Islamist Wave 2015 - News & Discussion

Angocachi Sunday 24 May 2015

After capturing Palmyra in the geographic center of Syria, it's airbase, it's arm depot, it's two gas fields, it's prison, it's UNESCO ruins and gaining access to it's highways to Damascus, Homs, and Deir ez Zhor and executing 300 of Assad's captured soldiers...
"Isis militants were mobilising around Homs’ Tayfour air base and were locked in fierce battles around the town of al-Sawana, which sits on the Palmyra-Damascus highway. On Thursday Isis captured part of the industrial city Sheikh Najjar in Syria’s northern Aleppo province, reviving fears the group may try to attack the city of Aleppo itself.
Isis fighters have also pushed beyond Palmyra to take T3 Station, a gas site critical to the Syrian power grid, as well as three oilfields. Isis makes hundreds of thousands of dollars a day from cheap oil sales in areas it controls."
Then ISIS went on to capture the Syrian & Iraqi side of the last border crossing Abadi and Assad had with each other.
"Of Syria’s three crossings with Iraq, two are now held by Isis and one is held by Kurdish militias in northwestern Syria."
"ISIS seized the Iraqi side of a key border crossing with Syria after isolated government forces pulled out"

That means that the Syrian-Iraqi border is 100% gone, completely cutting Iran & Shia Iraq from Assad & Hezbollah (Sisi shut the Suez Canal to the Iranian military after Morsi had reopened it to them).
It also means that the two Assad Eastern holdouts in Deir ez Zhor and Hasakah are going to be very short on resupply.
The debate now is where ISIS in Syria will expand next. They could attempt to finish off Deir ez Zhor and/or Hasakah, but it's more likely they'll give Assad's besieged soldiers there time to suffer the consequence of losing Palmyra before attempting to break in. Neither Assad holdout is capable of obstructing ISIS, they're now static positions with zero hope of being reconnected with Assad territory in the West. It's probable that ISIS will instead work to swallow Central Syria and then make a move on Homs. The anti-ISIS rebel alliance has indicated they expect the same and are now prepping, prematurely, to push toward Homs in an effort to beat ISIS in the race to it. If ISIS were to take Homs from Assad before the anti-ISIS rebel alliance, both Assad's forces and the anti-ISIS rebel forces would be cut into North & South. ISIS could then expand into each at its leisure while both of its foes bite at one another like two snakes in an ever tightening bag.

Meanwhile the US is worried about ISIS in Afghanistan,

"“In fact, Taliban and Daesh are reportedly fighting each other,” he said, using an acronym for Islamic State. “It is absolutely a concern.”

Some Afghan officials, including President Ashraf Ghani, have said the group does have an active presence in Afghanistan. Campbell said the group’s presence has grown considerably in the past six months."

And the UN is worried about ISIS in Libya after it captured Gaddafi's hometown of Sirte. They also hold most of Derna and a chunk of Benghazi.
"Bernadino Leon told a regional conference of the World Economic Forum on Saturday that the ISIS presence in Libya has grown in recent months from small groups to more than 2,000 loyalists."

This all while ISIS suicide bombs a Shia mosque in the Shia majority city of Qatif in Eastern Saudi Arabia, killing 21 people and sparking near riots by the Shia locals against the Saudi government.
In the Sinai ISIS captured an Egyptian soldier and executed him just days after killing 3 Egyptian judges.
In Gaza Hamas has arrested over 200 people in a sweep to stamp out growing ISIS.
Jordan is working against ISIS as a pro-ISIS fifth column grows within, particularly in the city of Maan, as it hosts Americans training Syrians to fight ISIS.
And in Iraq the Shia and Iranian forces on the ground are attempting to push back against ISIS in Baji to the North and the near total ISIS takeover in Anbar.

SOUTHERN SHUNEH, Jordan: The United Nations envoy on Libya says that ISIS extremists can "become a very serious threat" in the country within months if rival governments fail to reach a unity deal.

Bernadino Leon told a regional conference of the World Economic Forum on Saturday that the ISIS presence in Libya has grown in recent months from small groups to more than 2,000 loyalists.

Libya has fragmented since the capital of Tripoli was overrun last year by Islamist-allied militias who set up their own government. Libya's internationally recognized government withdrew to the east of the country.

Leon is mediating unity talks. He says that without a quick deal, "in a few months this (the rise of ISIS) can become a very serious threat for the Libyans and for us."

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Mi...poised-to-become-serious-threat-in-libya.ashx

The commander of international forces in Afghanistan said on Saturday that the Islamic State group is actively recruiting in the country, but is not yet operational there.

General John F Campbell said the group’s sophisticated social-media campaign was attracting Taliban fighters based in Afghanistan and Pakistan disgruntled with the lack of progress in more than 10 years of fighting to overthrow the Kabul government.

As a result, many were pledging allegiance to Isis, which controls about a third of Syria and Iraq, Campbell told reporters.

“We don’t want it to continue to grow,” he said, adding that efforts were being made to ensure its presence did not reach levels similar to Syria and Iraq.

He said Afghans largely did not agree with the ideology of the Islamic State, a factor that could limit its growth in Afghanistan. But he contradicted his earlier statement that Isis was not active on the battlefields of Afghanistan by saying it was reportedly fighting the Taliban for control of territory and men.

“In fact, Taliban and Daesh are reportedly fighting each other,” he said, using an acronym for Islamic State. “It is absolutely a concern.”

Some Afghan officials, including President Ashraf Ghani, have said the group does have an active presence in Afghanistan. Campbell said the group’s presence has grown considerably in the past six months, though he did not provide numbers.

