Category Archives: ISIS

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria

Most of ISIS’s ammunition was made in the U.S. and China

The New York Times reports: In its campaign across northern Syria and Iraq, the jihadist group Islamic State has been using ammunition from the United States and other countries that have been supporting the regional security forces fighting the group, according to new field data gathered by a private arms-tracking organization.

The data, part of a larger sample of captured arms and cartridges in Syria and Iraq, carries an implicit warning for policy makers and advocates of intervention.

It suggests that ammunition transferred into Syria and Iraq to help stabilize governments has instead passed from the governments to the jihadists, helping to fuel the Islamic State’s rise and persistent combat power. Rifle cartridges from the United States, the sample shows, have played a significant role.

“The lesson learned here is that the defense and security forces that have been supplied ammunition by external nations really don’t have the capacity to maintain custody of that ammunition,” said James Bevan, director of Conflict Armament Research, the organization that is gathering and analyzing weapons used by the Islamic State.[Continue reading…]

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ISIS adapts to U.S. airstrikes, holds territory and advances in American tanks, killing Kurds


A Wall Street Journal report shows that while the Pentagon claims that it has been successful in “disrupting” ISIS, what is much more obvious is the ease with which the organization has thus far adapted to the U.S.-led air campaign.

A U.S. official is quoted saying: “We’re not trying to take ground away from them [in Syria]. We’re trying to take capability away from them.”

And as the population of Kobane has witnessed, the U.S. is not even trying hard to prevent ISIS conquering new territory.

Islamic State fighters have reacted swiftly to the threat of airstrikes over the past weeks, moving out of captured military bases and government buildings in Syria, relocating weapons and hostages, and abandoning training camps, according to residents and rebels in the areas the militants control. In Syria and Iraq, they took down many of their trademark black flags, and camouflaged armed pickup trucks. They also took cover among civilians.

They also have maintained much of their financing and recruiting capability and continued to crack down on local populations, anti-regime activists and rebels in Syria said. At the same time, they publicized a series of beheadings of Western hostages.

In addition to holding territory after they came under attack, they pressed on with an ambitious offensive on the Syrian city of Ayn al-Arab, also known as Kobani, close to the border with Turkey.

Analysts said the U.S. is having a hard time getting intelligence to act on, and, as a result, a fraction of sorties flown have resulted in bombings.

Syrian anti-Assad activists and members of the Western-backed Free Syrian Army said the U.S. is overestimating the impact it has had on Islamic State. Some residents living in areas controlled by the group in Syria maintain that the air campaign has had little effect.

Militants began moving weaponry and leadership away from their bases immediately after the U.S. announced in September it would strike targets in Syria, activists and rebels said. By mid-September, residents of Raqqa—Islamic State’s de facto capital in northeastern Syria—said the city was emptied of the group’s senior leadership.

“We used to see commanders around the city. But since the announcement [that airstrikes would begin], they’re gone,” said one Raqqa resident.

However, an official from one U.S. ally in the Persian Gulf defended the success of the strikes so far, saying they had slowed the militants’ advance in both countries and was slowly degrading their financing infrastructure.

“ISIS will have a big problem when winter starts,” said one aid worker who provides relief in the eastern province of Deir Ezzour.

“They gained some popularity by distributing [a monthly stipend] of gas to the population and lowering prices. They won’t be able to do that.”

An Islamic State member interviewed via Skype said strikes by the Syrian regime have been more damaging than the U.S.-led assaults, and claimed the group’s production and refining of oil—a major revenue source — continues.

Christopher Harmer, a defense analyst at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, said the U.S. is having a hard time getting actionable intelligence. As a result, he estimated only about 10% of the sorties being flown by the U.S. and its partners have dropped bombs.

“ISIS is not really structured in such a way as to be vulnerable to airstrikes,” he said. “They don’t have a lot of static targets. We can bomb a building here, a building there, a tank here, a truck there. But ISIS fighters are very good at intermingling with the civilian population.”

