Category Archives: ISIS

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria

For activists fighting ISIS, Turkey has become as dangerous as Syria

The Guardian reports: The past six months have not been good for Isis. In addition to mounting losses on the battlefield, the organisation has been struggling to dominate the information war despite the enormous resources it devotes to shaping its message.

Central to Isis’s anger has been the activist group Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS). It numbers roughly 100 members who for more than a year have chronicled airstrikes, terror attacks, executions and other events in the Syrian city, often in real time. Life in the so-called caliphate is detailed without gloss or spin. No one else has been able to offer such insight into the organisation’s stronghold. And none have paid a bigger price for trying.

Late last year, Isis cut the internet and satellite television connections to Raqqa. It announced that anyone caught collaborating with the group would be killed, and it set about trying to weed out agents across the city and within its own ranks. According to one Isis member spoken to by the Guardian, the group has put extra resources into counter-espionage.

Since then at least four prominent activists and journalists have been killed, including three who were living and working in Turkey.

“The situation is getting more and more difficult, especially after the assassinations in Turkey,” said one member of the Raqqa group. “We are under immense pressure inside and outside Syria. Many activists have shut down their accounts and reduced their work in the areas under Isis control. Others [have remained] more driven to challenge Isis and continue their work relying on Thuraya phones and constantly changing their locations and contact details. We can still manage to get information from inside Isis but video has become more difficult now. They have built tremendous fear inside people.”

Another member of the group, who also insisted on remaining anonymous, said: “We have been receiving lots of death threats since 2012 but the situation right now is extremely dangerous. All I can do is move house every month or so and move cities. We ran away from Syria to Turkey for a safe place to work and live in but now Turkey has become as dangerous as Syria. [Continue reading…]

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Charles Lister interview: ‘ISIS is a convenient obsession’

Der Spiegel reports: British-American terror expert Charles Lister believes that al-Qaida ally Jabhat al-Nusra is more dangerous than Islamic State. In an interview, he warns that most Syrian rebel groups will abort the peace process should Bashar Assad remain in power.

SPIEGEL: A surprising conclusion in your new book [The Syrian Jihad: Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and the Evolution of an Insurgency] is that while Islamic State (IS) and the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad are obvious obstacles to ending the Syrian war, in your view the biggest problem is Jabhat al-Nusra, which is allied with al-Qaida. Why is that?

Charles Lister: In the West, the threat posed by IS has become an understandable, but convenient obsession. However, Jabhat al-Nusra has embedded itself so successfully within the Syrian opposition — within the revolution for a long time — that in my view it has become an actor that will be much more difficult to uproot from Syria than IS. Islamic State is all about imposing its will on people, whereas al-Nusra has for the last five years been embedding itself in popular movements, sharing power in villages and cities, and giving to people rather than forcing them to do things. That has lent it a power IS just doesn’t have. The reason I call IS a convenient obsession is that I don’t think anybody in the West knows what to do about Jabhat al-Nusra. There was a period of time where it was relatively clear that al-Nusra had a foreign attack wing that was plotting attacks in the West. They have never let go of their foreign vision, they have explicitly said they want to establish Islamic emirates in Syria, and they belong to an organization, al-Qaida, whose avowed goal is to attack and destroy the West. Not to establish an “Islamic State” and gradually expand it like IS, but explicitly to destroy the West.

SPIEGEL: Yet it was IS that killed 130 people in Paris on Nov. 13, carrying out the bloodiest terrorist attack on foreign soil since 9/11. Are these attacks a sign of strength or a sign of them being under pressure in Syria?

Lister: If these attacks were indeed centrally planned by IS, they have to be a sign of strength. Islamic State certainly is not weakening in Syria and Iraq. Yes, it has lost territory, but as a movement it is in no weaker position than it was 18 months ago. It still has sustainable sources of income, it has large amounts of territory under its control, and now, for the first time it has demonstrated a real ability to carry out what one might call spectacular attacks in the West, with real geopolitical repercussions. It shows its ability to shape international affairs. That in itself is a sign of strength. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS threatens to destroy Saudi prisons after executions

Reuters reports: Islamic State threatened to destroy Saudi Arabian prisons holding jihadists after Riyadh’s execution of 47 people including 43 convicted al Qaeda militants.

The militant group, which has claimed responsibility for attacks in the kingdom and stepped up operations in neighbouring Yemen, singled out the al-Ha’ir and Tarfiya prisons where many al Qaeda and Islamic State supporters have been detained.

