Category Archives: ISIS

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria

Think helping to fight ISIS will get you off terrorist list? Think again

McClatchy reports: The role of Syrian Kurds in the U.S.-led fight against the Islamic State has prompted calls for the removal of an affiliated Kurdish guerrilla group from the U.S. blacklist, bringing fresh scrutiny to a terrorist-designation process that some critics call arbitrary and outdated.

So far, the U.S. government’s response to the fighters of the Kurdish Workers Party, the PKK, could be summed up as: Thanks for the help, but you’re staying on the list.

Shedding a U.S. foreign terrorist designation is a long and complicated undertaking – a feat accomplished by just a handful of the dozens of groups that have landed on the list since its inception in 1997. A designation means that a group has earned the dubious label – and economic sanctions – of being named a “tier-one” foreign terrorist organization. Tier-two members are banned from entry to the United States; tier-three groups are undesignated but closely monitored.

Several organizations have languished on the State Department’s tier-one list even though they’re essentially defunct, with their leaders killed, jailed or engaged in peace talks with the governments they once attacked. Others on the 59-member list have been weakened but are still considered threatening. And, of course, there are the active, high-profile groups that in American minds are synonymous with terrorism: the Islamic State, al Qaida and Hezbollah, for example.

Those three, as well as the PKK, are among a half-dozen U.S.-designated groups now involved in the conflict over the Islamic State’s cross-border fiefdom. The battle is stirring up an unprecedented soup of militants, with five tier-one terrorist groups – both Sunni and Shiite Muslim – on the same side as the United States against the Islamic State, itself a designee. The Obama administration’s unsavory de facto partners against the Islamic State include the Lebanese militants of Hezbollah and the Nusra Front, the Syrian branch of al Qaida. [Continue reading…]

Since the Nusra Front was also targeted in the series of cruise missile strikes that marked the expansion into Syria of the U.S. war on ISIS, I think both they and the administration would dispute this claim that they have become de facto partners.

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Slaughter of Anbar tribesmen shows weakness in U.S. plan to beat ISIS

McClatchy reports: For four grueling months, Naim al Goud, his kinsmen and the local police fought off an Islamic State offensive against his town near Hit, a key city in Iraq’s war-torn Anbar province. In his telling, their constant pleas for Iraqi army intervention and U.S. airstrikes were ignored.

“Nobody gave us any kind of help,” said al Goud, a sheikh of the Albu Nimr, one of Anbar’s largest Sunni Muslim tribes. He said he texted target locations to Iraqi commanders to relay to their U.S counterparts, with no response. “We saw American fighters flying overhead. Maybe they hit somewhere else, but not the places we wanted them to attack.”

Exhausted, hungry and low on ammunition, al Goud and hundreds of his tribesmen ceased firing on Oct. 22 in return for a pledge from the Islamic State that civilians wouldn’t be harmed. They then set out on a 15-hour overnight drive through the desert, leaving behind families and associates and nursing another in a long list of Sunni tribal grievances that are hindering reconciliation with the Shiite-led government and threatening to derail President Barack Obama’s plan to crush the Islamic State.

“They did nothing for us,” al Goud said in an interview last week in a rented house in Baghdad. “It’s all killing and disaster.”

A week later, the Islamic State executed more than 40 Albu Nimr captives on a Hit street and drove thousands of Albu Nimr civilians into the desert, where hundreds have been slaughtered – more than 400 by Monday. Tribal leaders’ calls for help from the Iraqi army and for U.S. airstrikes again went unanswered. [Continue reading…]

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Yazidis face genocide by ISIS after U.S. turns away

The Daily Beast reports: In August, the Obama administration intervened to stop what it called a pending genocide of Yazidi minorities in Iraq. Now the U.S. is gone, but the genocide continues.

Thousands of Yazidis remain stranded and starving on Mount Sinjar while thousands more have been sold off into slavery by ISIS, according to Yazidi leaders, several of whom are in Washington to beg for urgent assistance.

When President Obama announced U.S.-led airstrikes in Iraq in early August, he said the mission was twofold: to protect U.S. personnel in Erbil and to save the ethnic Yazidis from ISIS, who had fled from their villages, chased by ISIS, and were stranded on the mountain with no food, no supplies, and no protection.

