Islamist Wave 2015 - News & Discussion

10 posts

Angocachi
In many ways no.
Al Qaeda and IS draw much of their support, recruits, and donations from Sunnis who are disillusioned by Sunni governments. AQ & IS exist because Sunnis aren't satisfied with their governments' lack of Shariah & Jihad... things AQ & IS have made their niche to deliver. When Saud battles Shia it's able to present itself as the champion of Sunni Islam. That deflates AQ & IS.
If Saud succeeds in smashing the Houthis in Yemen it will deny AQ & IS a theater they'd grow in. It's in AQ & IS' interests for Saud to fail against the Houthis, and then the anti-Saudi Salafi Jihadists can save the day and be the real heroes after all. That's the dream scenario from Zawahiri and Baghdadi's standpoint.
If Saud succeeds against the Houthis, on the other hand, and puts another American approved government in... it'll work to squeeze AQ & IS out of Yemen.... while getting to boast that it saved the whole Sunni world.

On a side note; the Yemen War has split Ikhwan. Yemeni and Syrian Ikhwan are cheering Saudi participation, while Egyptian Ikhwan (the heart of Ikhwan) is opposed while Sisi supports.
Angocachi

The only way for IS to defeat AQ is to continue to recruit sleepers and hidden loyalists throughout AQ. It's said by witnesses that IS was able to seize Yarmouk and the area south of it in Damascus by Nusra (AQ) collaboration. That means there are men in Nusra who are actually IS operatives. IS can use public defections to boost morale, support, recruitment, etc... but it will have to use stealth defections to shrink AQ from the inside. They can devour AQ branches this way, taking their men, money, territory, and information with them.
I predict that within the next year IS will inherit the majority of AQ territories and they won't even need to replace most of the formerly AQ men, leaving them in their posts, many of them secretly IS men months or years earlier.

Marcus

But I think it's most likely to weaken their security forces at home and cause even more domestic turmoil as casualties mount when they try to take on the experienced Houthi guerillas.

Angocachi
If the Saudi military takes sustained casualties from the Houthis it'll shore up support for the monarchy granted they rapidly defeat the Houthis. If the Saudi military starts taking casualties and it goes on without visible advances made against them, the monarchy will face serious internal challenges to its authority. That's why they're unlikely to engage the Houthis directly and consistently, but will rely on their air power and Yemeni proxies.

This article explains the situation between Al Nusra and IS. It's increasingly possible we'll see a reconciliation between Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, as they really need each other in Yemen & Syria now.

ISTANBUL -- Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian offshoot of the terrorist organization al Qaeda, has been joining ranks in some parts of Syria with rebel groups that were once the country’s main recipients of U.S. weapons. The two sides are banding together in key areas, including the outskirts of the capital Damascus and northern Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city, rebels fighting in Aleppo told International Business Times. That coordination has given the opposition more military might in the fight against President Bashar Assad, but is also sending a worrying message back to the Obama administration: The weapons it once provided to Syrian rebels may now end up in the hands of the very extremists it wants to quash, such as the Islamic State group.

Washington now has to worry not only about American weapons getting into the hands of al Qaeda-linked groups but also about them reaching the Islamic State group. According to Syrian fighters, Jabhat al-Nusra, aka the Nusra Front, is working alongside the militant group formerly known as ISIL or ISIS in the Yarmouk refugee camp outside Damascus to defeat the Assad regime’s military and local Palestinian factions. Some reports have hinted the Nusra Front may have even pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group in Yarmouk.

If the collaboration between the Nusra Front and the Islamic State group in Yarmouk, close to downtown Damascus, becomes a model followed in other parts of Syria, the opposition to Assad will consist almost exclusively of ultraradical Islamists. The U.S. will be left without any credible faction to back in the fight against the regime, and its top enemy in the region, the Islamic State group, will be strengthened.

Northern Syria -- where the Free Syrian Army and the military were until recently the only factions fighting -- has turned into a cauldron of opposition groups vying for power. The last moderate rebel group in the north, Harakat Hazm, dissolved last month, nullifying the two-year-old American campaign to prop it up with weapon deliveries.

The Obama administration approved a CIA-led program in the spring of 2013 that delivered support to those then considered moderate rebels, all of whom fought under the umbrella known as the Free Syrian Army, the main opposition group fighting Assad after the Syrian Civil War began in 2011. The CIA program allowed for the transfer of U.S.-made weapons via Turkey, and it was partially funded by Saudi Arabia and other wealthy Sunni states. But the rebel groups that were the beneficiaries of that aid began to dissolve when better-financed and -organized militias, such as the Islamic State group and the Nusra Front, emerged.

