By Capt (Ret) C de Waart, feel free to share: in Confidence Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2015 Part 19-142-Caliphate-ISIS-6 While the establishment of the so called Islamic State was sudden, and has survived its first year, the emergence of ISIL took a decade in the making. One year ago, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) took Mosul, declared a caliphate ruling over an "Islamic State", reshaping the history of an entire region, if not an entire faith. Regardless of the future fate of ISIL, the events of the summer of 2014 serve as a pivotal shift in both the history of the Middle East and the Islamic faith ISIL portrayed its offensive as a corrective measure to two traumatic events that resulted from the Great War. Over one summer, ISIL achieved both a secular and religious victory that actors in the Middle East and the Islamic world have so far failed to accomplish throughout this post-war century. Despite the future viability of its proto-state in Iraq and Syria against the military might of the US and its coalition, the ability to deliver on a promise of restoring an idealised Islamic state within territory ruled by two Shia governments will continue to inspire followers. Two major Mid East escalations: Yemeni rebels fire Scuds at Saudi air base. ISIS warns Syrian rebels. Threat equals capability and intent: Saudi Arabia 'downs Scud missile fired by Yemen rebels', ISIS may have potential to 'build chemical weapons', Australia says. Author of 'Islamic State: The Digital Caliphate', says in an interview that IS has very clever, experienced people who are supervising the media The important thing to note is that despite something like 4,000 air sorties by the US and Arab coalition, IS has been able to bring two-thirds of Syria and about half of Iraq under its control within a year. Then we were told that the Iraqi army would capture Mosul before Ramadan, and IS managed to derail that plan. The US was gambling on the fact that the Iraqi army was strong enough to fight and that there was no need for boots on the ground. But IS has outfoxed the US and Iraqi governments. What you need is a cultural and theological counter-attack. After all, this is also a war of ideas and ideology Threat equals capability and intent : Saudi Arabia 'downs Scud missile fired by Yemen rebels', ISIS may have potential to 'build chemical weapons', Australia says. Cees: Intel to Rent Page 1 of 21 20/03/2022
Transcript
By Capt (Ret) C de Waart, feel free to share: in Confidence
Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2015 Part 19-142-Caliphate-ISIS-6
While the establishment of the so called Islamic State was sudden, and has survived its first year, the emergence of ISIL took a decade in the making. One year ago, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) took Mosul, declared a caliphate ruling over an "Islamic State", reshaping the history of an entire region, if not an entire faith. Regardless of the future fate of ISIL, the events of the summer of 2014 serve as a pivotal shift in both the history of the Middle East and the Islamic faith
ISIL portrayed its offensive as a corrective measure to two traumatic events that resulted from the Great War.
Over one summer, ISIL achieved both a secular and religious victory that actors in the Middle East and the Islamic world have so far failed to accomplish throughout this post-war century.
Despite the future viability of its proto-state in Iraq and Syria against the military might of the US and its coalition, the ability to deliver on a promise of restoring an idealised Islamic state within territory ruled by two Shia governments will continue to inspire followers.
Two major Mid East escalations: Yemeni rebels fire Scuds at Saudi air base. ISIS warns Syrian rebels. Threat equals capability and intent: Saudi Arabia 'downs Scud missile fired by Yemen rebels', ISIS may have potential to 'build chemical weapons', Australia says.
Author of 'Islamic State: The Digital Caliphate', says in an interview that IS has very clever, experienced people who are supervising the media
The important thing to note is that despite something like 4,000 air sorties by the US and Arab coalition, IS has been able to bring two-thirds of Syria and about half of Iraq under its control within a year.
Then we were told that the Iraqi army would capture Mosul before Ramadan, and IS managed to derail that plan.
The US was gambling on the fact that the Iraqi army was strong enough to fight and that there was no need for boots on the ground.
But IS has outfoxed the US and Iraqi governments. What you need is a cultural and theological counter-attack. After all, this is also a
war of ideas and ideology
Threat equals capability and intent: Saudi Arabia 'downs Scud missile fired by Yemen rebels', ISIS may have potential to 'build chemical weapons', Australia says.
“Daesh is likely to have amongst its tens of thousands of recruits the technical expertise necessary to further refine precursor materials and build chemical weapons,”
At 2:45am on Saturday morning, the Houthi militias and ousted [president] Ali Abdullah Saleh launched a Scud missile in the direction of Khamees al-Mushait, and praise be to God, the Royal Saudi air defences blocked it with a Patriot missile," a statement
While in Iraq Bunker 13, there were 2,500 sarin-filled chemical rockets – all produced before 1991 – and 180 tons of the “very toxic chemical” sodium cyanide, Bunker 41 contained 2,000 empty artillery shells that were contaminated with mustard gas; over 600 one-ton mustard containers holding residue, and severely contaminated
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construction material. These could not be used for warfare, but they were still “highly toxic.”
It will take years to beat Isis extremists whose ignorance protects them against doubts about the justice of their cause, warns reformed jihadi
“The first thing is to realise the magnitude of the problem,” he says. “It is deep and difficult.