“People are starving. And children are dying of thirst. Meanwhile, ISIL forces below have called for the systematic destruction of the entire Yazidi people, which would constitute genocide,” said Obama. “And when we have the unique capabilities to help avert a massacre, then I believe the United States of America cannot turn a blind eye. We can act, carefully and responsibly, to prevent a potential act of genocide. That’s what we’re doing on that mountain.”

At first, international airstrikes and humanitarian airdrops somewhat alleviated the Yazidi crisis and opened up an escape corridor for many Yazidis to flee. But in October, the United States turned to other parts of the battle, leaving the Yazidis largely to fend for themselves. ISIS has now surrounded Mount Sinjar again, trapping approximately 10,000 Yazidis there. Meanwhile, ISIS forces are taking over Yazidi villages near the mountain one after another, killing the men and selling the women and children into the slave trade. [Continue reading…]

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How Iraq’s Shia militias are turning the fight against ISIS into a campaign against Sunnis

Tirana Hassan writes: Behind the relative safety of the large concrete blast walls, a Kurdish Peshmerga commander sat behind a dark wooden desk and described the situation in the battle-scarred towns in Iraq’s northern province of Salahaddin.

“There is no one left in any of these villages, they are all empty,” he told me.

This was not entirely true. As my colleague and I drove into the village of Yengija, some 50 miles south of Peshmerga-controlled Kirkuk, in an area controlled by the Islamic State until late August, the streets were packed — but not with residents.

Men who looked like soldiers lined the main street, scores of them, standing at attention with AK-47 assault rifles slung over their shoulders. With U.S.-provided Humvees parked along the side of the street, it looked like a military parade was about to start. But there was nothing official about this army. The men bore no insignia of Iraq’s armed forces: Most had on mismatched military fatigues, while some wore black balaclavas printed with a menacing skeleton face. From their slender frames, it looked like some were no more than 16 or 17.

It was only when we saw the bright yellow flags flying from a checkpoint and burned-out buildings that we realized who these armed men were. They were part of the Saraya al-Khorasani Brigade, one of the many Shiite militias that have assumed a national military role since the Iraqi government’s security forces crumbled this summer, fleeing their positions as the Islamic State fighters swept through Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city.

The Khorasani Brigade is a relatively recent addition to the network of Shiite militias in Iraq — and despite a similar sounding name, has no connection to the Khorasan Group, the alleged al Qaeda-affiliated organization that was the target of U.S. airstrikes in Syria in September. The Khorasani Brigade is just one of dozens of similar militias that are essentially running their own show in parts of the country. These Shiite militias are supplied with weapons and equipment from the central government in Baghdad, which is now being assisted by a U.S.-led military alliance in its fight against the Islamic State. [Continue reading…]

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HRW: ISIS tortured Kobane child hostages

Human Rights Watch: Kurdish children from the Syrian city of Kobani (or Ain al-`Arab in Arabic) were tortured and abused while detained by Islamic State (also known as ISIS), Human Rights Watch said today. Four children gave detailed accounts of the suffering they endured while held for four months with about 100 other children.

The children, aged 14 to 16, were among 153 Kurdish boys whom ISIS abducted on May 29, 2014, as they traveled home to Kobani. According to Syrian Kurdish officials and media reports, ISIS released the last 25 of the children on October 29. Interviewed one by one in Turkey, where they had fled to safety after ISIS released them in late September, the four boys described enduring repeated beatings with a hose and electric cable, as well as being forced to watch videos of ISIS beheadings and attacks.

“Since the beginning of the Syrian uprising, children have suffered the horrors of detention and torture, first by the Assad government and now by ISIS,” said Fred Abrahams, special advisor for children’s rights at Human Rights Watch. “This evidence of torture and abuse of children by ISIS underlines why no one should support their criminal enterprise.” [Continue reading…]

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U.S. backs Kurds on arms for Kobane, exposing more cracks in Turkey ties

Rudaw reports: In a clear sign of further cracks in US-Turkish ties, the US Department of State said Monday it backs Erbil’s move to send more arms to Kobane, the same day the Turkish president railed against too much international attention to the besieged Syrian-Kurdish town.

A group of 150 Peshmerga fighters from the Kurdistan Region are fighting alongside Syrian-Kurdish defenders who have resisted an overrun by the Islamic State, the jihadi group most commonly known as ISIS or ISIL.