“The Islamic State always seeks to free prisoners, but we calculate that the ending of the issues of prisoners will not happen except with the eradication of the rule of tyrants, and then destroying their prisons and razing them to the ground,” it said in an article posted online on Tuesday. [Continue reading…]

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Saudi executions seen as sending message to all dissenters

The New York Times reports: Officials in Saudi Arabia have said that the executions of 47 prisoners on Saturday were a long overdue reckoning for militants, including accused Qaeda members who were said to be recruiters, propagandists or bomb makers who helped carry out deadly attacks in the kingdom more than a decade ago.

But despite the weight of some of the accusations, the Saudi authorities had been in no hurry to put the men to death, allowing some to languish in prison for a decade or more. Only four of the men were convicted of crimes in the most severe category, punishable by death under Islamic law, reinforcing the fact that the death penalty is far less common in terrorism cases in Saudi Arabia than in drug or murder cases, according to human rights advocates.

With its decision to execute the accused militants, along with Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, an outspoken antigovernment cleric and advocate for Saudi Arabia’s Shiite minority who was arrested in 2012, the Saudi government seemed willing to endure the potentially high political costs of the killings in order to deliver a warning to would-be militants, political dissidents and others that any challenge to the royal family’s rule would not be tolerated, analysts say.

It remained to be seen whether the executions would provoke a backlash among Sunni ultraconservatives. But the killings of Sheikh Nimr and three other Shiite dissidents undermined the government’s assertions that it had executed only terrorists and prompted an explosion of tensions between Saudi Arabia and the Shiite government of Iran that has shaken the region. [Continue reading…]

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Journalist Ruqia Hassan murdered by ISIS after writing on life in Raqqa

The Guardian reports: Islamic State militants murdered a journalist who wrote about daily life in occupied Raqqa, having accused her of being a spy, activists have confirmed.

Ruqia Hassan, 30, was killed in September, but news of her death became widely known this week after Isis claimed on social media that she was still alive.

Writing under the pen name Nissan Ibrahim, Hassan’s posts described life for residents of Raqqa, Isis’s Syrian stronghold, and the frequent coalition airstrikes against the group.

Hassan studied philosophy at Aleppo University and later joined the opposition to the regime of Bashar al-Assad when the revolution began in Raqqa. She refused to leave after Isis entered the city. [Continue reading…]

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Inside ISIS’s weapons R&D lab

Sky News reports: Terror group Islamic State is employing scientists and weapons experts to train jihadists to carry out sophisticated “spectacular” attacks in Europe, while also modifying weapons systems capable of targeting passenger jets and military aircraft.

From a “jihadi university” in the Syrian city of Raqqa, the scientists have stunned western weapons experts by producing a homemade thermal battery for surface-to-air missiles.

It had been regarded as a virtually impossible feat for terror groups working without a military infrastructure.

But footage exclusively obtained by Sky News shows that IS can now recommission thousands of missiles assumed by western governments to have been redundant through old age. [Continue reading…]

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Militant in ISIS video believed to be British bouncy castle salesman

BBC News reports: The main suspect in the latest propaganda video by so-called Islamic State is thought to be British man Siddhartha Dhar, the BBC understands.

An official source told the BBC Mr Dhar was the focus of investigations into the video, which purports to show the killing of five men IS says were spies.

“A lot of people think it is him,” the source said, although there has been no official confirmation.
Mr Dhar, also known as Abu Rumaysah, fled Britain in 2014 while on bail.

The father-of-four, from Walthamstow in east London, had been arrested on suspicion of encouraging terrorism, but later travelled to Syria. [Continue reading…]

Vice News posted the following report on November 26, 2014:

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How the Saudis’ fear of ISIS may have been behind the decision to execute Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr

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Nibras Kazimi writes: Far more than al-Qaeda, the Islamic State has focused on the danger posed by Saudi Shias to ‘Sunnidom’ and had castigated the House of Saud as de facto protectors of the Shia.

Al-Nimr was specifically mentioned in a speech made by the Nejd (Central Saudi Arabia) ‘Province’ of the Islamic State in October 2015. The unidentified speaker alleged that al-Nimr was spearheading the secession of the eastern section of Saudi Arabia, where a large minority of Shias reside. According to the speaker, the House of Saud are in collusion with foreign plans to weaken Sunnis by allowing the Shias to break off and create a pro-Iran satellite state.

This rhetorical tussle between the Saudis and IS bears the element of taunting, with the latter asserting that the royals had lost their ‘virility’.