Do not rent out your brain to Isis so they can think on your behalf.” The talkative Bahraini is sought after for his understanding of the Islamic State, now
expanding across Syria and Iraq in a campaign the US has warned could take decades to defeat
That is what is needed. To confuse them, not to convince them.” Countering the Isis narrative that there is a “war on Islam” waged by a “conspiracy of Crusaders and Zionists” - rather than a west in pursuit of its economic interests and global stability - is another important strand of an effective counter-extremism strategy, Dean argues
Islamic State operatives in the Gaza Strip have been helping themselves to Hamas rockets in recent weeks after furtively penetrating the factory teams operating the group’s production and assembly lines
June 3, Success against ISIS requires a team of teams1 By Gen. Stanley McChrystal (ret.) Published June 03, 2015 Although tiny compared to the Mongol hordes, operating with apparent orchestrated synergy, ISIS is seemingly everywhere. Deft battlefield advances interwoven with terrorist strikes create a frightening kinetic reality that flies and multiplies across 21st century connectivity to assault our senses and undermine our confidence. Like savvy investors, ISIS uses speed and digital leverage to geometrically increase their perceived power. And in war, perception is reality. We—the U.S. government, international community, and forces on the ground—have all the tools and resources required to defeat ISIS and any of its future manifestations. What we don’t have is an organized, unified approach and structure to harness our collective will, resources, personnel, equipment, intelligence, policy, and diplomatic efforts to defeat them. Success demands connecting an ever-dispersed and intricate organization into a Team of Teams. In our fight against al Qaeda in Iraq in 2004, we found our elite team—with world-class technology, training, and intelligence—was losing to a comparatively ragtag group. We pulled all the traditional levers—more personnel, raids, and intelligence—to no avail. The ringing in our ears was too frequent, too disorienting. Faced with a 21st century threat, we faced the hard realization that being a great team was not enough. We learned through painful trial and error the necessity of transforming into a system that mirrored the speed and interconnectedness of the distributed networks we were facing. We—the U.S. government, international community, and forces on the ground—have all the tools and resources required to defeat ISIS and any of its future manifestations. What we don’t have is an organized, unified approach and structure to harness our collective will, resources, personnel, equipment, intelligence, policy, and diplomatic efforts to defeat them. Success demands connecting an ever-dispersed and intricate organization into a Team of Teams. This will require a fundamental shift in the way we organize ourselves; the traditional command and control structures of large organizations like the government, military, or corporations were developed to provide order and efficiency at scale. But this comes at cost of speed and decentralized decision-making. Even in a hierarchical command of teams, decisions tend to be made at higher levels. A Team of Teams approach to create networked structures spreads valuable contextual information and empowers individuals closest to the problem to react in real time. At its core, it makes us adaptable. In Iraq, we were driven to connect across boundaries in completely new ways,
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break silos to solve problems, and execute faster than we ever thought possible. This didn’t happen overnight; it took us the better part of five years to transform the way our organization operated. Defeating ISIS necessitates a new operating model, but also to recognize that ISIS isn’t a singular challenge, but rather the byproduct of a new order defined by complexity. It is essential to imbue our organizations with adaptability; the challenges will continue to mutate, and we need to adapt alongside. There can’t be a temporary taskforce or unit to defeat ISIS that is dismantled when the mission is complete. The new mission needs to foster a Team of Teams, otherwise we’ll find ourselves knocked to our knees time and again. Stanley McChrystal retired from the U.S. Army as a four-star general after more than thirty-four years of service.IS is far ahead of the US intelligence services: Abdel Bari AtwanAuthor of 'Islamic State: The Digital Caliphate', says in an interview that IS has very clever, experienced people who are supervising the media Kanika Datta June 5, 2015 The issue that everyone is raising in the light of Islamic State’s rapid expansion is greater US/Western engagement in terms of boots on the ground. Is this advisable given past failures?
The important thing to note is that despite something like 4,000 air sorties by the US and Arab coalition, IS has been able to bring two-thirds of Syria and about half of Iraq under its control within a year. Then we were told that the Iraqi army would capture Mosul before Ramadan, and IS managed to derail that plan. The US was gambling on the fact that the Iraqi army was strong enough to fight and that there was no need for boots on the ground. But IS has outfoxed the US and Iraqi governments. So now, the thinking is
that without boots on the ground there is no solution to the IS. That doesn’t mean that this strategy will succeed. In fact, IS would like greater US involvement in order to repeat the previous defeat. It’s another challenge for the US and could be extremely costly.
But shouldn’t the West also strengthen its technological capabilities to combat the hugely successful digital campaign that IS is waging? First, IS has very clever, experienced people who are supervising the media. Many of them are graduates of leading US and European technical universities. They are far ahead of the US intelligence services. If you look at their YouTube videos, they are like slick Hollywood productions. Second, where Al Qaeda used to rely on Al Jazeera to spread its message, these people are fully independent. They get something like 94,000 tweets and thousands of hits on their Facebook page every day. IS cyber operatives have created incredibly sophisticated layers of security and encryption that are impossible to crack. There are also so many accounts on Twitter, ask.fm, and so on that it is impossible to close them all down because they just start new ones. IS is much more brazen than Al Qaeda was — it even uses Skype to phone potential recruits! So while the West might spend more money on technology, it is expertise and insider knowledge that would be required to defeat the Cyber Caliphate. Now that the Taliban in Afghanistan is positioning itself as the more “moderate” face of jihad, does it make sense for the US to engage with it more closely at a diplomatic level? I believe contact with the Taliban is already taking place under the table. The US has recognised that Taliban will be in power once its troops finally leave Afghanistan. The Taliban has also learnt its lesson. The main obstacle between the two was Osama bin Laden because Mullah Omar was committed to him. Within Al Qaeda, too, there is a transformation as a political organisation. In an interview with Al Jazeera, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the
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head of Al-Nusra, Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, said two things. One, that Syria was not going to be a springboard to fight the West. Two, it would not target minorities. It’s a dual message to the West that it was willing to integrate with it to fight IS. In fact, unlike IS, Al-Nusra does not accept foreign fighters in its ranks.
