In Aleppo, the West has once again failed to prevent what it vowed to stop

Julian Reichelt writes: Over the past four years, the Aleppo I fell in love with has ceased to exist, its slow and painful four-year-long death now dramatically accelerated by Russian‎ smart bombs and Syrian regime dumb bombs.

If Aleppo were a person, this would be the point where we would pray for a swift end to their suffering. But Aleppo isn’t only one person, it’s a besieged town of 300,000, a disgrace to the conscience of the civilized world. Doctors are working in conditions resembling a slaughterhouse more than a hospital, but still saving lives. Children are burning tires to cloud the skies with smoke and obstruct the vision of Putin’s relentless jets and their soulless pilots. While they — eight-year-old kids — stand up to Putin’s air force and their crimes against humanity, the Western world — once again — has done nothing.

“We had gotten used to hell on earth,” one friend inside the city texted me two days ago. “Now they’re even bombing our hell to pieces.”

In the past days, while bombs were raining on the ruins of Aleppo, I have called, emailed or otherwise contacted every person in politics I know to voice not my concern, as our diplomats would say, but my outrage over what is happening — or, more accurately, what is not happening. [Continue reading…]

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I ran the CIA. Now I’m endorsing Hillary Clinton

Michael Morell writes: During a 33-year career at the Central Intelligence Agency, I served presidents of both parties — three Republicans and three Democrats. I was at President George W. Bush’s side when we were attacked on Sept. 11; as deputy director of the agency, I was with President Obama when we killed Osama bin Laden in 2011.

I am neither a registered Democrat nor a registered Republican. In my 40 years of voting, I have pulled the lever for candidates of both parties. As a government official, I have always been silent about my preference for president.

No longer. On Nov. 8, I will vote for Hillary Clinton. Between now and then, I will do everything I can to ensure that she is elected as our 45th president.

Two strongly held beliefs have brought me to this decision. First, Mrs. Clinton is highly qualified to be commander in chief. I trust she will deliver on the most important duty of a president — keeping our nation safe. Second, Donald J. Trump is not only unqualified for the job, but he may well pose a threat to our national security.

I spent four years working with Mrs. Clinton when she was secretary of state, most often in the White House Situation Room. In these critically important meetings, I found her to be prepared, detail-oriented, thoughtful, inquisitive and willing to change her mind if presented with a compelling argument. [Continue reading…]

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Trump’s dictator-friendly campaign manager, Paul Manafort

Adam DuBard writes: If one could find a textbook example of the Washington GOP Establishment, Manafort would certainly fit the bill. In 1976 he was a key delegate manager with Gerald Ford’s campaign, and he also produced the Republican Conventions of 1984 with Reagan and 1996 with Bob Dole. More importantly, he has gained a reputation with his lobbying firms Black, Manafort, Stone, & Kelly and later Davis, Manafort, & Freedman of representing and rehabilitating the image of anyone willing to pay the right amount, no matter how brutal or controversial their past. While he was originally hired for the primary purpose of reining in delegates and assuring their allegiances, he has since ruthlessly risen to the top of Trump’s campaign, a development that should come as no surprise once one becomes familiar with Manafort’s intriguing and controversial past.

After his political education with the campaigns of Ford and Reagan, Manafort jumped into lobbying in 1985 with the first of two lobbying firms with his name on it, Black, Manafort, Stone, & Kelly. The Stone in that name is no other than Roger Stone, the still prominent Republican strategist known for underhanded tactics and longtime friend of Manafort and Trump. Stone would later say of the now defunct firm, “Black, Manafort, Stone, and Kelly, lined up most of the dictators of the world we could find. … Dictators are in the eye of the beholder.” The amount of work Paul Manafort has done on the behalf of international dictators is long and varied, especially for someone who’s, you know, managing the campaign of a candidate for “the leader of the free world.”

