Category Archives: Syria

ISIS now regulates rape and slavery

Zvi Bar’el reports: The rape and trafficking of women now has rules, according to a short explanatory pamphlet released recently by the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL).

According to this publication, which appears in Q&A format, a man may take a woman as a slave and have sexual intercourse with her if she has reached puberty. However, if a man is only part-owner of a woman, he must purchase her fully from his co-owners before he can have intercourse with her. If the slave becomes pregnant, she may not be sold. However, if her owner dies, she goes free.

A man may not have intercourse with his wife’s slave, because the latter is another’s property. One may sexually enjoy a slave without having full intercourse with her if she has not reached puberty. A slave should be treated as property, as long as that property is not damaged. A woman must not be separated from her child when she is bought or sold, except if her children have reached adulthood.

These rules are presented together with quotes from the words of the prophet Mohammed and verses of wisdom from Islamic luminaries. Not only is the abduction of women and selling them as sex slaves an inseparable part of the strategy of terror imposed by ISIS in areas under its control in Iraq and Syria, the butchering of women is also an accepted act. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS implicated in botched cyberattack

The Associated Press reports: A cyberattack aimed at unmasking Syrian dissidents has experts worried that ISIS is adding malicious software to its arsenal.

Internet watchdog Citizen Lab says an attempt to hack into systems operated by dissidents within the self-styled caliphate could be the work of hackers affiliated with ISIS.

Citizen Lab analyst John Scott-Railton said there is circumstantial evidence of the group’s involvement, and cautioned that if the group has moved into cyber-espionage, “the targets might not stop with the borders of Syria.”

The Nov. 24 attack came in the form of a booby-trapped email sent to an activist collective in Raqqa, Syria, that documents human rights abuses in ISIS’ de-facto capital. The activist at the receiving end wasn’t fooled and forwarded the message to an online safety group.

“We are wanted – even just as corpses,” the activist, whose name is being withheld to protect his safety, wrote in his message to cybersafety trainer Bahaa Nasr. “This email has a virus; we want to know the source.”

The message eventually found its way to Citizen Lab, based at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs. There, Scott-Railton and malware researcher Seth Hardy determined that it could act as a kind of electronic homing beacon by revealing a victim’s Internet Protocol address. [Continue reading…]

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A contrivance of an alliance against ISIS

Time reports: The U.S. is largely flying solo when it comes to attacking ISIS

The U.S.-led bombing campaign against Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) is complex. A coalition made up of the U.S. and seven allies began bombing ISIS targets in Iraq in August. A month later, the U.S. began bombing targets belonging to the militant group in Syria, along with four allies.

Should the civilized world care that none of the seven U.S. allies bombing ISIS targets in Iraq (Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Netherlands and the United Kingdom) are bombing ISIS in Syria? And that, ipso facto, none of the four U.S. allies bombing targets in Syria (Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) are bombing ISIS targets in Iraq?

Does it matter that the U.S. stands alone when it comes to bombing both?

Perhaps more important is the lopsided nature of the air strikes: since Sept. 23, the allies have accounted for nearly 40% of close air support, interdiction and escort sorties, and 25% of total missions flown. “Many of those sorties that conduct dynamic targeting in support of ground forces require specialized capability, and frequently they do not result in a necessary strike on [ISIS] forces, equipment or facilities,” Gary Boucher, spokesman for the campaign, dubbed Operation Inherent Resolve, said Tuesday. [Continue reading…]

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Jabhat al-Nusra takes two Syrian bases in major blow to regime

AFP reports: Militants linked to Al-Qaeda dealt a major blow to Syria’s regime on Monday by seizing two key army bases within hours, giving them control over most of Idlib province.

The gains also signalled another defeat for Western-backed rebels who were driven out of most of the northwestern province last month by the jihadist Al-Nusra Front.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Al-Nusra Front — the battered country’s Al-Qaeda branch — seized Hamidiyeh and Wadi al-Deif, the regime’s largest outposts in Idlib.