The rebels that received U.S. aid joined other, stronger groups, bringing their weapons with them. In December, a video surfaced of a ceremony honoring the unification of some rebel entities in a group now called the Al Shamia Front -- with which the Nusra Front promptly aligned itself, at least on the battlefield.

But in the north of Syria, at least, this new group and the Islamic State group have not forged an alliance.

“There is military coordination between al-Nusra and the Al Shamia Front on the ground in fighting both the regime and the Islamic State,” said Oussama Abu Zayd, one of the advisers to the Al Shamia Front. “Most of the factions within the Al Shamia Front have had previous military coordination with Jabhat al-Nusra.”

Ward Furati, the media director of the Al Shamia Front, said rebels in Al Shamia make up 80 percent of all rebels in Aleppo. He said the Nusra Front and Al Shamia are collaborating only on the battlefield and do not align ideologically.

Despite these ideological differences, the collaboration between the Nusra Front and other rebels has already yielded a relevant victory: the recapture of Idlib from the Assad regime.

There, the Nusra Front and other rebels created a coordinated force known as Jaysh al-Fatah, meaning the Army of Conquest, which included Ahrar al-Sham, an ultraconservative group, and other Islamist organizations within the Al Shamia Front. After weeks of fighting and constant aerial bombardments by Assad’s air force, the rebels pushed the military out of the city and claimed control. It was the first major win for the opposition since it lost Homs to the military last year, but it came only because of ultraconservative Islamist fighters.

The Idlib victory “represents a turning point in the Syrian Civil War that is likely to alter the trajectory of the conflict in coming months, with implications for how rebels wage war in 2015,” the Institute for the Study of War said in a recent report . Idlib was “much of more of a victory for al Qaeda in Syria than a victory for the Syrian revolution,” said the public-policy think tank based in Washington. On the ground, residents have said they fear a city run by the extremist group would be as bad as living under the Islamic State group.

Battles such as the one in Idlib “will likely provide momentum to the JN-Islamist axis in Syria at the expense of moderate rebel forces, and hinder efforts to foster a political solution to the conflict,” the Institute for the Study of War said.

Defections from the increasingly small moderate rebel movement will make it more difficult for the U.S. to oust Assad by backing fighters who are associated with neither al Qaeda nor the Islamic State group. The current strategy is to find fighters who can be vetted and trusted, then trained and given weapons. The U.S. Defense Department told IBTimes via email it had “identified approximately 2,200 personnel by name” that it could train and equip with arms. But, as the war enters its fifth year, that process has yet to begin.

http://www.ibtimes.com/jabhat-al-nusra-isis-alliance-could-spread-beyond-damascus-1877819

Fitz

BTW, It appears Ramadi will soon fall to IS and Aleppo will soon fall to Al Nusra & it's allies. If so, it'd make a reconciliation even more attractive to both groups.
Marcus
Bob Dylan Roof
President Camacho
Marcus

Didn't the Taliban ban bacha bazi during their rule? Can't have made many friends that way...

Angocachi

There have been a few major non-IS related developments in the Islamist world lately

- The Saudi-Egyptian War on the Houthi in Yemen has split The Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan). Egyptian Ikhwan, Hamas, and anywhere Ikhwan is up against Arab monarchs they're opposed to the War in Yemen and are even receptive to backing from Assad and Iran. However, wherever the local Sunni Arabs are at war with Shia (Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen) the Ikhwanis support the Saudi-Egyptian intervention against the Houthis and they're opposed to Assad and Iran. With Ikhwan being crushed in Egypt, the pro-Sisi, pro-Saud, anti-Shia Ikhwanis are soaring.
The geopolitical battle for Sunni Arab Islamist politics is 90% the battle for Ikhwan. Iran must throw their weight behind Egyptian Ikhwan or the door to Sunni Arab allies will close forever.

-Another key Islamist politician has been executed by the Bangladeshi government. Between Morsi getting 20 years in Egypt, these sentences are painting a clear picture to Muslims around the world that Islamist politics is a dead end. Just as the failure of Islamists to seize Tunisia resulted in a swelling of Tunisian Jihadists, Egypt and Bangladesh are beginning to sprout an overgrown crop of militants.

-Russia has just offed the head of the Caucasus Emirate (a Zawahiri loyal Al Qaeda branch). The US has also killed a lot of Al Qaeda leaders lately. Al Qaeda could sustain these routine leadership losses in the past, but now they have competition. Immediately after his death a rival Caucasus Jihadist called on loyalty to IS. Whenever Russia, Assad, the US kill Al Qaeda leaders they are diverting the flow of Jihadist loyalties to IS.