In 1985 Manafort’s firm agreed to work for Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos to the tune of $1 million in return for shaping up his image in front of the US media and government ahead of the upcoming Philippine election. Marcos ruled as the president of the Philippines for twenty one years and gained a reputation as a brutal and corrupt leader, with martial law being the law of the land from 1972 until 1981. According to Filipino news outlets, Marcos’ reign of martial law would result in 3,257 extra-judicial killings, 35,000 torture victims, and 70,000 incarcerations. In addition to his totalitarian mean streak, Marcos and his wife Imelda made a habit of amassing money in various illegal methods. The Philippine supreme court has estimated that the Marcos family accumulated around $10 billion while in office, despite the fact that his official yearly salary never exceeded $13,500. In the end Marcos proved too corrupt even for President Reagan to support, as he was pressured to step down amid election-fixing allegations just months after hiring Black, Manafort, Stone, and Kelly. [Continue reading…]

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How hackers could destroy election day

Shane Harris writes: Stealing and leaking emails from the Democratic National Committee could be just the start. Hacking the presidential election itself could be next, a bipartisan group of former intelligence and security officials recently warned. Whoever was behind the DNC hack also could target voting machines and the systems for tabulating votes, which are dangerously insecure.

“Election officials at every level of government should take this lesson to heart: our electoral process could be a target for reckless foreign governments and terrorist groups,” wrote 31 members of the Aspen Institute Homeland Security Group, which includes a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and a former secretary of Homeland Security.

That echoes warnings computer security experts have been sounding for more than a decade: that the system for casting and counting votes in this country is also ripe for mischief. [Continue reading…]

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Trump reflects white male fragility

Charles Blow writes: [Donald Trump] appeals to a regressive, patriarchal American whiteness in which white men prospered, in part because racial and ethnic minorities, to say nothing of women as a whole, were undervalued and underpaid, if not excluded altogether.

White men reigned supreme in the idealized history, and all was good with the world. (It is curious that Trump never specifies a period when America was great in his view. Did it overlap with the women’s rights, civil rights or gay rights movements? For whom was it great?)

Trump’s wall is not practical, but it is metaphor. Trump’s Muslim ban is not feasible, but it is metaphor. Trump’s huge deportation plan isn’t workable, but it is metaphor.

There is a portion of the population that feels threatened by unrelenting change — immigration, globalization, terrorism, multiculturalism — and those people want someone to, metaphorically at least, build a wall around their cultural heritage, which they conflate in equal measure with American heritage.

In their minds, whether explicitly or implicitly, America is white, Christian, straight and male-dominated. If you support Trump, you are on some level supporting his bigotry and racism. [Continue reading…]

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The future of European democracy

Mervyn King, former Governor of the Bank of England, writes: As things stand, the long march toward political union desired by the elite governing the EU is not likely to reach a democratic destination. Those who decry nationalism should realize that the attempt by an elite to impose political union and free movement of people on unwilling electorates is today the main driving force of the extreme nationalist sentiments that they abhor. Whatever our grandchildren and their descendants decide to do in Europe, it must be based on a democratically legitimate process if it is to avoid recreating the very divisions that the original conception of the architects of postwar Europe so rightly strove to achieve.

Americans need to wake up from their cozy assumption that the apparatus of a supranational state is the only way to ensure a peaceful and cooperative European partner. Across Europe the younger generation wants to go beyond the nation-state to break down barriers and find new ways to resolve problems that extend beyond national boundaries. They will find ways to do this that do not require the outdated trappings of a supranational entity with its own anthem, flag, parliament, and now even steps toward an army.

Our political class would do well to recall the words of Confucius:

Three things are necessary for government: weapons, food and trust. If a ruler cannot hold on to all three, he should give up weapons first and food next. Trust should be guarded to the end: without trust we cannot stand.

Not just in Britain, but around the industrialized world, the divide between the political class and a large number of disillusioned and disaffected voters threatens trust. At times it seems that the governing class has lost faith in the people and that the people have lost faith in the government. And the two sides seem incapable of understanding each other, as we see today in the United States. But the continent on which the challenge is greatest is Europe. If any good comes out of the British referendum, it will be a renewed determination, not just in Britain but around Europe, to eliminate that divide. [Continue reading…]

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Britain fails to understand the nature of globalisation at its peril

By Jennifer Johns, University of Liverpool

There remains great uncertainty in the aftermath of the UK vote to leave the European Union. Few seem to have a plan for what Brexit will look like and how the UK’s relationship with the outside world will take shape.

But while the desire for sovereignty and to “take back control” were top of many voters’ list of reasons to vote to leave, the fact that we live in a globalised world where economies and trade supersede national boundaries cannot be ignored.

