Category Archives: ISIS

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria

The impact of airstrikes on the battle for Kobane

The Telegraph reports: The first signs that things could change came when planes appeared in the sky, circling for hours, but not attacking. The first strikes came on October 7 when US-made vehicles driven by Isil fighters to resupply the city were hit outside the town.

Scorched metal skeletons were all that remained of the jihadist’s prized Humvees.

“We had a walkie-talkie tuned on the Isil radio system, that we had taken from a jihadist that we killed,” said Mr Kharaba.

“When the first air strikes hit, we heard them on the radio screaming in panic.

“They were shouting ’Allah Akbhar’ (God is great) and listing the leaders who were killed: Abu Anas, Abu Hamza and many others.” Within a week, the air strikes had escalated from a few every day, to several every hour and by Tuesday the US and allies launched 21 air strikes on Isil positions in and around Kobane.

They bombed Tel Shair, a hill at the edge of Kobani, from which Isil had boastfully erected its black flag, and which it had used as a position to shell the town from.

Kurdish forces stormed the hill after the air strikes and cleaned it of their enemy.

“After we took the hill, I knew that Isil was on the back foot,” said Mr Kharaba.

“I knew it would be hard for them to keep Kobane.” The next day the strikes were hitting inside Kobane itself and the tide began to turn.

Pilots overhead grew in confidence and began to strike positions in the centre of Kobane, hitting Isil on their front lines.

Mr Kharaba described to the Telegraph being just metres from the air strike’s targets, and knowing he was safe: “They are incredibly accurate. If the Americans wanted to put a rocket in someone’s eye, even from hundreds of meters in the air, they could.”

The Syrian rebels and their Kurdish allies claimed they worked closely with the US planners to help set up the coordinates for the laser guided bombs.

Idris Nassan, 40, a senior spokesman for the Kurdish fighters told the Telegraph: “There is close co-ordination. We have a member of YPG who works directly with the Americans.”

Officially, the US government has shied away from directly admitting coordinating its attacks through the YPG, whose affiliate, the PKK, is on America’s terrorist list.

But John Allen, the US special envoy in charge of building the international coalition against Islamic State, admitted that Washington was open to receiving information on targets from all sources.

“Obviously, information comes in from all different sources associated with providing local information or potentially targeting information.

“And we’ll take it all when it comes in. It’s ultimately evaluated for its value,” Allen told reporters in Washington.

One fighter who asked not to be named recalled a battle on the eastern front of Kobane where his men were about to be forced into a retreat: “We called a Kurdish commander for help. He told us to move back a few meters. Then, minutes after, an air strike hit the men we had been fighting.”

The results have been increasingly effective. [Continue reading…]

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Humiliation replaces fear for the women kidnapped by ISIS

The Guardian reports: They sold Amsha for $12. Other girls and women went for more, much more. But Amsha had a small son and was pregnant with her second child. She had already seen Islamic State (Isis) militants execute her husband in front of her. Now the terror of that crime and the fear of captivity was to be replaced by the indignity and humiliation of being traded like cattle.

“A 50-year-old man with a dark beard came to buy me,” she recalls. “From that day on, I didn’t want to live any more.”

Amsha is one of hundreds of Yazidi women from northern Iraq captured during Islamic State’s rapid advance this year. Interviews with women who escaped reveal that Isis corralled the women into halls and other detention centres and gradually sold them off to fighters as the spoils of war.

Isis said in an online article that it was reviving an ancient custom of enslaving enemies and forcing the women to become wives of victorious fighters.

“One should remember that enslaving the families of the [non-believers] and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of the sharia, that if one were to deny or mock, he would be denying or mocking the verses of the Qur’an and the narrations of the prophet,” the article said, adding that mothers were not separated from their young children. [Continue reading…]

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Denmark tries a progressive approach to fighters returning from Syria

The Washington Post reports: The rush of morning shoppers parted to make way for Talha, a lanky 21-year-old in desert camouflage and a long, religious beard. He strode through the local mall with a fighter’s gait picked up on the battlefields of Syria. Streams of young Muslim men greeted him like a returning king.

As-salamu alaykum.

Wa alaikum assalaam.

