Category Archives: ISIS

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria

Zawahiri argues ISIS’s caliphate is illegitimate in newly released message

Thomas Joscelyn writes: Al Qaeda has released a message from Ayman al Zawahiri, who rebukes Abu Bakr al Baghdadi and the Islamic State, arguing the so-called “caliphate” is illegitimate. Ever since the rivalry between the two jihadist poles boiled over in early 2014, Zawahiri has allowed others to take the lead in al Qaeda’s attempt to undermine the Islamic State’s credentials. Zawahiri has criticized the Islamic State, but he has not unleashed a full broadside.

In the message released today, however, Zawahiri doesn’t hold back. He emphasizes that al Qaeda doesn’t recognize Baghdadi’s so-called “caliphate,” saying it is not qualified to lead Muslims. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Qassem Soleimani and the Iran-Iraq split

Garrett Khoury writes: Qassem Soleimani has many nicknames, generally containing one or both of the words “shadow” or “dark.” However, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force has been operating in the light since the devastating advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) began in the summer of 2014, but a year later is seeing him begin to wear out his welcome with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.

Tasked with organizing the defense of the Shi’a holy sites in central Iraq and leading the Shi’a militias called up in the panic following the collapse of the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), Soleimani has been seen regularly on the front lines and in Baghdad. With the power of the militias behind him, he has come to be seen as attempting to assert himself as the power behind the government, Iraq’s very own eminence grise.

The past month, though, has seen an ever-wider rift growing between Prime Minister Abadi and Soleimani, one that may threaten the relationship between Iran and Iraq as a whole. Abadi once spoke respectfully about Soleimani and Iran’s role in the country and the fight against ISIS. While perhaps not warmly, it was at least grateful and realistic about the need for Iranian assistance.

That has changed dramatically, though. Luckily, perhaps, for Abadi, events on the streets are working in his favor. The popular protests against corruption and government inefficiency that have spread around Iraq have crossed sectarian lines, but have been particularly aggressive towards Shi’a politicians in the south of the country. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

German intelligence confirms ISIS used mustard gas in Iraq, says news report

The Associated Press reports: Germany’s foreign intelligence agency BND has reportedly collected evidence of mustard gas use by the Islamic State group.

German daily Bild reported on Monday that BND intelligence agents collected blood samples from Kurds who were injured in clashes with Isis.

Schindler told the paper that the mustard gas either came from old Iraqi stockpiles produced under Saddam Hussein’s rule or was manufactured by Isis after it seized the University of Mosul.

A senior German intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to discuss the matter publicly, confirmed the comments attributed to Schindler. He declined to confirm that the BND collected blood samples or discuss the agency’s methods. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Syrian army, ISIS battle for central oilfield

Reuters reports: Islamic State fighters battled government forces on Tuesday at central Syria’s Jazal oilfield, the last such facility still partly under state control, a group monitoring the conflict reported.

Clashes broke out at dawn at the site which has been shut down by several days of fighting, Rami Abdulrahman, from the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said.

The Observatory, which monitors Syria’s conflict through a network of sources on the ground, had said on Monday the militants had seized all of the facility – a report denied by the government.

But Abdulrahman said on Tuesday the army had managed to keep Islamic State out of parts of the complex.

Jazal is a medium-sized field that lies to the northwest of the rebel-held ancient city of Palmyra, part of a region that holds Syria’s main natural gas fields and multi-million-dollar extraction facilities. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

What happens to former ISIS fighters?

Ben Taub writes: Michael Delefortrie grew up in a secular Christian household in Antwerp, Belgium, but secretly converted to Islam in 2006, when he was seventeen. One day, he came home from the mosque to discover that his father had dug up his Koran and prayer rug, and placed them on the table as props for the heated dispute to come. “I was a little bit angry that he touched the book,” Delefortrie told me, “because I know it’s a sacred book,” and now it was sullied by his father’s touch. His father was angry too. Delefortrie told me he issued a cruel ultimatum: “If you want to be a Muslim, go.” The teen-ager, who had A.D.H.D. and was trying to stop using alcohol and drugs, moved into an apartment above the mosque. He lived there for the next two years.