The other issue in the mix is the emerging US-Iran nuclear deal. How do you think it will impact the geopolitics of this region? The whole region is in disarray because of the Shia-Sunni clashes and that will definitely reshape the geopolitics of the future. Right now, as the Turkish prime minister recently acknowledged, there’s a new kind of Sykes-Picot conspiracy going on to divide the region on sectarian lines. Basically, to create space for ethnic minorities there will be something like 10 states out of Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen. If this is true, I don’t believe the Gulf and Saudi Arabia will be immune to the divisions. In fact, Saudi Arabia is particularly vulnerable.
As you say in your book, prejudice against and disaffection among Muslim youth in the West is proving fertile ground for IS’ message. What’s the threat perception for India, which has a large Muslim population? I don’t believe India can be immune but there is one obstacle for IS and that is the fact that India is a prosperous democracy. Of course, IS doesn’t need to address the whole Muslim community in India, only a fraction and that is easy to find. So, the Indian government should be aware of the threat IS can pose. What you need is a cultural and theological counter-attack. After all, this is also a war of ideas and ideology. India isn’t on the IS radar, there are too many countries to cross first, but that is for the time being.
Some analysts say the IS threat will play itself out. You predict 30 years of turmoil. Why? IS has three advantages that other terrorist organisations don’t. One, it is financially self-sufficient with revenues of $5 billion to $7 billion. It has built these reserves by looting money in Iraq plus its control over eleven oil fields. That alone gave it revenues of about $3 billion. Now, it has seized gas fields near Palmyra in Syria. Two, it is self-sufficient in military hardware after it captured stocks in Iraq and Syria that basically consists of sophisticated arms from the US and other countries. Third, IS is not a “guest” of anybody, it is a sovereign entity because it controls huge amounts of territory and rules over more than six million people. You can dismiss Al Qaeda because of its dependence on the Taliban. But nobody can dismiss IS, unless you do so by military means.
Why the caliphate survives, The establishment of a caliphate was sudden, but the emergence of ISIL was a decade in the making. 10 Jun 2015 Ibrahim al-Marashi is an assistant professor at the Department of History, California State University, San Marcos. He is the co-author of "Iraq’s Armed Forces: An Analytical History."
One year ago, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) took Mosul, declared a caliphate ruling over an "Islamic State", reshaping the history of an entire region, if not an entire faith. The ISIL offensive into Mosul in June 2014 and the resulting collapse of the Iraqi military took both Iraqi and international leaders by surprise and has bewildered media and government analysts alike. While the establishment of the so called Islamic State was sudden, and has survived its first year, the emergence of ISIL took a decade in the making. A year ago, the blame that led to the rise of ISIL, in polemical diatribes in the media, was attributed to the policies of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, yet the organisation's origins can be traced back to the fragile political process that emerged under the US Coalition Provisional Authority, which was then inherited by Iraq's subsequent leaders. Furthermore, it
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was the Syrian civil war that served as the vacuum that allowed ISIL to regroup and distinguish itself from al-Qaeda, emerging as the most tenacious armed Islamist group in the region. Regardless of the future fate of ISIL, the events of the summer of 2014 serve as a pivotal shift in both the history of the Middle East and the Islamic faith.
An Islamist non-state actor The emergence of ISIL and its declaration of an Islamic State, and the failure of the Iraqi and Syrian state to deal with this threat, has been unprecedented in the history of the Arab state system that came into formation after the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. For the first time, an Islamist non-state actor, which is now simultaneously national and transnational, carved out a new state in the Arab world, a system of states whose borders have remained relatively unchanged over the last century. While the formation of Israel in 1948 altered borders within this system, the difference in the case of the Islamic State is that it is ruled under a self-proclaimed caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who claims both religious and temporal authority among believers within his state and globally.The events in the summer of 2014 also serve as a testimony to another historical precedent in the region, albeit one that began in 2003. The invasion of Iraq was the first time the US invaded, occupied, and administered an Arab state. It also led to the decade-long rule of Iraq's first Twelver Shia-led government, the first state led by this sect in the entire Arab world.Furthermore, ISIL became reinvigorated as a result of a revolt against an Alawi Shia-led state in Syria, one of the most durable regimes since the rise of Hafez al-Assad in 1970. While ISIL emerged as a result of weak political institutions emerging in Iraq after 2003 and collapsing political institutions in Syria after 2011, it is also a reaction against these two states by a group whose anti-Shiism is one of its core tenets.
Corrective measure? While centenary commemorations of World War I have served as reflections of what the Great War means for Europe, the rise of ISIL, while sudden, represents a shift in the Middle East's post-war century.