The Taliban leadership, believed to be based in Pakistan, is under pressure to end the war in Afghanistan and start a dialogue with the Kabul government. Some positive overtures have been made by both sides, as well as by Islamabad. Although it is likely to be years before any peace talks begin, the movement is said by some analysts to be splitting between moderate and extremist elements. It is the more extreme Taliban followers who are seen changing their allegiance.

Campbell said many Taliban had become disillusioned with the leadership and saw the Islamic State as offering “an opportunity to maybe gain resources and so they pledge allegiance”.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/23/isis-actively-recruiting-afghanistan-us-general

BAGHDAD: ISIS seized the Iraqi side of a key border crossing with Syria after isolated government forces pulled out, a police officer and a provincial official said.

"Daesh [ISIS] early this morning took control of the Al-Walid post on the border between Iraq and Syria after the withdrawal of the army and the Iraqi border police," a police colonel said.

The jihadis had seized the Syrian side, known as Al-Tanaf, three days earlier, leaving Iraqi forces guarding the remote outpost in Anbar province very vulnerable.

The police colonel said the government forces at Al-Walid temporarily pulled back to the nearby Trebil border crossing with Jordan.

ISIS fighters seized another border crossing between Anbar and Syria last year. The other crossing between the two countries is further north and controlled by Kurdish forces.

The head of Anbar's border commission confirmed that government forces had pulled out of Al-Walid.

"There was no military support for the security forces and there weren't enough of them to protect the crossing," Suad Jassem said.

"Daesh now controls both sides of both crossings," she said.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Mi...-iraqi-side-of-key-syria-border-crossing.ashx

ISIS and the New ‘Army of Conquest’ in Syria Are Headed for a Showdown

Assad is in trouble. But ISIS moving in from the east may hit the rebels closing in from the north.
Two successive months and two stunning battlefield reversals for the embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad—one dealt him in the east by the so-called Islamic State, the other in the north by a new coalition of rebel forces that includes an affiliate of al Qaeda in a leading role. Now, as the two armies look to expand their territorial gains at the Assad regime’s expense, they’re also converging on each other.

The clash between the terror state widely known as ISIS and the newly emerged Jaish al Fata, or Army of Conquest, is likely to come sooner than later. Most likely it will happen in the vicinity of Homs, referred to by many rebels as “the capital of the revolution.” Ironically (or maybe not), Homs stands on the ancient caravan route between the ISIS-overrun Palmyra and the Mediterranean.

U.S. officials have been arguing in recent weeks that the ISIS/Syria/Iraq war is destined to last a long time, saying there are no signs the parties are exhausted yet or that foreign backers are ready to call a halt to the carnage, as they eventually did with the long-running Lebanese civil war. “We remain in a period of dangerous military stalemate, and it is likely to continue for some time,” argues Randa Slim of the Middle East Institute, a think tank in Washington.

That may be so, but as Slim acknowledges, “the trend in Syria today is definitely not in favor of the regime.” That’s a point her colleague at the institute, former Ambassador Robert Ford, emphasized even before the fall of Palmyra, arguing, “Despite constant Western media assessments that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s situation is secure, the reality is that the Syrian war is one of attrition. And minority regimes usually do not fare well in prolonged wars of attrition.”

There are signs that Assad is hedging his bets now, preparing for a last stand in the Alawi coastal strongholds. Rebel commanders say for weeks now the Assad regime has been stockpiling more military gear in the mountain redoubts of his minority Alawi sect, an offshoot of Shia Islam, in preparation to carve out a rump state.

Earlier this month, Assad was uncharacteristically somber when addressing a commemoration ceremony in Damascus, urging Syrians to help buck up the morale of the army. That morale won’t have been helped by the rout in Palmyra, which saw the defending force disintegrate in seven days in the face of a much smaller force of attackers, with Syrian government officers retreating pell-mell, leaving hundreds of their soldiers behind.

So inept was the defense of Palmyra and the nearby city of Tadmur that some observers wondered if Assad abandoned the site with its unique ruins and irreplaceable ancient artifacts and treasures deliberately, to gain Western sympathy support. The jihadis can be counted on to set about looting and smashing up the unique site. But the strategic importance of the city dominating the highway from Damascus, used to resupply remaining government forces in the eastern province of Deir ez Zour, would suggest that defeat there was not part of any twisted Syrian regime plan. And it wasn’t just ancient monuments that were lost. Tadmur has what may be the largest arms depot in Syria and a major airbase that is now out of the Assad regime’s reach.

For ISIS commanders, as for their resurgent rebel foes in the Army of Conquest, the question is likely the same now: Should they consolidate gains or press on with expansionary offensives against a reeling, hard-pressed Syrian government? The smart move for ISIS would be to consolidate, smooth out the front lines and oust the isolated government forces left in Deir ez Zour. This is what Joshua Landis, who runs the Syria Comment blog and is a professor at the University of Oklahoma, suspects ISIS will do. “Deir is presumed to be next big push,” he tweeted in the hours after the fall of Palmyra.

But caution doesn’t appear to be in the ISIS gene. Time and again the group has used force mobility despite U.S. surveillance and airstrikes to undertake the riskier course, opening up new fronts to wrong-foot opponents. Jonathan Schanzer, an analyst with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, says the jihadis “need to continue to conquer territory in order to survive.” He adds: “Pillage, plunder, and tax is how the group generates income for itself. If it ceases to do so, it will find itself with dwindling resources, particularly as the U.S. targets its oil fields and other assets.”