U.S. officials have said the strikes have had a high degree of accuracy.

One U.K. defense expert said that the coalition so far has struck mostly static targets, when the better way to hamper the group’s mobility is attacking fighters moving from one area to another.

“What air power can do is cut down on that mobility,” said Michael Clarke, the director at the Royal United Services Institute, an independent think tank on defense and security. “But it’s not evident at the moment that the coalition of air power has succeeded in doing that.”

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ISIS enters city. ‘Everyone in Kobane is in danger’

Middle East Eye reports: Two flags of Islamic State (IS) militants seeking to take the Syrian town of Kobane were flying on the eastern side of the town on Monday afternoon, eyewitnesses reported.

The flags, black with the Arabic lettering of the group, were seen by an AFP photographer, from the Turkish side of the border as well as an Al Aan TV reporter from an unknown location.

One was flying on top of a building on the eastern side of Kobane. Another was seen being planted by a man on the crest of a hill on the eastern edge of the town.


Idris Nahsen, the deputy foreign minister of Kobane region, told reporters by telephone that he could not confirm if IS militants were inside parts of the town. [Continue reading…]

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Resolve: Obama lacks what America lacks

USA Today reports: Americans should be braced for a long battle against the brutal terrorist group Islamic State that will test U.S. resolve — and the leadership of the commander in chief, says Leon Panetta, who headed the CIA and then the Pentagon as Al Qaeda was weakened and Osama bin Laden killed.

“I think we’re looking at kind of a 30-year war,” he says, one that will have to extend beyond Islamic State to include emerging threats in Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen, Libya and elsewhere.

In his first interview about his new book, Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace, Panetta argues that decisions made by President Obama over the past three years have made that battle more difficult — an explosive assessment by a respected policymaker of the president he served.

Even before it’s published Tuesday by Penguin Press, the 512-page book has provoked rebukes at the State Department and by Vice President Biden. But Panetta says he was determined to write a book that was “honest,” including his high regard for the president on some fronts and his deep concern about his leadership on others.

In an interview at his home with Capital Download, USA TODAY’s video newsmaker series, Panetta says Obama erred:

• By not pushing the Iraqi government harder to allow a residual U.S. force to remain when troops withdrew in 2011, a deal he says could have been negotiated with more effort. That “created a vacuum in terms of the ability of that country to better protect itself, and it’s out of that vacuum that ISIS began to breed.” Islamic State also is known as ISIS and ISIL.

• By rejecting the advice of top aides — including Panetta and then-secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton — to begin arming Syrian rebels in 2012. If the U.S. had done so, “I do think we would be in a better position to kind of know whether or not there is some moderate element in the rebel forces that are confronting (Syrian President Bashar) Assad.”

• By warning Assad not to use chemical weapons against his own people, then failing to act when that “red line” was crossed in 2013. Before ordering airstrikes, Obama said he wanted to seek congressional authorization, which predictably didn’t happen.

The reversal cost the United States credibility then and is complicating efforts to enlist international allies now to join a coalition against the Islamic State, Panetta says. “There’s a little question mark to, is the United States going to stick this out? Is the United States going to be there when we need them?”

Showing leadership in the fight against ISIS is an opportunity “to repair the damage,” he says. He says it’s also a chance for Obama to get a fresh start after having “lost his way.”

On Friday, the terrorist group released a video that showed the beheading of a fourth Westerner, British aid worker Alan Henning, and threatened to execute American hostage Abdul-Rahman (formerly Peter) Kassig next.

Panetta’s behind-the-scenes account of events during Obama’s first term, including the internal debate over helping Syrian rebels, is consistent with those in memoirs published this year by Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates, whom Panetta succeeded as Defense secretary.

But Panetta’s portrait of Obama is more sharply drawn and explicitly critical.

He praises the president for “his intelligence, his convictions, and his determination to do what was best for the country.” He notes that Obama has faced bitter opposition, especially from congressional Republicans. He credits him with scoring significant progress in fighting terrorism and righting the economy.