Much of the confusion about how Brexit will affect the British economy has resulted from the inability of those for and against it to acknowledge the realities of the position of the UK in the contemporary global economy. This failure to understand the realities of globalisation is partly why there is such confusion about how to deliver the kind of post-Brexit UK demanded by those who voted leave. But regaining national sovereignty is extremely difficult, if not impossible, in today’s global economy.

The interconnected world

The recent global financial crisis should have sent a powerful message. The degree of interconnection between places in the global economy has reached unprecedented levels and attempts to “unpick” these interconnections are highly problematic.

Globalisation is complex. It is no longer a case of “us” and “them”. Capital, goods and services flow within, between and across national borders – and the flow is uneven. It is often directed through key cities. So when we talk about flows of foreign direct investment between the UK and Germany, we are actually discussing flows of people and money between cities such as London and Berlin.

In fact, cities are the key drivers in trade. It is no surprise therefore that there were significantly higher votes to remain in the EU in cities such as London and Manchester. This is because these cities are points in the global economy through which trade, services and people flow. It is in these locations that we can most easily see the benefits of interconnection with cities in the EU and beyond.

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Syria: UN considers role in Russia’s ‘deeply flawed’ humanitarian corridors plan

The Guardian reports: The United Nations is considering overseeing a Russian proposal to create humanitarian corridors for civilians who wish to leave besieged Aleppo, despite strong opposition from aid organisations.

Confidential documents seen by the Guardian detailing internal UN deliberations on the Kremlin’s proposal, described as “deeply flawed” by humanitarian agencies, reveal the contours of a debate inside an organisation that wants to provide assistance to suffering civilians in Aleppo but fears being seen as an accomplice in an onslaught that has left a quarter of a million civilians under siege.

A UN document outlining its position on the humanitarian corridors proposal says it will only implement the overseeing initiative if the warring sides agree to a ceasefire or pause in fighting. [Continue reading…]

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American trained and armed Syrian rebels find Russian offers of support enticing

Michael Weiss writes: The Russian government is trying to poach Syrian rebels trained and equipped by the United States for the war against ISIS, according to the political leader of a prominent Pentagon-backed brigade in Aleppo — and the rebels are strongly considering Russia’s offer.

In an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast, Mustafa Sejry of the Liwa al-Mu’tasim Brigade said that he met personally with a Moscow representative the Syrian-Turkish border 10 days ago and was offered “unlimited amounts of weaponry and close air support” to fight both ISIS and Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, the rebranded al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, in exchange for the Mu’tasim Brigade’s transfer of loyalties from Washington to Moscow.

Sejry clearly wants to use the offer to leverage more and better support from the Americans if he can, but that may not be forthcoming. (The Pentagon and U.S. Central Command did not respond to requests for comment from The Daily Beast.) And the Russians, meanwhile, are whispering a lot of sweet nothings in the rebels’ ears. [Continue reading…]

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Greenland melt could expose hazardous Cold War waste

Climate Central reports: When the U.S. military abandoned Camp Century, a complex of tunnels dug into the ice of northwest Greenland, in the mid-1960s, they left behind thousands of tons of waste, including hazardous radioactive and chemical materials. They expected the detritus would be safely entombed in the ice sheet for tens of thousands of years, buried ever deeper under accumulating layers of snow and ice.

But a new study suggests that because of warming temperatures that are driving substantial melting of the ice, that material could be exposed much, much sooner – possibly even by the end of this century – posing a threat to vulnerable local ecosystems.

These remnants of the Cold War are also an example of an unanticipated political issue that could arise because of the effects of climate change, particularly as countries seek to establish a presence in the Arctic as warming makes it increasingly accessible.

“We think it’s a nice case study for this kind of political tension stemming from climate change,” study author William Colgan, a glaciologist at York University in Toronto, said. [Continue reading…]

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Physicists undiscover ‘new particle’

Discover reports: What began as a bump has turned out to be nothing more than a statistical ghost.

Physicists at the International Conference on High Energy Physics in Chicago announced today that the much-discussed 750 GeV aberration in their data discovered by the Large Hadron Collider at the end of last year disappeared upon further testing.