Battered Homs, Syria’s third largest city, is exposed and presents an inviting target—seizing “the capital of the revolution” would be a symbolic gesture for a group that is always keenly conscious of symbolism. Homs was first captured by the Muslims in the seventh century, when Umar ibn Al-Khattab, considered one of the greatest caliphs, took it away from Byzantine Christians and sun-worshippers. It is not hard to see that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-styled Caliph Ibrahim, would relish seizing the city for his putative caliphate.

The Army of Conquest’s commanders are discussing Homs as a possible next major target in a debate that has them swinging between striking at Latakia on the coast or Hama and then Homs, with Damascus as the distant prize.

In so many ways the Army of Conquest and the ISIS terror army are mismatched. The former probably has more manpower available than ISIS, especially as the jihadis have had to shift Syria-based fighters to Iraq.

A triangular fight over Homs, up against both the Army of Conquest and Assad’s forces, may be too big a battle for ISIS at the moment. Its victories have been based on lightning speed, with hundreds of fighters targeting weak defenses. But the jihadis possess smart tactical leadership and their fighters are motivated in the way only religious fanatics are, with a zealous readiness to die.

When they are up against highly motivated opponents, as they were in the battle for the Kurdish town of Kobani, they can be defeated. But it’s never easy. At Tikrit, a few hundred ISIS fighters held off significantly larger Shia and Iraqi forces for weeks. Palmyra also featured just a few hundred highly motivated fighters who made a swift seven days’ work of a large force that had good re-supply lines back to Damascus.

Some commanders and fighters in the Army of Conquest exhibit almost a relieved surprise at their win in Idlib and after four years of war some still lack self-confidence. Among the fighters in Aleppo, confidence is in short supply, says Lina Chawaf, the editor of the independent radio station Rozana. On a recent trip to the rebel-held half of the city, she noticed the insurgents in Aleppo “don’t have a hope to beat Assad” and “many of them were saying there is no solution except a negotiated political solution.”

Assad still has two major battlefield advantages—his air power and the support of foreign allies: Iran, Russia, and the Lebanese Shia movement Hezbollah. Those advantages are the big variables. In the past with Hezbollah fighters in the vanguard of his forces and Iranian commanders present and directing tactics, Assad was able to pull off military gains. Both at Idlib and Palmyra, Hezbollah and foreign Shia fighters in large numbers were noticeably absent, presumably because Hezbollah has had to focus on defending the rugged Qalamoun region running alongside part of the border with Lebanon, from rebel attack.

One of the biggest variables could well come down to money. Inadvertently (although rebels would argue conspiracy is afoot), the U.S. could throw Assad a cash lifeline, depending on the timing of nuclear negotiations with Iran and the lifting of sanctions if a deal is reached.

“The Syrian regime, while currently on its heels, is about to get a massive cash injection from Iran when the nuclear deal goes through,” argues the FFD’s Schanzer. “Iran is set to receive roughly $120 billion in cash. A portion of that will undoubtedly go to Syria, which Iran views as its 35th province.”

And the war goes on.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...quest-in-syria-are-headed-for-a-showdown.html

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) seized Syria’s last border crossing with Iraq on Friday, following a slew of advances in both countries that have cast doubt on the effectiveness of the international coalition battling the jihadis.

The border capture caps off a week of spectacular gains for Isis, which seized Syria’s ancient city of Palmyra and the Iraqi provincial capital of Ramadi, an hour’s drive from Baghdad.

Isis fighters have also pushed beyond Palmyra to take T3 Station, a gas site critical to the Syrian power grid, as well as three oilfields. Isis makes hundreds of thousands of dollars a day from cheap oil sales in areas it controls.

To Syrians, Palmyra is home to one the country’s most despised state prisons. Isis fighters stormed the prison on Thursday but found it empty, according to the group’s media sites, leaving the fate of its inmates unknown.

Though many living under Isis rule in Syria and Iraq have come to hate the group, some Palmyra residents welcomed the fighters on Friday and cheered the beheadings of police informants and hated government officials.

“They were divided into two groups: One with heads, and one without. Anyone suspected of fighting Isis was killed,” joked one activist, who asked not to be named. “People support the organisation (Isis) because it is more merciful than the regime.”

Supporters of the group, which claims to be building an Islamic caliphate across Syria and Iraq, are cheering what they see as a changing tide after it appeared to be bogged down by US-led air strikes and a push by Iraqi forces to retake areas in Iraq’s northwest.

“Al-Tanf crossing is under the control of caliphate, praise God,” said a Twitter post distributed by Isis media outlets. “We will chase you down wherever you go…. #Tadmur, #al-Tanf, #al-Waleed, #Islamic State.”

Of Syria’s three crossings with Iraq, two are now held by Isis and one is held by Kurdish militias in northwestern Syria. Syria’s four-year civil war, which was once conflict between Assad’s forces and rebels fighting to topple him, is now a convoluted war that has also brought in Kurdish militias seeking autonomous local rule and Isis.

“God help us,” said the activist Thaer al-Khalidiya. “Not just Syria, but all of the Middle East.”

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1842e3c0-006f-11e5-b91e-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3b73Cn8LW

Angocachi Tuesday 26 May 2015

As if ISIS wasn't attracting enough women, the UN has given (forwarded) accounts of ISIS body shaming, virginity tests, and extreme sex on penalty of death! 50 Shades of Mujahid might stir up the Western audience almost as much the possibility of artifacts being smashed. Not enough to send soldiers into combat, though.

"Members of Islamic State ( Isis ) burned a 20-year-old woman alive because she refused to engage in an "extreme sex act", according to a UN official.

Zainab Bangura , the United Nation's special representative on sexual violence in war, recently conducted a tour of refugee camps in the midst of the conflicts in Syria and Iraq.