-Obama is getting lynched over his Iran deal. Now the Jews are bringing the Marxist People's Mujahideen of Iran to congress on the Republicans' side...
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"The leader of a controversial group devoted to regime change in Iran is set to testify before Congress next week.

Maryam Rajavi, the president-elect of the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), will testify via videoconference April 29 at a House Foreign Affairs terrorism panel on " ISIS: Defining the Enemy ." The council is an umbrella group of Iranian dissident groups that includes the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), which was removed from the State Department's terrorism list in 2012 after an intense lobbying campaign and has since spent millions of dollars to raise its profile on Capitol Hill .

"They're not on the foreign terrorist list now, and they should be treated as if they're not on the foreign terrorist list," said panel chairman Ted Poe, R-Texas, an Iran hawk and one of the top recipients of MEK-linked donations in recent years.

Other panel members backed the controversial decision to invite a group that has been tied to attacks against US business and diplomatic interests in Iran under the Shah. The MEK renounced violence in 2001.

"I'd be very surprised if leaders of [Ireland's] NRA or Sinn Fein haven't been involved in official congressional business over the past two decades," said Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif. "It's clear that the MEK has revealed things about the Iranian government and its nuclear program that no one revealed. I would say the MEK is a very valuable source of information, whether it's Fordow , whether it's the original nuclear program, etc. And so since they've been a good source of information about important matters, those are the kinds of people you listen to at a hearing."

Others expressed reservations.

"I think it raises a lot of eyebrows and also raises a lot of questions about propriety," said Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va., a former Hill aide who sits on the full committee but not Poe's panel.

"You're talking to somebody who staffed a committee for 10 years," Connolly said. "I know this: I took great care about vetting who came before the committee as witnessses. You've got to take care so that you're not embarrassing anybody, and you're not unintentionally bringing people who may or may not bring credit to the process and to the institution. I would hope that all of those factors were weighed."

The Barack Obama administration believes Rajavi's group is trying to derail its negotiations with Iran and has raised doubts about its recent purported revelations about illicit nuclear activity . The group's claim to fame came in 2002 when it publicly revealed the location of an undisclosed nuclear facility at Natanz, but questions about how much the United States and Israel already knew at the time have swirled ever since.

"They've shown time and time again that they're not the most credible voice," an administration official told Al-Monitor.

The official went on to urge lawmakers to be wary of any claims that the NCRI — a group that fought alongside Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq War and has alleged ties to the CIA and Israel's Mossad — represents a viable Iranian opposition.

"In the absence of anyone else who can be defined in this town as an Iranian opposition , you get people wanting to point to her and her group as the opposition," the official said. "That's, I think, the very dangerous part."

The NCRI did not respond to a request for comment.

Poe said he had invited Rajavi to testify about the threats the Islamic State (IS) poses to MEK members who remain at Camp Liberty in Baghdad. The NCRI has accused Iranian-backed militias of ramping up rocket attacks against the refugee camp in recent weeks.

"I've heard reports from many sources of the threat to this camp because these folks cannot leave," Poe told Al-Monitor. "They're just one group that's being threatened by [IS], and we want to show all of the intricacies of [IS] and what they're doing."

Although committees usually avoid asking non-US citizens to testify, Poe said it made sense to get Rajavi's perspective in this case.

"She knows more about what's taking place at Camp Liberty than any person, anywhere," he said. "And that's why she's testifying."

A senior committee aide called the invitation to invite Rajavi "surprising," however, since the group has, to the source's knowledge, never mentioned IS in its communications with staffers before.

Rajavi isn't the only controversial witness for a hearing that promises a few fireworks. Also invited: Walid Phares, a foreign policy adviser to Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign with controversial ties to Lebanese Christian militias ; and Robert Ford, President Obama's ambassador to Syria who quit last year after losing patience with the administration's lack of commitment to the Free Syrian Army."

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/ori...ongress-maryam-rajavi-isis.html#ixzz3YE64eDL3

Antonius Blockhead Marcus Nelson Van Alden Fitz

Angocachi

The "IS-Taliban War" is actually a Taliban-Taliban War. Many Taliban commanders see the benefits of becoming part of an international Caliphate and more than that, they believe in it on religious grounds. They declare their loyalty to IS as Taliban, and believe they are better Taliban for it. In their eyes, the Taliban who don't join the Caliphate are the true defectors from Islam and betray what was always supposed to be the Taliban's purpose, the establishment of an Islamic State.