Islamist Wave 2015 - News & Discussion

10 posts

Angocachi
A Short History of the Jordani Monarchy's Relationship with Islamists

AS ALWAYS with King Abdullah of Jordan, politics is a bit of a gamble. As part of his war on Islamist extremism he wants to foster a version of the religion that is more submissive to the region’s regimes. In partnership with Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a military man turned Egypt’s president, he is preparing to summon Muslim leaders next month to Cairo’s Al Azhar, one of Sunni Islam’s oldest seats of learning, for a summit on modernising Islam.

Although their voices may be stifled by tightened anti-terrorism laws, many of his subjects are dubious. In a country where some 90% of the population is Sunni Muslim, many wonder why their monarch has joined the American-led coalition against jihadists from Islamic State (IS). “We don’t understand why the king has joined the alliance against Syria’s Sunnis in IS and is helping to prop up Bashar al-Assad, who has far more blood on his hands,” says a Jordanian writer. After the capture by IS of a Jordanian pilot whose plane came down in Syria in December, a group of retired army officers issued statements arguing that Jordan should not be involved.

The king’s appearance at a march in Paris alongside world leaders after the attack on Charlie Hebdo caused further unhappiness. Shortly after the king returned home, a protest gathering against the magazine and its cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad drew thousands of people.

Old-timers recall the less abrasive approach of King Abdullah’s father, Hussein, who had maintained a long tradition of allying with political Islamists. Indeed, the Hashemite dynasty’s claim to descend from the Prophet Muhammad gives it strong religious credentials and enduring appeal. In the 1950s King Hussein relied on the Muslim Brotherhood, the region’s main Islamist movement, to help protect his kingdom against cries of revolution from Arab nationalist movements. He co-opted Islamists into government, and after their electoral triumph in 1989 allowed them to hold five ministries.

After King Hussein expelled Fatah, Yasser Arafat’s armed Palestinian faction, in 1971, the late king also encouraged Palestinian Islamists to fill the ensuing vacuum. And in 1987, to counter Mr Arafat’s persistent support inside Jordan, King Hussein helped Palestinian Islamists set up their own armed group, Hamas, with a base in his capital, Amman.

In his latter years, King Hussein reined back the Brotherhood after its visceral opposition to his peace treaty with Israel. He gerrymandered the boundaries of constituencies to dilute the vote in the cities where the Islamist support was strongest.

But he never completely cut ties with his old allies. When Israel’s spooks poisoned Hamas’s Khaled Meshal in Amman in 1997, King Hussein threatened to cut relations with Israel unless Binyamin Netanyahu, prime minister then as now, not only produced the antidote, but released Hamas’s imprisoned leader, Ahmed Yassin.

By contrast King Abdullah, a military man, has frequently crossed swords with Islamists. Soon after ascending to the throne in 1999 he closed Hamas’s Amman office and threw out its leaders. He was the first foreign leader to visit Egypt’s generals after they overthrew Muhammad Morsi, the elected Muslim Brother president, in 2013. The king has deepened ties with the United Arab Emirates, which is a force behind the regional campaign against Islamists of all stripes.

Last September King Abdullah publicly joined America’s coalition against IS, when a more discreet ruler might have operated behind the scenes. And in recent months he has detained more than 30 Brotherhood members and hauled many to military trial, including Zaki Bani Irshaid, the movement’s deputy in Jordan.

Confidants of the king insist the crackdown is working. With Jordan’s Arab neighbours all in turmoil, or at war, the Brotherhood’s demand for political reform in Jordan no longer resonates, says one. The king is at the zenith of his power, and seems untouchable. “There have been no ‘Free Zaki’ protests,” he chirps.

Some Brotherhood members, too, say their increasingly combative leaders are to blame for their plight. But others warn that, as it has done before, the Brotherhood could respond violently when its political path is obstructed. “We’re a peaceful movement,” insists Muhammad Abu Faris, one of the Brotherhood’s senior and more radical ideologues. “But the people and King Hussein were in harmony, and now his son stands alone.”

http://www.economist.com/news/middl...tempts-curb-islamists-backfire-king-and-islam
Angocachi
The Council on Foreign Relations take on ISIS and Saud.

On the surface, the political transition in Saudi Arabia following the death of the much-revered King Abdullah has proceeded without a hitch. Salman, a half-brother of the former king, is the new ruler, while the recently named deputy, Crown Prince Muqrin, the youngest surviving son of Saudi Arabia’s founder, has moved up in line to the throne.

But in Riyadh, as elsewhere, appearances can be deceiving. Saudi Arabia faces long-term questions over political leadership and myriad immediate challenges. The succession issue has been shelved, not solved. King Salman is 79 and in poor health; Muqrin is 69. Ironically, given Saudi contempt for “godless communism”, the situation there is reminiscent of nothing so much as the gerontocracy that was the Soviet Union in the 1980s. And while the appointment of a next generation deputy crown prince is significant, competition among individuals, factions, and families over who will dominate the pivotal oil-rich country will be unavoidable.

The jockeying for political primacy will start sooner than many appreciate. But the most pressing challenge for the new collective leadership — one that will be hamstrung by the existence of strong political fiefdoms and a relatively weak centre — is how to deal with a strategic environment that has deteriorated markedly from the Saudi vantage point.