In other countries, Talha — one of hundreds of young jihadists from the West who has fought in Syria and Iraq — might be barred from return or thrown in jail. But in Denmark, a country that has spawned more foreign fighters per capita than almost anywhere else, the port city of Aarhus is taking a novel approach by rolling out a welcome mat.

In Denmark, not one returned fighter has been locked up. Instead, taking the view that discrimination at home is as criminal as Islamic State recruiting, officials here are providing free psychological counseling while finding returnees jobs and spots in schools and universities. Officials credit a new effort to reach out to a radical mosque with stanching the flow of recruits.

Some progressives say Aarhus should become a model for other communities in the United States and Europe that are trying to cope with the question of what to do when the jihad generation comes back to town. [Continue reading…]

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Iran vows to aid Lebanese military

The Associated Press reports: Iran said Sunday it is ready to provide aid to the Lebanese army as well as the Shiite Hezbollah group to help combat “terrorists.”

The promise of aid comes after Iran’s regional rival Saudi Arabia pledged billions of dollars to Lebanon’s armed forces, and will be seen by many Lebanese as part of a competition for influence over the tiny country, which is gripped by sectarian tensions and bitterly divided over the Syrian civil war.

Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, was quoted by state TV as saying that “supporting the Lebanese nation, army and resistance will still remain on Iran’s agenda.” Hezbollah’s allies refer to it as the “resistance” because of its stated mission of driving Israel out of occupied territory.

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Fiercest fighting in days hits Kobane

Reuters reports: The fiercest fighting in days shook the Syrian border town of Kobani overnight as Islamic State fighters attacked Kurdish defenders with mortars and car bombs, sources in the town and a monitoring group said on Sunday.

Islamic State, which controls much of Syria and Iraq, fired 44 mortars at Kurdish parts of the town on Saturday and some of the shells fell inside nearby Turkey, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. It said four more mortars were fired on Sunday. [Continue reading…]

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Joshua Landis: ‘Syria is locked into its grinding civil war’

Danny Postel in conversation with Joshua Landis, Director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, former president of the Syrian Studies Association, and editor of the blog Syria Comment. This discussion is an elaboration of a short article, “The Great Sorting Out: Ethnicity & the Future of the Levant,” by Landis that Elias Muhanna published on his blog, Qifa Nabki.

(H/t Pulse)

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The meaning of Kobane

Henri J Barkey writes: The Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani has been under a relentless siege by the Islamic State (IS) for the past few weeks. Surprisingly its defenders have endured, defying the long odds. Whether it falls or survives, Kobani is likely to become for Syrian and Turkish Kurds what Halabja became for Iraqi Kurds in 1988: a defining moment of nationhood and identity.

Halabja helped propel and shape the Kurdish autonomous region of northern Iraq, now called the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). In 1988, in the midst of the genocidal Anfal campaign against the Iraqi Kurds, Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons on the sleepy Iraqi Kurdish town near the Iranian border, killing some 5,000, mostly civilians. Unnoticed at the time, Halabja became for much of the world a symbol of the larger campaign of mass extermination against the Kurds, as well as a quintessential example of a crime against humanity.

For the Kurds, it marked yet another time the world stood by and watched silently; theirs was an inconvenient predicament, a sacrifice at the altar of grander strategic purposes. Saddam Hussein enjoyed the support of the West precisely because he was locked in a duel with Iran, then a larger threat.

Fast forward to today: Until the U.S. Air Force began a systematic bombing campaign against IS positions around Kobani, the city had been left largely to fend for itself. Skittish and worried about Turkey’s reaction to support for Syrian Kurds, the Obama Administration initially hesitated but then committed itself to bombing the besieging IS forces after they had penetrated the city’s outer defenses.

Kobani will have two different effects on the region. First and foremost, it will be an important marker in the construction and consolidation of Kurdish nationhood. The exploits of Kobani’s defenders are quickly joining the lore of Kurdish fighting prowess. After all, the Iraqi Kurdish forces, not to mention the Iraqi army, folded in the face of a determined IS onslaught only a couple of months ago. The longer the city resists, the greater will be the reputational impact (although it is already assuming mythic proportions).

