The United Nations is concerned by the presence of Islamic State in Afghanistan but says the militant group's power to unite insurgents is more significant than its capabilities in the war-torn country
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in title, tags, annotations or urlEgypt armed group pledges allegiance to ISIL - Middle East - Al Jazeera English - 0 views
www.aljazeera.com/...-isil-2014111062135628610.html
egypt armed group allegiance ISIS Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis
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Sinai-Based Ansar Bayt Al-Maqdis Swears Allegiance To ISIS A Week After Denying Links - 0 views
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Less than a week after denying reports that it had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, militants of the Sinai-based Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, or ABM, released an audio clip late on Sunday, declaring their support for ISIS, according to media reports. The nine-minute clip was posted on a Twitter account claiming to be ABM's official account.
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U.N. concerned by Islamic State's ability to unite Afghan insurgents - 0 views
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attempts are under way to broker an end to 13 years of conflict between the Taliban, who were ousted in a U.S.-led war in 2001, and Afghan and foreign
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growing numbers of disgruntled Taliban fighters have joined the militant group that has seized swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq
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significance is not so much a function of its intrinsic capacities in the area but of its potential to offer an alternative flagpole to which otherwise isolated insurgent splinter groups can rall
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U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's latest report to the Security Council on Afghanistan said a handful of Taliban commanders had declared allegiance to Islamic State and that an increasing number were seeking funding or cooperation with Islamic State.
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The radical Islamist group has declared a caliphate in the territory it controls in Syria and Iraq. A U.S.-led alliance has been targeting Islamic State with air strikes in Iraq and Syria for some six month
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Militants loyal to Islamic State have also been exploiting chaos in Libya, while Boko Haram, which is seeking to carve an Islamist emirate out of northeastern Nigeria, has pledged its allegiance to Islamic State
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"an alignment of circumstances that could be conducive to fostering peace talks" between the Afghan government and the Taliban. Officials said last month the Afghan Taliban has signaled it is willing to open peace talks.
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Sinai Jihadi Group Reportedly Pledges Allegiance to Islamic State - 0 views
The extremist group that killed hundreds of security forces in Egypt just pledged alleg... - 0 views
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Pakistani Taliban pledges support to ISIL - Central & South Asia - Al Jazeera English - 0 views
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Oil and Terror: ISIS and Middle East Economies - 0 views
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Iraq has the fifth largest oil reserves in the world and third highest in the Middle East after Saudi Arabia and Iran.
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Though currently the Iraqi government has reserves and surplus funds, mounting expenditures and falling oil prices has economists to project that Iraq will run a deficit next year.
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Thankfully, 6 of 8 Iraq’s major oil fields lie in the Shia South, which is unlikely to come under ISIS control.
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Turkey runs a huge trade surplus with Iraq, which is likely to slow down dramatically due to lower demand from Iraq.
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Iran’s position seems to be the trickiest of all in that its interests align with those of the US in its fight against ISIS
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Falling oil prices have definitely curtailed Iran’s ability to intervene without serious consequences for its economy. Iran needs oil prices well above USD $100 for it to balance its budget,
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Any cooperation between Iran and the US over ISIS could lead to a gradual withdrawal of sanctions, which would allow Iran to sell its oil on the open market and generate revenue. The flip side is that Iran’s oil would surely depress oil prices further.
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it finds its interests are aligned with those of Iran, a traditional foe, both of which are against ISIS.
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Russia needs oil prices near USD $100 to balance its budget and Iran needs high oil prices to support its nuclear program.
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Regionally, ISIS will disrupt and degrade the economy of several states, and that in turn may lead to further political chaos -- which is precisely ISIS's goal.
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New Tape Of ISIS Leader Appears To Prove He Was Not Killed In U.S. Airstrike - 0 views
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released an audio recording on Thursday in what could be the first sign of life since rumors spread that a U.S. airstrike hit Baghdadi and a convoy of ISIS leaders in Iraq.
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Baghdadi references several events that happened in the last week, including the recent move by militant groups in Yemen and Sinai to swear allegiance to ISIS.
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Libya has become the latest Isil conquest - Telegraph - 0 views
www.telegraph.co.uk/...-the-latest-Isil-conquest.html
ISIL militias armed groups syria Iraq Jihad Benghazi
shared by allieggg on 17 Nov 14
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If the conditions remain unchallenged and, hence, unchanged, it will turn into another Syria or Iraq.