The latest blow is Yemen , Saudi Arabia’s neighbour to the south, where Iran — Saudi Arabia’s principal rival for influence — has the upper hand. Yemen is already a staging ground for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula; on Thursday, the president resigned after the capital was brought to a halt by rebels. Things will go downhill further without a functioning government. It is only a matter of time before some of these attacks target the kingdom.

Things look as bad, or even worse, to the north and west. Iraq is fighting for its life against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis), but even if it survives, the result will be a weak and divided country that Iran and Iraq’s Shia majority dominate. The Syrian civil war has turned that country into yet another failed state, where the majority Sunni population finds itself under attack both from Iran-backed government forces as well as from various radical Islamist groups. Jordan, arguably Saudi Arabia’s closest partner in the region, has its hands full with millions of refugees that have crossed its borders, while Bahrain’s minority Sunni regime is having difficulty maintaining order among its Shia majority population.

Then of course there is Iran itself. Saudi officials are understandably worried about the country’s nuclear programme , and also have a perpetual concern about Iran’s ability to stir up trouble among the kingdom’s own Shia minority of some 3m people, many of whom live in the oil-rich eastern province.

It is not hard to imagine the nightmares of encirclement that haunt Saudi officials. The danger is not simply terrorist attacks in the classic sense, although that threat is significant, particularly if they demonstrate the regime’s inability to provide security to pilgrims making the journey to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

Rather, there is the likelihood that Isis, which seeks to bring about a modern day caliphate, will try to gain control of the country that is home to Islam’s two most important holy sites. The big risk for Saudi Arabia stems from the appeal of the group’s ideas to a population that is young, poorly educated and underemployed. The internet, more than bombs, could be the government’s undoing, especially as resentment of the kingdom’s thousands of cosseted princes is both broad and deep.

The good news for the new king is that Saudi Arabia is still the world’s largest producer of oil, and that its cash reserves are as impressive as its energy bounty. But muddling through what could be years of relatively low oil prices against the backdrop of a restive population and a chaotic and dangerous neighbourhood will require a leadership both united and capable. Not just Saudis, but many others have a stake in this being the case.

The writer is president of the Council on Foreign Relations

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/868f3396-a319-11e4-9c06-00144feab7de.html#axzz3PvCZU37o
Angocachi
More than 30 Philippines police commandos have been killed trying to capture South-east Asia's top Islamist terrorist, who was involved in planning the 2002 Bali bombings.

Malaysian-born Zulkifli Abdhir, one of the US's most wanted persons with a $US5 million bounty on his head , is believed to have been killed or wounded in the botched operation in a lawless region of the southern Philippines.

Zulkifli's death would be a severe blow to Islamist militants responsible for a series of deadly bombings in the Philippines and a recruitment drive for the so-called Islamic State group.

The elusive militant, also known as Marwan, was wrongly reported to have been killed in an air strike on a rebel base on the densely forested Philippines island of Jolo in 2012.

But he later emerged as a key figure in the ruthless Abu Sayyaf group that has carried out bombings, assassinations and extortion since 1991 under the guise of fighting for an independent Islamic region in the Philippines.

Zulkifli is believed to have been tutored by bombmaking expert Azahari Husin, the so-called "Demolition Man" of the Jemaah Islamiah terrorist group who was killed in Indonesia in 2005 .

A former associate of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan who was trained as a communications engineer in the United States, Zulkifli was a member of the Jemaah Islamiah central command at the time the group carried out the Bali bombing that left 202 people dead, including 88 Australians.

Fluent in English, Bahasa Malaysia, Tagalog and Arabic,he is suspected of having links to Islamist terror groups across the world. Since 2003 he has been living with members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in Maguindanao province, 960 kilometres south of Manila.

The 11,000-strong MILF signed a peace deal with the Philippines government last year and forged a ceasefire which has been safeguarded by a Malaysian-led team of foreign truce monitors.

But a fierce firefight erupted early on Sunday, when dozens of police commandos hunting Zulkifli encountered insurgents in corn fields near a village several kilometres from a main road. Witnesses said the bodies of more than 30 police were scattered at the battle scene. "What they described to me was gruesome," said Tahirudin Ampatuan, a local town mayor.

Villagers said the police became trapped and ran out of bullets. Six insurgents are believed to have been killed and 11 wounded. Only five police bodies have been recovered as gunfire continued to ring out across the area on Monday, villagers said.

MILF leaders blamed police for failing to co-ordinate with the group about the operation to capture Zulkifli and another wanted terrorist, Abdul Basit Usman, who has a $US1 million bounty on his head.

Maguindanao is the region ruled for years by the powerful Ampatuan clan that was responsible for the massacre of 58 people, including 32 media workers, on November 23, 2009. Backed by the government in Manila, the Ampatuans were considered a counter-force to the Muslim insurgency that has left 150,000 people dead and helped stunt development in the Philippines' poorest region.

Philippine Interior Minister Mar Roxas confirmed the police commanders were hunting a "high-value target" but said he hoped the operation would not affect the peace agreement with the MILF. The Philippine Star on Monday quoted an unnamed source saying that Zulkifli headed a Jemaah Islamiah sleeper cell that was activated to assassinate Pope Francis during his visit to the Philippines last week.