The jihadists advanced in coordination with Islamist rebel groups Ahrar al-Sham and Jund al-Aqsa, the Observatory said, adding that a string of villages in the area also fell.

Al-Nusra Front claimed via Twitter it was “the only faction that took part in the liberation of Wadi al-Deif”, and that it was now “chasing down” soldiers.

State television cited a military source as implicitly acknowledging the loss. [Continue reading…]

Reuters adds: Around 100 Syrian soldiers and 80 Islamist fighters were killed during a two-day battle in which insurgents captured the Wadi al-Deif military base, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said on Tuesday.

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Forty-four months and forty-four years : Part 1 — Two blindfolds

Yassin al Haj Saleh writes: Forty-four years ago, on an autumn day like this one in 1970, Hafez al-Assad seized power in Syria by military coup. The man had been minister of defense during the June 1967 war with Israel, which ended in a disastrous defeat for the Arabs and Syria. Thirty years later, he passed down control over the ‘republic’ to his son Bashar, a move unprecedented on the global stage except in North Korea and Azerbaijan. Forty-four months ago, a revolution erupted against the son’s rule, and he confronted this revolution, from the very beginning, with war. This war has developed into a number of wars, involving numerous sides, now including the participation of the Americans and their allies in opposition to the ‘Islamic State’ that occupies regions in the north east of the country and has spread its control into parts of Iraq. At the same time, the Assad state – along with its Iranian, Lebanese, and Russian allies – continues to wage war against those areas that have gone out of its control over the course of the revolution.

This moment in time – marking simultaneously the passage of forty-four months and forty-four years – should provide an opportunity to examine the Syrian microcosm, as well the global macrocosm that surrounds it.

This sequence of six posts will begin from the fact that this shorter period of forty-four is a continuation of the longer forty-four rather than a break with it, a deepening of the situation and not a rupture with it. The shorter period of forty-four explains the longer forty-four, sheds light on its more hidden dimensions: the longer forty-four provides precedents and beginnings, which we see come to completion only in the shorter forty-four.

This series of posts will constitute a vacillating back-and-forth movement that has three parts: between two periods of time, a long one and a short one; between two worlds, a small Syrian one and a greater international one; and between the lower and higher levels of Syrian society and of the world.

Despite the fact that Syria is not known well, and the fact that it remains unknown after forty-four months of extreme struggle, these texts will not seek merely to produce definitions. Rather, the texts will try to renew the nature of the current approaches and lines of perspective, a step that can then lead to definitions. The reason that Syria remains unknown in the West and the world at large is that the dominant approaches representing the country make the population invisible, indeed nonexistent. A change of approach is necessary in order for us to become visible, for us to exist. [Continue reading…]

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Forty-four months and forty-four years : Part 2 — Wars against the people

Yassin al Haj Saleh writes: At an early stage of the Syrian revolution, which erupted in the context of the ‘Arab Spring,’ the billionaire Rami Makhlouf stated that ‘the government’s decision is to fight.’ Speaking without any official title except for being the cousin of Bashar Assad, Makhlouf added: ‘Each one of us knows we cannot continue without staying united together.’ Without clarifying in the name of which ‘we’ he was speaking, Makhlouf went on: ‘We will sit here. We call it a fight until the end.’ Makhlouf’s comments were published in the New York Times on 10 May 2011, after less than two months of peaceful protests. This was not only a declaration of the determination for war, but reveals also that this war was waged to keep the ‘unity’ of political and economic power.

Rami Makhlouf dominates major sectors of the Syrian economy through the companies that he owns, or presides over. In the years leading up to the revolution, the expression ‘Ramisation’ in relation to the Syrian economy became the name of the process of Rami’s control over it. Because partnership with him was forced upon other economic actors, a word pun became widely pronounced among Syrians- that all economic activity was either Makhlouf or mukhalif (Arabic word for unlawful) – to be ‘Makhlouf’ meant to be in-line with the regime.

The state, the dominant political-security-economic complex, began its war early. At dawn on 22 March, when a protest gathering was dispersed at an ancient mosque in the city of Dara’a, a number of local inhabitants were killed, and the time-honored mosque was destroyed. Not a day has passed without killing ever since.