“There is no excess seen in the 2016 data particularly around 750 GeV, confirms Bruno Lenzi, a physicist at CERN. “All over the mass range the data is consistent with the background only hypothesis.”

It was thought that the bump indicated the presence of a much larger particle new to physics, which could have held exciting implications for everything from the search for dark matter to quantum gravity. [Continue reading…]

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Trump’s uncontrollable reactivity: He ‘literally can’t help himself’ says former adviser

trump-trance

Politico reports: Amid reports suggesting that he and other staffers are beginning to “phone it in,” [Trump campaign manager, Paul] Manafort subtly shifted blame to his candidate. He admitted that Trump’s comments in response to Khizr and Ghazala Khan were “not smart.” And he made it clear that it’s Trump, not any adviser or ally bending his ear, who is responsible.

“Well, first of all, the candidate is in control of his campaign. That’s No. 1,” Manafort said in a TV interview. “And I’m in control of doing the things that he wants me to do in the campaign.”

He attempted to dismiss the “turmoil” as “another Clinton narrative that’s being put out there.” But sources close to the campaign tell a different story of dysfunction and dismay inside Trump Tower.

“There’s just not much communication going on. It’s really sad, to be honest with you. They really just aren’t working as a team. Everyone’s just doing their own little thing,” said one former Trump adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “I just wish he’d stop answering the questions. People don’t want a politician and they got someone who’s not a politician, so he’s going to make these kind of mistakes.”

This adviser said Trump “literally can’t help himself” in responding to perceived slights or taunts — and that his team and closest allies are demoralized and frustrated, especially over the apparent disconnect between Trump and the RNC.

The adviser said Trump had easily bounced back from other controversies, but this latest round borders on a point of no return. “It feels like we’re close to it.” The only silver lining? “Republicans’ intense hatred for Clinton. You remind yourself who the opposition is.”

Clinton, however, has largely skated past her own unforced errors — she wrongly asserted in an interview Sunday that FBI director James Comey had praised her truthfulness during the investigation into her use of a private email server — because Trump’s behavior since the Democratic National Convention has been all-consuming.

All week, in fact, the GOP nominee has been stomping on what might have been another opportune news cycle. The Democratic National Committee is going through a public purge as its CEO, communications director and chief financial officer all left on Tuesday, days after Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned under pressure. Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reported on a “secretly organized” airlift of $400 million to Iran that coincided with the release of four Americans in January.

In the past 48 hours, however, Republicans criticizing Trump and, in some cases, leaving the party altogether and declaring their support for Clinton, have dominated the news cycle. Following reports that Sally Bradshaw and Maria Comella — former staffers to Jeb Bush and Chris Christie, respectively — were backing Clinton, former GOP California gubernatorial candidate and Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman announced Tuesday that she was not only following suit but planning to make a significant financial contribution to the Democrat’s campaign.

Christie and Gingrich, two of Trump’s closest allies and runners-up to serve as his running mate, have also blasted the nominee’s response to a Muslim family whose son was killed in Iraq, while also criticizing Trump’s especially undisciplined, unfocused performance over the past week. [Continue reading…]

Of late, expressions such as “unfit for high office” or “unfit to serve” have frequently been applied to Trump.

The problem with a vague concept like unfit is that it can too easily be reconstructed and taken to mean, “does not meet the approval of the establishment.”

To Trump’s supporters, this is likely to sound like Trump is yet again being condemned for the very reason they like him.

The issue is not simply that Trump is unfit to become president, but more specifically, the aspects of his personality that render him unfit.

The perennial question posed to every presidential candidate is, how will she or he handle a national security crisis?

Trump is famously unpredictable. He might see that as an asset — that it gives him an advantage over adversaries who can’t get one step ahead of him. Moreover, the fact that he’s unpredictable doesn’t explain why he’s unpredictable.

What is blindingly evident right now, however, is that Donald Trump is a man who is unpredictable because he possesses no self-control.

Faced with a crisis, no one knows — including the candidate himself — what Trump would do. This is what makes him unfit for office.

To elect Trump would be to turn the presidency into a game of Russian roulette.

Given that danger, to characterize this election as yet another contest to determine who is the lesser of two evils is to apply a crude equivalence between the candidates as though they differ merely in the degree to which each is objectionable.