In the book’s final chapter, however, he writes that Obama’s “most conspicuous weakness” is “a frustrating reticence to engage his opponents and rally support for his cause.” Too often, he “relies on the logic of a law professor rather than the passion of a leader.” On occasion, he “avoids the battle, complains, and misses opportunities.”

In the interview, Panetta says he thinks Obama “gets so discouraged by the process” that he sometimes stops fighting.

Whenever American politicians and pundits make Churchillian statements about the need for or the testing of American resolve, it’s hard to take these words seriously.

If, as Leon Panetta predicts, the fight against ISIS will require a 30-year war, rather than suggest that this will test American resolve, an honest assessment would surely conclude that the U.S. is incapable of making this kind of commitment.

But more than this, to say that this nation is incapable of making a 30-year commitment of any kind, is a much more damning critique than to point to the limits of U.S. military power.

Another way of describing this deficit in American resolve is to say that as a culture, America lacks the capacity to focus on the interests of the next generation.

The price of wanting to have it all and have it now, is that immediate gratification always comes at someone else’s expense. We steal the future.

If the fight against ISIS or any other grandiose undertaking is engaged in the name of defending the American way of life, I don’t think that’s a worthy cause — indeed, I’d say it’s a huge part of the problem.

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Two British jihadis thought to be among scores of prisoners traded by Turkey for hostages captured by ISIS

The Daily Mail reports: Two British jihadists are thought to have been among scores of prisoners handed back to Islamic State by Turkey in return for the release of diplomats.

Former grammar school pupil Shabazz Suleman, 18, and Hisham Folkard, 26, are understood to be among as many as 180 fighters exchanged by Turkey in the deal.

In return, the terror group has released 46 Turkish citizens and three local Iraqi staff who were captured when IS stormed the Iraqi city of Mosul five months ago.

The Times has seen a leaked list of names, including the two Britons, that has been confirmed by IS sources.

It is not known whether the two British men were captured by Turkish forces during fighting or whether they had been trying to escape Islamic State.

Shabazz Suleman, 18, a pupil at the Royal Grammar School in High Wycombe, had reportedly given his parents the slip to cross the border while on holiday in Turkey. He had a place lined up at a top university after achieving good A-level results this summer.

He had previously travelled to the Syrian border with an aid convoy last summer.

The deal is understood to have been brokered through complex talks with tribes and rebel militia.

Three French citizens, two Swedes, two Macedonians, one Swiss, and one Belgian are also believed to have been part of the exchange. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS hostage Abdul-Rahman Kassig: ‘I’m pretty scared to die’

NBC News reports: An Army Ranger-turned-aid worker held hostage by ISIS militants in Syria admitted to his parents he was “pretty scared to die” but also urged them to “seek refuge and comfort” from his humanitarian work.

Abdul-Rahman Kassig — who was born Peter but changed his name when he converted to Islam last year — wrote in a letter received by his parents on June 2 he was “praying every day” in captivity but was “not angry.” He added: “I am in a dogmatically complicated situation here, but I am at peace with my belief.”

Excerpts from his heartfelt letter were released in a statement late Sunday by his parents, Ed and Paula Kassig of Indianapolis, explaining how their 26-year-old son had traveled to Lebanon work as a medic before making a “spiritual journey” to become a Muslim. “We feel a need to more fully tell that story to the world,” the statement said. [Continue reading…]

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Air strikes against ISIS are not working, say Syrian Kurds

The Guardian reports: Isis fighters have pushed to within little more than a mile of the centre of the city of Kobani, undeterred by western air strikes which are proving ineffective, a leading Kurdish official in the city has said.

Fighting between the Islamist militants and Syrian Kurds continued unabated despite another volley of coalition air strikes in and around the Kobani enclave, Idris Nassan, Kobani’s “foreign affairs minister”, told the Guardian.