For months, public protests remained peaceful. In dozens of sites around the country the people attempted to occupy public spaces for the longest possible duration, utilizing only their bodies and voices. The goal was to take back possession of the political and the public space: to gather, speak up openly, and to transform the mass of people to a political actor.

On 18 April 2011 at around midnight, at least two hundred people were savagely butchered in Homs. They were peaceful protesters trying to do a permanent sit–in in the clock tower square. In August of 2011, tanks occupied the two cities of Hama and Deir az-Zor, which had witnessed demonstrations by hundreds of thousands people in public squares. The politically marginalized also joined into the revolution: university students, young men and women seeking opportunities for life and work, and former political prisoners.

The people were forced to take up arms in self-defense, when their attempts to possess politics peacefully were faced with war. Finding that its monopoly on violence was broken up, the elite took this confrontation to the level of tanks, military helicopters firing exploding barrels over cities and country-sides, military aircraft, long-range Scud missiles, and chemical weapons.

Is this ‘Civil War’? Could be. Though it must be clarified that it is not a war of some of the population against others, but rather a ‘fight until the end’, waged by the elite, Makhlouf’ et al, against the general population. The ‘state’, public resources and the public army were instrumental in this war of Ramisation. [Continue reading…]

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Getting help to Syria

Dexter Filkins writes: Few experiences are more haunting than visiting a refugee camp in the middle of winter. You walk the rows between the tents, peering in here and there, finding men and women wrapped in blankets, huddled round lanterns, each face wearing the unforgettable look of a person who has lost control of his life. The children are shivering. You wonder, inevitably, how things could get any worse.

On December 1st, the World Food Programme (W.F.P.), announced that it was suspending its operations to feed one million seven hundred thousand Syrian refugees—scattered across Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, and Egypt—because it had run out of money. (The program is under the auspices of the U.N., but funded entirely by voluntary donations.) Under the program, Syrian families received the equivalent of a dollar a person each day to buy food at local shops. This operation cost sixty-four million dollars a month, and, while governments and private donors had helped to fund it throughout most of 2014, there was no longer enough money to carry on. This was “disastrous,” the Programme said in a statement. Winter, indeed.

Agencies dedicated to providing humanitarian relief, like the World Food Programme and private organizations, like the International Rescue Committee (I.R.C.), are always pleading for money. From a distance, it’s easy to assume that they always get it, that a government or a wealthy donor will eventually write the check that allows them to continue their work. Not so: each year, relief organizations suspend or curtail aid because they run out of cash. “The majority of our programs end because the money runs out, not because the need is gone,” David Miliband, the president of the I.R.C., which has twelve thousand relief workers in forty countries, told me. In Zimbabwe, where at least a half million people need food, the W.F.P. is closing three of its four field offices at the end of the month. It has already reduced rations for malnourished children, pregnant women, and people with H.I.V. and with tuberculosis. [Continue reading…]

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Syrians have not experienced a state

Louay Hussein writes: Syrians did not build their state in the second quarter of the past century according to the usual struggles, or agreements that go into building states; we inherited state institutions established by the French mandate. Thus, it was easy for successive military coups, which swept the country a few years after independence, to turn the state into a tool of control rather than an institution that organises the common interests of all Syrians.

Is it not up to the people now to pick up the pieces? No. Instead it is the responsibility of those who have appointed themselves their political leaders: all their programs, attitudes and statements must focus on issues like national unity and central authority. This does not contradict the administrative de-centralisation that was necessary in order to build the new modern Syrian state, based on justice and equality for all Syrians, if by any chance one day this Syrian crisis comes to an end.

This became much clearer when Hafez Al-Assad ascended to power, and especially after he had consolidated his authority—which lasted for a long time. Political and military authorities quickly turned state institutions into agencies to oppress citizens and transform them into subjects, in the economic sense, but also socially and politically.

After three decades of Hafez Al-Assad’s rule, and over ten years of his son’s, Syrians saw the state as something alien, an entity which they might appease, con, abuse, fear, and from which they hide their opinions—everything that reinforces the dynamics separating a state from society.