But each American voter has a greater responsibility than to simply give voice to their personal likes and dislikes.

At this juncture in history, in spite of America’s ebbing power, the U.S. presidency is still the most powerful political office in the world. This isn’t a game show.

The fact that Trump has become the Republican nominee is an indication of a deep malaise in American politics and American culture in which serious issues perpetually become trivialized.

As voters, however, we aren’t mere spectators who can sit back and observe how this show plays out. We determine the outcome.

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Putin biographer, Masha Gessen, talks about Russia, Trump and WikiLeaks

Patt Morrison spoke to Masha Gessen, a Russian American journalist and author of a critical biography of Vladimir Putin, The Man Without a Face, the Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin:

Patt Morrison: Software analysts say Russian intelligence or Russian intelligence-related somebodies hacked Democratic emails. What’s going on?

Masha Gessen: Russia is a disruptive force on the world stage, and that’s actually what it aims to be. And I think this is where a very important distinction comes in that people tend to miss:

There is no doubt that various Russian intelligence services, and in this particular case we’re talking about two different intelligence services that apparently weren’t aware of each other while they were hacking the Democratic National Committee’s emails.

Russian intelligence services hack what they can and aim to create as much havoc, both in Western Europe and in the United States, especially around election time.

That’s quite different from saying, as some people have said, “Oh, they’re trying to throw the election to [Donald] Trump.” I don’t think that’s what’s going on.

It actually doesn’t work out chronologically either. But they are trying to cause trouble.

Would this hacking be meant to be directed at just destabilizing, just causing trouble, or is there a goal, an outcome that they might have in mind?

That’s the really important question. I don’t think there’s a goal that they have in mind. And there are several things that point in that direction. One is that Russia doesn’t usually have a goal in mind. It’s that the Putin government and Putin himself are not known for creating strategy. What they are known for is creating havoc.

The other thing is that talk of the chronology: Both of these actual hacking attacks by the two different agencies occurred in 2015, long before — one occurred earlier — long before it was even clear that Trump had a shot at the nomination. I think the goal was very much just to create trouble, which is what Russia is known for.

The other thing is, of course, that Putin hates Hillary Clinton. This is very personal for him. He has accused Hillary Clinton personally of having inspired and funded the protests in Russia in 2011, 2012. So imagining that Putin wants to do anything possible to prevent the election of Hillary Clinton, that is easy to imagine. [Continue reading…]

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What’s missing from the Trump vs Khan debate

Peter Beinart writes: What has happened in the days since [Khizr] Khan’s speech has been inspiring and disturbing too. Trump has attacked Khan, and been roundly repudiated for doing so. But most of the outrage, from both politicians and pundits, has centered on Trump’s criticism of a Gold Star family. That misses the point. There’s nothing inherently wrong with openly disagreeing with someone who has lost a child in battle. If a Gold Star father became a prominent crusader against gay marriage, those of us who support gay marriage would have every right to publicly challenge him, the magnitude of his personal loss notwithstanding.

What made Trump’s attack odious was not that he criticized a father and mother who have lost a son in war. It’s that by suggesting that Ghazala Khan was not “allowed” to speak, he recapitulated the anti-Muslim bigotry that made her convention appearance necessary in the first place. The reason politicians and pundits should embrace the Khans and repudiate Trump is not because they are Gold Star parents and he is not. It’s because they are defending religious liberty while he is menacing it.

Celebrating Khizr Khan as a Gold Star father is easy because it’s apolitical. Every American politician and pundit, no matter their ideological bent, pays homage to military families. Celebrating Khizr Khan as a champion of Muslim rights, by contrast, is harder. After all, some of the same conservatives who salute the Khans for their wartime sacrifice simultaneously demand a ban on Muslim refugees and warn about the imposition of Sharia law in the United States. [Continue reading…]

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Battle for Aleppo a pivotal moment for besieged residents

The Associated Press reports: The 28-year-old Syrian attorney turned down a scholarship to study economics in Germany in order to remain in his native Aleppo after rebels took it over in 2012, promising a new administration and life free of the rule of President Bashar Assad.