Elsewhere in Antwerp, a petty criminal named Fouad Belkacem began to gain notoriety for delivering fiery homophobic rants in public squares, and for demanding that Belgium become an Islamic state, governed by Sharia law. He quickly established a following of young men, named the group Sharia4Belgium, and plugged into an international network of jihadis striving to dismantle liberal European values and institutions. (I wrote about one Sharia4Belgium member, Jejoen Bontinck, for the magazine.) Delefortrie became one of Belkacem’s enthusiastic devotees. In December, 2011, he was arrested for trying to sell a Kalashnikov online. After being temporarily shunned by the group for having drawn too much negative attention, he created a splinter organization called Sharia4Flanders, but never managed to secure the interest of a second member. The following summer, the first Sharia4Belgium member left for Syria. Several dozen others had followed before Delefortrie left home.

In December, 2013, Delefortrie boarded a bus from Antwerp to Cologne, Germany, then took a taxi to Dusseldorf. From there, he flew to Istanbul, Turkey, then south to Adana, near the Syrian border. He paid a smuggler, hopped an unguarded patch of wire fence, and, now in Syria, met up with a Belgian friend, who drove him to an ISIS base in Aleppo. After being questioned about his reasons for coming to Syria, Delefortrie was transported to a large, walled villa housing foreign ISIS recruits. He lived there, among Tunisian, French, Belgian, and Dutch fighters, for five weeks, occasionally updating his Facebook account with pictures of himself dressed in camouflage and gripping a Kalashnikov, until moderate Syrian rebels attacked the villa. He and the other ISIS fighters fled. While the Syrian rebels pilfered their money and belongings, his group took refuge for a couple of days in an abandoned Carrefour shopping mall. Then, “We attacked them,” he told me in a dimly lit bar in Antwerp, this winter, before quickly revising his story: “They” — his comrades — “attacked them,” he emphasized this time.

Shortly after the battle, Delefortrie came back to Belgium, where, a few weeks later, he found himself in an interrogation room, seated opposite federal police. He told them repeatedly that he had never participated in the armed struggle, insisting that he only left for Syria to seek a “better life” and to provide “ideological support.” He dismissed the online pictures of himself carrying guns as “pictures to brag,” and denied any knowledge of a video posted to his Facebook account, titled “ISIS mujahid gives some advice,” claiming, “I don’t know what this movie is about.” Six other Sharia4Belgium members also returned from Syria, some of them offering even flimsier excuses. One claimed to work for the U.N.H.C.R., the U.N. refugee agency, but, when asked to give the full name of the organization, he told police that the first letter “probably stands for United, but I don’t remember the rest.” Another said he had been an ambulance driver, but could not name a single aid organization operating in northern Syria. A third, who confessed to joining a jihadi group that kidnapped, ransomed, and murdered local civilians, swore he only carried out menial tasks, telling police, “I just assumed if a bomb fell on the house while I was doing the dishes, I was also a martyr.” Mark Eeckhaut, a Belgian crime reporter, joked over beers in Antwerp, this winter, “If you believe the guys who are in this trial, nobody is fighting in Syria. Everybody’s cooking.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

An American family saved their son from joining ISIS. Now he might go to prison

The Washington Post reports: Asher Abid Khan sat in Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport and considered his next move — forward to Syria and enlistment in the Islamic State, the militant group that had drawn him to the possibility of dying for Allah, or home to Texas and his bewildered family whose imploring messages were filling his voice mail.

The 19-year-old pulled out his phone and dialed.

“I want to come home,” Khan told his father, Mohammed Abid Khan, who sat huddled in his living room here with his wife and other children.

Hours later, without ever leaving the airport, Khan boarded a plane and flew home to this Houston suburb.