There is another, rather unique aspect of the resistance that is adding to its mythic character: the role of women in the fight. The juxtaposition of an Islamic State, which enslaves women or covers them from head to toe, with the Syrian Kurds’ Democratic Union Party (PYD), which has large numbers of women fighting and dying alongside men, is particularly striking. Social and other media outlets have brimmed with stories of the heroism and sacrifice of these women. The fighting in Kobani, and especially the emergence of women fighters, has now entered the Kurdish lore and imagination. [Continue reading…]

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‘Kobane battle far from over’ says defense chief

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U.S.-led coalition jets strike Kobane, ISIS shells hit Turkey

Reuters reports: U.S.-led coalition jets pounded suspected Islamic State targets at least six times in the besieged Syrian town of Kobani on Saturday after the fiercest shelling in days by the insurgents shook the town’s center and hit border areas within Turkey.

Shelling continued after the strikes hit the center of Kobani. Several mortars fell inside Turkey near the border gate, called Mursitpinar, according to witnesses.

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In policy shift, U.S. opens direct talks with Syrian Kurds linked to the PKK

McClatchy reports: The Obama administration acknowledged Thursday that a U.S. official for the first time met with a representative of a Syrian Kurdish political party that’s closely linked to a group on the U.S. terrorist list.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said a U.S. diplomat met with a counterpart from the main Kurdish political party in Syria – the Democratic Union Party, better known by its Kurdish acronym as the PYD – to discuss the U.S.-led fight against the Islamic State. The PYD’s militia is engaged in fierce battles with the Islamist extremists, especially near the town of Kobani along the border with Turkey.

The direct talks are a sign of the shifting alliances created by the rise of the Islamic State. In Iraq, for example, the U.S. is providing air cover for Iranian-backed Shiite Muslim militias that once targeted American forces. And now in Syria, it appears the United States is willing to work with a group that’s tied to the PKK, or Kurdistan Workers Party, which has waged a guerrilla war for Kurdish rights in Turkey for 30 years and which has been on the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations for nearly two decades. Turkey and the European Union also have blacklisted the PKK.

Psaki provided no details of the meeting beyond saying that it took place over the past weekend and outside of the Middle East. Kurdish and other media reports say Charles Rivkin, the undersecretary of state for economic affairs, and PYD leader Salih Muslim met in Paris.

The new face-to-face U.S. channel to the PYD is likely to rankle Turkey, which on Monday bombed PKK locations in Turkey and has battled Kurdish civilians near Kobani protesting the international response to the Islamic State assault on the town. [Continue reading…]

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Lebanon pulled into war with ISIS

The Associated Press reports: With all eyes on the Islamic State group’s onslaught in Iraq and Syria, a less conspicuous but potentially just as explosive front line with the extremists is emerging in Lebanon, where Lebanese soldiers and Shiite Hezbollah guerrillas are increasingly pulled into deadly fighting with the Sunni militants along the country’s border with Syria.

The U.S. has been speeding up delivery of small ammunition to shore up Lebanon’s army, but recent cross-border attacks and beheading of Lebanese soldiers by Islamic State fighters — and the defection of four others to the extremists — has sent shockwaves across this Mediterranean country, eliciting fear of a potential slide into the kind of militant, sectarian violence afflicting both Syria and Iraq, and increasingly prompting minorities to take up arms.

The crisis was slow in coming.

For long, Lebanon managed to miraculously avoid the all-out chaos gripping neighboring countries — despite sporadic street clashes and car bombings, and despite being awash with weapons and taking in an endless stream of refugees from Syria who now constitute a staggering one third of its population of 4.5 million people.

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Iraq crisis: MPs complete unity government

BBC News reports: Iraqi MPs have approved new defence and interior ministers, completing a unity government that is battling the spread of Islamic State militants.

Mohammed Salem al-Ghabban, a Shia, was appointed interior minister, while Khaled al-Obeidi, a Sunni, was confirmed as defence minister.

IS controls large parts of the country, and has been making gains despite US-led coalition air strikes.

On Friday, a curfew was imposed in the city of Ramadi amid fierce fighting.

The vote by Iraqi MPs will be a big relief both inside and outside Iraq after weeks of wrangling, says BBC Arab affairs editor Sebastian Usher.

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YPG spokesman: ‘If the West wants to defeat ISIS it will have to help us’

Deutsche Welle reports: Redur Xelil is the spokesman of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, YPG.