Bagura was presented with appalling stories from victims of sexual crimes and their families and told of them in an interview in the Middle East Eye, an independent regional newspaper, this week.

"They [IS] commit rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution and other acts of extreme brutality. We heard one case of a 20-year-old girl who was burned alive because she refused to perform an extreme sex act. We learned of many other sadistic sexual acts. We struggled to understand the mentality of people who commit such crimes," Bagura, said.

The terror group justifies the horrendous sex crimes and slavery as Sunnah – a way of life prescribed by Mohammed's life and the Quran's teachings.

While the Quran does detail rules for the ownership and ethical treatment of slaves, it also advises slave owners to free enslaved people, even if this required buying them first.

Islamic scholars have estimated Muhammad and his family released nearly 40,000 slaves.

Teenaged girls' virginity tested

Bangura outlined the processes by which the "pretty virgins" are kidnapped by the jihadists and they bought and sold at auctions.

"After attacking a village, [Islamic State] splits women from men and executes boys and men aged 14 and over. The women and mothers are separated; girls are stripped naked, tested for virginity and examined for breast size and prettiness. The youngest, and those considered the prettiest virgins fetch higher prices and are sent to Raqqa, the IS stronghold," Bagura, said.

She later goes on to explain that there is a hierarchy system: sheikhs (rulers) get the first choice, then emirs (commanders) followed by fighters. But they are not content with just one woman and often take three or four girls and keep them for around a month, until they send the girls back into the market and replace them.

At slave auctions, buyers bargain heavily, pushing prices down by criticising girls as "flat-chested or unattractive".

"We heard about one girl who was traded 22 times, and another, who had escaped, told us that the sheikh who had captured her wrote his name on the back of her hand to show that she was his 'property'," Bagura added.

There are believed to be somewhere between 3,000-5,000 women enslaved by IS. Many are Yazidi, a minority that IS considers to be "devil-worshippers."

Hundreds of Yazidi women have escaped the clutches of their evil kidnappers, either by running free or being ransomed and rescued by beloved families. Buying a daughter back costs as much as $5,000 (£3,230). Bangura has asked international assistance in helping proper medical and "psychosocial" support to the escaped women, who have experienced this ordeal.

Some of these women are so desperate to escape they use their headscarves to hang themselves. Due to this IS has banned women from wearing headscarves in some regions.

"I learned of three girls who tried to commit suicide by drinking rat poison, which had been left in a room. They started vomiting and were rushed to hospital and washed out. When they came back, they were brutally attacked," Bangura told Middle East Eye.

Women are promised to IS fighters as a recruitment measure and the terror group raise money through trafficking, prostitution and ransoms.

IS has carried out "systematic sexual crimes" against Yazidi women and girls, having captured hundreds of them from northern Iraq over the last two years, Human Rights Watch has said.

In early April, more than 200 Yazidi women, children and elderly were released near Kirkuk after being taken hostage by IS last June.

Isis women's manifesto: Nine-year-old girls should become brides, declares all-female Al-Khansa Brigade

Syria Isis News: Kurds Grant Women Equal Rights in Defiance of Isis Laws

Iraq Crisis: Yazidi Women Leap off Mount Sinjar Cliffs to Escape Sex Slavery by Islamic State Militants"

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/isis-burns...ve-refusing-take-part-extreme-sex-act-1502859

Niccolo and Donkey Tuesday 26 May 2015

Angocachi Fitz Nelson Van Alden Broseph Bronze Age Pervert Longface

For three days, long convoys of ISIS forces trekked out across the desert towards Palmyra. 3 days through the open desert. Not a single airstrike by Uncle Sam. They were sitting ducks.

Yup, the USA doesn't want ISIS to push Assad out...nope. ISIS are rebels and Santa Claus is real.

Angocachi Tuesday 26 May 2015

Why didn't Assad hit them?
Has Assad made an agreement with the US to defend his military bases?
Was the US military able to identify the ISIS vehicles as ISIS?

The US has hit thousands of ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria and the US is responsible for killing about half of the ISIS command. Nobody has killed more ISIS, driven ISIS out of more territory, or armed & trained ISIS foes as much as the US has.

Perhaps Assad shouldn't have allowed all of those Sunni JIhadists to cross into Iraq during the American occupation of Iraq. Maybe Iran shouldn't have allowed Al Qaeda to use it as a transit between the Mashriq and Pashtunistan. Maybe Putin shouldn't have allowed so many highly skilled veteran Chechens leave for Afghanistan and Iraq. Exporting Jihadists as a way to release the pressure inside and keep the rival geopolitical camp tied down?

Niccolo and Donkey Tuesday 26 May 2015

SAA is under attack on several fronts.

Nope.

LMAO. Even the western media were openly for days discussing how ISIS was rolling across the desert to Palmyra. It wasn't a secret.

Angocachi Tuesday 26 May 2015

That's right. The US is also busy on several fronts.

Then it's not the United States' responsibility to defend them and it would be putting its personnel at risk to do so considering Assad's men have the capability to shoot down intruding American aircraft.

Identifying them is another matter. There is a lot more non-ISIS traffic in Eastern Syria than ISIS traffic. What's more, most ISIS vehicles are civilian vehicles. And even if the US is able to identify them, it's Assad's place to defend his territory.
That Assad's forces didn't stop the ISIS advance has already sparked conspiracy theories that he wanted Palmyra to fall so that ISIS could smash up some relics and Western media could report how it was safe under his reign. Of course it's silly, but so is the idea that the Pentagon intended Palmyra to fall to ISIS.