ISIL portrayed its offensive as a corrective measure to two traumatic events that resulted from the Great War. When its forces took control over the Syrian-Iraqi border post on the way to Mosul last year, it crafted a well-publicised spectacle erasing what it deemed as the "Sykes-Picot" border. This spectacle sought to situate ISIL's action beyond the Syrian and Iraq conflicts as a rectification of the secret Allied treaty that was the precursor to the Mandate system. This action sought to reverse the treaty, which in the views of ISIL and other Islamists carved up the organic, Arab core of the Islamic world.
Second, in 1924, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, as the post-WWI leader of a secular Republic of Turkey that emerged from the remaining territory of the defeated Ottomans, dissolved the caliphate, a centuries-old institution of the empire. ISIL's declaration of a new caliphate represented the first attempt to resuscitate this institution within the borders of a new state.
Over one summer, ISIL achieved both a secular and religious victory that actors in the Middle East and the Islamic world have so far failed to accomplish throughout this post-war century. Arab nationalists, like Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Baath Party of Michel Aflaq in Syria, to Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, have all sought the erasure of borders established by British, French, or Italian colonial policy in the region. Nasser succeeded in unifying Egypt and Syria for three years before the project collapsed, and Gaddafi's vision of a union of Libya and Tunisia, or the union of Baathist Iraq and Syria never advanced beyond the discussion stage. The Islamic State can claim its project succeeded while past attempts by secular actors to erase boundaries established by European powers have failed.Ironically, the 21st century caliph threatens to appeal to British Muslims, many of whom descend from the Indian subcontinent.
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Religious victory Along the same lines, ISIL scored a religious
victory that other regional and Islamic actors have failed to achieve: the restoration of a caliphate. The Liberation Party ( Hizb ut-Tahrir ), a global movement founded in Jerusalem in 1953, and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda had also declared their vision of a caliphate. ISIL has claimed to make both groups irrelevant by achieving this goal within a relatively small piece of territory, but appealing to a global Islamic imaginary. While Muslims leaders around the world have declared this new caliphate illegitimate, there exists a fear in both Muslim and Western states that a "caliphate foreign policy" poses a danger to domestic stability. This concern had not existed since the 1880s, when the British Empire had to counter the pan-Islamist foreign policy of the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid, which threatened to cause unrest among the large Muslim population in India. Ironically, the 21st century caliph threatens to appeal to British Muslims, many of whom descend from the Indian subcontinent. ISIL has successfully resuscitated and reinvented an Islamic source of authority, even though it might be among a relatively small, but motivated number of followers. Acknowledging the Iraqi and Syrian states' instability and ISIL's success a year later provides insight into the future of this organisation, regardless of the success or failure of the US-initiated international air campaign and coordinated Iraqi and Syrian ground campaign declared in September 2014. The ability of ISIL to appeal to an Islamic imaginary across borders and its restoration of the caliphate represents this organisation's crystallisation of a jihadist ideology which has developed over the last 30 years. Despite the future viability of its proto-state in Iraq and Syria against the military might of the US and its coalition, the ability to deliver on a promise of restoring an idealised Islamic state within territory ruled by two Shia governments will continue to inspire followers. Whether it is an ISIL ensconced in the urban centres of Mosul and Raqqa or an ISIL scattered into the periphery, it will still be able to launch attacks within Iraqi and Syrian cities, particularly through the use of car bombs and suicide attacks and take their fight to the US or Europe directly.
ISIS purloined rockets from Hamas production lines to attack Israel. Netanyahu marks out wide sterile zone DEBKAfile Exclusive Report June 8, 2015, Islamic State operatives in the Gaza Strip have been helping themselves to Hamas rockets in recent weeks after furtively penetrating the factory teams operating the group’s production and assembly lines, DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources reveal. The jihadis then secretly passed the stolen rockets to their squads for launching against Israel.By this device, ISIS newly arrived in Gaza has overcome its immediate deficiencies:1. They are tapping a local manufacturing source to steal rockets, instead of having to smuggle them in from afar through Egyptian Sinai. As the ISIS presence in the Hamas-ruled Palestinian enclave expands, so too will the intensity of its rocket fire against Israel.2. The Islamists count on acquiring more advanced longer-range missiles by the same means as soon as they are developed by Hamas’ manufacturing plants.It is hard to determine how this ominous reality relates to the comments the IDF OC Southern Command, Maj. Gen. Sammy Turjman, made to the heads of the local communities around the Gaza Strip Sunday night, June 7, to calm their fears over the resumption of rocket fire in the last two weeks. “In the Southern Command we have noticed that Hamas is making an effort to stop the rocket fire, although we don’t absolve the organization of responsibility and will respond accordingly,” the general said.He added: “Because of a few rockets exploding on empty ground, the IDF won’t embark on an operation in the Gaza Strip and jeopardize the gains we achieved [last summer].”