‘Caliph’ al-Baghdadi makes this point clear in his May 2015 audio speech when speaking about the Saudi military campaign against the Houthis in Yemen, what the Saudis call the ‘Storm of Decisiveness’:

“For it is only a ‘storm of delusion’ after the fires of the [Shias] had lapped at their thrones and their encroachment has reached our people in the Arabian Peninsula, which will lead lay Muslims to find refuge in the Islamic State because it is their defender, and this terrifies the [House of Saud] and the rulers of the Arabian Peninsula and shakes their bastions and that is the secret of their alleged ‘storm’ and, God willing, it shall be the [cause of their] demise. For the [House of Saud] and the rulers of the Arabian Peninsula are not people of warfare, and they do not have the patience for it, and they are people of luxury and frivolity, and people of drunkenness and dancing and banquets, who have acquiesced to the protection afforded to them by the Jews and Crusaders..”

This sort of taunting is not new to the Saudis. Nor is their counter reaction to prove their anti-Shia credentials from time to time. What is different nowadays is the scale of it, and the degree to which both sides are willing to go. [Continue reading…]

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The politics animating Sunni-Shia sectarian conflict

Nader Hashemi writes: The response by most Arab regimes, principally those of the GCC, to the Arab Spring is revealing. It serves to highlight the salience of authoritarianism over theology in understanding the dynamics of Sunni-Shi‘i relations today. Fearing that the demand for political change would sweep across the Arab world and destabilize their own societies, several of these regimes relied on a strategy of exploiting sectarianism to deflect demands for democratization. The response from these governments can be situated within the framework of Joel Migdal’s thesis [discussed earlier in this article] on the nature of “weak states” and the “strategies of survival” that shape their politics.

In writing about the House of Saud’s reaction to the Arab Spring, Madawi al-Rasheed observes that:

Sectarianism became a Saudi pre-emptive counter-revolutionary strategy that exaggerates religious difference and hatred and prevents the development of national non-sectarian politics. Through religious discourse and practices, sectarianism in the Saudi context involves not only politicizing religious differences, but also creating a rift between the majority Sunnis and the Shia minority.

This was made easier when only Shi‘as in the Eastern province came out to demonstrate during the Arab Spring, while similar protests in the rest of Saudi Arabia failed to materialize. The specter of an Iranian Shi‘i/Savafid threat was invoked, and the usual Wahhabi court (Ulema) were given air time to issue fatwas against public demonstrations and to warn people of the wrath of God that would fall upon those who defied their rulers. The security forces were then brought in as backup to restore order via the usual tactics of repression that are common in non-democratic regimes.

Al-Rasheed, however, notes that it is wrong to characterize relations between the Saudi regime and its Shi‘i population as a one-way street that relies exclusively on repression. The House of Saud “deploys multiple strategies when it comes to its religious minorities and their leadership,” she observes. “Wholesale systematic discrimination against the Shia may be a characteristic of one particular historical moment, but this can be reversed. A political situation may require alternatives to repression. Sometimes repression is combined with co-optation and even promotion of minority interests and rights.”

For example, when ISIS bombed Shi‘i worshippers on two occasions in May 2015, the Saudi regime strongly condemned the attacks and vowed to hunt down the perpetrators. Expressions of solidarity with the Shi‘a soon followed and were widely disseminated on official state media. Summarizing this strategy, al-Rasheed concludes that:

It is important to note that there is no regular and predictable strategy deployed by Saudi authoritarianism against the Shia. Each historical moment requires a particular response towards this community, ranging from straightforward repression to co-optation and concession. The Arab Spring and its potential impact on the country pushed the regime to reinvigorate sectarian discourse against the Shia in order to renew the loyalty of the Sunni majority.

[Continue reading…]

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The ten most important developments in Syria in 2015

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Aron Lund writes at length on each of these developments:

10. The Death of Zahran Alloush.
9. The Failure of the Southern Storm Offensive.
8. Operation Decisive Quagmire.
7. Europe’s Syria Fatigue vs. Assad’s Viability
6. The Vienna Meeting, the ISSG, and Geneva III.
5. The Donald.
4. The Iran Deal.
3. The Continuing Structural Decay of the Syrian Government.
2. The American-Kurdish Alliance.
1. The Russian Intervention. [Continue reading…]

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Suspect in pro-ISIS plot called mentally ill ‘panhandler’ who was ‘manipulated’

The Associated Press reports: An ex-convict arrested in a plot to carry out a pro-Islamic State attack at a bar on New Year’s Eve is a panhandler who had been asked to leave in the past, the bar’s owner said. The man’s family said he had a long history of mental problems.

