years, is that al Qaeda has metastasized. Imagine a cancer that had an original tumor. Now elements of the cells of that tumor have moved to places like the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen, parts of Africa, Somalia, and what we call the Sahel region, Mali. And now also to Syria. So we are having to deal with each of these cells. As you’ve seen, we’ve taken action in Yemen, we’ve taken action in Somalia, and now we’re taking action, as necessary, in Syria.”

Rice’s answer is both wrong and myopic.

First, the so-called Khorasan group is part of core al Qaeda. The idea that terrorists cannot be core al Qaeda solely because they are located outside of Afghanistan and Pakistan is obtuse. Documents recovered in Osama bin Laden’s compound show that the al Qaeda master ordered some of his minions out of the drones’ kill box in northern Pakistan and maintained ongoing communications with terrorists around the globe. The general manager of al Qaeda’s global network today is in Yemen.

Al Qaeda operatives can and do travel around the world, especially to and from Syria. Muhsin al Fadhli, a Kuwaiti who was targeted in the airstrikes, was first involved in al Qaeda’s attack planning as early as 2002. Fadhli has been tied to the October 6, 2002, attack on the French ship MV Limburg, as well as the October 8, 2002, attack against U.S. Marines stationed on Kuwait’s Faylaka Island. One Marine was killed in the Faylaka Island shootout. Fadhli is so trusted within al Qaeda that he was one of the few jihadists to have foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks, which, for obvious reasons, were kept secret beforehand. The U.S. government first designated Fadhli an al Qaeda terrorist in 2005.

One of Fadhli’s co-leaders in al Qaeda’s Khorasan group is a jihadist known as Sanafi al Nasr, who is a third cousin of Osama bin Laden. Nasr, who leads a senior planning committee within al Qaeda, in addition to other duties, was groomed to rise through al Qaeda’s ranks at a young age because of his impeccable pedigree. Several of his brothers, two of whom were once detained at Guantánamo before being freed, became loyal al Qaeda operatives. Other family members, including his father, have been tied to al Qaeda as well. Gulf donors know that Nasr will put their money to good use for al Qaeda because he is a fully made man.

Fadhli, Nasr, and their cohorts in the Khorasan group are, by any reasonable definition, core al Qaeda members. In addition, Fadhli and Nasr once oversaw al Qaeda’s Iran-based network, which the Obama administration has described as a “core facilitation pipeline” for al Qaeda. Al Qaeda terrorists with similar backgrounds have been identified in each of the other geographic areas Rice listed.

Second, al Qaeda’s planned attacks, staged from Syria, directly refute Rice’s claim that “it doesn’t at this stage pose nearly the same type of threat that it used to.” Administration officials justified the airstrikes on the Khorasan group—that is, al Qaeda—by explaining that it posed an “imminent” threat to the West. “Intelligence reports indicated that the group was in the final stages of plans to execute major attacks against Western targets and potentially the U.S. homeland,” Lieutenant General William Mayville, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, explained to reporters after the airstrikes. In other words, “core” al Qaeda in Syria was planning 9/11-style attacks.

Third, by likening al Qaeda to cancer, Rice employed the same tortuous metaphor that administration officials have repeated over and over. As anyone who has had a loved one pass away from cancer knows, however, metastatic cancer is one of the worst-case scenarios. Even if the “original tumor” is “substantially degraded,” tumors elsewhere can be just as lethal, if not more so. No one wants to hear that a cancer has metastasized, and doctors desperately try to prevent it from doing so. And, of course, it is no comfort to family and friends of the deceased
to learn that they died from a secondary tumor rather than the original one.

The administration’s cancer metaphor is particularly absurd with respect to al Qaeda. Only by defining “core” al Qaeda in exceptionally narrow terms can one claim it has been decimated. The attack planning in Syria alone is enough to undermine this perception.

What administration officials also ignore is that al Qaeda’s geographic expansion, or “metastasis,” has always been part of the plan. Despite al Qaeda’s leadership disputes with ISIL, there are more jihadist groups openly loyal to al Qaeda today than on 9/11 or when Barack Obama took office in January 2009. Earlier this month, the group announced the creation of a fifth regional branch, Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), which likely subsumes several existing jihadist organizations. On September 6, AQIS-trained fighters boarded a Pakistani ship. Al Qaeda says they were attempting to launch missiles at an American warship, which would have been catastrophic, both in terms of the immediate damage and the ensuing political crisis in Pakistan. AQIS joins Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Jabhat al Nusrah (Syria), and Al Shabaab (Somalia) as formal branches of al Qaeda, all of which owe their loyalty to Zawahiri. Other unannounced branches of al Qaeda probably exist, too. These are not just “cells,” as Rice put it, but fully developed insurgency organizations that challenge governments for control of nation-states.

Other administration officials did a better job than Rice of explaining the Khorasan group. Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser to the president, explained that it was made up of “core al Qaeda operatives” who had relocated to Syria. President Obama said they are “seasoned al Qaeda operatives.” But accurate descriptions such as these have been the exception, not the rule, when it comes to the Obama administration’s descriptions of al Qaeda.

President Obama has long spoken of al Qaeda in exactly the terms used by Rice. “Today, the core of al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan is on the path to defeat,” Obama said in a speech at the National Defense University on May 23, 2013. “Their remaining operatives spend more time thinking about their own safety than plotting against us.”

It is no wonder that, initially, there was such public confusion over the Khorasan group. Its very existence refutes the U.S. government’s paradigm for understanding the terrorist threat. Now more than ever, the administration should revisit its assessments of al Qaeda. The idea that there is a geographically confined “core” of al Qaeda in South Asia that has little to do with what happens elsewhere is undermined by a mountain of evidence. Al Qaeda is still a cohesive international network of personalities and organizations. The details of al Qaeda’s plotting in Syria make this clear.

And, according to the administration itself, al Qaeda was close to striking the West once again.

Thomas Joscelyn is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. 

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Syrian Brotherhood Stands Nearer to ISIS Than to U.S. :: The Investigative Project on Terrorism

September 25, 2014

Syrian Brotherhood Stands Nearer to ISIS Than to U.S.

by Ravi Kumar

IPT News  September 16, 2014

via Syrian Brotherhood Stands Nearer to ISIS Than to U.S. :: The Investigative Project on Terrorism.

While the United States tries to build a coalition of Arab allies to join the fight against the terrorist group ISIS, now known as the Islamic State, one group which stands to benefit directly is coming out against Western intervention and expressing unity with other radical jihadists.

A Syrian Muslim Brotherhood spokesman says attacks on the Islamic State by the United States and its allies are not the answer.

“Our battle with ISIS is an intellectual battle,” Omar Mushaweh said in a statement published Sept. 9 on the Syrian Brotherhood’s official website, “and we wish that some of its members get back to their sanity, we really distinguish between those in ISIS who are lured and brainwashed and they might go back to the path of righteous, and between those who has foreign agendas and try to pervert the way of the [Syrian] revolution.”

Rather, the first target for any Western intervention should be dictator Bashar al-Assad’s regime, Mushaweh asserts, according to a translation of his comments by the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

Such comments should reinforce Western concerns about the Syrian Brotherhood, whose members are prominent among the Free Syrian Army (FSA), one of the supposedly moderate factions in the Syrian civil war which receive U.S. training and weapons. And it shows the challenge of finding truly moderate allies on the ground in Syria. Compared to ISIS, the FSA might be considered moderate. Then again, ISIS was so ruthlessly violent that al-Qaida disavowed the group in February.