Thus, receiving any services from a public office is considered an act of “generosity” by the official, since according to regulations he can do whatever he wants with public money, including leaving it to his relatives and entourage. For ordinary Syrians, even public property is considered state property—meaning the regime’s property—not a commons. We can understand why Syrians show no interest in taking care of, or protecting, public property. Public property was seen as a resource to exploit, rob and misuse when possible. In short, Syrians have not experienced a state. This has serious implications and requires extensive research. [Continue reading…]

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Understanding the drivers of radicalization in Syria

Syria Deeply: Syria has not traditionally been a seat of extremist Islam. What has contributed to the radicalization of the country? What’s driving it now?

Nader Hashemi: First and foremost, it’s the conflict itself. It’s not a coincidence that we are seeing the spread of Islamic radicalism in Syria as a direct result of the barbarity of the Assad regime, and as a result of a conflict that in my view is borderline genocidal.

In the midst of the chaos, mayhem, bloodshed and crimes against humanity, you don’t produce liberal, democratic opinion. You produce the antithesis of it: an environment that reflects the social conditions of chaos and anarchy.

There is also an ideological battle taking place in the Middle East today with respect to different political currents of Islamism, and it’s not a coincidence that we are seeing the upsurge and the rise of radical Islamism of various forms, with the most radical being ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, after the crushing of the Arab Spring and the democratic openings it unleashed.

Syria is a case study of the deep and intimate relationship between the closure of political opportunities and democratization, and in the aftermath of their demise, the upsurge of the rise of radical Islamic tendencies. In the early days of the revolution, in the first six months of 2011, ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra weren’t present inside Syria. The early formation of radical jihadism in Syria started to take root and gain currency as political openings and possibilities for political change started to diminish. Human-rights violations and repression feed into a narrative of radical extremism and they undermine the prospects for more democratic and more moderate expressions of political Islam. [Continue reading…]

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Syria: The view from Moscow

Christopher Phillips writes: Of all the states involved in the Syria crisis, Russia has arguably been the most insulated from its fallout. Western states and their regional allies have been frustrated as their policies to topple President Bashar al-Assad repeatedly fail, while threatening jihadists such as ISIS have thrived in the chaos. Refugees have flooded Syria’s neighbours. Even Assad’s other ally, Iran, has seen its hard-earned regional reputation shattered. In contrast, the costs to Moscow have been limited.

However, the conflict’s echoes are finally being felt. In early December, Islamist gunmen fought Russian forces in Grozny, killing 20, prompting fears of ISIS-inspired violence in the northern Caucasus. The oil price has plummeted to $65, partly the result of Saudi Arabian machinations to punish both Iran and Russia. This is 35 percent below the Kremlin’s budgeted price and, along with western sanctions over Ukraine and the tumbling value of the Ruble, looks set to cripple Russia’s economy. However, contrary to some claims, this seems unlikely to prompt any major reconsideration of President Vladimir Putin’s Syria policy.

It is important to understand the view of Syria from Moscow. At the beginning of the crisis, Western analysts mistakenly believed Putin’s support was about preserving Russia’s interests in Syria: a tiny naval installation in Tartous and a modest arms market. Yet such material interests are, in reality, marginal. Instead, Putin sees Syria primarily through a geo-strategic lens. While Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have all taken leading roles in the campaign against Assad, Russia sees the West and particularly the US as chief instigator. [Continue reading…]

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Syrian rebels see U.S. abandoning them

Josh Rogin writes: As Congress struggles to pass a bill to fund the government for the rest of the year, one curious and significant item was left on the cutting room floor: a request from the Barack Obama administration for $300 million to expand the secret CIA program to arm the “moderate” Syrian rebels.

The request, which administration officials had been lobbying for in recent weeks, was held up by the House Intelligence Committee, which has serious doubts about the Free Syrian Army and other rebel groups that for years have been receiving arms secretly from the U.S. and its allies, two administration officials told me. Without the money, Syrian opposition leaders say, the FSA will struggle to hold its remaining positions in northern Syria, much less make progress against Islamic State and the Bashar al-Assad regime.