“There are fierce clashes between Isis and YPG [People’s Defence Corps] fighters, at the moment mainly to the south-east of the city. Isis now stands at two kilometres from the city centre,” Nassan told the Guardian by phone. “I can hear the bombs and shells here.”

According to Nassan, the situation was “under control for now”, but he underlined that air strikes had not deterred a further Isis advance.

“Air strikes alone are really not enough to defeat Isis in Kobani,” he stressed. “They are besieging the city on three sides, and fighter jets simply cannot hit each and every Isis fighter on the ground.”

He added that Isis had adapted their tactics to military strikes from the air. “Each time a jet approaches they leave their open positions, they scatter and hide. What we really need is ground support. We need heavy weapons and ammunition in order to fend them off and defeat them.” [Continue reading…]

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Kurdish fighter Ceylan Özalp reported alive


“19-Year-Old Kurdish Woman Fighter ‘Kills Herself Rather Than Falling into Isis’ Hands'” is a headline appearing in International Business Times, October 3. I referred to the same story in this post, but it appears not to be true.

The first appearance of this story is thought to be this tweet on September 28 from @cansuipek21.

The tragic image of a nineteen-year-old woman fighter killing herself with her last bullet so that she would not be captured by ISIS, must have seemed iconic to many observers — a graphic representation of the plight Kurdish fighters in Kobane face, surrounded on three sides by ISIS while receiving no support from Turkey and very little from U.S. airstrikes. Sometimes a story conveys a powerful truth even when it turns out not to be true.

Müjgan Halis, a Kurdish journalist, has tweeted (as have others) that Özalp is alive. This was retweeted by the politician Ayla Akat Ata (who was a defense lawyer for Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the PKK). At this point, I’m inclined to treat their word as authoritative.

This should be good news for everyone apart from ISIS.

In early September, Gabriel Gatehouse reported: Around a third of the Syrian Kurdish force is made up of women. On the front lines they fight alongside the men, taking the same risks and facing the same dangers.

“Women are the bravest fighters,” says Diren, taking refuge from the scorching heat in the cool of an underground bunker.

She and three comrades are having lunch: flatbread, cheese and watermelon. Many of the fighters, like Diren, 19, are still teenagers.

“We’re not scared of anything,” she says. “We’ll fight to the last. We’d rather blow ourselves up than be captured by IS.”

Like the followers of the Islamic State, most Kurds are Sunni Muslims. But that is where the similarities end. Diren says that, to the fanatics of IS, a female fighter is “haram”, anathema: a disturbing and scary sight.

“When they see a woman with a gun, they’re so afraid they begin to shake. They portray themselves as tough guys to the world. But when they see us with our guns they run away. They see a woman as just a small thing. But one of our women is worth a hundred of their men.”

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Coalition risks loss of support in Syria unless it clarifies its aims

Hassan Hassan writes: As the US-led offensive against ISIL inside Syria enters its 10th day today, there already appears to be a growing public backlash in Syria against the campaign. The scepticism about the air strikes emanates from the lack of clarity over the real aims and objectives of the offensive. Five reasons can be identified for this cynicism, which should be addressed if the air strikes are to lead to a positive outcome.

The first one is that the air strikes do not offer any clear endgame. This lack of clarity over what to expect from the air strikes has led Syrians to interpret the signals they have received so far. Bashar Al Assad, for example, is not only spared the air strikes, but he also has more time to bomb civilian areas, given that the pressure against his forces in Hama and eastern Aleppo has been reduced significantly. This is creating an impression that the Assad regime is a de facto partner in the US coalition, despite all the rhetoric to the contrary.

Another reason is the economic consequences of the air strikes. On Tuesday, the Pentagon announced that most of the oil refineries controlled by ISIL in Syria have been destroyed. These refineries will prevent ISIL from generating further revenues in Syria, which will also affect ISIL in Iraq, as much of the refined oil is transferred to the other side of the border.

However, these refineries, even before ISIL’s arrival in eastern Syria, have served as a lifeline for local communities.

