The Syria Analysis Thread

10 posts

Schmeisser
I think this is largely true, and there is also another angle: Jabhat al-Nusra (The Support Front) is supposed to work with and influence other anti-Assad factions including FSA and IF whereas ISIS works as its own main effort. This has certainly been how it has worked so far. Nusra supports all of these fighters and acknowledges them as fellow mujahideen but more importantly supports ISIS. It has been often said the Nusra has different politics than ISIS but the same aqeedah, haqq, and end goals.

Zawahiri claims that the only AQ affiliate in Syria is Nusra. This is supposed to be a matter of funding, but ISIS certainly appears to be the better funded group. ISIS soldiers have camp-patterned knee-length shirts, Blackhawk tactical vests, Camelbaks, iPads and iPhones, fleets of Toyota Hilux technicals with AA guns, and enough chitrali caps to make them look like the Taliban. They also possess the most tanks. It is often claimed that ISIS spend less time than other formations at the front, but where did they get so many T72's with reactive armor? They really resemble a foreign army in itself, and they have most of the foreign fighters. The claim that they are not affiliated to AQ is attractive to foreign fighters who might not want to carry that stigma back to their home country if they need to go back. Nusra is mostly all Syrians who've been brought into the AQ fold. They're badass fighters, but they basically look like FSA fighters who wear Tawheed bandanas. ISIS clearly appear better organized, disciplined, and funded.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/embed/NemKUrgko08

Also, if anyone doesn't believe that IF is Saudi funded, why are they shooting off all of the old Saudi ant-tank missile stock at the same time the Saudi's just made the biggest purchase of US weapons in US history including a massive amount of new TOW missiles? Liwa and Jaish al Islam were clearly funded above and beyond their battlefield promise, and how? Where did their weapons gear and uniforms (US military pre-digi desert BDUs) come from? There could be another answer to this question, which I am open to as I'm still a bit perplexed how Hezbollah got some many American desert-digi and woodland MarSOC FROG suits, so maybe there is another explanation, but it would certainly appear that IF is a Saudi operation, and practically everybody involved in Syria or paying attention to it has reached the same conclusion to the point it's practically established factor.
Stubby
This is wrong in a few ways. First, AAS doesn't receive funding from Saudi Arabia, and all these groups fighting ISIS are individuals, the IF isn't 'fighting' them, all they've done is issue a warning. Second, if the Islamic brigades fighting ISIS are guilty of being secularists (for rejecting a foreign group coming, declaring themselves rulers of your country, taking your weapons and killing your soldiers, all against the orders of their superiors), then wouldn't JN and Zawahiri be guilty as well, for being complicit in destroying the 'Islamic state' that not even Zawahiri believes exists? The first group that declares themselves a caliphate, they're the caliphate? This is a sloppy line of reasoning I'm sure you're using to portray the enemies of ISIS as not true salafis, in the face of all evidence to the contrary.

This is just a ridiculous conspiracy theory. It's absurd to attribute motives to AAS, again without any evidence, just to make them fit into your big regional narrative. They set up the court in Aleppo with JN, and this is a group who has nothing to do with Saudi Arabia. There is nothing pointing to what you said, while they are setting up sharia court with the original AQ in Syria!

You're an idiot if you believe that AAS takes orders from Saudi Arabia. You have a very childish logic as well, it's no different from saying that since Saudi Arabia supports factions connected with ISIS, Saudi Arabia supports AQ.

Here's more contrary evidence:

This is AAS withdrawing from the funding apparatus that is funding a group that is actually a Saudi ran org, the Jaish al Islami.

This is all happening in November 2013. What's happened since then? ISIS kidnapping and killing AAS commanders and men.



sources: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Mi...-murder-of-fellow-jihadist.ashx#axzz2pzOVuiAh
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/Digital-Library/Articles/Detail/?lng=en&id=172128

More cognitive dissonance, AAS is destroying the Islamic state, but Zawahiri is being a pragmatist, when both AAS and Zawahiri are on the same page. There's a grand Saudi conspiracy to destroy Islamism, but JN and Zawahiri are siding with this conspiracy as a machiavellian tactic. More complicated nonsense, the result of analyzing things from the top down, for the sake of your narrative, instead of from the bottom up, building your narrative from the facts.