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The problem with these platitudes, say DEBKAfile’s military analysts, is that they represent a repeat of the mistake Israel made on its northern front, by letting the Hizballah terrorists pile up a huge arsenal of up to 100,000 rockets and missiles, all pointing one way – south.Hamas may indeed be trying very hard to prevent rockets being fired against Israel from the Gaza Strip, but it has not been able to keep ISIS undercover agents out of its manufacturing plants or from stealing the rockets. Gen. Turjman does not say how the Islamists managed to creep into the Hamas factories or whether they have been able to invade other parts of the Palestinian military organization. The point is not how many rockets should be fired before the IDF goes to war in the Gaza Strip, but for how long Israel’s leaders can afford to pretend to make naught of the dangerous situation building up there. ISIS uses such make-believe to fuel its policy of expansion.Israel, Egypt and Hamas are in fact working together, out of their respective interests, to put a stop to the rocket fire from the Gaza Strip. Egypt has been blowing up smuggling tunnels; Hamas contingents are out there trying to nab the rocket teams; Israel and its armed forces, acting on orders from Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, without informing the public, are marking out a broad anti-rocket sterile zone, stretching from the Gaza border to encompass the communities and towns in the south and up to the international airport to the north. This area embraces a population of 1.6 million and ten cities – Ashkelon, Ashdod, Netivot and Beersheba, long sufferers of Gaza rockets, and further north: Modi’in, Ramle, Lod, Rehovot, Ness Ziona and Gedera. Another Iron Dome battery was positioned in Rehovot, in addition to those defending the south. Most Israelis are not aware of the size and destructiveness of the long-range Grad missiles, at least three of which exploded in the last fortnight. DEBKAfile has attached a photo to this article to illustrate the deadly weapon now in the hands of the Islamist State in Gaza. Since Hamas and Islamic Jihad alone possess rockets capable of reaching Rehovot, some 30 km southeast of Tel Aviv and the same distance from the Ben Gurion international airport, it is now obvious that the Islamists have got hold of them, notwithstanding the efforts made by Israel, Egypt and Hamas.ISIS’s ability to stealthily invade Hamas poses them all with their most daunting problem.
Two major Mid East escalations: Yemeni rebels fire Scuds at Saudi air base. ISIS warns Syrian rebels. DEBKAfile Special Report June 6, 2015, Saudi military sources reported Saturday, June 6, that Patriot air defense batteries had intercepted Scud missiles fired by Yemen Houthi rebels against the kingdom’s largest air base at Khamis al-Mushait in the south west. It is from there that Saudi jets take off to strike the Yemeni rebels. debkafile’s military sources report that the Patriot anti-missile systems, which were activated for the first time, were manned by American teams. This was the first direct US military intervention on the Saudi side of the Yemen conflict. It was also the first time that Houthi rebels or their allies had fired Scud missile into the oil kingdom. Our sources add that the launch was supervised by Hizballah officers. They were transferred by Tehran to Yemen to ratchet up the conflict - although US, Saudi, Yemeni government and Houthi representatives meeting secretly in Muscat Friday agreed to attend a peace conference in Geneva this month. Nonetheless, through Friday night and Saturday morning, Houthi forces and allied military units kept on battering at Saudi army and National Guard defense lines, in an effort to break through and seize territory in the kingdom’s southern provinces. The insurgents were evidently grabbing for strategic assets to strengthen their hand at the peace conference.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is also juggling his chips on the deteriorating Syrian warfront. In the coming hours, he is widely expected to announce the activation of the mutual defense pact signed between Iran and Syria in 2006, under which each signatory is committed to send military troops if necessary to defend its partner. (C: see for more on this my latest upload: Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2015
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Part 4-1-Iran-7) Thursday, June 4, Khamenei fired sharp verbal arrows at the Obama administration: “The United States tolerates extremist groups in Syria and Iraq and even helps them in secret,” he charged. Our military sources add that although various Mid East publications, especially in Lebanon, are reporting that Iran has already sent units in numbers ranging from 7.000 to 15,000 troops to Syria, none have so far landed, except for the Shiite militias brought over at an earlier stage of the Syrian conflict. The expected Khamenei announcement may change this situation. ISIS was not waiting. Saturday morning, the group issued a warning to the Syrian rebel forces fighting in the south – the Deraa sector of southern Syria near the meeting point of the Jordanian and Israeli borders and the Quneitra sector opposite the Israeli Golan. They were ordered to break off contact with the US Central Command Forward Jordan-CF-J which is located north of Amman, and the IDF operations command center in northern Israel. Any Syrian rebels remaining in contact with the two command centers would be treated as infidels and liable to the extreme penalty of beheading, the group warned. The impression of ominous events brewing in the regime was rounded off Friday night by an unusual announcement by the Israeli army spokesman that Iron Dome anti-missile batteries had been deployed around towns and other locations in the south, although no reference was made to any fresh rocket attacks expected from the Gaza Strip. debkafile adds: The first batteries were arrayed Thursday night, June 4, at vulnerable points in southern Israel - from the southernmost Port of Eilat on the Gulf of Aqaba to the western Port of Ashdod on the Mediterranean.
