Islamist Wave 2015 - News & Discussion

January 30, 2015
Libya on Edge
By Jon Lee Anderson

Amid reports that the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) was finally beaten back from the Syrian-Turkish-border town of Kobani, and of threats and negotiation offers from ISIS hostage takers, came the news, on Tuesday morning, of an attack on the Corinthia Hotel in Tripoli. Two gunmen, or possibly three, blasted their way into the hotel, shooting at whomever they saw. Ten people, five of them foreigners, were murdered. One American, identified as David Berry and said to be a former Marine working for the Virginia-based security firm Crucible, was among those killed. Security forces working for Libya Dawn, the coalition of militias that currently holds power in Tripoli, sealed off the hotel and went after the attackers. One of the jihadists is said to have blown himself up, and another is said to have died in a gun battle. It is unclear what happened to the others.


The Tripoli Province, a Libyan affiliate of ISIS, claimed responsibility during the attack, and said that it was being carried out in retaliation for the death of Abu Anas al-Liby, a Libyan Al Qaeda agent. Al-Liby, who was suspected of involvement in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, which killed two hundred and twenty-four people, was captured in a U.S. Special Forces raid last year and taken to the United States to face trial on terrorism charges. Al-Liby, who was reported to have liver cancer, died in a hospital earlier this month, before he could stand trial.

The Libyan ISIS affiliate had been developing for some time. Since 2011, hundreds of Libyans have travelled to Syria to fight Bashar al-Assad’s regime, and have joined either Jabhat al-Nursra, the Al Qaeda affiliate there, or ISIS. Many of those fighters reportedly have returned to Libya since last summer, in order to establish an ISIS affiliate. The Tripoli Province announced itself in October in the eastern city of Derna, a longtime center of jihadism. In recent months, via social-media communiqués, the group claimed to have opened chapters in Libya’s lawless south, as well as in Tripoli. Recent attacks for which the group has claimed responsibility have included the abduction of a group of twenty Coptic Christian Egyptians, in the city of Sirte; the decapitation of several media activists in Derna; and, several weeks ago, the murder of ten soldiers at a remote desert outpost in Libya’s deep south.

Until the hotel attack, the situation in Libya had been out of the public eye for months. Most foreigners, including almost all Western Embassy workers and journalists, left the country last summer, when fighting broke out between militias in the capital. The conflict caused the country to be divided between two competing power centers: the Islamist-dominated Libya Dawn holds Tripoli and the nearby coastal cities Misrata and Sirte; the anti-Islamist Dignity government is based in the eastern cities Tobruk and Bayda.

When I met with Libya Dawn officials in Tripoli last month, they made efforts to deride and downplay the ISIS presence there. Prime Minister Omar al-Hassi told me that the ISIS adherents were little more than a gaggle of youths, and suggested that “development projects to create employment” would be an adequate response to their extremism.

The Corinthia attack will put an end to these denials by the Islamists in government. Much like the Charlie Hebdo murders in Paris and the Mumbai attacks of 2008 , the raid showed what a small group of men with weapons and a disregard for human life can do. Officials in Tripoli should also be concerned that, according to a second ISIS communiqué, issued after the assault, the attackers included a Tunisian and a Sudanese member, a sign that international jihad is seeking a roost in chaotic Libya. (In October, the Times reported that as many as three thousand Tunisians had travelled to Iraq and Syria to join ISIS, a larger number than have come from any other country.)

The Corinthia, a five-star hotel overlooking the harbor, is well known in Libya. When Muammar Qaddafi’s government collapsed, in August, 2011, it became a diplomatic hub, where revolutionaries and journalists slept and worked as the city around them fell apart, and had only intermittent electricity and water. Early on in the chaos, I spent a couple of nights sleeping on the lobby floor, along with scores of other latecomers. Apparently, the Corinthia remained a base for Libyan officials, as well as for visiting foreign delegations. Even Prime Minister al-Hassi is said to live there, although he reportedly was not present at the time of the attack.