The fall of Palmyra to ISIS is bad news for the American backed rebels because it means that ISIS will soon be in Homs. The American stooges have to divert their attention off of the North and prematurely work on Homs (another reason some suspect Assad wanted Palmyra to fall to ISIS). If they don't reach Homs first, ISIS will succeed in cutting the country in half and they'll be on the Lebanese border. It would be the greatest victory for ISIS on the Syrian front and spell disaster for both Assad and the rebels.

Angocachi Friday 29 May 2015

The US special forces and Russian spetsnaz trained colonel in command of Tajikistan's Omon (special police) has defected to ISIS in the Mashriq and threatened to later return to Tajikistan and topple the anti-Islamic Tajik government, and to attack the US and Russia. He's now the most famous Tajik to join ISIS since a 3 time MMA champion was killed by a US airstrike near Kirkuk earlier this year. This comes as Russia held a large CSTO military exercise in Tajikistan. Russia has now promised $1.2 billion to Tajikistan to fight ISIS. The World Bank predicts remittances to Tajikistan from Tajik laborers in Russia will drop as much as 40% this year, sending droves of unemployed young Tajik men home to their heavily remittance dependent country. ISIS intends to enter this climate to try its hand at a winning the war Jihadists lost in 1990's Tajikistan.

Meanwhile a man from Baltimore is raising a Christian army of Assyrians and Western volunteers in Northern Iraq, inviting the scorn of liberal media.

[IMG]

We are now witness to two men, the noble Tajik Mujahid and the virtuous American Crusader, divorced of their irreligious governments and wed to the people of their faith, with hearts full of piety and courage, rifle in hand, zealous and adventuring... standing proof that the 20th century, the century of atheism and secularism, has waned and that the 21st century is to be one of spiritual warfare in the literal sense, and we are in the time of men who die for scripture and the paradise after. It is as if 1099 has jumped off the pages of history and into our modern world and imposed itself on the hollowed out peace and prosperity centric ideologies that saw hundreds of millions of men die for empty causes and worse, saw billions live to realize them. We are in the era of clashing swords, the boisterous banner of the cross raised against the ominous black banner, and of victory against all the Earth and nations for the sake of God.

Perhaps as important, these two men are final proof that ISIS is the distilled, purified core of Islam. Only such a thing could rouse these two men out of time... one to fight for it and the other against it.

The US-trained commander of Tajikistan’s elite police force has appeared in a YouTube video announcing his defection to Islamic State .

Colonel Gulmurod Khalimov, 40, who commanded the central Asian nation’s special-purpose police force known as Omon, disappeared in late April, prompting a search by Tajik police.

He reappeared on Wednesday, dressed in black, brandishing a sniper rifle and vowing to bring jihad to Russia and the Unites States, in a 10-minute video clip posted online.

“Listen, you dogs, the president and ministers, if only you knew how many boys, our brothers, are here, waiting and yearning to return to Tajikistan to re-establish sharia law there,” he said, addressing the Tajik president, Imomali Rakhmon. “We are coming for you, inshallah.”

Rakhmon has run Tajikistan, the poorest post-Soviet nation, since 1992. He used Russian support to crush Islamist guerrillas in a 1992-97 civil war and tolerates little dissent. His government has been criticised by rights groups for everything from forced beard shavings to numerous convictions of believers on religious extremism grounds.

In the video, Khalimov asked soldiers whether they were prepared to die for a government that cracks down on public expressions of Islam such as wearing a hijab and praying in the street.

He said he had been trained by elite Russian spetsnaz forces in Moscow and US special forces in America.

“Listen, you American pigs, I’ve been three times to America, and I saw how you train fighters to kill Muslims,” he said, patting his rifle. “God willing, I will come with this weapon to your cities, your homes, and we will kill you.”

He appealed to the more than one million Tajik nationals working in Russia to cease being “slaves” and join Isis.

Tajikistan’s interior ministry refused to comment on the video.

Both Russia and Nato, alarmed by the threat posed by radical Islam to predominantly Muslim central Asia, have stepped up military drills with the region’s post-Soviet nations. The International Crisis Group thinktank estimates that about 4,000 central Asians fight for Islamic State.

Alexander Knyazev, a Kazakhstan-based central Asia analyst, said Khalimov’s defection showed that some local security units could not be trusted.

“I think Islamist propaganda will now exploit Khalimov’s example in full,” he told Reuters, adding that volatile neighbouring Kyrgyzstan faced similar problems.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/28/tajikistan-police-chief-defects-to-isis

In late February, a Baltimore-born, self-proclaimed freedom fighter named Matthew VanDyke beamed into Greta Van Susteren's Fox News show from Erbil, the capital of Iraq's Kurdish region. A few days earlier, he had announced on Facebook that he was in Iraq to "raise and train a Christian army to fight" ISIS and that he had formed a company called Sons of Liberty International (SOLI) to provide "free military consulting and training to local forces fighting terrorists and oppressive regimes." For months, the so-called Islamic State had terrorized Iraq's Assyrian Christians, forcing many to flee their homes and villages and seek safe haven among the Kurds. With ISIS on the march across Iraq and Syria—and making headlines for its brutal beheadings of journalists and aid workers—the story of an American taking an on-the-ground role in the fight sparked a media frenzy. VanDyke, who is 35 and holds a master's degree in security studies from Georgetown, was soon featured by media outlets across the country, including the New York Times , USA Today , the Baltimore Sun , and MSNBC.

This wasn't the first time VanDyke had become a media sensation. A few years earlier VanDyke had made international headlines after he was captured in Libya, where he had been fighting alongside rebel forces to overturn the regime of Moammar Qaddafi. He eventually escaped, and he would later say that his Christian faith deepened during his six-month imprisonment. A film about VanDyke, who had traveled across the Arab world by motorcycle, won best documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2014.