ISIS may have potential to 'build chemical weapons', Australia says June 06, 2015 Australia’s foreign minister, Julie Bishop, has voiced concerns over an alleged possibility of the Islamic State group to build chemical weapons. There have been several reports of ISIS using toxic chlorine gas in homemade bombs in Iraq and Syria. “The use of chlorine by Daesh [an Arabic term for ISIS], and its recruitment of highly technically trained professionals, including from the west, have revealed far more serious efforts in chemical weapons development,” Bishop said late on Friday in Perth. “Daesh is likely to have amongst its tens of thousands of recruits the technical expertise necessary to further refine precursor materials and build chemical weapons,” she said. Chlorine gas is a strong oxidizer, which may react with flammable materials. The toxic gas, which was first used as a weapon during WWI by Germany, is on the banned list of chemicals under the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention. Kurdish officials said its peshmerga fighters, busy reinforcing their positions on a highway between Mosul and the Syrian border, came under attack from an IS suicide bomber driving a truck filled with toxic chlorine gas late January. Authorities say their forces destroyed the truck with a rocket before it had a chance to detonate near soldiers. Shortly after the attack, the Kurdish fighters began to complain of “nausea, vomiting, dizziness and weakness” – all common symptoms of chlorine poisoning. Soon they found “20 empty canisters” in the back of the attacker's vehicle. The Kurds, who have been battling against Islamic State militants since last year, sent the remains of the suicide bomber to a laboratory, which said “the samples contained levels of chlorine that suggested the substance was used in weaponized form.” The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the chemical weapons watchdog, conducted a fact-finding mission in neighboring Syria last year, where ISIS has been fighting against the Bashar Assad government. According to the OPCW probe, chlorine was used “systematically and repeatedly” in Syria in 2014. The report stated that chlorine was used in attacks on the villages of Talmanes, Al Tamanah and Kafr Zeta, all located in northern Syria. OPCW said that “the descriptions, physical properties, behaviour of the gas, and signs and symptoms resulting from exposure, as well as the response of patients to the treatment leads” lead it conclude with a high degree of confidence that “chlorine, either pure or in mixture, is the
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toxic chemical in question.” Last year, 11 Iraqi police officers were taken to hospital after an ISIS chemical weapons attack, with the Defense Ministry and doctors later confirming their diagnosis was poisoning by chlorine gas. According to a Washington Post report, the Islamic State militants’ chlorine gas attack occurred on September 15, in the town of Duluiyah, located north of the capital.
While we think rebels are stupid and complex weapons need trained manning Saudi Arabia 'downs Scud missile fired by Yemen rebels' Jeddah says it shot down missile fired into kingdom just hours after it repelled a major rebel attack on Jizan province. 06 Jun 2015 11:01 GMT Saudi Arabia has said it has shot down a Scud missile fired into the kingdom by Houthi rebels and forces allied to the former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. "At 2:45am on Saturday morning, the Houthi militias and ousted [president] Ali Abdullah Saleh launched a Scud missile in the direction of Khamees al-Mushait, and praise be to God, the Royal Saudi air defences blocked it with a Patriot missile," a statement by the leadership of the Saudi-led joint Arab military coalition said. The statement came just hours after Saudi Arabia said its army had repelled an offensive by Saleh forces backed by Houthis fighters on its Jizan province, which borders Yemen, according to state media. Dozens of armed men, believed to belong to Republican Guard units loyal to Saleh, died in Friday's attack, which the Saudi security sources said was the biggest since the conflict in Yemen began.
The Saudi armed forces said in a statement that four of their soldiers had died of injuries sustained during the attack. "The Armed Forces repelled the offence which was aiming to penetrate the border, in an attempt to achieve, ... a moral victory to compensate the casualties among the aggressors' ranks," the Saudi statement said. Friday's fighting is believed to have started when units of soldiers loyal to Saleh and Houthi fighters tried to infiltrate the border at Al Khouba. The rebels launched a number of rockets at Saudi military positions, before the Saudi army retaliated with artillery shelling and air support from Apache helicopter gunships.Houthi reinforcements on the Yemeni side of the border were also targeted during the retaliation. The rebel-aligned Al Masirah TV aired video purporting to show fighters moving towards Saudi watchtowers and firing rockets. Friday's developments came a day after the Houthis agreed to join UN-backed peace talks in Geneva planned for June 14. Elsewhere, the coalition on Friday carried out air strikes in the capital, Sanaa, and Ibb city, targeting positions of the Houthis and its allies. Rebel military positions were also hit in Dhi Naem district in Al-Bayda province and Ataq city in Shabwa province. A coalition of Arab states has been bombing Houthi forces for more than two months in an attempt to restore President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who has fled to Saudi Arabia.
About 2,000 people have been killed and half a million displaced by the fighting.Earlier, there were violent clashes in the southern port city of Aden between Houthi rebels and soldiers loyal to Hadi. Fighting also broke out in the city of Taiz, with popular resistance committee forces battling Houthi militias. The fighters reportedly blew up a home in the city where Houthi fighters had been gathering. Reports of ISIS militants using chlorine gas on the battlefield appeared after the jihadists seized a large former Iraqi chemical weapons production plant last June. Iraq’s UN Ambassador Mohamed Ali Alhakim said that “armed terrorist groups” took over the Muthanna complex on June 11. The plant harbored 2,500 degraded chemical rockets, formerly filled with a weapon of mass destruction, sarin, and other chemical agents. The Iraqi government told the UN that as a result of the takeover of the plant, Iraq was unable to fulfil its obligations to destroy chemical weapons. Alhakim’s letter
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to the UN mentioned two specific bunkers, whose contents came to be revealed by the AP via a 2003-era UN report. While in Bunker 13, there were 2,500 sarin-filled chemical rockets – all produced before 1991 – and 180 tons of the “very toxic chemical” sodium cyanide, Bunker 41 contained 2,000 empty artillery shells that were contaminated with mustard gas; over 600 one-ton mustard containers holding residue, and severely contaminated construction material. These could not be used for warfare, but they were still “highly toxic.” US officials has said that whatever was still in the compound had become largely ineffective, however. "Should they [terrorists] even be able to access the materials, frankly, it would likely be more of a threat to them than anyone else," US Defense Department spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby told Reuters last July.