In addition, the Syrian Brotherhood openly mourned the death last week of a commander in Ahrar Al Asham, a Syrian faction with ties to al-Qaida.

Mushaweh’s views about the U.S. intervention are shared by other Brotherhood members. Another Brotherhood leader, Zuher Salem, minimized the ISIS threat by comparing current American rhetoric to that which preceded the 2003 Iraq invasion.

“All of these tales that are being told by America about the primitive, terrorist and threatening nature of the Islamic State are similar to the tales that have been told in regard to the Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, and about the crimes against humanity,” Salem wrote in an article published Sept. 13 by the Arab East Center, a think tank associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. “It is trifling to race with others to condemn terrorism and the killing of the American journalist, because we should be aware the aim of this anti ISIS coalition is to pave the way for an Iranian hegemony over the region.”

Yusuf Al Qaradawi, an influential Brotherhood cleric living in Qatar, joined in criticizing the American military campaign against ISIS. “I totally disagree with [ISIS] ideology and means,” he wrote on Twitter, “but I don’t at all accept that the one to fight it is America, which does not act in the name of Islam but rather in its own interests, even if blood is shed.”

While both are Sunni Muslim movements, each seeking to establish a global Islamic Caliphate, ISIS views the Brotherhood as too passive, while the Brotherhood sees ISIS as being unnecessarily violent in pursuing its aims.

The two have common enemies, however, including the ruling regimes of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, and Jordan, which have worked to cripple the Brotherhood, and which ISIS considers infidel regimes which should be toppled in pursuit of a broader Islamic Caliphate.

In another indication the Syrian Brotherhood is no moderating force, it issued a statement on its website Sept. 10 mourning the killing of Ahrar Al Asham leader Hassan Aboud in a suicide bombing.

“Syria has given a  constellation of the best of its sons, and the bravest leaders of the Islamic front and Ahrar Al Sham,” the head of the Brotherhood’s political bureau, Hassan Al Hashimi, said in the statement translated by the IPT. “We consider them Martyrs.”

Ahrar Al Sham is a radical group co-founded by Abu Khaled al-Suri, who was al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri’s designated representative in Syria. Al-Suri was killed in February in a suicide bombing believed to be carried out by ISIS.

Aboud made clear his ideological links to al-Qaida clear in a July 2013 Twitter post. “May God have mercy on the Mujahid Sheikh Abdullah Azzam. He was a scholar of Jihad and the morality.” Azzam was considered a mentor to Osama bin Laden, and pushed conspiracy theories involving Jewish and Christian plots against Islam.

The Brotherhood official mourning Aboud, Al Hashimi, has visited the United States a couple of times since the Syrian civil war started.

 

He spoke at the controversial Dar al-Hijrah mosque in northern Virginia on Nov. 17, 2013, as part of a program organized by the Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF). The SETF has worked closely with Muslim Brotherhood members and some of its officials have expressed anti-Semitic statements and solidarity with Hamas.

Still, the SETF has partnered with the State Department to implement training projects in Syria. Last December, the SETF’s executive director endorsed working with a coalition of Syrian opposition groups called the Islamic Front, even though several entities involved, including Ahrar Al-Sham, had fought with ISIS and the radical Jabhat al-Nusra, or al-Nusra Front. Four Islamic Front affiliates also endorsed a declaration calling for “the rule of sharia and making it the sole source of legislation” in a post-Assad Syria.

The announcement of the event was distributed to the Dar Al Hijrah mailing list, but without mentioning that Al Hashimi is the head of the political bureau of the Muslim Brotherhood.

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Arab states risk backlash by joining Syria strikes

September 25, 2014

Arab states risk backlash by joining Syria strikes

As Gulf nations flex their military muscles, they are also treading dangerous, and complicated, political waters

By Adam Schreck September 25, 2014, 9:07 am

via Arab states risk backlash by joining Syria strikes | The Times of Israel.

 

Hamas backed by Qatar and building rockets again  and the USA is in coalition with Qatar an use Qatar air bases .

And obama blame Israel for the turmoil in the middle east  , and abu mazen smellls his change in the UN.

The President called out to the Israeli leadership and public to not give up peace. “This conflict is the main source of problems in the region; for far too long, it has been used in part as a way to distract people from problems at home. And the violence engulfing the region today has made too many Israelis ready to abandon the hard work of peace”.

 

Saudi Arabian air force pilots sit in the cockpit of a fighter jet at an undisclosed location on September 23, 2014, after taking part in a mission to strike Islamic State targets in Syria (Photo credit: AFP photo/Handout — Saudi Press Agency)

 

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The Arab nations that joined the United States in striking the Islamic State group in Syria were unusually open about it, throwing aside their usual secrecy and wariness about appearing too close to Washington. Saudi Arabia even released heroic-looking photos of its pilots who flew the warplanes.

Their boasting reflects the depth of Gulf nations’ concern over the threat of the extremist group sweeping over Iraq and Syria. It also shows their desire to flex some military muscle toward regional rival Iran, a key supporter of the Syrian and Iraqi governments.

But the Sunni monarchies run the risk of a backlash by hard-line Islamists angered by the attacks against the Sunni fighters, whom many see as battling a Shiite-led government in Baghdad. Militant websites sympathetic to the Islamic State group lit up on Wednesday with the photos of the Saudi pilots, alongside calls for them to be killed.

Even beyond the ranks of hard-liners, many around the region are suspicious of US motives in yet again launching military action in an Arab nation. Many among the Syrian rebels grumble that the United States and Arab nations ignored their pleas for action against Syrian President Bashar Assad for years and are intervening now against the radicals only because it is in their interest.

Moreover, the US expanded the strikes beyond the Islamic State, hitting al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria, the al-Nusra Front, in a bid to take out a cell called the Khorasan Group that is believed to be plotting attacks against the United States. That has other Syrian rebel factions with Islamic ideologies — and there are many of them — worried they, too, could be hit by the Americans.

“For four years, we called on the West to help us topple the regime, but it’s clear the target is the Islamic factions,” said a Damascus-based opposition activist, Abu Akram al-Shami, speaking via Skype.

The countries whose air forces carried out strikes were all Sunni-led states run by hereditary monarchs with longstanding ties to the American military: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Bahrain. Another Gulf monarchy, Qatar, played a supporting role, according to the Pentagon. US President Barack Obama — who had been eager for Arab backing in the campaign — praised them for their willingness to stand “shoulder to shoulder” with the US.

Perhaps most vulnerable to a backlash is Jordan, which borders Syria and has a strong community of Islamists and ultraconservative Salafis who have sympathies with the Islamic State group. Jordan was the homeland of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the man who founded al-Qaeda’s branch in Iraq, which eventually evolved into the Islamic State group. He was killed eight years ago in a US airstrike in Iraq.

Mohammed al-Shalabi, a prominent figure in the jihadi-Salafi movement in Jordan, told The Associated Press that while the Islamic State group has “made mistakes” — killing journalists, for example — it is still part of the Muslim nation and US strikes against it will only build support for it.

“The US is hated in the region because of its support for Israel. People will now feel sympathy with (the Islamic State group) against the US,” he said.