Large crowds prevented bombers getting near the Pope, the source said.
Angocachi
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Palestinians waving Islamic State flags attempt to storm the French Cultural Center in Gaza City. Some in the crowd carried posters glorifying the terrorists who carried out this month's attacks in Paris. (Image source: ehna tv YouTube screenshot)

Hamas and other Palestinian groups are continuing to deny the obvious, namely that the Islamic State terror group has managed to set up bases of power in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The Palestinians do not feel comfortable talking about the fact that Islamic State is working hard to recruit Palestinians to its ranks.

The presence of Islamic State in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is an embarrassing development for both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.

For Hamas, the fact that Islamic State has long been operating in the Gaza Strip is something that it does not want the world to know about.

Hamas cannot afford a situation where another Islamist terror group poses a challenge to its exclusive control over the Gaza Strip. Since it seized control over the Gaza Strip in 2007, Hamas has successfully suppressed the emergence of rival forces, first and foremost the secular Fatah faction headed by Mahmoud Abbas.

But if until recently it was Fatah that posed a challenge and threat to Hamas's rule, now it is the Islamic State and its supporters in the Gaza Strip are openly defying the Islamist movement's regime.

When the first reports about Islamic State's presence in the Gaza Strip emerged last year , Hamas and other Palestinians were quick to dismiss them as "false."

Salah Bardaweel, a senior Hamas official, said in February 2014 that the Islamic State "does not exist" in the Gaza Strip.

This week, however, it became evident that Hamas was lying when it denied the presence of Islamic State in the Gaza Strip.

Some 200 supporters of the Islamic State, who held up Islamic State flags, took to the streets of Gaza City to protest the latest cartoons published by the French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo.

The protesters tried to storm the offices of the French Cultural Center in Gaza City. They also chanted slogans that called for slaughtering French nationals, and burned the French flag.

The protest apparently caught Hamas by surprise. Hamas security forces that were rushed to the scene dispersed the protesters and arrested seven Islamic State supporters.

Attempts by Hamas to impose a news blackout on the Islamic State protest failed, as photos and videos of the demonstration found their way to social media. Needless to say, Hamas-affiliated media outlets ignored the protest. They were hoping that the world would also not see the Islamic State demonstrators on the streets of Gaza City.

Hamas's biggest fear is that scenes of Islamic State supporters marching in the heart of Gaza City will scare international donors and dissuade them from providing badly needed funds for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip. Hamas is also afraid that Western officials working with the United Nations and relief agencies will stop visiting the Gaza Strip after watching the footage of Islamic State supporters.

In recent weeks, it has also become evident that Islamic State has some kind of a presence in the West Bank -- a fact that poses a serious threat to Abbas's Palestinian Authority [PA].

Just last week, Israel announced arrests of members of an Islamic State terror cell in the West Bank city of Hebron. The three Palestinian members of the cell confessed during interrogation that had planned to launch a series of terror attacks against Israel. The three suspects were identified as Waddah Shehadeh, 22, Fayyad al-Zaru, 21 and Qusai Maswaddeh, 23.

Until recently, Hamas was considered the number one threat to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Now, however, it has become evident that Islamic State is also trying to set up bases of power in the West Bank. According to Israeli security sources, dozens of Hamas and Islamic Jihad members in the West Bank have defected to Islamic State in recent months. Their main goal, the sources, said, is to topple the PA and launch terror attacks on Israel.

Abbas is lucky that the Israeli security forces are still operating in the West Bank, including inside cities and towns controlled by the Palestinian Authority. Were it not for the IDF and various branches of the Israeli security establishment, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Islamic State would have toppled the Palestinian Authority and beheaded Abbas and his officials a long time ago.

Still, Abbas does not feel comfortable acknowledging the fact that a growing number of Palestinians in the West Bank are joining Islamic State. Abbas fears is that if he admits that Islamic State is already operating in the West Bank, this could dissuade many Western countries from supporting his effort to persuade the world to support the creation of an independent Palestinian state. Like Hamas, Abbas also fears that Westerners would stop visiting Ramallah and other West Bank Palestinian cities once they learn about Islamic State's presence in these areas.

Although Hamas and the Palestinian Authority are continuing to bury their heads in the sand and deny what is there, they cannot avoid responsibility for the emergence of Islamic State in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. The glorification of terrorists and jihadists by the PA and the ongoing anti-Israel incitement by both the PA and Hamas, are driving many Palestinians into the open arms of the Islamic State.

This is something that the UN Security Council members will have to consider the next time they are asked to vote in favor of the establishment of a Palestinian state. Otherwise, they will be voting for the creation of an Islamic, and not a Palestinian, state.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5139/palestinians-islamic-state
Angocachi
Spy General Unloads on Obama’s ISIS War Plan

Former DIA Chief Michael Flynn likens the fight against Islamic militants to the Cold War and calls for an international chain of command akin to that of the Allies in World War II.
The former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency slammed the Obama administration on Monday as “well intentioned” but paralyzed and playing defense in its the fight against Islamic militancy.