His family had saved him from an uncertain fate in Syria, but not legal jeopardy in the United States. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

U.S. revamping rebel force fighting ISIS in Syria

The New York Times reports: In an acknowledgment of severe shortcomings in its effort to create a force of moderate rebels to battle the Islamic State in Syria, the Pentagon is drawing up plans to significantly revamp the program by dropping larger numbers of fighters into safer zones as well as providing better intelligence and improving their combat skills.

The proposed changes come after a Syrian affiliate of Al Qaeda attacked, in late July, many of the first 54 Syrian graduates of the military’s training program and the rebel unit they came from. A day before the attack, two leaders of the American-backed group and several of its fighters were captured.

The encounter revealed several glaring deficiencies in the program, according to classified assessments: The rebels were ill-prepared for an enemy attack and were sent back into Syria in too small numbers. They had no local support from the population and had poor intelligence about their foes. They returned to Syria during the Eid holiday, and many were allowed to go on leave to visit relatives, some in refugee camps in Turkey — and these movements likely tipped off adversaries to their mission. Others could not return because border crossings were closed. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

ISIS captures last government oilfield in Syria

Al Jazeera reports: The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters have captured the last major oilfield under Syrian government control during deadly clashes over a vast central desert zone, a monitoring group said.

The Jazal field was now shut down and clashes were ongoing east of Homs, with casualties reported on both sides, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, without giving dates or more details.

Syria’s army said it had repulsed an attack in the same area but did not mention Jazal or comment on how much of the country’s battered energy infrastructure remained under its sway. It said it killed 25 fighters, including non-Syrian fighters.

“The regime has lost the last oilfield in Syria,” said the Observatory, which tracks violence through a network of sources on the ground. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

‘Jewish Schindler,’ amid skepticism, insists his Yazidi rescue efforts are for real

JTA reports: Skepticism is rising over the Montreal businessman dubbed the “Jewish Schindler” for purportedly rescuing Yazidi and Christian women and children from ISIS in Iraq.

Steve Maman has earned worldwide praise for his efforts to save 128 people.

But in a statement released Wednesday, the Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East, or FRRME, rejected Maman’s assertion that the Rev. Canon Andrew White, its founding president, has been “instrumental” in the success of Maman’s group, the Liberation of Christian and Yazidi Children of Iraq, or CYCI.

Some reports “have inaccurately made a connection between CYCI’s activities, as publicized by Mr. Maman,” the statement by the United Kingdom-based FRRME said. But while Maman is a “personal contact” of White who has supported CYCI’s aims, “FRRME does not collaborate with CYCI either financially or in terms of practical assistance.”

Similarly, the CICY website says that rescued girls are sent to a displaced persons camp run by White in Kurdistan, but the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees has denied such a camp exists. [Continue reading…]

Vice News reports: A group of Yazidi spiritual and political leaders, activists, and aid workers are demanding an inquiry into the work of a Montreal man who claims to have rescued 128 Yazidi and Christian women and children enslaved by Islamic State militants.

Steve Maman has attracted international attention for his Canadian non-profit group, The Liberation of Christian and Yazidi Children of Iraq (CYCI), which on its website claims to have “single handedly helped save over 120 Yazidi and Christian women and children from ISIS [Islamic State, or IS] controlled territories in Iraq” through a network of volunteers. Headlines affectionately dubbed the Moroccan-born Jew and luxury car and crystal dealer the “Jewish Schindler.”

As of Tuesday, a GoFundMe page he set up in early July had swelled to more than $580,000 from donors around the world.

But now, concerned members of the Yazidi community in Iraq and the United States — including their top spiritual leader Baba Sheikh — have issued a written statement calling on Maman to cease taking donations until he proves that he’s doing the work he says he’s doing. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

The world’s failure in Syria

The Guardian reports: The full horror of the human tragedy unfolding on the shores of Europe was brought home on Wednesday as images of the lifeless body of a young boy – one of at least 12 Syrians who drowned attempting to reach the Greek island of Kos – encapsulated the extraordinary risks refugees are taking to reach the west. [Continue reading…]


To speak of the world’s failure in Syria, presupposes some sort of global responsibility, yet many war-weary Americans might wonder: what makes Syria our responsibility?

The answer is simple: the war in Iraq.