Federal authorities have said Emanuel Lutchman, 25, sought to prove he was worthy of joining Isis by leading an attack in Rochester with a machete and knives that were provided by an FBI informant.

After authorities announced his arrest on Thursday, Lutchman’s father and mother described a man who had had psychiatric troubles since childhood, had recently stabbed himself in a suicide attempt and, they said, would not have conducted the attack on his own.

“The boy is impressionable,” his father, Omar Lutchman, told NBC News. “First he was a Blood, then he was a Crip, then he became a Muslim. He’s easily manipulated.”

The father and the suspect’s grandmother, Beverley Carridice-Henry, told the network Lutchman is married and has a two-year-old son but had been having marital and money problems. He was frustrated over being unable to find work and care for his family, they said. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS signals business as usual, with menacing new ‘frontman’

Martin Chulov writes: His tone was flatter, his physique less muscled, but his intent as menacing as his predecessor. The debut of what appears to be a new British-accented jihadi in an Islamic State propaganda film seemed tailored to signal business as usual for the terror group, two months after its foreboding former face, Mohammed Emwazi, was killed.

A lot has happened since then; the coordinated attacks in Paris, three mass bombings in southern Turkey, apparent near-misses in Munich and Brussels, a downed Russian passenger jet in the Sinai and heightened anxiety from Madrid to Istanbul.

But this latest video was aimed directly at the UK. The message was simple: David Cameron’s decision to bomb Isis targets in Syria had made Britain more of a target. And that whenever one British Isis frontman was killed, another was ready to take his place. [Continue reading…]

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Britain acts to stem flow of young doctors recruited by ISIS in Sudan

The Guardian reports: A British delegation, including an imam from London, have visited Sudan to try to dissuade young British doctors from joining Islamic State (Isis), which has been urgently seeking more foreign medics to help at its hospitals in Syria.

The Foreign Office is coordinating efforts to prevent more Britons travelling from Khartoum’s University of Medical Sciences and Technology (UMST). At least 17 British doctors travelled from there to Syria during 2015 to staff Isis’s health ministry.

It has emerged that a second group of UK doctors who left Sudan for Syria have joined up with members of an earlier group who travelled to join Isis in March. According to family sources, the second group of five Britons, including two brothers from Leicester, are understood to have joined up with 20-year-old Rowan Kamal Zine El Abidine, one of a group of nine British medical staff who journeyed from Khartoum months earlier. [Continue reading…]

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Jihadists deepen collaboration in North Africa

The New York Times reports: A group of light armored vehicles skated over the moonscape of the Sahara, part of one of the largest detachments the French military has deployed here since colonial times. Its mission is growing ever more urgent: to cut smuggling routes used by jihadists who have turned this inhospitable terrain into a sprawling security challenge for African and international forces alike.

Many of the extremist groups are affiliates of Al Qaeda, which has had roots in North Africa since the 1990s. With the recent introduction of Islamic State franchises, the jihadist push has been marked by increasing, sometimes heated, competition.

But, analysts and military officials say, there is also deepening collaboration among groups using modern communications and a sophisticated system of roving trainers to share military tactics, media strategies and ways of transferring money.

Their threat has grown as Libya — with its ungoverned spaces, oil, ports, and proximity to Europe and the Middle East — becomes a budding hub of operations for both Al Qaeda and the Islamic State to reach deeper into Africa.

And as Africa’s jihadists come under the wing of distant and more powerful patrons, officials fear that they are extending their reach and stitching together their ambitions, turning once-local actors into pan-national threats. [Continue reading…]

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John Kerry won’t call the Islamic State by its name anymore. Why that’s not a good idea.

Shadi Hamid and Will McCants write: Refusing to utter the Islamic State’s name … needlessly complicates the religious fight to discredit the organization. Muslims understandably feel that their religion is being hijacked. But there’s something odd about an American president or Secretary of State opining on what is and isn’t legitimately Islamic. Shouldn’t it go without saying that a murderous extremist group isn’t what Muslims are all about?

There is a place for Muslim apologetics — from Muslims. This is precisely what a group of prominent British figures did when they attempted to rebrand the Islamic State as “the Un-Islamic State.”

But when non-Muslim officials insert themselves into this debate, it sets a negative precedent. It lends itself easily to broader pronouncements on who the good, “moderate” Muslims are, in contrast to the “bad guys,” a category which presumably could include anyone who falls on the Islamist side of the spectrum, regardless of whether they’re actually “extreme.”