“The requested funds are a crucial indication of the partnership between the United States and Syrian freedom fighters. This comes at a particularly important time,” said Oubai Shahbandar, a senior adviser for the Syrian National Coalition.

Nonetheless, not everyone in the White House will lament the decision to drop it from the spending bill: Congress’s disenchantment with the Syrian rebels is shared by many officials inside the administration, following the rebels’ losses to Assad, IS and the al-Nusra Front in northern Syrian cities such as Idlib. There is particular frustration that these setbacks resulted in some advanced American weaponry falling into extremist hands.

Reflecting that dissatisfaction, the Obama administration has taken a series of steps in recent weeks to distance the U.S. from the moderate rebels in the north, by cutting off their weapons flow and refusing to allow them to meet with U.S. military officials, right at the time they are struggling to survive in and around Aleppo, Syria’s largest city. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. concern grows over ISIS fighters training in Libya

The Los Angeles Times reports: Fighters for the Islamic State militant group have been training in remote areas of Libya, heightening the Obama administration’s concern about a country that U.S. officials have largely ignored since its 2011 revolution.

Training camps with several hundred Islamic State fighters have been spotted in parts of eastern Libya, and some U.S. intelligence reports suggest a new presence for the militant group near Tripoli, in the country’s west, U.S. officials disclosed in recent days.

Although the officials say no immediate military response is planned, the appearance of the camps is giving new impetus to a debate about whether the United States eventually will need to expand its campaign against the militants beyond Iraq and Syria.[Continue reading…]

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Syria’s military and ISIS have been ‘ignoring’ each other on battlefield, data suggests

NBC News reports: Syria’s military and ISIS may be sworn enemies but instead of wiping each other off the battlefield they have been delicately dancing around each other, according to new data exclusively obtained by NBC News.

Both sides in the bloody conflict appear to be eliminating smaller rivals ahead of a possible final showdown.

Around 64 percent of verifiable ISIS attacks in Syria this year targeted other non-state groups, an analysis of the IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Center’s (JTIC) database showed. Just 13 percent of the militants’ attacks during the same period — the year through Nov. 21 — targeted Syrian security forces. That’s a stark contrast to the Sunni extremist group’s operations in Iraq, where more than half of ISIS attacks (54 percent) were aimed at security forces. [Continue reading…]

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Israeli missile found in Syria after airstrikes

IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly reports: Syria’s claims that Israel carried out airstrikes on 7 December appear to have been confirmed by amateur video footage and images of the wreckage of an Israeli munition recovered in the southwest of the Arab country.

The Syrian authorities have claimed that Israel carried out two airstrikes: one at Damascus International Airport, the other near Al-Dimas, a town near the Lebanese border.

The claim was corroborated by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based group that monitors the conflict in Syria using a network of sources. It reported that 10 explosions were heard near Al-Dimas and that a warehouse area was targeted at the airport. [Continue reading…]

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U.S.-led warplanes hit militants in Syria and Iraq 27 times this week

The Los Angeles Times reports: U.S.-led warplanes launched 27 airstrikes against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria this week, officials said Friday.

The three-day attack by jets and drones was focused on militants in Syria’s second-largest city, Aleppo; the embattled Syrian city of Kobani and several cities in Iraq: Ramadi and Rutba to the west; Samarra and Mosul to the north.

In Aleppo and Kobani, U.S. officials claim to have destroyed Islamic State bunkers and fortified structures. In Iraq, the airstrikes destroyed armored vehicles as well as bulldozers and an excavator, they said.

President Obama has described the airstrike campaign as an effort to “degrade and ultimately destroy” Islamic State, which rose to prominence during the summer when its fighters crossed the border from Syria into Iraq and conquered large swaths of territory, including Mosul, one of Iraq’s largest cities. [Continue reading…]

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State Dept: Rebels are never going to defeat Assad militarily

Foreign Policy reports: In a grim assessment of the U.S.-backed Syrian rebels, a senior State Department official said on Wednesday that the country’s armed opposition will not be able to topple the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad now or in the foreseeable future, despite the existence of a Pentagon program to train and equip 5,000 rebels per year.