Recently retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn called for the U.S. to lead the charge in a sweeping, decades-long campaign against the Islamic State group, al Qaeda, and its ilk—a fight like the one against the former Soviet Union—against a new enemy he said is “committed to the destruction of freedom and the American way of life.”

“There is no substitute, none, for American power,” the general said, to occasional cheers and ultimately a standing ovation from a crowd of special operators and intelligence officers at a Washington industry conference.

He also slammed the administration for refusing to use the term “Islamic militants” in its description of ISIS and al Qaeda.

“You cannot defeat an enemy you do not admit exists,” Flynn said.

He said the administration is unwilling to admit the scope of the problem, naively clinging to the hope that limited counterterrorist intervention will head off the ideological juggernaut of religious militancy.

“There are many sincere people in our government who frankly are paralyzed by this complexity,” said Flynn, so they “accept a defensive posture, reasoning that passivity is less likely to provoke our enemies.”

Flynn refused to name President Obama as the focus of his ire in comments afterward to The Daily Beast, saying that he was simply “sending a message to the American people.” But the comments show the widening rift between some in the national-security community who want to see more special-operations and intelligence assets sent into the fight against ISIS and other groups in Syria and beyond.

Flynn’s comments echo calls by other former Obama administration officials like former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and former CIA Director and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta who all say they urged more intervention earlier in the Syrian conflict.

Flynn left his DIA post in the summer of 2014, with close associates muttering about his frustration with the Obama White House’s inaction against al Qaeda, the self-proclaimed Islamic State, widely known as ISIS or ISIL, and more. Since his departure, he has been speaking to business executives and contemplating several offers from corporate America and academia, but has stayed mum about why he left his DIA post earlier than planned.

Within the shadowy world of special operations-driven intelligence, Flynn developed a reputation for bluntly speaking his mind, working for Gen. Stanley McChrystal at the elite Joint Special Operations Command and later serving as McChrystal’s intelligence chief in Afghanistan before McChrystal had his own run-in with the Obama administration for impolitic remarks in Rolling Stone magazine.

Flynn caused controversy during his Afghan stint when he went outside military channels to a think tank, publishing a monograph called Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan . That broadside was maligned for the delivery method but widely praised for its message—that traditional military-intelligence practitioners were too focused on targeting the enemy rather than understanding the cultural and economic environment driving the enemy to fight.

In this latest critique, Flynn accused the administration of failing to understand what drives ISIS or al Qaeda.

“They want us to think that our challenge is dealing with an undefined set of violent extremists or merely lone-wolf actors with no ideology or network. But that’s just not the straight truth,” said Flynn. “Our adversaries around the world are self-described Islamic militants—they say,” he told the crowd at the annual National Defense Industry Association’s special-operations meeting. There were many nods of approval.

The current head of Special Operations Command, Gen. Joseph Votel, was more circumspect in comments to the same audience about whether or not the United States “should be” expanding the fight against Islamic militancy.

“The bigger issue is whether we are allowed to do that,” Votel said, measuring his words carefully. The famously reticent U.S. Army Ranger—who just came from leading the shadowy and elite Joint Special Operations Command—said the issue “falls into the realm of uncomfortable topics” he has to bring up with the administration.

Votel described the foreign-fighter flow into the Middle East in support of ISIS as “staggering,” adding that “over 19,000 foreign fighters from more than 90 different countries have traveled to Syria and Iraq.”

Flynn described the enemies arrayed against the U.S. as varied, but “fueled by a vision for worldwide domination, achieved through violence and bloodshed. They want to silence all opposition. They hate our ideals and they hate our way of life.”

In the fight against militant extremism, Flynn said the problem is so sweeping, the world should create a “single unified and international chain of command, probably civilian-led,” like the coalition championed by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower during World War II. He made further references to former President Ronald Reagan’s all-out war against the Soviet Union, not only outfighting them in proxy wars, but outspending them and outthinking them in terms of fighting their ideology.

Flynn said that since 1960 there had been more than 30 insurgencies, conflicts, and wars, “and in two-thirds of these cases, the bad guys won.”

“A strong defense is the best deterrent,” against such fights, he said, adding that, “the dangers to the U.S. do not arise from the arrogance of American power, but from unpreparedness or an excessive unwillingness to fight when fighting is necessary.”

“Retreat, retrenchment, and disarmament are historically a recipe for disaster,” he added, making reference to budget cuts and troop drawdowns faced by the current military as the Obama administration attempts to reduce troop levels in Afghanistan, as it did in Iraq before sending small numbers of trainers and advisers to assist the government there in the current crisis brought on by the territorial gains of ISIS.

The White House did not respond immediately to requests for comment on Flynn’s remarks.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...s-white-house-paralyzed-by-radical-islam.html
Angocachi
US, Qatar, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia Preparing FSA to fight ISIS rather than Assad

In the U.S. view, the most serious threat coming from Syria is the self-styled Islamic State, or ISIS. That's why the Pentagon is sending forces to train what it terms moderate Syrian rebel fighters.

But here's the catch. Moderate rebel commanders say it will be hard to explain this mission to their troops, who took up arms with the aim of toppling Syrian President Bashar Assad, not ISIS.

The U.S. plan calls for the Americans and their allies to train and equip about 5,000 Syrian moderates. U.S. troops are heading to Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia for the training.