“We support what they’re (Kurds) – their help in fighting back against ISIL in Kobane, yes,” said the US State Department Spokesperson Jen Psaki, responding to a reporter’s question about whether the US supports the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) decision to resupply Kurdish fighters in Kobane.

Major general Karzan Shaqlawai of the Peshmerga Ministry told Rudaw that a new resupply convoy of arms was on its way to Kobane with weapons for the Peshmerga and Syrian People’s Protection Units (YPG). They said the convoy was going through Turkey.

Ajansa Nûçeyan a Firatê reports: YPG Commander Mahmud Berxwedan said after the peshmerga forces crossed into Kobanê they have acted like a single army, rather than in coordination. He added: “The peshmerga are endeavouring to carry out what is asked of them in a self-sacrificing way.” Mahmud Berxwedan said the peshmerga had carried out effective strikes against the ISIS gangs with the heavy weaponry they had brought with them.

Mahmud Berxwedan said that since the end of October the initiative had passed to the YPG forces and answered questions from the ANF regarding the arrival of the peshmerga, the situation of civilians and the latest state of the conflict. [Continue reading…]

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This is how ISIS smuggles oil

Mike Giglio reports from Besaslan: This town on the Turkish-Syrian border is covered in trash. Residents refuse to let any outsiders — even garbagemen — inside. What makes Besaslan more guarded than the other grim towns lining what has become one of the world’s most dangerous borders sits at the end of a winding dirt road: oil.

The oil brings Omar to town weekly, huddling with grease-covered men to negotiate the purchase of faded, 17-gallon drums. A Syrian in his thirties, Omar was once a proud rebel in his country’s civil war. Now he’s a merchant in the trade that bankrolls the extremists who hijacked it: the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. The militants can make more than $1 million a day selling oil from fields captured in eastern Syria. But the way this shadowy trade works on the ground remains largely unknown. [Continue reading…]

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New GCHQ chief spouts fiery rhetoric but spying agenda is same as before

James Ball reports: The new chief of GCHQ, Robert Hannigan, had two options when taking his post. As a relative outsider, joining the organisation from the Foreign Office, he could choose to strike a new, conciliatory tack in the post-Snowden surveillance debate – or he could defend the agency’s practices.

Barely six days into the job, Hannigan has signalled he will go with the latter. In a Financial Times opinion piece, he went much further than his predecessor’s valedictory address in pushing the traditional spy agency pro-surveillance agenda.

US technology giants, he said, have become “the command-and-control networks of choice for terrorists and criminals”. Privacy “has never been an absolute right”. Even principles of free speech are terror aids: Isis are “capitalising on western freedom of expression”, he stated.

By the usually moribund rhetorical standards of senior UK intelligence officials, this is fiery stuff. But the agenda behind it is very much business as usual. The UK’s intelligence agencies take the approach that they will get little credit for protecting civil liberties, but would be on the receiving end of huge opprobrium were they to fail prevent an attack. As a result, they lobby successive governments every year for ever-more powers, a small step at a time. [Continue reading…]

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Kobanê resists ISIS — but Turkey still can’t get the Kurdish question right

By Cengiz Gunes, The Open University

The biggest new development in the ongoing conflict between the Kurds and Islamic State has been the growing co-operation between the Kurdish movements in Iraq and Syria – a phase change that forces to upend the whole question of Kurdish politics.

The link-up between Kurdish movements across borders has been a major security coup. It first paved the way for a US airdrop of weapons, ammunition and medical supplies on October 20, resources which were sent to defend the town of Kobanê, which has been under siege from IS for seven weeks. We’ve also seen the deployment of Iraqi-Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, armed with heavy weapons such as artillery and anti-tank missiles.

These events have run contrary to many analysts’ initial expectation that Kobanê’s fall to IS was a foregone conclusion – and the exemplary resistance of Kurdish forces has drawn the support of both the international coalition and the Peshmerga forces.

But winning the support of the international coalition is a major development for the Kurds’ entire political cause, not just for their fight against IS.

Previously, the US authorities rejected the idea of working with the Kurds in Syria at all, on the grounds that the main Kurdish political party in Syria – Democratic Union Party (PYD) – has links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is on the US’s list of terrorist organisations.

But the Kurds’ response was astute and effective – and has forced the US’s hand. The Syrian Kurdish political parties met in Duhok, in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, to establish a joint administration for Syria’s Kurdish-controlled areas. The Kurds of Syria and Iraq knew that closer co-operation could make them an important force in the international fight against IS – which in turn is likely to increase their clout in regional politics in general.