Matthew VanDyke speaks with reporters at the Baltimore-Washington International Airport after returning home from Libya in 2011. Patrick Semansky/AP
"So, tell me what we can do to help?" Fox's Van Susteren asked VanDyke, as he described his latest venture. VanDyke, who sported a beard and black suit and tie, made a plea for funding to continue the effort. "We're really stalled right now, unable to really continue," he explained. "I've put about $12,000 of my own money in and I'm going broke doing this, so we really need donations from the public to help these Christians defend themselves and take the fight against ISIS."

But as VanDyke solicited donations, his operation was in trouble. By the end of February, the military director of the Iraqi Christian militia VanDyke's company was training would issue a press release formally severing the group's ties with the American (though he would later rekindle his relationship with VanDyke and SOLI). Meanwhile, the initial crop of US military veterans VanDyke had brought to Iraq as trainers had abruptly quit,citing concerns that VanDyke may not have obtained US government authorization to provide military training to foreign nationals, as required by US law. Flouting such rules can carry massive fines —even prison time.

Asked how he had prepared for this training operation, in terms of obtaining permission from US or Iraqi authorities, VanDyke told Mother Jone s that initially "nobody was sanctioning it." He added, "Part of the whole purpose of SOLI is to step in where governments had failed, so going and asking permission from the governments that have already failed is not particularly productive." (VanDyke later said that his company had "complied with US registration requirements.")

"Part of the whole purpose of SOLI is to step in where governments had failed, so going and asking permission from the governments that have already failed is not particularly productive," says VanDyke, who describes his effort as "crowdfunding a war against ISIS."
VanDyke says his company is "crowdfunding a war against ISIS." And SOLI notes on its website that it is "the first security contracting firm run as a non-profit." But elsewhere on the site, the company notes that "Sons of Liberty International (SOLI) is not a non-profit or 501c3; support is not tax deductible. SOLI is a company that operates on a non-profit business model." VanDyke won't disclose how much he has raised or spent. Doing so, he maintains, would put lives in danger: "I can't give a number for how much we raised, because I don't want our personnel kidnapped…The moment we announce what's in the account, then our people become more of a target, and then we get grabbed and that's what they're gonna ask for."

Last summer, ISIS began targeting the Assyrians of northern Iraq, one of the oldest Christian communities in the world. Militants massacred civilians, blew up ancient artifacts, and bulldozed settlements, including the 3,000-year-old city of Nimrud. Horrified by the slaughter—and by the beheadings of journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley, both of whom VanDyke knew—he began contacting Iraqi Christian political leaders and offering his services to train a militia to repel the Islamic State from their territory. VanDyke wasn't the only one with this idea. A California-based nonprofit group called the American Mesopotamian Organization had undertaken a similar effort, dubbed "Restore Nineveh Now," to help the Assyrians defend themselves. Both VanDyke and the AMO would separately begin working with an upstart militia group that eventually dubbed itself the Nineveh Plain Protection Units (NPU).

After securing the backing of some local leaders, VanDyke, who has no formal military training, began recruiting US military veterans to forge the NPU into a well-disciplined fighting force. One of his first calls was to Michael Cunningham, a retired Army sergeant who was featured in Restrepo , Sebastian Junger's 2010 documentary about the fierce fighting in Afghanistan's Korengal valley. VanDyke and Cunningham had met at a film festival, where Marshall Curry's documentary on VanDyke, Point and Shoot , was screened alongside Restrepo .

"How do you feel about going over and training a Christian army to fight ISIS?" Cunningham recalls VanDyke asking him. Cunningham, who was finding it difficult to adjust to civilian life, tentatively signed on. But, he says, he knew VanDyke had some significant groundwork to cover before they could begin their work. Most important, VanDyke had to get formal approval from the State Department. The Arms Export and Control Act requires US citizens to obtain State Department licensing before offering formal or informal military services to foreigners. This includes providing training or military equipment. A subsection of the law known as the International Traffic in Arms Regulations stipulates that licenses should be denied unless the activities are "in the interest of the security and foreign policy of the US."

Cunningham says he repeatedly pressed VanDyke to obtain State Department approval. "I asked him every month leading up to our departure," he recalls. "He was like, 'No problem, I know all these people, and everything will be fine.'"

Cunningham's worries persisted throughout November, as VanDyke organized their trip, but his misgivings were eclipsed by a personal crisis. Cunningham's relationship fell apart, he was unemployed, and he was crashing on the couches of friends and relatives. "I could be homeless, or go to Iraq," he remembers. "So I left."

As VanDyke and Cunningham finalized their plans, the American Mesopotamian Organization, a nonprofit founded in 2009 to champion the interests of the Assyrian people, had been actively fundraising to equip and train the NPU, the same local force that VanDyke planned to work with. The AMO would eventually amass at least $250,000 to fund the militia, though the group, aware of legal concerns, was careful about how these funds were spent. It did not supply weapons, according to Jeff Gardner, the spokesman for the AMO's Restore Nineveh Now project. The AMO planned to use some of the funds to hire a military contractor to train the NPU in basic security procedures and community policing techniques. (According to Gardner, the AMO was not required to receive State Department approval because it would not be supplying weapons or providing military training.)

When VanDyke entered the picture, the NPU decided to work with both him and the AMO. VanDyke's arrival on the scene caught the AMO off guard. "I did not know that he existed," says David Lazar, the AMO's founder. "I had never heard of him." Lazar asked Gardner to keep tabs on VanDyke and check his background.