Zakkaria Abboud, a law student turned commander in the southern city of Daraa, says that in four long years since the uprising began, he's lost 200 family members and friends. His face is scarred from combat.

"As a moderate military, we have the right to support and aid from the American government," he says, "because we became the American government's trusted friends."

Winning U.S. Trust

I met several rebel commanders and activists in Amman, the capital of neighboring Jordan. These Syrians are from the Southern Front alliance that controls much of the south of Syria, and they show me how they're trying to win America's trust.

Col. Baqqour al-Salim defected from Assad's army and is now a commander north of Damascus. The brisk, older man shows me a professional-looking video produced by the Southern Front. In it, dozens of commanders individually pledge to uphold human rights, moderation and rule of law.

"I would like the entire Western world to see it, whether it's Europe or the United States," Salim says. He wants them to feel "relieved and at ease concerning the Syrian revolution." In other words, that they're helping moderate revolutionaries, not the jihadist groups that developed as the rebellion splintered.

These commanders also carefully video themselves using the missiles they were given by the group they call the Friends of Syria, which includes the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. They're proving the missiles are not falling into the hands of extremists.

That's one of the big fears of U.S. officials — that these rebels are too weak and disorganized to even hang on to their weapons or have an impact in battle. Particularly in the north, some fighters have joined with extremists, or they've lost key ground. They change leaders and squabble.

The commanders say they have received some covert training, though the Pentagon won't confirm that, and they hope they'll be high on the list for the new plan to train and arm fighters on a larger scale. But hurdles remain.

Navigating Conflicting Goals

The colonel says most of the men in his area are simple, religious people. They took up arms against an enemy — Assad — and it's hard for them to understand why they're now getting help from a coalition whose goal is to fight ISIS, rather than Assad.

The colonel adds there isn't a big ISIS presence in his area, but the group sends preachers to talk to people. So when Salim tells his men they have to fight ISIS, they reply that they "do not fight Muslims."

While Assad's forces, too, are Muslim, they are strongly linked to the president and his fellow Alawites, who are an offshoot of Shiite Islam. Most rebel forces identify with the country's majority Sunni Muslims — and the most extreme form is practiced by ISIS.

Probably the most influential commander in the Southern Front is Bashar al-Zaabi, a onetime travel agent.

In his meetings with Americans, he says he explains that stopping terrorism requires stopping it at the source. He says Assad allowed ISIS to grow by releasing extremists from prisons and not conducting military operations against the group.

Like the others, Zaabi wishes the coalition would try to defeat Assad and ISIS. The U.S. says it's seeking to pressure Assad to step down, rather than routing him militarily.

But Zaabi says if Assad doesn't fall, a whole, brutalized generation will grow up to be extremists.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/...-want-to-fight-assad-but-now-theyll-face-isis
Angocachi
Islamic State Attacks in Tripoli, Libya

TRIPOLI, Libya — Militants claiming allegiance to the Islamic State said they were responsible for an armed assault on a luxury hotel that killed at least five people here on Tuesday, the most significant in a string of terrorist attacks against Western interests and government institutions in the capital since the ouster of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi more than three years ago.

Four or five gunmen stormed the hotel, the Corinthia, in the early morning, firing their guns into the lobby, battling guards and shooting at least one Filipino woman and possibly other civilians, according to news reports and people in contact with associates inside the hotel.

Fighters wearing black uniforms labeled “police” and loyal to the Tripoli government — one of two rival governments now fighting for control of Libya — responded to the attack, cordoning off streets and surrounding the hotel. Their forces entered a long standoff with assailants still inside.

A car exploded in the hotel parking lot, although it was unclear whether the cause was a car bomb, a rocket-propelled grenade or some kind of missile.

The hotel, one of the most luxurious in Tripoli, the capital, is a hub for foreign tourists and businessmen visiting Libya, and it also houses the offices of several foreign embassies. But most foreigners have fled as the country has descended into chaos and armed conflict since last summer. Libyans who do business in the hotel said it was largely empty when the attack began.

An unidentified hotel employee told The Associated Press that guests, including British, Italian and Turkish visitors, had fled out the back as the attackers entered the lobby. There were initial reports that some of the attackers had taken hostages. By midday, however, security officials interviewed on Libyan television said that there were no hostages and that at least two of the attackers had been killed.

A group calling itself the Tripoli Province of the Islamic State, the extremist group that has seized territory in Syria and Iraq, issued a statement on social media claiming responsibility for the attack just as it was beginning. The group portrayed the assault as retaliation for the abduction last year by American commandos of a Libyan Qaeda operative, Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, also known as Abu Anas al-Libi.

Mr. Ruqai, 50, died this month in a New York hospital of complications from liver surgery as he was waiting to stand trial for a role in the Qaeda bombings of the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

Accompanying a picture of smoke rising from the hotel parking lot, the statement called the attack “an inside operation” by “the heroes of the caliphate,” and called the hotel a “headquarters that includes diplomatic missions and the crusader security companies.”

Libya has struggled to build a coherent and functional government to replace the one led by Colonel Qaddafi. Regional and ideological militias have battled for power and territory, often competing to coerce or intimidate the feeble institutions of the transitional government. Last summer, Libya broke into two warring coalitions based on opposite sides of the country.