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The ongoing low-level insurgency in Benghazi is driven by two factors. The first is the radical Islamist ideology of certain groups that refuse to recognise the modern state and its institutions. For example, according to the leader of AS’s Benghazi branch, Mohammed al-Zahawi, his group will not disarm and demobilise until its version of sharia is imposed. The realisation of such an Islamic state constitutes the group’s main aim. In other words, it is the nature of their Jihad.
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The second reason is the Islamists’ history with the state security forces. During the 1990s, Muammar Gaddafi unleashed a crackdown on all expressions of Islamism, which saw thousands of youths arrested and jailed as political prisoners. Many were incarcerated in the notorious Abu-Saleem prison. Today’s rejection of state institutions has its roots in that brutality.
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However, Benghazi is not the only Islamist stronghold in Libya: the city of Derna, which has historically been a strong recruiting ground for Jihadi fighters to Afghanistan, Iraq, and more recently Syria, is of serious concern
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Derna’s Shura Council of Islamic Youth and Ansar al-Sharia have decided to declare Derna an “Islamic emirate” and publicly announce their allegiance to ISIL and its leader and so called “Caliphate” of Abu Baker al-Baghdadi. This means that ISIL now has its terrorist tentacles in Libya.
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If the international community continues to overlook the current Libyan crisis, the country is likely to become an incubator of militant Islamist groups.
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In addition to a military response, however, we need a holistic and proactive approach that focuses on achieving reconciliation and stability. This involves forcing all rival political parties to the negotiation table to agree that a newly elected parliament is the sole representative body in the country.
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This article basically accentuates the driving factors to the ongoing insurgency of ISIL in Libya and how the threat is even more extreme than that of Iraq and Syria. One is the Islamist ideology in itself, rejecting any form of a modern state and the institutions that accompany its success. For example in Libya the leader of the AS branch declares that his militants will not disarm or demobilize until sharia law is imposed. Second, during Gaddafi's rule he unleashed a crackdown on all Islamic expression. The brutality shown towards Islamic groups during this time has fueled their resentment towards sectarian rule and has urged them to push for the rejection of state institutions even more so. The article explains how Islamic groups have claimed power in both Benghazi and Derna, the latter being the historic recruiting ground for Jihad fighters to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. The author makes it clear that both military and diplomatic force from the international community is crucial for the reconciliation of security.
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Libya's civil war: That it should come to this | The Economist - 3 views
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It is split between a government in Beida, in the east of the country, which is aligned with the military; and another in Tripoli, in the west, which is dominated by Islamists and militias from western coastal cities
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the revolutionaries cobbled together a National Transitional Council (NTC) claiming to represent all of Libya
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Volunteers from students to bank managers took up arms, joining popular militias and only sometimes obeying the orders of defecting army commanders trying to take control
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In August Western bombing of government bases surrounding Tripoli cleared an avenue for the revolutionaries to take the capital.
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Recognised abroad, popular at home and enjoying the benefits of healthy oil revenues—97% of the government’s income—the NTC was well placed to lay the foundations for a new Libya
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he judges, academics and lawyers who filled its ranks worried about their own legitimacy and feared confrontation with the militias which, in toppling Qaddafi, had taken his arsenals for their own.
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The NTC presided over Libya’s first democratic elections in July 2012, and the smooth subsequent handover of power to the General National Congress (GNC) revived popular support for the revolution.
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Islamist parties won only 19 of 80 seats assigned to parties in the new legislature, and the process left the militias on the outside
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tried to advertise its moderation by putting an unveiled woman at the head of its party list in Benghazi
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The incumbent prime minister, Abdurrahim al-Keib, a university professor who had spent decades in exile, fretted and dithered
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He bowed to militia demands for their leaders to be appointed to senior ministries, and failed to revive public-works programmes
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Many received handouts without being required to hand in weapons or disband, an incentive which served to swell their ranks
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the number of revolutionaries registered with the Warriors Affairs Commission set up by the NTC was about 60,000; a year later there were over 200,000. Of some 500 registered militias, almost half came from one city, Misrata.
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In May 2013 the militias forced parliament to pass a law barring from office anyone who had held a senior position in Qaddafi’s regime after laying siege to government ministries.
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In the spring of 2014, Khalifa Haftar, a retired general who had earlier returned from two decades of exile in America, forcibly tried to dissolve the GNC and re-establish himself as the armed forces’ commander-in-chief in an operation he called Dignity
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The elections which followed were a far cry from the happy experience of 2012. In some parts of the country it was too dangerous to go out and vote
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Such retrenchment has been particularly noticeable among women. In 2011 they created a flurry of new civil associations; now many are back indoors.