And Schmeisser, the only brigade with a clear connection to the Saudi govt is located in Damascus, so your reasoning makes no sense.
Stubby

Schmeisser is just playing, today he's a mega hardcore AQ supporter, tomorrow he's a wannabe sicario, the next day he's back with the WBC, and everyday he's a crackpot, weirdo, and meth smoker.

I envy how it easy it is for you guys to just pump out posts, I imagine it's the complete lack of external sources, and just making it up as you go along. You have no idea the relative number of tanks in any org, jerking off to combat videos all day doesn't really make you an expert.

Schmeisser

I think some of us have personal sources which is why we're not linking to associated press articles as much as you might like. Just my guess. To give you an idea of relative number of tanks, Ahrar and others have been complaining lately that they're being clobbered by ISIS armor, others are noting AAS has been getting their asses handed to them lately by ISIS martyrdom operations which they're questioning the legitimacy of using so heavily in this situation, and ISIS themselves have been bragging about their wave of silenced pistol shots on other groups all around Aleppo. I have neither heard nor seen much of these tanks lately, and sure, I'm pretty much going on how it seems to me. If you have information to the contrary, I'd be interested in hearing it.

The first part of your poast is true though.

Stubby

None of the common ATGM in use in Syria have been part of the Saudi arsenal. And Saudi Arabia commonly signs huge weapon deals, they've been doing that for a decade, it doesn't mean anything. All the big supply waves have appeared to be purchases made on behalf of rebels groups from 3rd parties, not the transfer of arms from the standing army of a sovereign state. And even more commonly seems to weapons taken from Syrian arsenals, or smuggled from Libya.

Obviously I can't comment on your personal sources (sounds like horseshit to me).

Angocachi
Stubby
Do you agree that IF is Saud backed and sponsored?
Longface
Syria Militants Said to Recruit Visiting Americans to Attack U.S.

WASHINGTON — Islamic extremist groups in Syria with ties to Al Qaeda are trying to identify, recruit and train Americans and other Westerners who have traveled there to get them to carry out attacks when they return home, according to senior American intelligence and counterterrorism officials.
These efforts, which the officials say are in the early stages, are the latest challenge that the conflict in Syria has created, not just for Europe but for the United States, as the civil war has become a magnet for Westerners seeking to fight with the rebels against the government of President Bashar al-Assad. At least 70 Americans have either traveled to Syria, or tried to, since the civil war started three years ago, according to the intelligence and counterterrorism officials — a figure that has not previously been disclosed.

The director of the F.B.I., James B. Comey, said Thursday that tracking Americans who have returned from Syria had become one of the bureau’s highest counterterrorism priorities.
“We are focused on trying to figure out what our people are up to, who should be spoken to, who should be followed, who should be charged,” Mr. Comey said in a meeting with reporters, without referring to specific numbers. “I mean, it’s hard for me to characterize beyond that. It’s something we are intensely focused on.”
Fearing that the handful of Americans who have returned to the United States pose a threat because they may have received extensive training and jihadist indoctrination, the F.B.I. is conducting costly round-the-clock surveillance on a small number of these individuals, according to the officials.
“We know Al Qaeda is using Syria to identify individuals they can recruit, provide them additional indoctrination so they’re further radicalized, and leverage them into future soldiers, possibly in the U.S.,” said a senior counterterrorism official, who, like half a dozen other top intelligence, law enforcement and diplomatic officials interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to be identified discussing delicate national security issues.
In Europe, where larger numbers are leaving for Syria, officials share the same concern and are working closely with American authorities to coordinate measures to stem the flow and track those who return.
Analysts say at least 1,200 European Muslims have gone to fight since the start of the civil war. In a confidential memo on Nov. 26, Gilles de Kerchove, the European Union’s counterterrorism coordinator, warned that “the first returnees have come back, and there are cases where individuals continue traveling back and forth.”
Most of the Americans who have traveled to Syria are still there, the officials said, though a few have died on the battlefield. Nicole Lynn Mansfield , 33, of Flint, Mich., a convert to Islam, was killed last May while with Syrian rebels in Idlib Province.
Another American, Eric G. Harroun , a former Army soldier from Phoenix, was indicted in Virginia by a federal grand jury last year on charges related to allegations that he fought alongside the Nusra Front, one of the Syrian opposition groups linked to Al Qaeda. In September, he pleaded guilty to a lesser charge involving conspiracy to transfer defense articles and services, and was released from custody.
Mr. Harroun’s involvement was hardly a secret. Last February, he bragged about his role , posting a photo on his Facebook page saying, “Downed a Syrian Helicopter then Looted all Intel and Weapons!”