But even with this new-found solidarity, any effort to properly integrate the Kurds into the existing regional power equation will have to clear significant hurdles.

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The Kurds’ lonely fight against ISIS

Der Spiegel reports: The headquarters of one the world’s mightiest terrorist organization is located in the mountains northeast of Erbil, Iraq. Or is it the nerve center of one of the Western world’s most crucial allies? It all depends on how one chooses to look at the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

All visits to the site in northern Iraq’s Qandil Mountains must first be authorized by PKK leaders, and the process is not immediate. But after days of waiting, our phone finally rings. “Get ready, we’re sending our driver,” the voice at the other end of the line says. He picks us up in the morning and silently drives us up the winding roads into the mountains. At one point, we pass the burned out remains of a car destroyed by Turkish bombs three years ago, killing the family inside. The wreckage has been left as a kind of memorial. The driver points to it and breaks his silence. “Erdogan has gone nuts,” he says.

Just behind the Kurdish autonomous government’s final checkpoint, the car rounds a bend in the road and suddenly Abdullah Öcalan’s iconic moustache appears, part of a giant mural made of colored stones on the opposite hillside. The machine-gun toting guards wear the same mustache. “Do you have a permit, colleagues?” they ask.

Officially, we’re in the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq. Really, though, it is a PKK state. A region of 50 square kilometers (19 square miles) of rugged, mountainous territory, it provides a home for PKK leadership in addition to training camps for fighters. It also has its own police force and courts. The surrounding hillsides are idyllic with their pomegranate trees, flocks of sheep and small stone huts. But they are also dotted with Humvees, captured by the PKK from the Islamic State terrorist militia, which had stolen them from the Iraqi army.

It is here in the Qandil Mountains that PKK leaders coordinate their fight against Islamic State jihadists in the Syrian town of Kobani and in the Iraqi metropolis of Kirkuk in addition to the ongoing battle in the Sinjar Mountains. Turkey, some fear, could soon be added to the list. [Continue reading…]

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The motivations of Syrian Islamist fighters

Vera Mironova, Loubna Mrie, and Sam Whitt write: With the Syrian civil war now well into its third year, there are scores of armed rebel forces fighting against the Bashar al-Assad regime, as well as against one another. In the marketplace of rebel groups vying for support, rebel fighters are offered incentives and face coercive pressures to join one group over another. The weakening of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) over the past year has led many Syrian rebels to rethink their allegiances on the battlefield. Possible suitors include nominally “Islamist” groups, including moderate revolutionary organizations like Ahrar al-Sham. A growing concern, however, is that rebels may be driven into the ranks of more extremist organizations such as Jabhat al-Nusra (JN) and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). This leads to a key question: what inspires thousands of ordinary Syrian people to join up with Islamist groups in Syria and Iraq?

To understand who these Syrian fighters are and what motivates them, the authors have been conducting survey research from inside Syria. Over the past year, the authors have surveyed more than 300 FSA fighters as well as Syrian civilians and refugees and 50 Syrian Islamist fighters in the Islamic Front (Ahrar al-Sham) and JN, the latter of which is al-Qa`ida’s affiliate in Syria.

This article proceeds by presenting a series of questions as the authors gave them to the interview subjects. It then discusses the implications that arise from their answers. To briefly summarize the findings, the interviews reveal that in contrast to foreign fighters, who have generally come to Syria on a quest for spiritual fulfillment and to build an Islamic state through jihad, Syrian fighters are joining Islamist groups primarily for instrumental purposes. Islamic groups are perceived as better equipped, led, and organized, and therefore are seen as more capable of defeating the al-Assad regime, which remains the primary goal of Syrian rebels. [Continue reading…]

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New Peshmerga convoy dispatched to Kobane today

Kurdish Question: The Kurdish forces have regained the control of four villages to the West of Kobane after an operation that lasted through the night.

Reports say that the YPG, Peshmerga and the FSA conducted the joint operation towards the early hours of this morning. The Peshmerga pummelled ISIS positions with mortar fire while the YPG and FSA forces clashed with ISIS.