“We do not see a situation in which the rebels are able to remove him from power,” Brett McGurk, one of the State Department’s point men in managing the ad hoc international coalition battling the Islamic State, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “It will have to be a diplomatic process.”

In recent weeks, the situation for Syria’s beleaguered moderate opposition has gone from bad to worse, as they continue to lose ground in the crucial northern provinces of Idlib and Aleppo. The near-extinction of many moderate rebel groups has coincided with increasing gains by Salafist groups tied to al Qaeda or the Islamic State. For the remaining “moderates,” aligning with Washington poses a deadly risk, as U.S. airstrikes against al Qaeda-aligned militant groups in Syria fuel conspiracies that Washington tacitly supports Assad.

That’s a problem for the Obama administration’s Syria policy, which relies in part on recruiting and training moderate rebels to combat Islamic State militants before taking the fight to the Syrian government. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS: The inside story

Martin Chulov reports: In the summer of 2004, a young jihadist in shackles and chains was walked by his captors slowly into the Camp Bucca prison in southern Iraq. He was nervous as two American soldiers led him through three brightly-lit buildings and then a maze of wire corridors, into an open yard, where men with middle-distance stares, wearing brightly-coloured prison uniforms, stood back warily, watching him.

“I knew some of them straight away,” he told me last month. “I had feared Bucca all the way down on the plane. But when I got there, it was much better than I thought. In every way.”

The jihadist, who uses the nom de guerre Abu Ahmed, entered Camp Bucca as a young man a decade ago, and is now a senior official within Islamic State (Isis) – having risen through its ranks with many of the men who served time alongside him in prison. Like him, the other detainees had been snatched by US soldiers from Iraq’s towns and cities and flown to a place that had already become infamous: a foreboding desert fortress that would shape the legacy of the US presence in Iraq.

The other prisoners did not take long to warm to him, Abu Ahmed recalled. They had also been terrified of Bucca, but quickly realised that far from their worst fears, the US-run prison provided an extraordinary opportunity. “We could never have all got together like this in Baghdad, or anywhere else,” he told me. “It would have been impossibly dangerous. Here, we were not only safe, but we were only a few hundred metres away from the entire al-Qaida leadership.”

It was at Camp Bucca that Abu Ahmed first met Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the emir of Isis who is now frequently described as the world’s most dangerous terrorist leader. From the beginning, Abu Ahmed said, others in the camp seemed to defer to him. “Even then, he was Abu Bakr. But none of us knew he would ever end up as leader.”

Abu Ahmed was an essential member of the earliest incarnation of the group. He had been galvanised into militancy as a young man by an American occupation that he and many like him believed was trying to impose a power shift in Iraq, favouring the country’s larger Shia population at the expense of the dominant Sunnis. His early role in what would become Isis led naturally to the senior position he now occupies within a revitalised insurgency that has spilled across the border into Syria. Most of his colleagues regard the crumbling order in the region as a fulfilment of their ambitions in Iraq – which had remained unfinished business, until the war in Syria gave them a new arena.

He agreed to speak publicly after more than two years of discussions, over the course of which he revealed his own past as one of Iraq’s most formidable and connected militants – and shared his deepening worry about Isis and its vision for the region. With Iraq and Syria ablaze, and the Middle East apparently condemned to another generation of upheaval and bloodshed at the hands of his fellow ideologues, Abu Ahmed is having second thoughts. The brutality of Isis is increasingly at odds with his own views, which have mellowed with age as he has come to believe that the teachings of the Koran can be interpreted and not read literally.

His misgivings about what the Islamic State has become led him to speak to the Guardian in a series of expansive conversations, which offer unique insight into its enigmatic leader and the nascent days of the terror group – stretching from 2004, when he met Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in Camp Bucca, to 2011, when the Iraqi insurgency crossed the border into Syria. [Continue reading…]

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