Tripoli has come under the control of a coalition calling itself Libya Dawn, which includes moderate Islamist politicians, extremist Islamist fighters, the powerful militias from the city of Misurata and ethnic Berber groups in the West. Proclaiming its own “government of national salvation,” the Dawn coalition’s government rested its claims to legitimacy on the rump of a disbanded transitional Parliament reconvening in Tripoli.

Opponents of the Libya Dawn coalition routinely refer to it as a terrorist collaborator, happy to cooperate with extremists like Ansar al-Shariah, the Benghazi group linked to the killing of the American ambassador J. Christopher Stevens in 2012, or the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. The attack on the Corinthia may pose a test for the coalition, forcing it to either denounce some of its allies or appear to countenance the violence.

The rival coalition, under the banner Operation Dignity, is now based in the Eastern cities of Tobruk and Bayda, but it includes fighters from the Western city of Zintan, along with fighters and officers that were loyal to Colonel Qaddafi and those that renounced him. Its military effort is led by Gen. Khalifa Hifter, who last year tried to stage a military takeover, promising to rid Libya of Islamists.

Under his protection, the leaders and a slight majority of a new Parliament elected last year have moved from Tripoli to Tobruk, where they have lent formal legitimacy to his battle against Libya Dawn and its allies.

In the chaos, three Libyan militant groups have pledged loyalty to the Islamic State — one based in Derna in the east, one based in the southern desert and the group based in the region around Tripoli that carried out the attack.

In December, the Tripoli group claimed responsibility for a bombing near the headquarters of the Foreign Ministry, in retaliation for a senior official’s Merry Christmas message, which the group deemed heretical. It has also claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of as many as 20 Egyptian Christians who were in Libya as guest workers in the coastal city of Surt.

Neither the Libya Dawn government in Tripoli nor the Dignity government in Tobruk had an immediate statement in response to the hotel attack.

Speaking on Libyan television, Omar Khadrawi, a security official for the Tripoli government, denied that the attack was perpetrated by Islamic State militants. He blamed “elements of the old regime,” accusing them of “tampering with the security situation that Tripoli is blessed with.”

Mahmoud Abu Hamza, another security official speaking on television from the scene of the attack, said he saw the bodies of two attackers. He said one had detonated a suicide vest, killing himself and a security officer.

The European Union’s foreign affairs chief, Federica Mogherini, called the attack “another reprehensible act of terrorism that deals a blow to efforts to bring peace and stability to Libya.”

The United Nations is trying to convene a meeting in Geneva of representatives from both coalitions to form a unity government. Ms. Mogherini, in a statement, said the European Union “strongly supported” the talks “to bring a political solution based on respect and dialogue.”

The Corinthia was also the site of an assault in 2013, when gunmen abducted the prime minister at the time, Ali Zeidan, who lived there. He was released hours later, and no one was held responsible for his abduction.

The hotel is now reportedly the residence of Omar al-Hassi, the prime minister of Libya Dawn’s Tripoli government. But neither Mr. Hassi nor his guards were at the hotel at the time of the attack.

Local news reports said Mr. Hassi had been evacuated at the start of the attack.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/28/w...c-state-tripoli-libya-terror-attack.html?_r=0
Angocachi
ISIS Strikes Sinai, 26 Killed

CAIRO — A series of simultaneous bombings targeting security facilities in the Sinai killed at least 26 people Thursday night, prompting fears that the Egyptian government’s campaign of home demolitions, curfews and sweeping arrests has failed to choke off a budding insurgency there.

The wave of bombings was the first major outburst of violence since the main Islamist militant group operating in the Sinai pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in November.

Through a Twitter account linked to the group, now known as the Sinai Province of the Islamic State, it claimed responsibility for the attacks on more than a half-dozen locations.

The assault, involving nearly simultaneous bombings in several places around the cities of Arish and Rafah, was the most complicated and widely coordinated terrorist attack in Egypt in years. It was also the deadliest attack in the Sinai since a multistage assault on a military checkpoint killed at least 31 people on the night of Oct. 24.

Indeed, the ambition of the attack suggested either that the Sinai militants may be following the advice, or the example, of the Islamic State extremist group, or perhaps that the Sinai outfit sought a spectacular attack to advertise its new affiliation.

Residents of the Sinai and the Egyptian state news media said that attackers had deployed multiple car bombs and mortars against several government targets: the North Sinai security headquarters in Arish, the provincial capital; a nearby army base; a hotel used by the police; a security camp near the border town of Rafah; and several checkpoints.

Al Ahram, Egypt’s flagship state newspaper, reported that its office in Arish had also been struck, although apparently only because it was near the security headquarters and not because it was a target.

Health officials said the bombings had injured more than 100 people, according to the state news media. “This means that the military does not control Sinai, as it claims,” said Khalil al-Anani , a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies who studies extremism. “The insurgency is getting stronger and stronger, and the government’s strategy is a failure.”

Borhan el-Beek, a resident of Arish, said his home was about 400 yards from a complex of security buildings that were attacked in four places about 7:30 p.m., not long after the start of the nightly curfew.

“Now there are soldiers and patrols filling the streets,” he said, “and I can see from my balcony there are tanks making the rounds.”