American officials say their concerns about the recruitment and training of Americans are based on intelligence gleaned from passenger travel records, human sources on the ground in Syria, intercepted electronic communications, social media postings and surveillance of Americans overseas who have expressed interest in traveling to Syria. The authorities are also trying to identify Americans traveling there by scouring travel data that the European Union has been providing to the Department of Homeland Security as part of a 2011 agreement.
While the main goal of the Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, another group with ties to Al Qaeda, remains toppling Mr. Assad’s government, American officials said the groups had carved out enough space and influence to begin building the apparatus to conduct attacks outside Syria.
Despite the United States’ use of powerful surveillance tools and drone attacks on Qaeda leaders in places like Pakistan and Yemen, Mr. Comey said in the meeting with reporters that he was worried about a “metastasizing Al Qaeda threat” in Africa and the Middle East.
“We’ve had great success against core Al Qaeda in the Af-Pak region,” Mr. Comey said, referring to Afghanistan and Pakistan, “but at the same time, in the ungoverned or poorly governed spaces in Africa and around the Middle East, we see a resurgence of Al Qaeda affiliates.”
The group’s attempts to create a pipeline into the United States suggest that it is still not deterred from trying to follow through on its most lofty, and difficult, goal of carrying out an attack on American soil.
“That Al Qaeda would like to get operatives into the homeland or in Western Europe has been a persistent theme over the past several years,” said one senior law enforcement official.
Indeed, the extremists’ efforts in Syria are taking a page from the playbook of Al Qaeda and its associates in Pakistan, where jihadist talent spotters have sought to identify, recruit and train American citizens or residents before they return home.
Both Najibullah Zazi, a former coffee cart operator who unsuccessfully plotted to detonate backpack bombs on the New York City subway, and Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-born American convicted in the failed Times Square bombing of 2010, received training in Pakistan.
The challenge of identifying Americans who are trying to travel to Syria is one of the greatest challenges that the United States Customs and Border Protection’s National Targeting Center in Dulles, Va., has faced since it was created in October 2001.
But American law enforcement and counterterrorism officials have dealt with a similar threat over the past few years from roughly three dozen Somali-Americans who have traveled to Somalia to fight there. The F.B.I., local law enforcement agencies and Somali community leaders have overcome initial hurdles to cooperate in identifying individuals who could pose a threat.
But unlike those in the Somali group, largely young men from a few communities like Minneapolis and Columbus, Ohio, the Americans heading to Syria pose a much thornier challenge because they are “a much larger group of people traveling there for a wider array of reasons,” the senior law enforcement official said. “The cross section of folks we’re aware of is very broad.”
Richard Stanek, the sheriff of Hennepin County, Minn., where Minneapolis is, said he had been contacted by several federal officials seeking advice on how to deal with this more diverse potential threat. But his advice carries caveats.
“Our experiences are different than what we’re seeing with Syria,” said the sheriff, who is also president of the Major County Sheriffs’ Association, which represents the nation’s 77 largest sheriff offices. “The same indicators aren’t necessarily there.”
Schmeisser
I guess you're right, Saud isn't playing a role in the conflict.

Anyhow, if "jerking off to combat videos doesn't make you an expert," I'll take your word for it. If you think my personal sources are horseshit, fair enough. But I might take a minute to point out that I was clearing out ISI strongholds when AAS was in short pants. Son.
SweetLeftFoot
Angocachi
The Islamic State of Iraq & the Levant has retaken Raqqa and reversed the gains made by 'rivals rebel groups backed by Gulf Arab and Western states.'
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/12/us-syria-crisis-qaeda-idUSBREA0B0JD20140112