DW: What is the current situation like in Kobani?

Redur Xelil: Clashes are still very heavy but we’ve made a significant step forward. Now we are not only resisting the assault but also striking back against enemy positions. However, we still rely on our light weapons against the heavy ones used by the “Islamic State” (IS) forces against us. We need supplies of all sorts as we are not facing just one armed group but the army of a whole state.

But you do have US air cover. What is the degree of coordination between the YPG and Washington?

Airstrikes are important but not enough to get rid of the enemy. Regarding coordination with Washington, it is obvious that we have to give them our exact position so that their bombs don’t fall on us. I cannot give you any further details about it. All I can say is that we’re looking forward to improve cooperation between us.

If airstrikes are not enough, will it be possible to defeat IS without the presence of international troops on the ground?

Mosul – Iraq’s second city – fell in three days while a town like Kobani has already endured a whole month of fighting, and that’s only thanks to our highly motivated fighters who are defending their land. So far, the YPG has proved to be the only armed force that has successfully fought IS. However, we’re not in a position to go beyond our borders, we cannot fight them outside our boundaries unless we coordinate with local Arabs in those areas, as we’ve done on previous occasions. International support is doubtless necessary but I think the different communities in the Middle East could defeat IS if they were properly armed, trained and coordinated. If the West wants to defeat the Islamists it will have to help us. [Continue reading…]

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Kobane key to U.S. strategy against ISIS

The Associated Press reports: The U.S. isn’t sure why IS is fighting so hard for control of Kobani, a city with few resources and far removed from any capital. But like the U.S. with Kobani, a loss to a ragtag group of Kurdish fighters would be a propaganda loss for IS.

Much of the daily fighting in Kobani is caught on camera, where TV crews and photographers on the Turkish side of the border have captivated the world’s attention with searing pictures of refugees, black plumes of smoke from explosions, and the sounds of firefights on the city’s streets. In video after video, refugees just across the border can be seen and heard cheering as U.S. airstrikes pound the extremists.

Last week, in pictures and Tweets, the militants’ supporters declared Kobani as theirs, and changed the city’s name to Ayn al-Islam, or Spring of Islam. The online jeering has quieted considerably after the airstrikes of the last several days.

The Islamic State relies on its global online propaganda machine, run largely by supporters far from the battle, to entice fighters, funding and other aid to the front. If the militants’ victories begin to ebb in such a public forum, U.S. officials believe, so too will their lines of support. That alone makes the battle for Kobani a must-win fight for the U.S. strategy.

And that is not lost on Washington. “What makes Kobani significant is the fact that ISIL wants it,” Kirby said. [Continue reading…]

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Fleeing Kobane: Taking only the things they could carry

Middle East Eye reports: When Islamic State militants began to close in on Kobane, the town erupted into chaos.

Most fled with just the clothes they were wearing, and any money stashed away in the house they could grab quickly.

Taking the time to pack bags was a gamble, especially for families living on the outskirts of the town, who had long heard about the notoriety of the advancing militants that have captured world attention for the particular brand of cruelty they unleash on their opponents.

Yet, even amid the chaos, a few individuals managed to take an object of sentimental value, an item that in their mind could not be left behind and could not be replaced. In disarray and terror, a small piece of comfort was nonetheless carried over the Syrian border to safety.

As mortars rained down on their hometown, and the fighting between the Peoples Protection Unit (YPG) Kurdish forces and Islamic State militants descended from the rural outskirts into the city, Khaled Khalil Bisiki and his family made the decision to flee Kobane.

Two weeks ago in the middle of the night, as they hurryingly packed their lives into the family’s small battered car, Bisiki ran back inside to grab the deeds to his lands in Kobane. His wife, Maram, quickly followed, grabbing precious family photos.

“We left so fast we couldn’t bring anything with us really, it was all so fast, so you just grab the things you think you can bring with you,” Khaled told Middle East Eye.

“When you remember something is important, it becomes so important. I remembered our land deeds, I want to always have proof that this is my family’s place – to never lose that – and my wife grabbed the family photos.” [Continue reading…]

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ISIS holding thousands of women and children as slaves in Iraq and Syria

Emily Feldman reports: The Islamic State is currently holding thousands of people hostage inside ISIS territory, having taken members of the minority Yazidi sect captive this summer during a brutal campaign across northern Iraq.