On December 10, when Cunningham and VanDyke arrived in Erbil, the NPU had already assembled an initial crop of about 25 men for them to train. Working out of the small Assyrian village of Sharafiya, Cunningham put the recruits through a US-military style boot camp. Each day started with physical conditioning followed by what VanDyke describes as "combat simulations," which included training in general military tactics, such as how to maneuver under fire. According to a training plan obtained by Mother Jones , the program also provided instruction in "room clearing," "military operations in urban terrain," "mortar employment," and "communicating and coordinating targets."

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/04/matthew-vandyke-isis-assyrian-army

Nelson Van Alden Fitz President Camacho Marcus Broseph Longface Cro-Magnon Cornelio

Angocachi Friday 29 May 2015

Van Dyke's Assyrian Christian army story continued...

NPU members line up for early morning training in Iraq. Jeff Gardner, Picture Christians Project
SOLI's training program was "secret," VanDyke says, "and it actually remained that way for December, January, and February." He says it was important to keep the program under wraps for safety reasons, since the Islamic State's stronghold in Mosul was less than 25 miles away from its training camp. According to VanDyke, he ultimately revealed the existence of the training effort—though not the location of where it was happening—because he was running out of money and needed to solicit funds to keep the project going.

During the first month of the program, VanDyke says, the State Department had no idea his training operation existed. He eventually met with State Department officials at the consulate in Erbil to explain what he was doing. "When we went to the State Department and told them we'd been in country over a month training this force, it was a surprise to them," he notes. "Essentially we were running a covert camp."

"When we went to the State Department and told them we'd been in country over a month training this force, it was a surprise to them," he notes. "Essentially we were running a covert camp. Nobody was sanctioning it."
VanDyke says the State Department officials he met with responded positively to his training effort: "They encouraged us to continue working with NPU leadership."

But a State Department official says, "We have checked with State Department personnel at our Consulate in Erbil and they have conveyed no such" approval of VanDyke's training program.

In interviews with Mother Jones , VanDyke repeatedly said the State Department was initially unaware of his training efforts. He subsequently stated in an email that "Sons of Liberty International complied with US registration requirements prior to signing a contract with the Nineveh Plain Protection Units (NPU), as required by U.S. law." The State Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls—with which all US-based military and security firms planning to provide services overseas must register—does not make public its registrants. But according to that office, approved registrants receive a certification form that they are free to share. VanDyke did not respond to a request to provide this documentation.

David Ellison, an arms-trafficking-law expert and consultant, said the penalties for providing military training to foreigners without State Department approval can be harsh, including millions of dollars in fines and possible criminal prosecution. "This all sounds very bad," Ellison says of VanDkye's training program. Scott Gearity, an expert on the Arms Export and Control Act at BSG Consulting, says that VanDyke's activities might pose a problem: "This doesn't seem like a very ambiguous case."

In the past, the Justice Department has aggressively prosecuted military contractors who violate the Export and Control Act. One high-profile case involved the infamous military contractor Blackwater, which in 2010 was forced to pay the US government $42 million for violations that included offering "defense services" to the government of the Sudan "without first having obtained a license from the US Department of State," according to an FBI press release on the settlement. As part of this case, Blackwater was charged with illegally providing training to Canadian law enforcement and military personnel.

Soon after Christmas in 2014, the initial group of 25 NPU recruits graduated from SOLI's training program, and VanDyke returned to the United States to fundraise. Cunningham stayed behind to train the next class of recruits. The NPU had received hundreds of applications from Iraqi Christians eager to receive military training, and it chose 350 to participate in the next session. To accommodate this larger class, the Kurds gave VanDyke use of a former US base known as the Manila Training Center.

Because this contingent would be far too large for Cunningham to train on his own, he and VanDyke agreed that he would recruit a few friends—all of them US military veterans with experience in the Middle East—to join him in Iraq. The men would be unpaid. "They were volunteers, and they knew they were volunteers from the start," VanDyke says. "We were going to try to fundraise, and if we fundraised, we had maybe the possibility of paying trainers in the future. But none of these guys came over expecting payment and wanting payment…The entire point of SOLI was to be all-volunteer."

The NPU throws a surprise birthday party for Michael Cunningham in Iraq. Michael Cunningham
According to Cunningham and two of the trainers he recruited, they were each under the impression that VanDyke was trying to raise money to pay them. "I put off signing up for school for this," says Miguel Gutierrez, a former Army corporal, who also appeared in Restrepo . "I got hopes and dreams. I didn't get paid."

By mid-January, with the second training program underway, Cunningham and the other trainers grew increasingly worried that they might be operating in Iraq illegally. Cunningham was concerned enough that when it was time to provide firearms training to the NPU recruits, he brought in members of the Kurdish military to teach them how to shoot. (In an interview, VanDyke dismissed the concerns of SOLI's trainers: "They perhaps were worried about getting in trouble when they came back for what they had done, which is ridiculous.")

In late January, the American Mesopotamian Organization's Gardner visited Iraq to check on the NPU's progress. He was also curious to find out more about VanDyke.

When Gardner visited the Manila Training Center, VanDyke was still in the United States. But Gardner did meet Cunningham and the other SOLI trainers, who unloaded on VanDyke. "They told me, 'We cannot work with this guy,'" Gardner recalls. The trainers complained that VanDyke's operation was disorganized, unprofessional—and possibly illegal.

Based on Gardner's conversations with the trainers and others at the training camp, the AMO urged the NPU to cut its ties with VanDyke. The militia's leaders agreed to do so after SOLI's second training program ended in early February, according to Gardner.