“This war is not in Jordan’s interests,” the deputy head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, Zaki Bani Rsheid, told the Al-Ghad newspaper. He warned that the war would only boost the power of Iran across the region and that Jordan’s participation could bring “responses targeting its internal security and stability.”

In a move some saw as an attempt to soothe Salafi anger, a Jordanian court on Wednesday acquitted and freed a radical Muslim preacher known for his pro-al-Qaeda sermons, Abu Qatada. Analysts said the preacher could help give legitimacy to the campaign against the Islamic State group — or at least help keep Salafis quiet over it.

The action in Syria makes for the largest grouping of Arab military forces against a common target since the broad-based coalition formed to evict Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1991, according to analysts at the Austin, Texas-based geopolitical intelligence company Stratfor.

Their participation reflects the growing concern among Gulf countries — particularly Saudi Arabia and the Emirates — about the rise of Islamist groups in the wake of the Arab Spring, such as the Muslim Brotherhood movement and various al-Qaeda affiliates.

“The Islamic State represents a direct threat to the national security of these countries,” said Hossam Mohamed, a political analyst at the Regional Center for Strategic Studies in Cairo.

Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, the two richest of the group, boast some of the region’s best-equipped militaries, including Western-made fighter jets and Apache attack helicopters.

The Emirates in particular has been playing a more active military role. It has deployed troops as part of the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan and, along with Qatar, contributed warplanes to the alliance’s aerial campaign over Libya in 2011 that helped lead to the ouster of Moammar Gadhafi. American officials have also said the Emirates carried out airstrikes against Islamist rebels in Libya last month, but the country has not confirmed that.

American and French sorties targeting the extremists have flown from air bases in Qatar and the Emirates, and from the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush, which is assigned to the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain. Saudi Arabia has agreed to host training facilities for Syrian rebels on its territory.

It remains unclear how much of a military role the countries will play from here on. Their participation may turn out to be token, the Stratfor analysts said — or “these airstrikes could develop into a small but growing assertiveness among the region’s Arab monarchies.”

However, Saudi Arabia and its allies are looking beyond just striking the extremists. They want to pressure Iran and eventually turn the campaign against Assad, whose ouster they seek, said Mustafa Alani, an expert on security and terrorism at the Geneva-based Gulf Research Center.

“They are not hoping to topple the regime by military strikes. Military strikes are only a means to generate pressure on the regime to accept a diplomatic political solution,” Alani said. “The idea is to weaken the regime to send a clear message.”

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U.S.-Backed Syrian Group Harakat al-Hazm Condemns U.S. Strikes on ISIS as ‘Attack on the Revolution’

September 24, 2014

U.S.-Backed Syrian Group Harakat al-Hazm Condemns U.S. Strikes on ISIS as ‘Attack on the Revolution’

byPatrick Poole

via The PJ Tatler » U.S.-Backed Syrian Group Harakat al-Hazm Condemns U.S. Strikes on ISIS as ‘Attack on the Revolution’.

 

September 24, 2014 – 4:47 am

Just days after Congress approved $500 million in support for “vetted moderate” Syrian rebels, one of those same “vetted moderate” rebel groups currently receiving heavy weaponry from the U.S. has condemned the U.S. for airstrikes on ISIS in Syria earlier this week.

Harakat al-Hazm, which was one of the first Syrian rebel groups to receive heavy weapons from the U.S. this year, issued a statement Tuesday denouncing the U.S. for the anti-ISIS attacks. Harakat al-Hazm has been hailed by the Washington, D.C. foreign policy establishment as “rebels worth supporting” and “a model candidate for greater U.S. and allied support, including lethal military assistance.”

As reported by the L.A. Times:

One of the administration’s favored moderate rebel factions, Harakat Hazm, part of the Free Syrian Army alliance and a recipient of U.S. missiles and training, issued a statement Tuesday denouncing the “external intervention” — that is, the U.S.-led bombing campaign in Syria — as “an attack on the revolution.”

The group said its main goal was toppling Assad. It is demanding “unconditional arming” of the Free Syrian Army, yet its members also acknowledge fighting alongside Al Nusra Front, the official Al Qaeda force in Syria.

Still, the country’s motley bands of fighters labeled as moderates may well be the White House’s best hope for now. It has few other options.

Here is a copy of the statement by Harakat al-Hazm:

ByPCk0yCIAExhvhHarakat al-Hazm may sound familiar to PJ Media readers.

Earlier this month I reported that Hazm fighters admitted to an L.A. Times reporter that they were fighting alongside Jabhat al-Nusra, the official al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria. I also noted that despite media claims that Harakat al-Hazm had released a statement of “rejection of all forms of cooperation and coordination” with Nusra, it signed a statement of alliance with Nusra to prevent the Assad regime from advancing into Aleppo.

The Obama administration billed the $500 million approved last week by Congress as aid to the rebel groups to help roll back gains by hardcore jihadist groups, including ISIS.

And now that one of the primary groups to which the U.S. is supplying heavy weapons in order to supposedly “roll back” ISIS gains has not only denounced the U.S. for this week’s airstrikes on ISIS, declaring them an “attack on the revolution,” but is also partnering with a U.S.-designated terrorist group, Jabhat al-Nusra, what hope is there really that the “vetted moderate” Syrian rebel groups are going to accomplish that goal?

And one final question: in light of this catastrophe, who is vetting the vetters?

 

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Obama v. The Generals: Should Top Brass Contradict the Commander-in-chief in Public?

September 24, 2014

Obama v. The Generals: Should Top Brass Contradict the Commander-in-chief in Public? You Tube, September 23, 2014

 

Categories: Generals, Iraq war, Obama, Syria war
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Britain’s Female Jihadists

September 22, 2014

Britain’s Female Jihadists, Gatestone Institute, Soeren Kern, September 21, 2014

(The gentler sex and the religion of peace submission and death. — DM)

“My son and I love life with the beheaders.” — British jihadist Sally Jones.

Mujahidah Bint Usama published pictures of herself on Twitter holding a severed head while wearing a white doctor’s jacket; alongside it, the message: “Dream job, a terrorist doc.”

British female jihadists are now in charge of guarding as many as 3,000 non-Muslim Iraqi women and girls held captive as sex slaves.

“The British women are some of the most zealous in imposing the IS laws in the region. I believe that’s why at least four of them have been chosen to join the women police force.” — British terrorism analyst Melanie Smith.

Mahmood also called on Muslims to conduct jihad operations on British streets. In a recent tweet, she counselled: “If you cannot make it to the battlefield, then bring the battlefield to yourself.” Great Britain is now the leading European source of female jihadists in Syria and Iraq.

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As many as 60 Muslim women between the ages of 18 and 24 are believed to have left Britain to join the jihadist group Islamic State [IS] during the past twelve months alone, according to British terrorism analysts.

Dozens more have inquired about joining IS since the beheading of American journalist James Foley in Syria in August 2014 set off a frenzy of enthusiasm within jihadist circles.

Many of the women seem to be motivated by the hope of finding a jihadist husband, analysts say, apparently because they covet the cultural and religious “prestige” conferred upon Muslim widows whose husbands have died as “martyrs” for Allah.

Until recently, most of the British women affiliated with IS have been restricted to performing domestic chores such as cleaning and cooking. Lately, however, some women have become restive and have demanded a greater role in the IS enterprise.