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Turnout in the June 2014 elections was 18%, down from 60% in 2012, and the Islamists fared even worse than before
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Dismissing the results, an alliance of Islamist, Misratan and Berber militias called Libya Dawn launched a six-week assault on Tripoli. The newly elected parliament decamped to Tobruk, some 1,300km east
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Grasping for a figleaf of legitimacy, Libya Dawn reconstituted the pre-election GNC and appointed a new government
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So today Libya is split between two parliaments—both boycotted by their own oppositions and inquorate—two governments, and two central-bank governors.
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The army—which has two chiefs of staff—is largely split along ethnic lines, with Arab soldiers in Arab tribes rallying around Dignity and the far fewer Misratan and Berber ones around Libya Dawn.
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General Haftar’s Dignity, which has based its government in Beida, has air power and, probably, better weaponry
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the Dignity movement proclaims itself America’s natural ally in the war on terror and the scourge of jihadist Islam
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Libya Dawn’s commanders present themselves as standard-bearers of the revolution against Qaddafi now continuing the struggle against his former officers
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Ministers in the east vow to liberate Tripoli from its “occupation” by Islamists, all of whom they denounce as terrorists
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threatens to take the war to Egypt if Mr Sisi continues to arm the east. Sleeping cells could strike, he warns, drawn from the 2m tribesmen of Libyan origin in Egypt.
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The struggle over the Gulf of Sirte area, which holds Libya’s main oil terminals and most of its oil reserves, threatens to devastate the country’s primary asset
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And in the Sahara, where the largest oilfields are, both sides have enlisted ethnic minorities as proxies
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ibya Dawn has drafted in the brown-skinned Tuareg, southern cousins of the Berbers; Dignity has recruited the black-skinned Toubou. As a result a fresh brawl is brewing in the Saharan oasis of Ubari, which sits at the gates of the al-Sharara oilfield, largest of them all.
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On January 3rd, IS claimed to have extended its reach to Libya’s Sahara too, killing a dozen soldiers at a checkpoint
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have since been conspicuous by their absence. Chastened by failure in Afghanistan and Iraq, they have watched from the sidelines
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Dignity is supported not just by Mr Sisi but also by the United Arab Emirates, which has sent its own fighter jets into the fray as well as providing arms
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If oil revenues were to be put into an escrow account, overseas assets frozen and the arms embargo honoured he thinks it might be possible to deprive fighters of the finance that keeps them fighting and force them to the table
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Until 1963 Libya was governed as three federal provinces—Cyrenaica in the east, Fezzan in the south and Tripolitania in the west
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the marginalised Cyrenaicans harked back to the time when their king split his time between the courts of Tobruk and Beida and when Arabs from the Bedouin tribes of the Green Mountains ran his army
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July 2011 jihadists keen to settle scores with officers who had crushed their revolt in the late 1990s killed the NTC’s commander-in-chief, Abdel Fattah Younis, who came from a powerful Arab tribe in the Green Mountains. In June 2013 the Transitional Council of Barqa (the Arab name for Cyrenaica), a body primarily comprised of Arab tribes, declared the east a separate federal region, and soon after allied tribal militias around the Gulf of Sirte took control of the oilfields.
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In the west, indigenous Berbers, who make up about a tenth of the population, formed a council of their own and called on larger Berber communities in the Maghreb and Europe for support
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Derna—a small port in the east famed for having sent more jihadists per person to fight in Iraq than anywhere else in the world
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opposed NATO intervention and insisted that the NTC was a pagan (wadani) not national (watani) council
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Some in Derna have now declared their allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the caliph of the so-called Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq.
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In December the head of America’s Africa command told reporters that IS was training some 200 fighters in the town.
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Control and crucifixions: Life in Libya under IS - BBC News - 0 views
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of retributions. We spoke to people who have been forced to leave the city, to escape Islamic State.
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My dad is a senior policeman and was getting threats in Sirte. Anyone who works with the police can be kidnapped or killed unless you join them
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S was quite laid back at the start in terms of implementing their harsh interpretation of Sharia, or Islamic law. You get the feeling that they were focussing on building loyalty and allegiances from the tribal society of Sirte
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It was only in August when Islamic codes of dress and behaviour began to be implemented more noticeably. It was also then when crucifixions and lashings began to be meted out to anyone convicted. These usually take place after Friday prayers.