While the United Nations has put the number of captives at about 2,500, other estimates are as high as 7,000. And prospects for any rescue are bleak.

Even as the U.S. and its allies bomb ISIS targets in Syria and Iraq, the group has managed to hold on to key cities where it is reviving the practice of slavery.

The latest edition of Dabiq, an ISIS magazine, includes an impassioned argument for the practice as well as an account of how the Yazidi women from the Sinjar region of Iraq were distributed among the fighters.

“The Yazidi women and children were divided according to the Shariah amongst the fighters of the Islamic State who participated in the Sinjar operation…to be divided as khums,” a kind of tax.

“The enslaved Yazidi families are now sold by the Islamic State soldiers.”

The magazine also warns “weak-minded and weak-hearted” ISIS followers who might question or object to the practice of slavery.

“Enslaving the families of the [infidels] and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of the Shariah,” the article says. “If one were to deny or mock [it], he would be denying or mocking the verses of the Quran.”

The article’s description of how prisoners were dealt with closely mirrors accounts from the few who have escaped or managed to contact their loved-ones by phone.

Women were sold at slave markets, forced to marry and imprisoned in the homes of ISIS fighters across both Iraq and Syria. [Continue reading…]

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After repelling ISIS, PKK fighters are the new heroes of Iraqi Kurdistan

Al Jazeera reports: The body of Zanyar Kawa is making its final journey to Sulaymaniyah, in northeastern Iraq. The slain fighter died 500 miles from his hometown battling the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, in Kobane, a Syrian town near the Turkish border.

Though an Iraqi Kurd, Kawa did not die serving the Iraqi Kurdish security forces, known as the peshmerga. Rather, he was killed fighting alongside guerrillas associated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which seeks self-determination for Kurds in Turkey and across the region. Both Turkey and the United States consider the PKK a terrorist organization.

Nearly a hundred people have gathered on a grassy plaza in the city’s center to receive Kawa’s body and accompany it home. PKK flags are flying, along with banners of Abdullah Öcalan, the group’s founder. While most in the crowd are Turkish Kurds who live in exile, there are Iraqi Kurds, too.

In the past, the PKK did not count many Iraqi Kurds among its members, nor was the separatist group a critical player in Kurdistan’s internal affairs. But since ISIL fighters swept through northern Iraq this summer, that has changed. Increasingly, Iraqi Kurds are embracing the PKK fighters as heroes, lauding them for recapturing the northern Iraqi town of Makhmour and its surrounding villages and for rescuing thousands of members of the Yazidi ethnic group who were trapped in nearby Sinjar. [Continue reading…]

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Iran’s ‘shadow commander’ Major General Qassem Suleimani steps into the light

The Atlantic reports: On October 16, Iran’s Fars news agency proclaimed the “magnificent role of General Suleimani in the fight against the terrorists of Daesh,” using an alternative acronym for ISIS.

Fars, which is affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, boasted that The Guardian had noted the role of Major General Qassem Suleimani, the leader of Iran’s Quds Force — the branch of the Revolutionary Guards responsible for overseas operations — in combating Islamic State militants.

“According to this publication,” Fars enthused, “General Suleimani is playing a key role in the fight against the Islamic State group.”

It is no coincidence that Fars dedicated a whole news article to the fact that an “English newspaper” had commented on Suleimani’s presence in Iraq. Iran has made a concerted effort in recent weeks to show the world that Suleimani — and by extension, the Quds Force — is bolstering Shiite militias against ISIS.

Numerous photographs have circulated on social media and in Iran’s state press showing Suleimani in Iraq and Syria. They are notable largely because until now, Suleimani has been an elusive figure, a subject of great media interest and speculation but also great secrecy. Suleimani’s name has appeared frequently in the Western press, but usually accompanied by the description “shadowy,” as in “shadowy figure,” or even “Shadow Commander.”

Yet this month, the hitherto rarely glimpsed Suleimani has been snapped in Irbil, grinning with Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters; meeting with a top Shiite commander, Mohammad Kazmi, at the Quds Force headquarters in Iraq; and hanging out with Shiite militias while wearing a reversed baseball cap and Palestinian keffiyeh: [Continue reading…]

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