Four years later, besieged in the ruins of Syria’s largest city and once its commercial heart, Mohammed Khandakani’s dream is in serious jeopardy after Syrian troops, aided by Russian air power, closed the lifeline of the rebel-held area after weeks of fighting.

The siege and inaction by world and regional powers that claim to support the rebels collided to deprive him of “brief feelings of independence and freedom,” Khandakani said in a telephone interview from inside Aleppo, which has been largely cut off from the international media. A resident of the Maadi neighborhood, close to the city’s old quarter, he now fears for his two children, wife, mother and other relatives.

Khandakani, who volunteers with the city’s medical council and documents casualties of war, is among tens of thousands of Syrians trapped in the rebel-controlled part of Aleppo, struggling to survive the crippling encirclement of their once-thriving city. Bread and medicine are being rationed, and as fuel runs out, many are relying on bicycles to run errands past skeletons of buildings and rubble that litter the city’s narrow alleys and streets.

For those who remain amid the government siege that began July 17, the battle for Aleppo is a pivotal point in the Syrian civil war. [Continue reading…]

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The Turkish government’s response to the attempted coup is an affront to democracy

Benjamin Ward writes: The word “coup” in French literally means “blow” or “shock.” The latter meaning aptly describes the reaction of the world to the events in Turkey on the night of July 15-16 by elements of its military.

The circumstances of the coup attempt are still far from clear. What is clear is that its failure owes a great deal to the spontaneous reaction of ordinary people who flooded the streets to resist the military and the solidarity across the political spectrum. All four of the main political parties united in opposition to the attempt to overthrow the democratically elected government. According to the Turkish government, 246 people were killed amid resistance to the coup, 179 of them civilians, and 2,000 were wounded.

But after the shock has come a second blow as the government unleashed a purge that goes far beyond holding to account those involved in trying to overthrow it. It has hit most of the country’s major institutions– the judiciary, prosecutors’ office, police, the media, the civil service, schools, universities, trade unions and hospitals.

This second blow is weakening the democracy that Turkey’s population took to the streets to defend. Turkey’s international partners should act quickly to press Ankara to reverse course and ensure that people caught up in the purge are given due process and fair criminal trials and that the country’s institutions are strengthened rather than weakened. [Continue reading…]

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How a secretive branch of ISIS built a global network of killers

The New York Times reports: Believing he was answering a holy call, Harry Sarfo left his home in the working-class city of Bremen last year and drove for four straight days to reach the territory controlled by the Islamic State in Syria.

He barely had time to settle in before members of the Islamic State’s secret service, wearing masks over their faces, came to inform him and his German friend that they no longer wanted Europeans to come to Syria. Where they were really needed was back home, to help carry out the group’s plan of waging terrorism across the globe.

“He was speaking openly about the situation, saying that they have loads of people living in European countries and waiting for commands to attack the European people,” Mr. Sarfo recounted on Monday, in an interview with The New York Times conducted in English inside the maximum-security prison near Bremen. “And that was before the Brussels attacks, before the Paris attacks.”

The masked man explained that, although the group was well set up in some European countries, it needed more attackers in Germany and Britain, in particular. “They said, ‘Would you mind to go back to Germany, because that’s what we need at the moment,’” Mr. Sarfo recalled. “And they always said they wanted to have something that is occurring in the same time: They want to have loads of attacks at the same time in England and Germany and France.”

The operatives belonged to an intelligence unit of the Islamic State known in Arabic as the Emni, which has become a combination of an internal police force and an external operations branch, dedicated to exporting terror abroad, according to thousands of pages of French, Belgian, German and Austrian intelligence and interrogation documents obtained by The Times.

The Islamic State’s attacks in Paris on Nov. 13 brought global attention to the group’s external terrorism network, which began sending fighters abroad two years ago. Now, Mr. Sarfo’s account, along with those of other captured recruits, has further pulled back the curtain on the group’s machinery for projecting violence beyond its borders.

What they describe is a multilevel secret service under the overall command of the Islamic State’s most senior Syrian operative, spokesman and propaganda chief, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani. Below him is a tier of lieutenants empowered to plan attacks in different regions of the world, including a “secret service for European affairs,” a “secret service for Asian affairs” and a “secret service for Arab affairs,” according to Mr. Sarfo. [Continue reading…]

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