The army “has been fighting terrorism for a year and a half, and how are the percentages? Is it increasing or decreasing?” he asked. “In the North Sinai, we just don’t know.”

Islamist militants have long found a haven in the rugged and loosely governed Sinai Peninsula, capitalizing on its marginalization and the widespread resentment of the police. In the 18 months since the military ousted President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, however, the Sinai has become the center of a campaign of retaliatory attacks on Egyptian security forces that has become the most significant challenge to rule of Mr. Morsi’s successor, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

In an effort to combat the attacks, Mr. Sisi, a former defense minister, has ordered a virtual military occupation of the region. Helicopter gunships have destroyed homes and buildings believed to conceal militants. Residents describe large networks of police informants and widespread arrests.

After the embarrassment of the Oct. 24 attack, security forces announced the forced evacuation and demolition of more than 800 homes within about a kilometer of the border with the Gaza Strip and Israel. That ultimately led to the razing of much of the border town of Rafah.

The authorities said that was necessary to seal off tunnels under the border with Gaza, which they said had been used by militants to attack and escape.

But the scale of Thursday’s assault indicates that the militants have retained sufficient ability to operate despite the crackdown.

“They have displaced a lot of people, and that undoubtedly creates a lot of resentment and increases the atmosphere of permissiveness for this kind of violence,” said Tamara Cofman Wittes , director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution and a former deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs.

“It is clear that this extremely coercive approach is not working,” she added.

Spokesmen for the military and the police did not respond to requests for comment. Mr. Beek, the resident of Arish, said he wished the Sinai could return to the time before the surge in violence. He lamented the forced evacuations, strict curfews and constrictions on the ability to enter or leave the Sinai.

“More increases in the pressure on the citizens of Sinai, making them feel really like seventh- and eighth-rate citizens,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/30/w...acilities-in-sinai-kill-at-least-26.html?_r=0
Angocachi
Islamic State Offshoots Spring Up in Egypt, Other Countries
Egyptian Army Battles a Deadly Sinai Insurgency

CAIRO—The video looks hard to distinguish from the ones filmed in Syria and Iraq. Islamic State gunmen arrive in a fleet of pickup trucks, set up checkpoints on a busy highway and start hauling away suspected collaborators with the “apostate” government. It ends, predictably, with forced confessions and gruesome, close-up shots of killings.

But these videos, released by Islamic State’s “Province of Sinai” last month, weren’t shot anywhere near Syria or Iraq. The highway in the footage is the main road linking the Egyptian cities of el-Arish and Rafah, on the Mediterranean shore of the restive Sinai Peninsula close to the Gaza Strip.

Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has demanded that all of the world’s Muslims pledge allegiance to him—and Sinai’s main insurgent movement, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, in November became one of the main jihadist groups outside Syria and Iraq to do so. Similar Islamic State franchises have also sprung up in parts of Yemen, Algeria and Libya—where the “Province of Tripoli” Tuesday claimed responsibility for a deadly attack on one of Tripoli’s main hotels.

How they fare represents a crucial test of the extent to which Islamic State, with its singular brutality and genocidal ideology, can metastasize beyond its home turf. While all of these groups operate autonomously, they are establishing increasingly close connections with Islamic State’s leadership in Syria, diplomats and security officials say. That includes funding and expertise and travel by jihadists to Syria.

The “Province of Sinai” so far appears to be the most dangerous of these Islamic State franchises, inflicting serious casualties on the Egyptian army in what’s likely to be a prolonged and increasingly vicious insurgency.

“In a way, what is happening in Sinai looks a lot like what was happening in Iraq in the mid-2000s,” said Issandr El Amrani, director of North Africa at the International Crisis Group think tank. “There is a cause for alarm because Islamic State has a methodology and a network of expertise based on causing splits in society to rally people around them—which is how it worked in Syria and Iraq.”

Just as in other areas where Islamic State has found support, there is a long history of local grievances in Sinai. The vast desert area, bordering on Israel and the Gaza Strip, is culturally distinct from the rest of Egypt, with more conservative mores and historical links to Bedouin tribes of Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Resentment about underdevelopment and heavy-handed security measures has helped turn the northern part of Sinai, in particular, into a fertile ground for Islamic State militants, security analysts say.

“They know they have a foundation in Sinai region,” says Maher Farghaly, a Cairo-based expert and author of several books on Egypt’s Islamist militants. “But they also have groups in other Egyptian governorates. They are capable of attacks there too, anytime and anywhere, even though the security authorities pretend otherwise.”

The fact that wide-scale violence outside Sinai has been rare, however, shows that Islamic State—at least for now—poses a local rather than systemic challenge to the government of President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, Western diplomats and Egyptian officials argue. Mr. Sisi, who ousted the elected President Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013, has solidified his rule by cracking down on Islamist and other dissent. More than 20 people were killed in recent days as security forces dispersed demonstrations against his rule in Cairo and other Egyptian cities. Those protests aren’t related to the Sinai insurgency.

Retired Maj. Gen. Sameh Seif Elyazal, chairman of the state-run Al Gomhouria Center for Political and Security Studies in Cairo and a former deputy head of Egypt’s military intelligence, said recent Egyptian military operations in Sinai, coupled with the establishment of a border buffer zone that seeks to stop weapons-smuggling from the Gaza Strip, have significantly improved the security situation there.