Oil refineries have helped the population in Deir Ezzor to survive starvation after they were isolated between the Iraqi authorities across theborder, on one hand, and the regime on the other. These refineries were the latchkeys of a full-fledged war economy that helped to operate water-pumping engines to irrigate lands far from the Euphrates river. Without them, the situation in Deir Ezzor would have been much worse. Destroying these refineries will not affect ISIL, which had stopped operating them days before the air strikes began, as much as it will affect families living there. [Continue reading…]

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British Muslims unite in fury at ISIS murder of Alan Henning

The Guardian reports: British Muslims have expressed fury and anguish in the wake of the brutal killing of Alan Henning by Islamic State (Isis) militants, as the family of the Salford taxi driver said they were “numb with grief” at news of his murder.

Many in the UK Muslim community had been hoping the aid convoy volunteer might be freed on the eve of the Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha. Vigils had been held in his home town and more than 100 high-profile Islamic leaders had appealed for him to be released. But the posting of a gruesome video on Friday night, appearing to show his beheading, ended hopes and unleashed a torrent of condemnation.

Harun Khan, deputy secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain – the largest Islamic organisation in the UK, representing more than 500 organisations – said: “Yesterday was a huge day of significance because it was the day when people will seek forgiveness and salvation. It’s a time of peace, this was really shocking to a lot of people. If Isis really wanted to win the propaganda war, they would have released Alan. They are not really Islamic: nobody recognises them, and they are hijacking the religion.” [Continue reading…]

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Syrian Kurdish leader visits Turkey as ISIS advances on Kobane

Rudaw reports: The leader of Syria’s largest Kurdish group, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), whose fighters are battling an advance by Islamic State militants in the north of the country, has held talks with officials in the Turkish capital, local media reported.

Friday’s visit by Salih Muslim was the first to Turkey in more than a year and could suggest a softening of Ankara’s stance as it comes under increasing pressure to intervene militarily against jihadist militants who have laid siege to the Syrian town of Kobane near the Turkish frontier.

Turkish media reported the PYD leader had not met directly with the Turkish government but had held talks with officials from the country’s intelligence agency.

Since Muslim’s last visit to Turkey in July 2013, tensions between Ankara and the PYD, which has close links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey, have flared.

Turkey views the PYD as an extension of the PKK, which for three decades has fought the Turkish state for more autonomy, and says it is allied with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad who Ankara wants to see overthrown. It is also wary of territorial gains made by Kurdish groups in northern Syria, fearing this could lead to eventual self-rule, emboldening Turkey’s Kurds.

The PYD has accused Turkey of aiding Islamist militants inside Syria, a charge Ankara denies, and of obstructing efforts by Kurdish militias to defend towns along the Turkish border.

In an interview with Reuters last week, Muslim said he had called on Western states to provide weapons to his embattled fighters but that help had not arrived because, “Turkey and other countries are preventing this because they don’t want the Kurds to be able to defend themselves”. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. airstrikes back local forces in Iraq but not Syria — Kobane feels ‘deserted and furious’

Bloomberg reports: The U.S military is monitoring the threat to Kobani, and has conducted airstrikes “in and around” the town in the past several days, Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby told reporters in Washington yesterday. U.S. Central Command said today the coalition had carried out 14 strikes against Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq yesterday and today. Vehicles, artillery positions and a building were destroyed near Kobani, said in an e-mailed statement.

Kirby said the U.S. operation in Syria targets areas Islamic State can use as a “sanctuary and a safe haven,” compared with strikes in Iraq that are being conducted to back local forces. That doesn’t mean “we are going to turn a blind eye to what’s going on at Kobani or anywhere else,” Kirby said.

While Turkey’s government has vowed to prevent an Islamic State takeover of Kobani, Kurds aren’t convinced, accusing authorities in Ankara of using the crisis to smother a largely autonomous Kurdish region that has evolved during Syria’s three-year civil war.

The Kurds fighting Islamic State in Syria are linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, whose separatist ambition has long been considered Turkey’s top security threat.