To the extent that the Libya Dawn government, despite its denials, has been operating in coördination with extremist groups like Ansar al-Sharia—blamed for the assassination, in 2012, of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens—the hotel attack will be an embarrassment. It may even hasten the disintegration of the Libya Dawn coalition, which includes moderate as well as more hardline Islamists. There are already tensions between some of these groups over policy questions—specifically, whether to engage in a United Nations-led process to end the civil conflict.

Whatever the outcome, the Corinthia bombing is a harbinger of more violence in Libya, with its competing governments and myriad rival factions—all armed to the hilt.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/libya-edge

So that I don't have to post mountains of articles (ISIS articles are being pumped out like Coca-Cola bottles right now);

The Peshmerga have, only with US air power, been able to push ISIS out of Kobane and are currently moving on Mosul. ISIS launched an attack on Kirkuk that has been interpreted as an attempt to slow the Marxist-Kurd advance. The Peshmerga have stated that they have no interest in capturing Arab inhabited territory, and so far they really haven't, but they're determined to take advantage of American support in order to take and hold Kurd territories.
The Iranian backed Shia Badr militia in Iraq has pushed into Diyala, armed with tons of American armor and weapons, and carried out massacres. ISIS land is getting bitten off on several fronts, but they're still nearly the uncontested masters of the Sunni Arab Mashriq.
Speaking of which, ISIS just executed a Jordani f-16 pilot by burning him to death in a cage. Jordan responded by executing 2 of their prisoners. It was a potentially smart move that they expect will turn the Jordani population fiercely against the monarchy for fighting and losing Jordani blood on America's behalf against a fellow Sunni Arab entity.

All of that is of minor importance to this however,

Islamic State in Afghanistan: Start of a Turf War?
Islamic State fighters have killed a Taliban commander in Afghanistan. Is a turf war afoot?

The turf war between the Taliban and the Islamic State may be intensifying in Afghanistan. On Monday, masked gunmen claiming to fight for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, or IS) killed Abdul Ghani, a Taliban commander, in Logar province. The incident was reported by Afghanistan’s Pajhwok News based on the testimony of the administrative chief for Charkh district in Logar. After killing the Taliban commander, the militants ordered civilians and bystanders to refrain from watching television. The attack took place during the daytime in the main district bazaar.

According to the district chief’s testimony, the gunmen were dressed in black and claimed that they were soldiers of the Islamic State. Since its rise to prominence last summer in Iraq, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State, declared the creation of a caliphate spanning Iraq and Syria and set himself up as the caliph. The Islamic State has spent considerable energy since then in recruiting would-be jihadists in Pakistan and Afghanistan to its cause. The incident in Logar province could simply be the result of a local flare-up. Alternatively, it could foreshadow broader conflict between the Islamic State and the Afghan Taliban. The Islamic State’s presence in Afghanistan should not be overstated by any means; the Taliban remain the stronger militant outfit by far. The Islamic State’s popularity is growing, but it lacks a well-institutionalized presence in Afghanistan.

Evidence of an Islamic State presence in Afghanistan isn’t entirely absent. In a separate Pajhwok report , Mohammad Omar Safi, the governor of the northeastern region of Kunduz province, said that about 70 IS-affiliated militants were operating in the province. Safi cautioned that the Afghan government needed to develop a strategy to combat the Islamic State’s growing influence within his province. In Helmand province, around 300 IS-affiliated militants are being led by Mullah Abdul Rauf Khadim, a former Taliban commander. Khadim was reportedly captured with around 45 supporters just under a week ago by the Afghan Taliban for “anti-Islamic activities.” As U.S. troops leave Afghanistan, the primary objective of the Afghan National Army is neutralizing the threat from the Taliban and affiliated militant groups. Islamic State-affiliated militants could considerably complicate the Afghan government’s efforts to improve the country’s security situation.

Recently, the Islamic State declared the creation of the Khorasan Shura – a leadership council for Afghanistan and Pakistan composed almost entirely of former Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) leaders. The announcement of the Shura demonstrated that the group’s ambitions for influence among jihadists in Pakistan and Afghanistan will continue to grow. While fighters with the Pakistani Taliban have defected to the Islamic State, following in the footsteps of the members of the Khorasan Shura, the Afghan Taliban have remained loyal to Mullah Omar and have refused to declare their loyalty to Abu Bakr al-Bahgdadi in most cases.