“We will see some problems for some time, but the peninsula is much more stable than before,” he said. “Right now every single square centimeter is controlled by the army.”

Gen. Elyazal, however, also acknowledges the challenges that persist. He said some 12 million pieces of weaponry have been hidden by Islamic State militants in Sinai’s vast deserts.

“We believe they have already succeeded in recruiting a few people from some tribes, especially the tribes that have radical ideas, that follow political Islam,” he said.

While low-grade militancy in northern Sinai has been simmering for years, it flared as the country’s new authorities freed Islamist prisoners and allowed militant exiles to return after the 2011 uprising. The army takeover and the arrest of Mr. Morsi in 2013 further radicalized many locals. The Egyptian army, deployed en masse to the peninsula as internal security forces collapsed, has been greeted with frequent ambushes and roadside bombs. It has lost hundreds of men in this campaign, analysts and diplomats estimate.

One of the insurgency’s deadliest operations in Sinai was the Oct. 24 assault on the Karam al-Kawadis military base in north Sinai. Footage filmed by the militants and released under the Islamic State logo purports to show a suicide bomber approaching the base, and then an assault by dozens of gunmen who raise the group’s black-and-white flag atop a seized tank and loot armored personnel carriers. Then, they are filmed chasing down the soldiers who try to escape, and finishing them off, one by one. Dozens of soldiers are seen killed in the attack.

In the video, a Province of Sinai leader identified as Abu Osama al Masri, then rails at Mr. Sisi: “We will be the sword that cuts off your neck and the bombs that destroy your kingdom and break your back.” He is dressed in combat gloves, an embroidered black robe and black headgear, his face obscured. Nearby on display are the weapons purportedly seized from the army: a trove of mortars, .50 caliber machine guns dismantled from APCs, and grenades.

“The question is—to what extent is the Egyptian army prepared for this guerrilla war? It has been preparing for external conflict, not internal conflict,” said Khalil al-Anani, an Egyptian scholar of Islamist movements at Johns Hopkins University. “This is something new for Egypt. It’s an open-ended game that could drag the army into uncharted waters.”

http://www.wsj.com/articles/islamic-states-sway-spreads-in-middle-east-north-africa-1422483739
Angocachi

This comes as NATO's presence in Afghanistan fizzles out.

Islamic State appoints leaders of 'Khorasan province,' issues veiled threat to Afghan Taliban

Abu Muhammad al Adnani, a spokesman for the Islamic State, announced the group's "expansion" into the lands of "Khorasan" -- modern day Afghanistan, Pakistan and parts of the surrounding countries -- and declared former Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan (Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan or TTP) commander Hafez Saeed Khan as the "governor" of Khorasan province. Khan had previously served as the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan's emir for the tribal agency of Arakzai.

Adnani made his announcement in a nearly seven minute audio taped speech titled, "Say, Die in Your Rage!" which was published on Jan. 26 2015 by the Islamic State's Al Furqan media outlet. [For a translation of the speech, by Pieter Van Ostaeyen, see ' Audio Statement by IS Spokesman Abu Muhammad al-'Adnani as-Shami .']

The declaration comes only a few weeks after a conglomeration of former TTP officials formed the Khorasan Shura and pledged bayat, or allegiance, to the Islamic State. [See Long War Journal report, Pakistani Taliban splinter group again pledges allegiance to Islamic State .]

The Islamic State spokesman acknowledged Khan's pledge of allegiance to Abu Bakr al Baghdadi as Commander of the Faithful and the Caliph of Muslims, and claimed that Baghdadi had accepted the pledge and appointed Khan as the province's governor and Mullah Abdul Rauf Khadim as the deputy governor. Khadim, a former Guantanamo detainee and former senior Taliban commander in southern Afghanistan, has reportedly been operating in Helmand province on behalf of the Islamic State. [See Long War Journal report, Ex-Gitmo detainee leads contingent of Islamic State fighters in Afghanistan .]

Adnani further urged the "mujahideen in Khorasan" to come forth and obey the commands of Khan and Khadim. Notably, Adnani also urged caution in his call to arms, noting that "the factions will assemble against you and the rifles and bayonets fixed against you will multiply." He encouraged the mujahideen to stand firm against "factionalism and disunity" and to meet these challenges by "unsheathing your swords and spears." Although not clearly stated, Adnani was issuing a veiled threat to the Taliban factions, both Afghan and Pakistani, that opposed the creation of the Khorasan Shura and who were opposed to the Islamic State.

The Afghan Taliban movement has been consistent in avoiding recognizing the Islamic State and its Caliph Abu Bakr al Baghdadi since the reclusive leader of the Afghan Taliban, Mullah Mohammad Omar, has previously held the title of Commander of the Faithful position since 1996.

Adnani's declaration and Baghdadi's reported approval for the Islamic State to expand into Afghanistan and Pakistan could incite divisions within the various Taliban factions operating in both countries. The cohesion of many Taliban factions has been compromised over the past few years, mostly due to attrition and leadership decapitations, as well as ideological differences and personal feuds.


http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2015/01/islamic_state_appoin.php#ixzz3QIYmMh8i