It will take years to beat Isis extremists whose ignorance protects them against doubts about the justice of their cause, warns reformed jihadi
“The first thing is to realise the magnitude of the problem,” he says. “It is deep and difficult.
Do not rent out your brain to Isis so they can think on your behalf.” The talkative Bahraini is sought after for his understanding of the Islamic State, now
expanding across Syria and Iraq in a campaign the US has warned could take decades to defeat
That is what is needed. To confuse them, not to convince them.” Countering the Isis narrative that there is a “war on Islam” waged by a “conspiracy of Crusaders and Zionists” - rather than a west in pursuit of its economic interests and global stability - is another important strand of an effective counter-extremism strategy, Dean argues
Al-Qaida fighter turned MI6 spy urges effort to 'confuse' Islamic State
June 6, It will take years to beat Isis extremists whose ignorance protects them against doubts about the justice of their cause, warns reformed jihadi. Aimen Dean is an unusual example of a poacher turned gamekeeper. The talkative Bahraini is sought after for his understanding of the Islamic State, now expanding across Syria and Iraq in a campaign the US has warned could take decades to defeat. Dean’s insights are based on his own experience as an al-Qaida terrorist – but one who underwent a crisis of conscience and changed tack to spy for British intelligence. With his neat haircut, dark suit and gold-rimmed glasses, Dean – not his real name - looked at ease amongst the academics and security policy wonks debating strategies for countering violent extremism at a conference in Qatar this week. But his years in the jihadi world – and his extraordinary journey out of it – inform his view of how to combat Isis, which is attracting thousands of young Muslims from across the world to its “Caliphate” in the heart of the Middle East.
“The first thing is to realise the magnitude of the problem,” he says. “It is deep and difficult. The idea that there a magic solution to convince these people just to turn around and come back and be good citizens is almost impossible. It is ludicrous.” Sowing doubt is the key. “Al Qaida and Isis say on Twitter and YouTube that the shortest path to heaven is jihad and martyrdom. New recruits to Isis went to nightclubs, took drugs, were members of gangs and had sexual relations out of wedlock. They want absolution, forgiveness. The thirst for redemption is there. And Isis is catering to that need.
“The motivation is religious even if the recruits are ignorant. They think they will end up in heaven if they blow themselves up for Isis. Isis is offering simple answers to all questions - so
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you need to encourage complexity: 100% certainty means a committed militant; 95% certainty means a confused militant; a confused militant is a disarmed militant. That is what is needed. To confuse them, not to convince them.” Countering the Isis narrative that there is a “war on Islam” waged by a “conspiracy of Crusaders and Zionists” - rather than a west in pursuit of its economic interests and global stability - is another important strand of an effective counter-extremism strategy, Dean argues. But Isis, he cautions, is a more coherent cause than al-Qaida ever was. Establishing a jihadi society in the areas it controls in Syria and Iraq has been effective. New recruits “will not have to spend their lives on the run like al-Qaida. They will stand their ground because it is the Islamic State- and they will fight to the death to defend it.”
Dean, 37, grew up in Saudi Arabia, fought the Serbs in Bosnia and ended up in Afghanistan swearing loyalty to Osama Bin Laden and meeting Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the 9/11 attacks. But his own doubts surfaced when 240 African civilians were killed in the suicide bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. He questioned a 13 th
century fatwa that justified the death of innocents in a jihad – directly challenging al-Qaida doctrine on human shields. He saw a “slippery slope” and decided to get off it.
That led, via Qatari intelligence, to eight years working undercover with MI5 and MI6. He passed on information that foiled attacks and led to the arrest and deaths of former al-Qaida comrades. His cover was inadvertently blown in 2006 by a book that drew on CIA sources and he went public for the first time three months ago in a BBC interview. He has been pardoned in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia and now runs a consultancy in Dubai. The al-Qaida commander who issued a fatwa against him for treachery was killed in a US drone strike in Afghanistan. Dean remains a devout Muslim and sees Isis as representing in part an Arab Sunni fightback against perceived reverses at the hands of Iran and Shia groups it supports or exploits – in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and most recently in Yemen, where Houthi rebels are now facing the Saudi-led air strikes of Operation Decisive Storm. “The Saudis have stolen some of Isis’s thunder by countering Iran’s weight,” he says. In his assessment this has significantly cut jihadi recruiting in the kingdom - and encouraged Isis to mount sectarian bombings of Shia mosques.
Other terrorism experts argue that while Dean’s insights are valuable, his experience is outdated and he focuses too narrowly on the role of religion in jihadi recruitment while paying insufficient attention to social background and individual psychology. But he warns in turn of the “easy dismissal” of the effects of Islamic theology as a motivating factor. Anti-radicalisation campaigns– “led by Downing Street imams or Elysee preachers”- can never succeed because their official nature means they will be discredited, he insists. It may be a legacy of his MI6 years that he believes clandestine propaganda and psychological warfare methods work better. “The last thing I want to do is to do what many security professionals do, which is to complicate the simple and simplify the complex,” Dean says. “If I have learnt anything it is not to take anything at face value. Do not accept Isis as the truth and the only truth. The books are out there. Do not rent out your brain to Isis so they can think on your behalf.”