By mid-February, Cunningham and the three trainers he'd recruited quit. Cunningham says he delivered the news to VanDyke in a phone call, telling him, "I don't want to work with you; I can't work with you." According to Cunningham, VanDyke told him he had "fucked up real bad" for quitting. In a subsequent conversation, Cunningham claims, VanDyke made a loosely veiled threat: "I'll never forget: He says, 'I met with my [Kurdish secret] police friend and I told him about the situation between you and me, and he wanted to do something about it…You know [they] don't have the best human rights record. I tried to call it off.'" VanDyke denies threatening Cunningham and calls him a "disgruntled former associate."

On February 28—five days after VanDyke went on Greta Van Susteren's show to tout his effort to build a Christian militia—the NPU issued a press release stating that it was no longer working with him. "The rank and leadership of the NPU wishes to clarify that Mr. VanDyke and his company Sons of Liberty International are no longer being employed in any capacity by the Nineveh Plains Protection Units," the release noted, "and have not been since February 19, 2015."

Gevara Zaya, the NPU's military director, also sent a letter directly to VanDyke. "Your services are no longer being employed in any capacity," he wrote. "Please refrain from using any image, title, or reference to the Nineveh Plain Protection Units (NPU) in any capacity, commercial or otherwise." (VanDyke says he never received this letter.)

Gevara Zaya's letter to Matthew VanDyke
In an email interview, Zaya said that he was surprised and aggravated by VanDyke's media blitz. Though he was satisfied with SOLI's work at the training camp, Zaya noted, he believed that VanDyke was inflating his role with the NPU. "He was appearing in the media and spoke like he [was] our savior," Zaya wrote.

A few weeks later, in late April, Zaya sent a text message to Mother Jones to say that he wanted to revise his earlier comments about VanDyke: "While we were glad to have Matthew speak good about us…Matthew and us do not want people to think…he was a leader of NPU. [The] press release [was] to make clear that he is not a leader of NPU." Contrary to the NPU's press release and his letter to VanDyke, Zaya now said the NPU had never cut ties with VanDyke and that the NPU was considering a new training proposal from SOLI.

The AMO was dismayed that VanDyke was back in the picture, and continued to press NPU leaders to disassociate themselves from him. "The Assyrian people have suffered enough," Gardner says. "What they need are selfless men and women who have the skill and dedication to build a unified and peaceful future for all of Iraq's people. VanDyke's misadventures with a camcorder will likely have the opposite effect."

On May 11, VanDyke once again took to Facebook, this time to announce that he had launched a "leadership training" program for NPU sergeants and officers, led by a "former West Point instructor." He linked to a Sons of Liberty International press release , in which VanDyke was quoted saying, "The Christian community in Iraq has been pushed around for a long time, and it needs to stop. I have the right connections and experience to help."

Days later, SOLI issued another press release noting that VanDyke's training program had been cut short. VanDyke reported that his company had been barred access to the NPU's headquarters, where the training of NPU fighters was taking place. He blamed the AMO for this development. "The result is that SOLI cannot provide the NPU with additional free training or resources…at this time," VanDyke said in the press release. "Denying the NPU access to a training program before they are deployed against ISIS is unconscionable. It will likely result in the death of NPU soldiers."

Undeterred after his break with the NPU, VanDyke was meeting with other Christian forces in Iraq to pitch his services, according to the release. "SOLI looks forward to its next mission to support the Christian community of Iraq in their fight against ISIS," he said.

Niccolo and Donkey Saturday 20 Jun 2015

A nice summary...............

The War on Yemen and our useless regional clients

When the U.S. started bombing ISIS last year, the administration claimed to have the support of a “broad coalition” that included a number of Washington’s Gulf client states. The “broad coalition” was never as broad as Obama claimed, nor did its members contribute very much, but there was at least some support being offered by regional governments. In practice, the war on ISIS was always predominantly a U.S. operation, but since the war on Yemen began it has become even more so:

Less well publicised has been the fact that the contribution to the anti-Islamic State coalition of the Gulf states has been withdrawn and relocated to Khamis Mushait, near the Saudi border with Yemen, so that Riyadh and its regional allies can prosecute an air campaign against Houthi rebels and those parts of the Yemeni security forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

This illustrates very nicely what the priorities of the Gulf client states are, and those priorities don’t include assisting the U.S. in fighting jihadists in their region. It has been fairly clear in both Syria and Yemen for some time that the Saudis and their Gulf allies are far more concerned to target anyone they perceive to be supported by Iran, and they are only too happy to help jihadists directly or indirectly along the way. That is why they concentrate their efforts on wrecking Yemen in the name of combating phantom Iranian “expansionism” while leaving AQAP untouched, and that is why they have diverted their forces away from the fight against ISIS to the war on Yemen.

Nothing could better demonstrate how unreliable and undeserving of U.S. support the Gulf clients are. The U.S. helps them carry out their appalling and indefensible campaign in Yemen, and at the same time the U.S. expected to take on the responsibility for fighting ISIS that properly belongs to the governments in the region. This is not evidence of U.S. “indispensability” so much as it is proof of our government’s unending gullibility in letting client governments get whatever they want at our expense.

Angocachi Saturday 20 Jun 2015

0 Saudi Strikes on AQAP = Saudi Support
Then...
0 Saudi strikes on Hezbollah = Saudi Support
0 Saudi strikes on Assad = Saudi Support

Saud fights AQAP via its proxy in the Yemeni government and its vassal in the United States government. Saud prefers to use proxies like the Bahraini monarchy, Fatah, Ahrar Al Sham, Sisi, and the United States against foes like the Shia, Saddam Hussein, Al Qaeda, Hamas, Ikhwan, etc. They only intervene directly when a proxy fails and success is not improbable.

Islamist Wave 2015 - News & Discussion

10 posts