The success of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan is a major impediment to the Islamic State’s mission to successfully pitch its caliphate as the only viable destination for jihadists worldwide. The Pakistani and Afghan Taliban control and exercise authority over large amounts of territory, undermining the Islamic State’s efforts at being seen as the only sustainable radical Sunni-Salafi domain. For the moment, there is little reason to believe that the Islamic State will abandon its recruitment efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The turf war between the Islamic State and the Taliban may have just begun.

http://thediplomat.com/2015/02/islamic-state-in-afghanistan-start-of-a-turf-war/

The impact of a Jordani F-16 pilot's capture and execution by the Islamic State.
Longface

Pilot’s murder may weaken Jordanian support for role in anti-Isis campaign

The brutal murder of Muadh al-Kasasbeh, the pilot who was captured by the Islamic State (Isis) , is likely to have a devastating impact on Jordan and may in the long term undermine its role in the US-led coalition attacking jihadi targets in Syria.

The Jordanian government and its citizens will be horrified by this exceptionally cruel killing . King Abdullah will be concerned that it will weaken the already lukewarm support for the country’s military participation in the fight against Isis. That was without doubt the intention of the group, which often singles out the Hashemite monarch in its venomous rhetoric, calling him the “Jordanian tyrant”.

Even before the shock of Kasasbeh’s death, opposition to Jordan’s anti-Isis role was on the rise. It is hard to see Jordan suddenly withdrawing from the coalition, but the king may become more cautious, while appealing to his people’s sense of patriotism and injured national pride.

Calls for revenge were quickly voiced by those who had been chanting the slogan “We are all Muadh” in recent weeks.

Jordan is one of four Arab countries – the others are Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates – that have been taking part in anti-Isis attacks in Syria since they began last September.

But the western-backed kingdom is in an especially vulnerable position: it is the only one of what the US calls its Arab “partner nations” that shares borders with both Syria and Iraq. It has taken in hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees and there is sympathy and even support among Jordanian Sunni extremists for what is seen as an Isis fightback against Syria’s Bashar al-Assad.

About 200,000 people, the majority of them Sunnis, have been killed since the uprising erupted nearly four years ago. Assad is also bracketed with his close ally Iran and Shia sectarianism more generally. According to a poll last September by the Centre for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan, only 62% of Jordanians consider Isis to be a terrorist organisation.

Jordan was the homeland of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of al-Qaida in Iraq, a direct forerunner of Isis. The 2005 hotel bombings the group carried out in Amman, killing 60 people in what is often called Jordan’s 9/11, are a terrible reminder of the risks of homegrown fanaticism.

An estimated 2,000-2,500 Jordanians are known to be fighting with Isis – the third largest foreign Arab contingent after Saudi Arabia and Tunisia. Many come from impoverished no-hope towns on the East Bank, a world away from the sophistication of Amman.

King Abdullah, who was informed of the grim news about Kasasbeh while on a visit to Washington, has been a keen participant in the anti-Isis effort. He has emphasised the need to fight the group’s extremism and brutality and its claim to be Islamic.

A government information campaign echoes the king’s message about the values of moderate Islam and the rejection of the takfiri school that Isis uses to sanction the often sectarian killing of so-called apostates. But the campaign generated mixed feelings at home from the start. A popular Twitter hashtag #thiswarisnotourwar makes the point succinctly.

“Isis sympathisers feel injustice and anger at America and Israel and always felt that Islam was under attack by Crusaders,” Muin Khoury, a leading Jordanian pollster, told the Guardian recently. “And now they don’t agree with Jordan being involved in the coalition.”

Adnan Abu Odeh, a former minister, said the government was “walking a tightrope”. Other critics suggested that Jordan had been somehow blackmailed by Washington into taking part.

Discontent became more voluble after Kasasbeh’s capture when his F16 came down near Raqqa on Christmas Eve, especially among his powerful tribe, one of several which form the loyal backbone of the Jordanian armed forces and security services. In his home town of Kerak, dozens of people protested, chanting anti-coalition slogans and calling on the king to pull out of the campaign against Isis.