“The people of Kobani feel deserted and furious,” Faysal Sariyildiz, another pro-Kurdish legislator, said yesterday.

The Washington Post adds: The real reason [for the limited number of airstrikes on ISIS near Kobane] appears to be that the main focus of the U.S.-led air war remains on Iraq, with any strikes conducted in Syria intended primarily to degrade the Islamic State’s capacity to operate there, according to Andrew Tabler of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

“This is about stabilizing Iraq, not about minorities,” he said. “It appears Syria is secondary and strikes are not being carried out with a discernible political or humanitarian strategy.”

U.S. officials asked to explain the inaction in Kobane cast the answer in similar, if less explicit, terms.

Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, noted to reporters Friday that airstrikes had been conducted in the vicinity of the town, adding that if they could be conducted “in such a way that we’re not going to cause any greater damage or civilian casualties, then . . . we’re going to do it,” he said.

But, he added, “we’re broadly focused, not just on one city and one town. We have to stay broadly focused on the whole region.”

“The focus in Syria has really been about the safe haven they enjoy,” he said of Islamic State fighters. “In Iraq, it’s really been much more focused on supporting Iraqi security forces and Kurdish forces on the ground.”

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ISIS pushes forward on Kobane

Al Jazeera reports: The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant is continuing to push its attempts to control a key Syrian border town despite resistance from local fighters and US-led air attacks.

Fighting raged on Saturday between ISIL and Kurdish fighters in Kobane, with artillery fire pounding the southwestern areas, a day after ISIL fired at least 80 mortar rounds into the town and advanced to its outskirts.

Al Jazeera’s correspondent Bernard Smith said he could hear artillery bursts and gunfire from his position in Suruc in Turkey, about 6km from Kobane.

An Al Jazeera correspondent reported that ISIL on Friday night attempted four times to storm the town from the east side, but US-led air attacks stopped the advances and killed dozens of its fighters.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based group, said the attacks hit at least four areas, killing 35 ISIL fighters and destroying some materiel. Al Jazeera cannot independently verify the report.

Juan Cole adds: Ismat Sheikh, commander of the Kurdish forces at the border town of Kobane (Ain al-Arab) that is besieged by ISIL tanks and artillery, says that he expects massacres of its inhabitants if it falls to the Sunni Arab extremists.

He warned that ISIL fighters are less than a mile from his front line.

Despite US air strikes, ISIL has drawn up some 25 tanks and a number of artillery pieces to pound Kobane repeatedly.

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Turkey pretends to challenge ISIS but attacks Kurds instead

The BBC’s Paul Adams reports that Kobane is still under attack while a squadron of Turkish tanks sits idle a few hundred metres away.

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Why Turkey’s parliamentary vote authorizing military action is unlikely to result in military action

Aron Lund writes: While Turkey is likely to lend assistance to the U.S.-led campaign, the parliamentary vote won’t trigger any military action by itself. Much of the reporting and commentary on the vote has overlooked that this is in fact the third year in a row that Turkey’s parliament has issued an authorization for military force.

The first of such resolutions was passed in October 2012, after several exchanges of fire across the Syrian-Turkish border. The one-year authorization took aim at the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, serving as a shot across the bow by lowering Turkey’s threshold for intervention.

However, no intervention ever came. The parliament therefore extended its one-year deadline in October 2013. Again, no intervention took place during the year, and the resolution is set to expire today. That’s why the Turkish parliament has issued a resolution now—not because of the fighting in Kobane or the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State, although it may of course be used to join these battles. [Continue reading…]

In this useful analysis, Lund refers to the PKK as being “even now involved in violence against the [Turkish] army,” yet the evidence of this which he cites is a report on “a clash [which] erupted after a group of Turkish soldiers, deployed on a hill with four military vehicles, opened fire on a group of HPG [PKK] guerrillas.”

It looks like Lund should have written that the Turkish army is even now involved in violence against the PKK.

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