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Who controls which area in Syria, November 1, 2014

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White House-Pentagon friction reveals weakness of coalition against ISIS

Mark Perry writes: When U.S. President Barack Obama appointed retired Marine Gen. John Allen to serve as his special envoy to the global coalition against the Islamic State, the news was greeted with applause from the jihadi group’s greatest enemies. Kurdish and Iraqi Sunni leaders welcomed the appointment, with good reason — these same leaders had requested that Allen, widely known as one of Obama’s favorite generals, be appointed to the position.

But not everyone was pleased, especially at the Pentagon, where top generals had deep misgivings over how Obama had chosen to manage the campaign against the Islamic State.

Among the dissenters was the head of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Lloyd Austin, who took a dim view of Allen’s role. Austin complained to aides that Allen would report directly to the president — bypassing both himself and Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Austin believed that Allen’s appointment would lead to confusion about who was really leading the effort, a senior U.S. officer who serves with Austin told me several days after the appointment. “Why the hell do we need a special envoy — isn’t that what [Secretary of State] John Kerry’s for?” this senior officer asked.

Austin’s private doubts echoed the deep skepticism among a host of serving and retired officers who served in the region, this same senior officer said. [Continue reading…]

The Daily Beast reports: Top military leaders in the Pentagon and in the field are growing increasingly frustrated by the tight constraints the White House has placed on the plans to fight ISIS and train a new Syrian rebel army.

As the American-led battle against ISIS stretches into its fourth month, the generals and Pentagon officials leading the air campaign and preparing to train Syrian rebels are working under strict White House orders to keep the war contained within policy limits. The National Security Council has given precise instructions on which rebels can be engaged, who can be trained, and what exactly those fighters will do when they return to Syria. Most of the rebels to be trained by the U.S. will never be sent to fight against ISIS.

Making matters worse, military officers and civilian Pentagon leaders tell The Daily Beast, is the ISIS war’s decision-making process, run by National Security Adviser Susan Rice. It’s been manic and obsessed with the tiniest of details. Officials talk of sudden and frequent meetings of the National Security Council and the so-called Principals Committee of top defense, intelligence, and foreign policy officials (an NSC and three PCs in one week this month); a barrage of questions from the NSC to the agencies that create mountains of paperwork for overworked staffers; and NSC insistence on deciding minor issues even at the operational level.

“We are getting a lot of micromanagement from the White House. Basic decisions that should take hours are taking days sometimes,” one senior defense official told The Daily Beast.

Other gripes among the top Pentagon and military brass are about the White House’s decision not to work with what’s left of the existing Syrian moderate opposition on the ground, which prevents intelligence sharing on fighting ISIS and prevents the military from using trained fighters to build the new rebel army that President Obama has said is needed to push Syrian President Bashar al-Assad into a political negotiation to end the conflict. [Continue reading…]

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Iraq says 322 tribe members killed, many bodies dumped in well

Reuters reports: Islamic State militants have killed 322 members of an Iraqi tribe in western Anbar province, including dozens of women and children whose bodies were dumped in a well, the government said in the first official confirmation of the scale of the massacre.

The systematic killings, which one tribal leader said were continuing on Sunday, marked some of the worst bloodshed in Iraq since the Sunni militants swept through the north in June with the aim of establishing medieval caliphate there and in Syria.

The Albu Nimr, also Sunni, had put up fierce resistance against Islamic State for weeks but finally ran low on ammunition, food and fuel last week as Islamic State fighters closed in on their village Zauiyat Albu Nimr.

“The number of people killed by Islamic State from Albu Nimr tribe is 322. The bodies of 50 women and children have also been discovered dumped in a well,” the country’s Human Rights Ministry said on Sunday. [Continue reading…]

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The first shrine of its kind in Iraq is destroyed by ISIS

Sam Hardy reports: Nearly a thousand years old — the “first of its kind in Iraq,” according to Archnet, and one of the last six standing, according to Iraq Heritage — the distinctive muqarnas-domed mausoleum is now a statistic. The tomb of Shia ‘Uqaylid amir Sharaf ad-Dawla Muslim is one of a number of sites that have been destroyed recently. Preceded by the Shrine of Arbaeen Wali (for 40 martyrs in the Islamic conquest of Tikrit) and the Syrian Orthodox “Green Church” of Mar Ahudama in late September, followed by the Yezidi Shrine of Memê Reşan (Meme Reshan) in late October, the Mausoleum of Imam al-Daur was destroyed by the Islamic State on October 23.

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