Abdullah moved quickly to reassure the pilot’s family that everything was being done to secure his release. But even as he comforted Kasasbeh’s parents and wife in the royal palace in the capital, demonstrations took place outside without the police intervening – something that would be unthinkable in normal times.

Kasasbeh’s capture, one MP complained to the BBC, was “making it harder to convince Jordanians that we should be in this war in the first place”.

Official nervousness has been evident from the beginning. The Jordanian government did not advertise its military involvement, perhaps fearing revenge attacks by Isis or a domestic backlash. It had been assumed before the campaign began that Jordan would offer to use its highly regarded intelligence services rather than get involved in armed action.

Abdullah, like his father, King Hussein, is close to the US and has maintained Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel in the face of domestic opposition. But the present monarch’s critics sometimes describe him as impetuous. Observers have made the comparison between the anti-Isis campaign and King Hussein’s decision to stay out of the US-led coalition that came together to eject Iraq forces from Kuwait in 1991.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/03/pilot-murder-jordan-anti-isis-campaign



An Article Explaining How the UAE has dropped out of the War on the Caliphate

WASHINGTON — The United Arab Emirates , a crucial Arab ally in the American-led coalition against the Islamic State, suspended airstrikes against the Sunni extremist group in December, citing fears for its pilots’ safety after a Jordanian pilot was captured and who the extremists said had been burned to death , United States officials said Tuesday.

The United Arab Emirates are demanding that the Pentagon improve its search-and-rescue efforts, including the use of V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, in northern Iraq, closer to the battleground, instead of basing the missions in Kuwait, administration officials said. The country’s pilots will not rejoin the fight until the Ospreys, which take off and land like helicopters but fly like planes, are put in place in northern Iraq.

The United Arab Emirates notified the United States Central Command that they were suspending flights, administration officials said, after First Lt. Moaz al-Kasasbeh of the Jordanian Air Force was captured when his plane went down near Raqqa, Syria. A senior American military official said Islamic State militants “grabbed” Lieutenant Kasasbeh “within just a few minutes.” He added, “There was no time for us to engage.”

But United Arab Emirates officials questioned the American military about whether rescue teams would have been able to reach Lieutenant Kasasbeh even if there had been more time to do so, administration officials said.

In a blunt exchange last week in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates’ foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, asked Barbara Leaf, the new American ambassador, why Central Command, in his country’s view, had not put proper assets in northern Iraq for rescuing downed pilots, a senior administration official said.

“He let her have it over this,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the issue. It was Ms. Leaf’s first courtesy call on the foreign minister.

The exchange followed a month of disputes between American military officials and their counterparts in the United Arab Emirates, who have also expressed concern that the United States has allowed Iran to play a growing role in the fight against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL.

A spokesman with Central Command declined to comment.

The divide between the United States and the United Arab Emirates is significant because the country has been the United States’ most stalwart Arab ally in the fight against the Islamic State. The country, a collection of oil-rich principalities, conducted more missions in the beginning of the air war than any other member of the international coalition. Its collection of F-16s attacked the militants in northern Iraq and Syria from the Al Dhafra air base in the United Arab Emirates.

The country was one of the first to join the coalition. In early September, even before President Obama had recruited the first members at a NATO summit meeting in Wales, Yousef Al Otaiba, the United Arab Emirates’ ambassador to the United States, issued a statement that his country stood ready to join the fight.

For the United States, keeping the United Arab Emirates on board is key; Mr. Obama has insisted that the United States will not fight the Islamic State without help from Sunni Arabs. The White House is keen to present the coalition as one that includes moderate countries in the region.

The relationship with the United Arab Emirates has become especially important as United States relations with other Muslim allies like Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia have grown tense. Such allies have defended their roles in the campaign despite criticism at home.

It was unclear Tuesday why the American military had not been able to put the requested rescue assets in northern Iraq. After the Islamic State released the video of what it said was the Jordanian pilot’s execution Tuesday, administration officials said Mr. Obama had ordered national security officials and the intelligence community to devote its resources to locating other hostages held by the Islamic State.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/04/w...-isis-effort-disengaged-in-december.html?_r=0