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Regards Cees: This is not the script of some fantasy movie. As of now, the fantasy dimension of this story is only the optimistic part of it. Conversely, the possibility of out-and-out obliteration of the historical and cultural heritage of the Middle East is, in fact, quite realistic. About two weeks ago, the Islamic State (also called ISIS or ISIL) conquered the ancient city of Palmyra, northeast of Damascus, which has some of the most significant archaeological finds in Syria. The fate that awaits this World Heritage site is yet unclear, but if the treatment of other such sites, where ISIS has smashed artifacts, is any guide, there is reason to be alarmed. Nor does one know what the organization’s next target is. One can only study the map of archaeological sites in the Middle East and wait in dread for the next news report. True, destruction of historical excavations is hardly the only type of atrocity, and evidently not the worst one, that has occurred in the civil wars in Syria and Iraq, or other wars under way in the Middle East – some of which Israel is a party to. Nevertheless, the destruction of the Mideast’s archaeological treasures has virtually inconceivable long-range implications: A region that boasts the world’s richest inventory of religiously and historically significant sites is liable to become a sterile wasteland with no past. We have grown accustomed to the idea of biological species – apes, tigers and whales – facing extinction. But now we are having to accept the idea that entire regions of the world could be emptied of their historical heritage. The fighting will presumably end at some point, but in its wake we will have an eternity to live in a region that has undergone cultural cleansing. That is a sort of devastation that cannot be reclaimed or rebuilt. What can we conclude from all this, beyond expressing shock? It is easy, of course, to blame “Islam.” Undeniably, Islam is characterized by a fairly dominant element of waging war against idol worship. “The Prophet Mohammed commanded us to shatter and destroy statues,” intones the ISIS narrator in a film about the destruction of the museum in Mosul, Iraq, this past February. Nevertheless, a few facts do need to be stated. First, the archaeological sites of the ancient Middle East existed for centuries in the midst of Muslim habitation; for the most part the Muslims were proud of them and preserved them devotedly. Second, it would be simplistic to describe the destruction as the consequence of the struggle between Islam and the ancient pagan religions of our region: ISIS has also demolished dozens of mosques – for instance, one identified as the tomb of the Prophet Jonah in Mosul. So Islam is itself a victim of the present-day wave of destruction. This is not a new phenomenon. When the House of Saud conquered Mecca in the early 19th century and imposed a puritanical Wahabi Islam regime there, tombs, mosques and paintings were destroyed. All at once, Islamic rituals that had existed for generations in the holy city were eliminated, since they were now considered acts of idol worship. As with other religions, Islam also has an inherent conflict between the prohibition of idols and the predisposition toward a religion that incorporates imagery and the physical senses.
Iconoclastic bent In effect, it is not only Islam that must now do some soul-searching. Indeed, every religion or culture that upholds and enforces a ban on the making of statues or creation of images or pictures bears the blame here. One must not, of course, leave out Judaism in this regard. As evidence, one must recall certain archaeological sites in Israel – for instance, in Tiberias and the Ela Valley – where Jews have vandalized mosaics in recent years. Protestant Christianity also possesses a strong iconoclastic bent. As part of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, icons, bas-reliefs and church paintings throughout Europe were vandalized and smashed. What’s more, not only is the penchant to destroy images characteristic of both West and the East; it is not limited to the religious realm, either. Rationalism and modernism both have a strong inclination toward abstraction, fusion, purification, the smashing of idols and the
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slaughtering of sacred cows. It is no coincidence that when ISIS reaches Tel Aviv, it will find hardly anything to destroy. In this modern White City, one encounters almost no statues created in the image of either humans or any other living creatures. In this regard, it is interesting to consider the now-famous words of Yair Garbuz, who at a pre-election rally a few months ago spoke out against the “amulet-kissers, idol-worshipers and people who prostrate themselves at the graves of saints.” If the casual listener were to hear this line, he might think that it was uttered by an ISIS leader – not a secular intellectual in the heart of Tel Aviv. Aside from any consideration of the scandal generated by these words or their political connotations in the present-day Israeli context, one might wonder what would induce an artist like Garbuz, who creates images and deals with the medium of plastic arts, to feel such powerful hostility toward sensual forms of ritual. Does this have anything to do with the artistically sloppy style, so lacking in depth and aesthetics, of the “Want of Matter” school founded by Garbuz and the late artist Raffi Lavie? It is hard to say. Iconoclasm is a tendency that develops in cultures and individuals in various periods of time and contexts, but at base, it is a zealous impulse toward purity, unity and exclusivity. In this regard, there is no substantive difference between religious fundamentalists and the strident purveyors of one or another secular ideology. In many respects, a world that is devoid of any remnants of older eras may be viewed favorably by those who seek to deny the past, and perhaps especially the secular ones among them – whether they view all of history as a continuous crime perpetrated by the forces of patriarchal hegemony, or they are devotees of modern technology who have little interest in anything outside their touch screen. For either group, the scenario described above is for all intents and purposes quite desirable.