Had the U.S. and its allies not invaded Iraq in 2003, it’s hard to envisage that the region with Syria at its epicenter would now be ripping itself apart.

That’s not to suggest that absent the Iraq war, there would now be something that could reasonably be called Middle East peace.

Yet it’s fair to assume that however the region’s systemic injustices might have metastasized over the last decade, the result would most likely not have been the worst refugee crisis since World War Two.

Facebooktwittermail

U.S. launches secret drone campaign to hunt ISIS leaders in Syria

The Washington Post reports: The CIA and U.S. Special Operations forces have launched a secret campaign to hunt terrorism suspects in Syria as part of a targeted killing program that is run separately from the broader U.S. military offensive against the Islamic State, U.S. officials said.

The CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) are flying drones over Syria in a collaboration responsible for several recent strikes against senior Islamic State operatives, the officials said. Among those killed was a British militant thought to be an architect of the terrorist group’s effort to use social media to incite attacks in the United States, the officials said.

The clandestine program represents a significant escalation of the CIA’s involvement in the war in Syria, enlisting the agency’s Counterterrorism Center (CTC) against a militant group that many officials believe has eclipsed al-Qaeda as a threat. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

The ISIS economy: Crushing taxes and high unemployment

The Atlantic reports: Before Islamic State militants overran her hometown of Mosul in June 2014, Fahima Omar ran a hairdressing salon. But ISIS gunmen made Omar close her business—and lose her only source of income. Salons like hers encouraged “debauchery,” the militants said.

Omar is one of many business owners — male and female — who say ISIS has forced them to shut up shop and lose their livelihoods in the process. The extremist group has also prevented those who refuse to join it from finding jobs, and has imposed heavy taxes on civilians.

“ISIS controls every detail of the economy,” says Abu Mujahed, who fled with his family from ISIS-controlled Deir al-Zor in eastern Syria. “Only their people or those who swear allegiance to them have a good life.” When they took over Deir al-Zor, ISIS gunmen systematically took control of the local economy, looting factories and confiscating properties, says Mujahed. Then they moved in, taking over local business networks.

In Raqqa, the Islamic State’s de facto capital, a group of traders loyal to the gunmen have imposed a stranglehold over the local economy, locals and activists say.

Together with the ISIS-controlled Syrian provinces of Deir al-Zor and Hasakeh, Raqqa has been described as a “breadbasket” for Syria. But it is now traders loyal to ISIS who control all transportation of agricultural goods from Raqqa to other areas under Islamic State control — including places in Iraq.

And it is ISIS traders, not local merchants, who control the prices of goods in the markets, activists say. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

How Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim al-Badri became the leader of ISIS

William McCants writes: Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim al-Badri was born in 1971 in Samarra, an ancient Iraqi city on the eastern edge of the Sunni Triangle north of Baghdad. The son of a pious man who taught Quranic recitation in a local mosque, Ibrahim himself was withdrawn, taciturn, and, when he spoke, barely audible. Neighbors who knew him as a teenager remember him as shy and retiring. Even when people crashed into him during friendly soccer matches, his favorite sport, he remained stoic. But photos of him from those years capture another quality: a glowering intensity in the dark eyes beneath his thick, furrowed brow.

Early on, Ibrahim’s nickname was “The Believer.” When he wasn’t in school, he spent much of his time at the local mosque, immersed in his religious studies; and when he came home at the end of the day, according to one of his brothers, Shamsi, he was quick to admonish anyone who strayed from the strictures of Islamic law.

Now Ibrahim al-Badri is known to the world as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the ruler of the Islamic State or ISIS, and he has the power not just to admonish but to punish and even execute anyone within his territories whose faith is not absolute. His followers call him “Commander of the Believers,” a title reserved for caliphs, the supreme spiritual and temporal rulers of the vast Muslim empire of the Middle Ages. Though his own realm is much smaller, he rules millions of subjects. Some are fanatically loyal to him; many others cower in fear of the bloody consequences for defying his brutal version of Islam. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Khaled al-Asaad, the martyr of Palmyra

By Pierre Leriche, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris

A second ancient temple at Palmyra has been razed, with a satellite image appearing to confirm the destruction of the Temple of Bel, previously one of the best-preserved parts of the ancient city.