And when the West co-opts Muslim talking points about the “true” Islam, it makes it harder for Muslims in the Arab world to make the same claim. Western governments are widely loathed and lack credibility in the region, even when they take care to explain their policies. A 2006 study suggested Arab students’ views of American policy “worsened slightly” the longer they listened to U.S.-sponsored Radio Sawa and al-Hurra TV. When Western officials repeat religious criticisms of the Islamic State, they make it easier for the group’s sympathizers to dismiss the criticisms as mere imperial dictation. [Continue reading…]

Some regular readers here may have noticed that in headlines (the one above being an exception), I have stuck with ISIS, in spite of its official name change and the ongoing debate among outsiders over which is the most appropriate label. My choice has nothing to do with that debate. It’s based instead on the matter of usage.

Whichever happens to be the most commonly used label is “correct” by that virtue alone. That’s why even though ISIS is actually an ambiguous term, you will rarely find yourself in a conversation during which you’ll be asked to clarify whether you’re talking about the terrorist organization, ISIS, or the Egyptian goddess, Isis.

When it comes to determining who’s saying what, where, Google Trends is an indispensable tool.

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Saudi mass execution driven by fear of Sunni militancy

Angus McDowall writes: The Al Saud ruling family regard the expansion of Shi’ite Iran’s influence in the Middle East as a threat to their security and to their ambition of playing the leading role among Arab states.

Inside the kingdom, however, it is the threat of a rebellion by the majority Sunnis that most alarms a dynasty whose rule is based on conservative support at home and an alliance with the West.

All past threats to the Al Saud, from a 1920s tribal rebellion to riots in the 1960s, a siege at Mecca’s Grand Mosque in 1979 and protests in the 1990s, were caused by conservative Sunni anger at modernisation or ties with the West.

That was why the al Qaeda uprising that began in 2003, and attacked the Al Saud by turning its own conservative Salafi brand of Sunni Islam against it, was such a danger. It is why the jihadist movement’s latest iteration, Islamic State, is also a problem.

While Islamic State seems to lack real support among Saudis, some may sympathise with its broader goals, approving of its rhetoric against Shi’ites and the West and its criticism of corruption among the Al Saud.

By executing al Qaeda ideologues and attackers, Riyadh was showing its determination to crush support for the militant cause. By also killing four Shi’ites, angering Iran in the process, it was telling conservative Sunnis it was still on their side. [Continue reading…]

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Meltdowns, crises and ISIS: A terrible year in the Middle East

By Simon Mabon, Lancaster University

As we approach the fifth anniversary of the Arab Uprisings, it’s hard to remember the days of popular protests, of democratic revolutions and of dreams of a better future that rocked the Middle East in 2011. Nearly five years on, tensions between rulers and the ruled have exploded across the region – and the ensuing struggles for survival have continued to take all manner of ugly forms.

At the centre of things, the Syrian conflict has deepened – and while the brutality of Islamic State (IS) has been responsible for much of the recent chaos and tragedy across Syria, the regime of Bashar al-Assad has been responsible for seven times as many Syrian deaths as IS. Assad’s position was strengthened by continued support from Russia, Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, antagonising powerful states in the West and the Gulf – particularly Saudi Arabia. The Gulf states also faced domestic threats from IS, with the group carrying out a number of attacks on Shia sites and communities across the region.

The Syrian conflict became ever more internationalised in 2015. The number of foreign fighters on the ground – on all sides – continued to grow, while on the diplomatic level, the Vienna talks tried to resolve the seemingly intractable conflict – though they have yet to yield any decisive action.

The task of dealing with IS was further complicated by a batch of new wilayats, groups who declared allegiance to IS. Wilayat Sinai in particular was purportedly responsible for a range of acts, allegedly including a massive bomb attack in Cairo and the downing of a Russian passenger jet over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

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U.S. and allies conduct 24 air strikes against ISIS targets in Iraq

Reuters reports: The US and its allies conducted 24 air strikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq on Thursday, the US military said on Friday.

It said in a statement the strikes targeted Isis positions in seven areas. Four strikes near the city of Ramadi, the centre of which fell to Iraqi forces this week, hit a large tactical unit and destroyed a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device facility, five militant fighting positions and two heavy machine guns.

Near Tal Afar, 11 strikes destroyed nine bunkers, five culverts and four bridges used by the militants. Near Mosul, three strikes struck a tactical unit and destroyed two heavy machine guns, six fighting positions, a weapons cache and a trench.

In Ramadi, terrified families waved white flags as they emerged from homes reduced to rubble. Government troops were still battling Isis fighters holed up on Friday, five days after the army recaptured the city centre. [Continue reading…]

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