Several British women are now engaged in IS recruiting efforts, using social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to encourage a new wave of British jihadists to travel to Syria and Iraq.

A half-dozen other women have been incorporated into a female-only militia called the Al-Khansaa brigade, based in the Syrian city of Raqqa, where the IS has set up its headquarters.

Al-Khansaa—named after a seventh-century female Arab poet who was a contemporary of the Muslim Prophet Mohammed—was established in February 2014 with the purpose of exposing male enemy jihadists who try to disguise themselves by wearing women’s clothing in order to avoid detection and detention at IS checkpoints.

The brigade was also established to detain civilian women in Raqqa who do not follow the Islamic State’s strict interpretation of Islamic Sharia law, including the requirement that all women be fully covered in public and that they be accompanied by a male chaperone.

In an interview with the blog “Syria Deeply,” Abu Ahmad, an IS official in Raqqa, explained the rationale behind Al-Khansaa. He said:

“We have established the brigade to raise awareness of our religion among women, and to punish women who do not abide by the law. There are only women in this brigade, and we have given them their own facilities to prevent the mixture of men and women.”

British terrorism analyst Melanie Smith told the Daily Telegraph that Al-Khansaa is a Sharia law police brigade whose social media accounts are run by British women and written in English.

“The British women are some of the most zealous in imposing the IS laws in the region,” Smith said. “I believe that’s why at least four of them have been chosen to join the women police force.”

The Al-Khansaa brigade has now expanded its remit to operating brothels for the use of IS fighters. The result is that British female jihadists are now in charge of guarding as many as 3,000 non-Muslim Iraqi women and girls who are being held captive as sex slaves, according to British media.

“It is the British women who have risen to the top of the Islamic State’s Sharia police and now they are in charge of this operation,” another analyst told the Daily Mirror. “It is as bizarre as it is perverse.”

A key figure in the Al-Khansaa brigade is said to be Aqsa Mahmood, a 20-year-old woman from Glasgow, Scotland who left for Syria in November 2013. Mahmood attended private schools and had wanted to become a doctor, but she dropped out of university without warning and vanished overnight in order to become a jihadist and marry an IS fighter.

Using the jihadist name of Umm Layth (Arabic for “Mother of the Lion”) on Twitter (account now suspended), Mahmood has encouraged other British Muslim women to leave their families behind in order to join the jihad in Syria. She wrote:

“Biggest tip to sisters: don’t take detours, take the quickest route, don’t play around with your Hijrah [religious pilgrimage] by staying longer than 1 day for safety and get in touch with your contacts as soon as you reach your destination.”

Mahmood, who says she is dedicated to the “pursuit of Allah’s pleasure,” added: “Once you arrive in the land of jihad, [IS] is your family.”

In two tweets Mahmood described the kinship she felt with fellow Muslims in the Islamic State. Before referring to the place as “paradise,” she concluded:

“Wallahi [I swear] I will never be able to do justice with words as to how this place makes me feel or what Ansaar of Shaam [helpers of Syria] have done for me and Allah only knows how much I love and appreciate these people for His sake…”

In another post, Mahmood called on Muslims to imitate those who murdered British soldier Lee Rigby outside the Woolwich Barracks in London in May 2013. “Follow the examples of your brothers from Woolwich, Texas and Boston,” she wrote, referring also to the shooting in Fort Hood, Texas in November 2009 and the Boston Marathon bombings in April 2013.

Mahmood also called on Muslims to conduct jihad operations on British streets. In a recent tweet, she counselled: “If you cannot make it to the battlefield, then bring the battlefield to yourself.”

She also wrote about martyrdom: “Allahu Akbar, there’s no way to describe the feeling of sitting with the Akhawat [sisters] waiting on news of whose Husband has attained Shahadah [martyrdom].”

British media have published photographs of a burqa-clad Mahmood holding a shotgun, and of a child holding an AK-47 machine gun.

Mahmood’s parents have said they cannot understand why their daughter ran away from home to become a jihadist:

“Our daughter was brought up with love and affection in a happy home, attended Craigholme private school, went to university and was always taught to show respect for mankind and was well integrated into this society. She may believe that the jihadists of ISIS are her new family but they are not and are simply using her.

“If our daughter, who had all the chances and freedom in life, could become a bedroom radical, then it is possible for this to happen to any family.”

Another British jihadist linked to the Al-Khansaa brigade, a 21-year-old medical student who goes by the name Mujahidah Bint Usama, published pictures of herself on Twitter holding a severed head while wearing a white doctor’s jacket. The gruesome image appears alongside the message “Dream job, a terrorist doc,” followed by images of smiley faces and love hearts.

Usama’s Twitter account has now been suspended, but in her description of herself she wrote: “Running away from jihad will not save you from death. You can die as a coward or you can die as a martyr.”

Yet another British jihadist, a 22-year-old convert to Islam named Khadijah Dare, has vowed to become the first female jihadist to execute a British or American captive.

Writing under the Twitter name Muhajirah fi Sham (Arabic for “immigrant in Syria”), Dare asked for links to video footage of the beheading of James Foley. In a slang-filled tweet she wrote:

“Any links 4 da execution of da journalist plz. Allahu Akbar. UK must b shaking up ha ha. I wna b da 1st UK woman 2 kill a UK or US terorrist!(sic)”.

In another tweet, Dare wrote:

“All da people back in Dar ul kufr [land of disbelievers] what are you waiting for … hurry up and join da caravan to where the laws of Allah is implemented.

“No one from Lewisham [a borough in southeast London] has come here apart from an 18-year-old sister shame on all those people who afford fancy meals and clothes and do not make hijra [Mohamed’s flight from Mecca to Medina in 622]. Shame on you.”

Dare was born in London and converted to Islam at age 18, when she began worshipping at the Lewisham Islamic Center, a mosque linked to the radical cleric Abu Hamza and the two killers of Lee Rigby.

Dare moved to Syria in 2012 to marry a Swedish jihadist named Abu Bakr. The marriage was arranged through his mother on Facebook and she did not meet him until the day of their wedding. Dare recently published pictures of her son holding an AK-47 rifle.

In a Channel 4 documentary that aired in July 2013, Dare, who at that time went by the name Maryam, said:

“I couldn’t find anyone in the UK who was willing to sacrifice their life in this world for the life in the hereafter… I prayed, and Allah ruled that I came here to marry Abu Bakr.”

She also called on other British Muslims to join the jihad:

“You need to wake up and stop being scared of death…we know that there’s heaven and hell. At the end of the day, Allah’s going to question you. Instead of sitting down and focusing on your families or your study, you just need to wake up….”

702Khadijah “Maryam” Dare, a young London woman who converted to Islam and moved to Syria to marry a Swedish jihadist, is shown here in Aleppo setting off to go shopping with a friend and their small children. They bring along their AK-47 assault rifles “just in case”. (Image source: Channel 4 video screenshot)

On August 31, the Daily Mirror reported that Dare’s jihadist rants have turned her into a “celebrity jihadi” who has become an “immense threat” due to her popularity. The newspaper reported that British security services have now made finding her a “top priority” over fears that radical Muslims are answering her calls to leave the UK to join IS in the Middle East.

In a four-minute video entitled, “Answering the Call–Foreign Fighters (Mujahedeen) in Syria,” a burka-clad Dare appears firing an AK-47 rifle and pleading with fellow Brits to fight by her side in Syria. Speaking in a London accent, she said:

“These are your brothers and sisters as well and they need your help. So instead of sitting down and focusing on your families or focusing on your studies, you need to stop being selfish because time is ticking.”

Not all British female jihadists are in their teens and twenties. A 45-year-old British convert to Islam named Sally Jones recently issued threats via Twitter to behead Christians. Jones, who changed her name to Umm Hussain al-Britani, wrote: “You Christians all need beheading with a nice blunt knife and stuck on the railings at Raqqa. Come here I’ll do it for you!”

Police say Jones, who also goes by the name Sakinah Hussain, travelled to Syria in late 2013 after converting to Islam and developing an online romance with a 20-year-old British jihadist from Birmingham named Junaid Hussain.

Hussain, who uses the alias Abu Hussain al-Britani, was jailed in 2012 for running a computer hacking group known as Team Poison. He escaped to Syria in 2013 while on bail, and has been posting extremist messages on social media pledging to conquer the world and kill infidels.

Police fear Hussain is masterminding plan to teach jihadists how to empty the bank accounts of rich and famous Britons to fund terror attacks.

According to British media, Jones, originally from Kent in southeast England, was once an aspiring musician with an all-girl punk rock band but ended up spending a lifetime on social welfare benefits. She is now raising her 10-year-old son from a previous marriage as a Muslim under the Islamic State.

In an interview with The Sunday Times, Jones reflected on her new circumstances: “My son and I love life with the beheaders.”

 

Categories: Iraq war, Islam, Islamic State, Jihad, Syria
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Al Nusrah Front threatens to execute 2nd Lebanese hostage

September 21, 2014

Al Nusrah Front threatens to execute 2nd Lebanese hostage, Long War Journal, Thomas Joscelyn, September 21, 2014

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The Al Nusrah Front, al Qaeda’s official branch in Syria, is threatening to kill a second Lebanese hostage held in its custody. The man has been identified as Ali al Bazzal.

The threat was posted in tweets on one of the group’s official Twitter feeds. A banner containing the threat can be seen above.

In addition, a video posted online appears to show the group executing another Lebanese hostage, Mohammad Hamiyeh. In a tweet on Sept. 19, Al Nusrah said that Hamiyeh “is the first casualty of the stubbornness of the Lebanese military that has become a puppet in the hands of the Iranian party.”

The “Iranian party” is Hezbollah, which is fighting alongside Bashar al Assad’s forces against Al Nusrah and other rebel forces.

Lebanese officials subsequently confirmed that Hamiyeh has been killed. The al Qaeda group had repeatedly promised to kill Hamiyeh if its demands were not met.

The video shows a man shooting Hamiyeh in the head, with Bazzal sitting to his right. Bazzal then pleads for his life, saying that Hezbollah, the “party of the devil,” must alter its operations.

“If you don’t stop attacking and inciting against our Sunni brethren then I will follow my fellow soldier who was killed right there,” Bazzal says, according to The Daily Star, a publication based in Lebanon.

The video does not appear to have been posted on Al Nusrah’s official Twitter feeds, but instead surfaced online separately. For instance, the banner shown above was posted on Al Nusrah’s Twitter feed for the Qalamoun region of Syria. The video was not posted on the same feed.

The version of the video viewed by The Long War Journal also does not contain Al Nusrah’s official media logo.

Still, the image of the man identified as Bazzal in the video matches the picture in banner republished above, which was released by Al Nusrah.

The banner contains the question, “Who will pay the price?” Al Nusrah used that same question in the first video it released showing its Lebanese hostages, who were captured in August, as well as in subsequent statements and online banners.

The al Qaeda group says that Hamiyeh was the first to pay the price, because the Lebanese army and Hezbollah have not met their demands. Al Nusrah has said previously that it wants Hezbollah to remove its fighters from Syria, and a number of other conditions met. As in Al Nusrah’s past hostage operations, the government of Qatar is attempting to broker the negotiations.

Al Nusrah has shied away from killing its captives in recent weeks, releasing hostages on several occasions. The organization has not produced graphic beheading videos like its counterparts in the Islamic State, a jihadist group that has captured large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria since earlier this year. The Islamic State and Al Nusrah are fierce rivals.

While it has not produced gory execution videos like its rivals in the Islamic State, Al Nusrah has now executed a Lebanese soldier and threatened to kill another hostage.

Categories: Islam, Jihad, Syria
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EXCLUSIVE: Q and A with former Islamic State member

September 21, 2014

EXCLUSIVE: Q&A with former Islamic State member, Your Middle East, Rozh Ahmad, September 19, 2014

IS pic

Islamic State (IS) member “Sherko Omer” would now be a dead jihadist hadn’t he surrendered to the pro-Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in northeast Syria earlier this year. Journalist Rozh Ahmad met him to learn more about the experience.

In this interview “Omer” explains how he left his hometown in Iraqi Kurdistan to join the Syrian opposition and eventually became an IS member, what he witnessed and the reasons for which he risked his life to exit the extremist Islamic organisation.

Why and how did you join the Islamic State (IS) in Syria?

Two friends and I decided to leave Iraqi Kurdistan to join the Syrian opposition and its fight against the regime. In October 2013 we got contacts from several people close to the Kurdistan Islamic Group (Komal) in my hometown, Halabja. We were told that the contacts were members of the Free Syria Army (FSA). We met the contacts in Turkey and they took us to a hotel for few days. Afterward, they took us to a training camp on the Turkey-Syria border and we found ourselves at an ISIS (or IS) camp instead of FSA.

But how is it possible that you weren’t aware your contacts were IS jihadists?

Well, we spoke with them in standard Arabic but they did not mention anything about IS until we were at the training camp. They talked against the regime as a machinery killing its own Muslim people and we had already heard that from FSA on TV. Moreover, they had no beards, dressed in modern clothes and even took us to a hotel in the Turkish city of Kilis. We therefore assumed that they were FSA not IS, as did many others who came to Turkey to join the Syrian opposition but joined us at the IS camp.

Is it true that IS trains new recruits for beheadings on dead bodies at the camps?

Not true for the camp I was at, where beheading training was practiced with chickens and other animals. I did not do it because when we arrived they asked for my skills and qualifications and because I am a technical professional and I had qualifications, I was assigned to technical works and trained with pistols and lightweight weapons. This is because my main duty was to learn the communication equipment, interception of enemy phone and radio lines as well as rescuing digital gadgets and archives during attacks. I never engaged in a firefight and this was the precise reason why Kurdish YPG fighters agreed to hand me back to my family after months of investigations.

How did IS members treat you as a new recruit?

IS commanders were very nice and respectful at the camp. You would think you knew them for many years. They gave us the best food; clothes, weapons and we enjoyed the friendship and brotherhood. In reality we knew deep inside there was a choice to leave, but (we started) to think of ourselves as fighters taking this brotherhood and luxury to Syria and we were told that we had secured a place in heaven too, that was very comforting. But beside these facts, to be honest staying also felt like a moral obligation since they spent money, gave us food, clothes, cars and respected us so much that leaving the camp felt like betraying the good deeds of those people.

What about the promise of virgin angles [sic] in heaven, is there any truths to this?

Yes, of course. We were told that as martyrs we would have 72 eternal virgins in heaven and we can save dozens of our close relatives from hell too.

So, IS promises its’ recruits 72 virgin angels and you are saying this is not “anti-Islamic propaganda” as some people may otherwise claim?

We were promised women in heaven and on earth too based on IS jihadist teaching of the verses of some Suras of the holy book of Quran and hadiths by prophet Muhammad, all of which were explained through the Tafsir (explanation) by Islamic scholars like Ibn Majah, Bukhari and Ibn Kathir. We were told all non-Muslim women prisoners will be our wives and God wills it.

In Islamic holy war you cannot kill enemy women and children under any circumstances, they can only be taken as prisoners. It is permissible to have sexual intercourse with the captive women even if jihadists are married. You can buy and sell these women but for the children you have to raise them as home workers or teach them to become jihadists. I did none of these things because I was a communication technician not in the battlefield. And, who would claim otherwise when IS openly and proudly say they are carrying out these acts as implementation of Islamic Sharia.

Nonetheless, there are Muslim women who willingly offer their bodies for IS jihadists and this is called “Sex for Jihad” and they too will be compensated in heaven according to IS. However, these women were mostly with the commanders, I did not see average jihadist fighters with these Muslim women.

And everyone believed in this at the camp?

The consequences of disbelieving were not clear in an environment where they practice beheading. Nonetheless, many IS jihadist fighters truly believed all this but foreign recruits had no clue as to what the verses of holy Quran actually meant. I saw many foreign recruits who were put in the suicide squads not because they were “great and God wanted it” as IS commanders praised them in front of us, but basically because they were useless for IS, they spoke no Arabic, they weren’t good fighters and had no professional skills.  They were brainwashed into the “women in heaven” and those they could rape on earth before they eventually killed themselves. I am alive partly thanks to my qualifications.

You have to remember that IS has been portrayed as an organisation of gangs only, although this is evident what they do, but the political leadership pay unbelievable attention to education and educated recruits. But at the end of the day good moral values are based on the way education and intelligence are being used.

So IS jihadists could just take women prisoners and sleep with them against their will, which the world considers rape?

Not only I say this but the IS emirs and commanders openly and proudly says it too. They believe it is permissible to sleep with women prisoners even against their will if they are infidels, non-Muslims and apostate women.  This happened to Christian women in Al-Raqqa after their husbands were publically beheaded and I witnessed it. Now it is happening to Kurdish Yezidi women of Sinjar in Iraqi Kurdistan.

What did you witness in Al-Raqqa?

After training, my two Kurdish friends left to A’zaz where they have been confirmed killed now, but I was assigned to work as a technician in Al-Raqqa in the communications department. I was once told to go to a house to test some equipment to see if they can be useful for the technical and communication bureau. Once inside I realised it was a Christian home.

I saw six jihadists demanding that a Christian women and her daughter become their wives. The daughter was about 12-13-years-old. I told the jihadists forcing women is forbidden in Islam and children can’t be touched under any circumstances. They loaded their guns in my face and told me to leave. I immediately left to the local court that was based in a small house, but the judge was worse, he said I was wrong because 13-year-old girl is not considered a child, essentially because prophet Muhammad married his wife, Aisha, when she was only 9 years old. He accused me of having poor faith in the practices of prophet Muhammad for which I could have been detained and possibly punished with tough sentences, but my field commander soon arrived and saved me.

This was the reason that made you leave IS?

I wanted to leave first week into my post in Al-Raqqa but I was a coward, scared of getting beheaded and did not know my way out. Unlike at the camp, IS jihadists acted as God in Al-Raqqa. They were rude, arrested and killed anybody for no real reason.

I decided to risk my life to escape after I witnessed a wounded captured Kurdish YPG fighter publically beheaded. He was about my age, but unlike me he was extremely brave. He spat on every jihadist around him. He shouted slogans about Kurdish freedom and Abdullah Ocalan. I had never seen anyone so brave in my life. His fingers were cut yet he shouted insults against the jihadists. He was finally beheaded from behind to suffer and salt was put on his half-cult neck to die in agony but he did not give up until he painfully died this way. Children too were present at the public execution. However, I felt very sick afterward and did not sleep for a week thinking I am either going to runaway or kill myself, but thank God the chance came soon afterward in the city of Serekaniye.

How and why did you end up in Serekaniye (Ras Al-Ain) because I am not sure if it is possible to travel from Al-Raqqa to the Kurdish region these days?  

My commander said Kurdish YPG was an infidel secularist army and impure, arguing that each jihadist has the duty to first purify his own people and if we were all pure then infidels would not exit. The commander and others too gave me examples of Palestine and Israel as well as Kosovo and Serbs.  They told me jihadists should first fight impure Muslims of Palestine and Kosovo to purify them and this way Israelis and Serbs would not exist. This was argued against my Kurdish people too.  I joined a new battalion; we went back to Turkey and crossed the Turkish border to enter Serekaniye.

And what about the Ceylanpinar Turkish border post that is heavily controlled by Turkish soldiers?

They just turned a blind eye.

How?

We were initially told by the IS field commander to fear nothing because there was cooperation with the Turks at the border. The watchtower light caught us and our commander said everybody should stop but do not look at the light. He talked on the radio, then the watchtower light began to move after 8-10 minutes and that was the signal saying we could safely cross the border.

When and how did you finally escape IS in Serekaniye?

I was sent to fix radios, communication equipment and help resolve technical issues of a small base north of Serekaniye end of February 2014. I joined a new battalion for this because IS planned to regroup northeast Syria to attack the YPG. I fixed all the faulty equipment after I arrived in Serekaniye, but then they asked me to intercept and interpret YPG radio communications. YPG members spoke Kurmanji Kurdish and I spoke Sorani Kurdish, but I could’ve tried harder to accurately intercept and interpret YPG radios and track their next moves, but when I heard female fighters speaking in Kurdish over the radio I just couldn’t do it.

Nearly a week passed at the base and it was the YPG that attacked our campsite. I was lucky because I was at the last outpost faraway when YPG first attacked and I immediately surrendered after YPG sniper killed the two jihadists beside me. I shouted in Kurdish, they told me to go closer and get naked and after it was clear that I had no suicide belt, they accepted my surrender.  It is true that I have physically escaped now thanks to God and thanks to the YPG, but Al-Raqqa is mentally haunting me now because what I have witnessed is just pure horror.

“Sherko Omer” is a pseudonym. His real identity has been kept secret for security reasons. The views expressed are his own.

Categories: Islamic State
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ISIS Releases ‘Flames of War’ Feature Film to Intimidate West

September 21, 2014

ISIS Releases ‘Flames of War’ Feature Film to Intimidate West, Clarion Project, Ryan Mauro, September 21, 2014

After releasing the trailer last week, the Islamic State released the full film — a gory, bravado flick showcasing their ruthless tactics in Syria.

Islamic-state-flames-of-war-full-film-IPA screen shot from ‘Flames of War.’ The American narrator of the film is on the far left.

This up-to-date, sophisticated cinematography combined with the bloodthirsty message the film makes Flames of War reminiscent of Hitler propagandist Leni Riefenstahl’s 1935 film, Triumph of the Will.

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True to its promise, the Islamic State terrorist group released a 55-minute video (see below) narrated by an operative in Syria with an American accent.  At the same time, Al-Qaeda has released a new video (see below) featuring an American recruit named Adam Gadahn calling on Muslims to pursue regime change in Pakistan.

The Islamic State video is far above the Al-Qaeda video in terms of production. The 55-minute film, titled Flames of War, is professionally edited and highlights the Islamic State’s seizure of the Syrian Army’s 17th Division base near Raqqah.

Footage is shown from the attack and then the film shows an Islamic State fighter near the base speaking in fluent English with an American accent. Captured Syrian soldiers are shown digging their own graves. One claims that 800 of Assad’s troops were at the base and were defeated by only 20-30 Islamic State members. The captives are then shot point blank and shown gruesomely falling in the ditches.

Flames of War uses the narrator to explain the Islamic state’s version of the events, namely, that they are merely trying to establish god’s law on earth but are being attacked by Assad, the Americans, the West and various other foes.

The film utilizes romantic imagery carefully crafted to appeal to dissatisfied and alienated young men, replete with explosions, tanks and self-described mujahedeen winning battles. Anti-American rhetoric provides the voice-over to stop motion and slow motion action sequences. The use of special effects such as bullet-time is interspersed with newsreel footage.

This up-to-date, sophisticated cinematography combined with the bloodthirsty message the film makes Flames of War reminiscent of Hitler propagandist Leni Riefenstahl’s 1935 film, Triumph of the Will.

The film finishes with a written statement from Islamic State “Caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi referring to the U.S. as the “defender of the cross.” The message appears to indicate that the group believes U.S. combat forces will be sent to Iraq.

“As for the near future, you will be forced into a direct confrontation, with Allah’s permission, despite your reluctance. And the sons of Islam have prepared themselves for this day, so wait and see, for we too are also going to wait and see,” it says.

The new Al-Qaeda video with Adam Gadahn is simple and only features a lecture from him. The contrast between the two videos is a microcosm of how Al-Qaeda has faded into the background as the Islamic State has risen and is winning the next generation of jihadists.

Gadahn is from California and converted to Islam in 1995. He moved to Pakistan in 1998. He has been acting as an Al-Qaeda spokesman since 2004 and is often called “Azzam the American.”

The name of Gadahn’s newest video is, “The Pakistani Regime: The Agent of the Devil.” The Pakistani military began an offensive in North Waziristan, a terrorist stronghold, in June. A senior Pakistani Taliban commander was just killed in the fighting.

It is undated, but Gadahn mentions the Iraqi government led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, dating it to before August 15 when al-Maliki resigned. Gadahn last appeared in a video in March confirming the death of Abu Khalid al-Suri, the official liaison between Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri and terrorists in Syria.

The focus of the new Al-Qaeda video is to urge Muslims to topple the Pakistani government and attack its military and intelligence services in order to replace it with a “just and prosperous Islamic state.” He preaches that Muslims are to follow Taliban leader Mullah Omar as their emir.

Gadahn tells the audience that only overthrowing the Pakistan government can prevent invasions by India and China, the dismantling of its nuclear weapons arsenal and the dividing of the country into several states. He states:

“The fastest way to achieve regime change in Pakistan is to target American and other Western and Zionist interests on our soil and theirs and besiege their diplomatic compounds and enclaves until the occupiers go back home where they belong.”

By “occupiers,” Gadahn is referring to any foreign presence that impedes the creation of an Islamic state with sharia governance. The native Muslim population that opposes such a goal would be branded as apostates, carrying the punishment of death.

Although Al-Qaeda is urging jihadists to focus on Pakistan, Gadahn singles out the government of Saudi Arabia as the “biggest Western tool of them all.”

Gadahn’s video comes at a time of increased concern about an Al-Qaeda attack on the West because of a special unit it has established in Syria named Khorasan.

It consists of top operatives from Pakistan that were trained by Ibrahim al-Asiri, an operative from Al-Qaeda’s branch in Yemen called Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. He is known for inventing bombs that can penetrate airport security by hiding them in underwear and ink cartridges. It was previously reported that al-Asiri had switched allegiance to the Islamic State.

CBS News reports that intelligence sources described al-Asiri as “the most innovative bomb-builder in the jihadist world.”

The Khorasan operatives were sent to Syria with the specific objective of recruiting jihadists with Western passports so they can potentially get onto airliners and blow them up.

One commonality in the two videos is that both groups preach that battlefield success is proof of Allah’s approval. The Islamic State video, for example, says “Allah helps you and grants you victory” and repeats that point several times.

“Allah is with his believers and it is he who directs the RPG grenade, punishing the enemy with the hands of the Mujahadeen,” the film states.

If battlefield successes indicate Allah’s approval, then battlefield defeats must indicate Allah’s disapproval or even divine judgment. That is part of the reason for the Islamic State’s rise and Al-Qaeda’s decline.

Understanding this doctrine can help the West undermine the enemy’s support. Jihadists can spin their setbacks and tell supporters that Allah rewards patience, but it is hard to convince audiences that Allah is on your side if you repeatedly suffer defeat. If moderate Muslims reinforce that doubt, then the group’s troubles increase exponentially.

View Flames of War, Full film:

View Pakistani Regime: The Agent of the Devil:

 

Categories: Islamic State
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In Search of the ‘Moderate Islamists’

September 18, 2014

In Search of the ‘Moderate Islamists,’ Accuracy in Media, Andrew McCarthy, September 18, 2014

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It is not out of ignorance that President Obama and Secretary Kerry are denying the Islamic roots of the Islamic State jihadists. As I argued in a column here last week, we should stop scoffing as if this were a blunder and understand the destructive strategy behind it. The Obama administration is quite intentionally promoting the progressive illusion that “moderate Islamists” are the solution to the woes of the Middle East, and thus that working cooperatively with “moderate Islamists” is the solution to America’s security challenges.

I wrote a book a few years ago called The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America that addressed this partnership between Islamists and progressives. The terms “grand jihad” and “sabotage” are lifted from an internal Muslim Brotherhood memorandum that lays bare the Brotherhood’s overarching plan to destroy the West from within by having their component organizations collude with credulous Western governments and opinion elites.

The plan is going well.

As long as the news media and even conservative commentators continue to let them get away with it, the term “moderate Islamist” will remain useful to transnational progressives. It enables them to avoid admitting that the Muslim Brotherhood is what they have in mind.

As my recent column explained, the term “moderate Islamist” is an oxymoron. An Islamist is a Muslim who wants repressive sharia imposed. There is nothing moderate about sharia even if the Muslim in question does not advocate imposing it by violence.

Most people do not know what the term “Islamist” means, so the contradiction is not apparent to them. If they think about it at all, they figure “moderate Islamist” must be just another way of saying “moderate Muslim,” and since everyone acknowledges that there are millions of moderate Muslims, it seems logical enough. Yet, all Muslims are not Islamists. In particular, all Muslims who support the Western principles of liberty and reason are not Islamists.

If you want to say that some Islamists are not violent, that is certainly true. But that does not make them moderate. There is, moreover, less to their nonviolence than meets the eye. Many Islamists who do not personally participate in jihadist aggression support violent jihadists financially and morally – often while feigning objection to their methods or playing semantic games (e.g., “I opposeterrorism but I support resistance,” or “I oppose the killing of innocent people . . . but don’t press me on who is an innocent“).

Understandably, the public is inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to people the government describes as “moderates” and portrays as our “allies.” If transnational progressives were grilled on these vaporous terms, though, and forced to concede, say, that the Muslim Brotherhood was the purportedly “moderate opposition” our government wants to support in Syria, the public would object. While not expert in the subject, many Americans are generally aware that the Brotherhood supports terrorism, that its ideology leads young Muslims to graduate to notorious terrorist organizations, and that it endorses oppressive Islamic law while opposing the West. Better for progressives to avoid all that by one of their dizzying, internally nonsensical word games – hence, “moderate Islamist.”

I rehearse all that because last week, right on cue, representatives of Brotherhood-tied Islamist organizations appeared with Obama-administration officials and other apologists for Islamic supremacism to ostentatiously “condemn” the Islamic State as “not Islamic.”

As I recount with numerous examples in The Grand Jihad, this is the manipulative double game the Brotherhood has mastered in the West, aided and abetted by progressives of both parties. While speaking to credulous Western audiences desperate to believe Islam is innately moderate, the Brothers pretend to abhor terrorism, claim that terrorism is actually “anti-Islamic,” and threaten to brand you as an “Islamophobe” racist – to demagogue you in the media, ban you from the campus, and bankrupt you in court – if you dare to notice the nexus between Islamic doctrine and systematic terrorism committed by Muslims. Then, on their Arabic sites and in the privacy of their mosques and community centers, they go back to preaching jihad, championing Hamas, calling for Israel’s destruction, damning America, inveighing against Muslim assimilation in the West, and calling for society’s acceptance of sharia mores.

The Investigative Project’s John Rossomando reports on last Wednesday’s shenanigans at the National Press Club. The Islamist leaders who “urged the public to ignore [the Islamic State’s] theological motivations,” included “former Council on American-Islamic Affairs (CAIR) Tampa director Ahmed Bedier, [who] later wrote on Twitter that IS [the Islamic State] ‘is not a product of Islam,’ and blamed the United States for its emergence.”

Also on hand were moderate moderator Haris Tarin, Washington director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC); Imam Mohamed Magid, former president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA); and Johari Abdul-Malik, an imam at the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Va. All of these Islamists are consultants to the Obama administration on policy matters; Magid is actually a member Obama’s Homeland Security Advisory Council.

Where to begin? CAIR, as I’ve repeatedly pointed out, is a Muslim Brotherhood creation conceived to be a Western-media-savvy shill for Islamic supremacism in general, and Hamas in particular. At the 2007-08 terrorism-financing prosecution of Hamas operatives in the Holy Land Foundation case – involving a Brotherhood conspiracy that funneled millions of dollars to Palestinian jihadists – CAIR was proven to be a co-conspirator, albeit unindicted. Mr. Bedier, who is profiled by the Investigative Project here, is a notorious apologist for Hamas – the Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch, which is formally designated as a terrorist organization under U.S. law. He also vigorously championed such terrorists as Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s Sami al-Arian (who pled guilty in 2006 to conspiring to provide material support to terrorism).

I’ve profiled MPAC here. It was founded by disciples of Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna and champions of both Hezbollah and the Sudanese Islamists who gave safe-haven to al-Qaeda during the mid Nineties. After the atrocities of September 11, 2001, MPAC’s executive director, Salam al-Marayati, immediately urged that “we should put the state of Israel on the suspect list.” Without a hint of irony, MPAC’s main business is condemning irrational suspicion . . . the “Islamophobia” it claims Muslims are systematically subjected to. Like many CAIR operatives and other purveyors of victim politics, MPAC officials tend to double as Democratic-party activists.

Magid’s organization, ISNA, is the most important Muslim Brotherhood organization in the United States. I have profiled it in these pages a number of times. As detailed in The Grand Jihad, it is the Islamist umbrella organization that traces its origins to the Muslim Students Association, the foundation of the Brotherhood’s American infrastructure.

The MSA, which indoctrinates students in the jihadist-lauding works of Banna and Sayid Qutb, has not surprisingly been the launch point for several prominent terrorists – Patrick Poole provides the scorecard here, which includes al-Qaeda founder Wael Julaidan; al-Qaeda operative Anwar al-Awlaki; al Qaeda financier and Hamas/Hezbollah champion Abdurrahman Alamoudi; and Aafia Siddiqui, the notorious “Lady al-Qaeda” who was captured apparently plotting a terror rampage targeting New York City, who attempted to murder as U.S. Army captain while in custody, and whose release the Islamic State has been demanding. (Other MSA alumni include ousted Egyptian president and Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi, and top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin.)

I profiled the Dar al-Hijrah mosque and Johari Abdul-Malik, one of its very interesting imams, in both The Grand Jihad and a 2010 column. At a 2001 conference hosted by the Islamic Association of Palestine – an organization the Muslim Brotherhood established to promote Hamas in the United States – Abdul Malik advised that Muslims could “blow up bridges” and “do all forms of sabotage” as long as they avoided “kill[ing] people who are innocent on their way to work.” As he works to make Islam “the dominant way of life” in America (as he put it in a Friday “sermon” in 2004), he shrugs off the mosque’s history of praising violent jihad, comparing jihadist “martyrs” to the United States Marines.

One of the founders of Dar al-Hijrah was Ismail Elbarasse, a Muslim Brotherhood operative who was a friend and business partner of Mousa abu Marzook – a high Hamas official who, before being deported, actually ran that terrorist organization from his Virginia home. It was from Elbarasse’s home that the FBI seized the 1991 Brotherhood memo from which I derived the title of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America – a document in which the Brotherhood described its “work in America” as a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers, so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.

Dar al-Hijrah’s imams and board members have included a who’s who of the jihad:

  • Anwar al-Awlaki, the aforementioned al-Qaeda operative;
  • Mohammed al-Hanooti, a former Islamic Association of Palestine leader and major Hamas fundraiser;
  • Mohammed Adam El-Sheikh, a founder of the Muslim American Society (the Brotherhood’s quasi-official presence in the U.S.) who ran the Baltimore office of the Islamic American Relief Agency until that charity was shut down by the Treasury Department for supporting al-Qaeda;
  • Abdelhaleem Asquar, serving a federal prison sentence for obstructing an investigation of Hamas’s American support network;
  • Samir Salah, who helped Osama bin Laden’s nephew set up another charity (Taiba International Aid Association) that was shut down for bankrolling terrorism;
  • Esam Omeish, a Democrat who was forced to resign from a state-government immigration panel after the emergence of videos showing his praise for “the jihad way” against Israel.

With such a cast of characters, the mosque has predictably attracted some notorious attendees, including the aforementioned terrorists Marzook and Alamoudi; Nidal Hasan, the jihadist who murdered 13 American soldiers at Fort Hood; Omar Abu Ali, the one-time valedictorian at Virginia’s Islamic Saudi Academy who is now serving a life sentence after joining al-Qaeda and conspiring to murder President George W. Bush; and 9/11 suicide hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Hani Hanjour – Awlaki’s ofttimes companions whose presence cannot be all that surprising since an al-Hijrah Islamic Center phone number was found in the Hamburg apartment shared by 9/11 ringleaders Mohammed Atta and Ramzi bin al-Shibh.

By appearing with leaders of Dar al-Hijrah, ISNA, MPAC, and CAIR, the Obama administration and its allies are telling us that these purportedly “moderate Islamists” are the allies America needs to defeat the Islamic State.

Seriously?

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