The revelation follows the release of images by Islamic State last week showing the Baalshamin temple had been blown up.

IS militants seized control of Palmyra in May, sparking fears for the 2,000-year-old World Heritage site. Ancient ruins are not all that has been lost.

Khaled al-Asaad, the 81-year old former director of the world-renowned archaeological site at Palmyra in Syria, was beheaded in August. His body was hung on a street corner by Islamic State for everyone to see.

Prior to his death, al-Asaad and his son Walid, the current director of antiquities, had been detained for a month. They had been tortured as their captors tried to extract information about where treasures were to be found.

Walid’s fate remains unknown.

Continue reading →

Facebooktwittermail

Tolerant and multicultural, Palmyra stood for everything ISIS hates

Tim Whitmarsh writes: In May 2015, Islamic State captured the modern city of Palmyra. The adjoining Unesco world heritage site is a breathtaking archaeological complex like no other. In the 2nd century AD this oasis city in the Syrian desert was one of the grandest and wealthiest places in the world, with a total population about the size of modern Cardiff. Much of the ancient civic and sacred architecture still survives. Perhaps most evocative is the colonnaded street more than 1km in length: in antiquity, caravan traders from all over the Middle East would have processed along this road with their spices and silks towards the city’s religious heart, the magnificent temple of Bel, eyed from above by hundreds of statues of Palmyrene benefactors.

The future of this extraordinary site is precarious. At the time of the initial occupation, an anti-Assad Syrian radio station carried an interview with Abu Laith al-Saoudi, an Isis commander, who vouched that only the idolatrous statues would be destroyed; “concerning the historical city we will preserve it and it will not undergo damages inshallah (‘if God wills it’)”. Whatever deity reigns in Isis fantasy firmament, however, must have been in a capricious and malign mood.

On 23 August 2015 it was reported that the temple of Baal Shamin, one of the best-preserved and most unique buildings on the site, had been levelled by explosives. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Message to the West from ISIS suicide-bombing mastermind: ‘Islam is coming’

Martin Chulov in Baghdad interviews Abu Abdullah, known to his ISIS commanders as “the planner” – the man responsible for dispatching suicide bombers to attack mosques, universities, checkpoints and market places across the Iraqi capital: Throughout the past decade, Iraq’s prisons have been condemned by human rights groups as places where torture is routinely used on security prisoners. Abdullah winced when the guards approached him, and a block and chain sat in a plastic crate near the cell door. He bore no visible physical scars, though, and appeared well nourished – a legacy of what a senior officer said was an order from the government to keep all prisoners fed and in cells with constant electricity and air conditioning.

“Can you imagine that,” the officer sneered. “They have a better life than most people in Baghdad.”

When the guards left the room Abdullah appeared far more at ease, quickly switching from submission to defiance. “What is your message to the west?” he was asked. Abdullah paused briefly, then looked towards the door to see if we were alone. His eyes flashed: “Islam is coming. What the Islamic State has achieved in the past year cannot be undone. The caliphate is a reality.”

Abdullah, whose real name is Ibrahim Ammar Ali al-Khazali, claimed to have been a member of Isis and all of its earlier incarnations since 2004. His path to violent jihad was unorthodox: he was born a Shia Muslim and practised the faith until the late 1990s, when he converted to Sunni Islam and disavowed the teachings of the rival sect.

He said he had been active in the organisation’s earlier years until 2007 when he was shot in the head during a clash with Iraqi forces. Entry and exit scars were obvious near his left ear and he moved slowly, even taking into account the shackles and chains, as if he had lost some of his motor skills.

Whatever his injury, his resolve appeared to harden in recent years. “It was after 2011 that I got busy again,” he said. “I wanted to live in an Islamic state ruled by sharia. I want every thing that [Isis] wants. Their goals are my goals, there is no difference.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail