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ISIS Reaps Gains of U.S. Pullout From Syria - The New York Times - 0 views

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  • American forces and their Kurdish-led partners in Syria had been conducting as many as a dozen counterterrorism missions a day against Islamic State militants, officials said. That has stopped.
  • And across Syria’s porous border with Iraq, Islamic State fighters are conducting a campaign of assassination against local village headmen, in part to intimidate government informants.
  • “There is no question that ISIS is one of the big winners in what is happening in Syria,” said Lina Khatib, director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at Chatham House, a research center in London.
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  • When President Trump announced this month that he would pull American troops out of northern Syria and make way for a Turkish attack on the Kurds, Washington’s onetime allies, many warned that he was removing the spearhead of the campaign to defeat the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.
  • Although Mr. Trump has repeatedly declared victory over the Islamic State — even boasting to congressional leaders last week that he had personally “captured ISIS” — it remains a threat. After the loss in March of the last patch of the territory it once held across Syria and Iraq, the Islamic State dispersed its supporters and fighters to blend in with the larger population or to hide out in remote deserts and mountains.
  • Changes in the political context in Syria and Iraq have diminished the Islamic State’s ability to whip up sectarian animosity out of the frustrations of Sunni Muslims over the Shiite or Shiite-linked authorities in Syria and Iraq — the militants’ trademark.
  • Mr. Trump first said last December that he intended to withdraw the last 2,000 American troops from Syria; the Pentagon scaled that back, pulling out about half of those troops.
  • And within hours of Mr. Trump’s announcement almost two weeks ago that American forces were moving away from the Syrian border with Turkey, two ISIS suicide bombers attacked a base of the Syrian Democratic Forces in the Syrian city of Raqqa.
  • But now the American withdrawal and the Turkish incursion are threatening the informal supervision of those former prisoners, Ms. Khalifa said, creating a risk that some might gravitate back to fighting for the Islamic State.
  • Mr. Trump, for his part, has insisted repeatedly that Turkey should take over the fight against the Islamic State in Syria. “It’s going to be your responsibility,” Mr. Trump said he told the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
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The war against the Islamic State hits hurdles just as the U.S. military gears up - The... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...6-a9b5-bf703a5a7191_story.html
shared by alexdeltufo on 08 May 16 - No Cached
  • hen President Obama first ordered U.S. warplanes into action against the extremists sweeping through Iraq and Syria in 2014, U.S. officials put a three- to five-year timeline on a battle they predicted would be hard. After a rocky start, officials say they are gratified by the progress made, especially over the past six months.
  • “So far in terms of what we had hoped to do, we are pretty much on track,” said a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss sensitive subjects. “We’re actually a little bit ahead of where we wanted to be.”
  • The Islamic State will have occupied those cities for well over two years before the offensives begin, far longer than any of those it has lost so far. The battle for Mosul, long a Pentagon priority, has already been delayed by at least a year
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  • The extra resources are an acknowledgment, U.S. officials say, that the war can’t be won without a greater level of American involvement.
  • intense Islamic State fire from the small but strategically important village of Al-Nasr, about 40 miles to the south. It was a reminder, said Col. Steve Warren, a U.S. military spokesman, that “we’ve got a foot on his neck but he’s still got some fight in him."
  • We have to pause, reset a bit and do some things.”
  • U.S. officials say they have seen no fallout yet from the fracas in Baghdad, but don’t rule out that there could be one if the political instability continues.
  • One major effort for which the United States needs Turkish engagement is a faltering offensive against the Islamic State in the northern Syrian countryside of Aleppo province, bordering Turkey.
  • Cutting the Islamic State’s vital supply route to Turkey is considered an essential prerequisite for any eventual offensive to retake Raqqa.
  • The recent resumption of fighting around the nearby city of Aleppo has come as a fresh reminder that the war in Syria will continue to draw resources away from the Islamic State fight. Peace talks in Geneva aimed at ending the conflict have deadlocked, eroding hopes that a political solution is in sight.
  • It was repelled, however, only with the help of intense U.S. airstrikes, underscoring the vital role the United States plays in securing recaptured territory.
  • But were you to remove that air power and the capabilities the Americans bring, I could imagine them making gains again on the ground.”
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Iran-Led Push to Retake Falluja From ISIS Worries U.S. - The New York Times - 0 views

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shared by maddieireland334 on 29 May 16 - No Cached
  • American commandos are on the front lines in Syria in a new push toward the Islamic State’s de facto capital in Raqqa, but in Iraq it is an entirely different story: Iran, not the United States, has become the face of an operation to retake the jihadist stronghold of Falluja from the militant group.
  • On the outskirts of Falluja, tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers, police officers and Shiite militiamen backed by Iran are preparing for an assault on the Sunni city, raising fears of a sectarian blood bath
  • But the United States has long believed that Iran’s role, which relies on militias accused of sectarian abuses, can make matters worse by angering Sunnis and making them more sympathetic to the militants.
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  • The battle over Falluja has evolved into yet another example of how United States and Iranian interests seemingly converge and clash at the same time in Iraq. Both want to defeat the Islamic State, also known as ISIS
  • In Syria, where the government of Bashar al-Assad is an enemy, America’s ally is the Kurds.
  • But in Iraq, where the United States backs the central government, and trains and advises the Iraqi Army, it has been limited by the role of Iran, the most powerful foreign power inside the country.
  • In an extraordinary statement on Wednesday, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the world’s pre-eminent Shiite religious leader, who lives in Najaf in southern Iraq and is said to be concerned by Iran’s growing role in Iraq, urged security forces and militia to restrain themselves and abide by “the standard behaviors of jihad.”
  • The United States has thousands of military personnel in Iraq and has trained Iraqi security forces for nearly two years, yet is largely on the sidelines in the battle to retake Falluja. It says its air and artillery strikes have killed dozens of Islamic State fighters, including the group’s Falluja commander.
  • Militiamen have plastered artillery shells with the name of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a Shiite cleric close to Iran whose execution this year by Saudi Arabia, a Sunni power, deepened the region’s sectarian divide, before firing them at Falluja.
  • Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who has stressed that civilians must be protected in the operation and ordered that humanitarian corridors be opened to allow civilians to leave the city safely, disavowed the militia leader’s comments.
  • She said that some residents had been killed for refusing to fight for the jihadists, and that those inside were surviving on old stacks of rice, a few dates and water from unsafe sources such as drainage ditches.
  • To allay fears that the battle for Falluja will heighten sectarian tensions, Iraqi officials, including Mr. Abadi, and militia leaders have said they will adhere to a battle plan that calls for the militias not to participate in the assault on the city.
  • The American military role in Iraq has been limited mostly to airstrikes and the training of the army. But, as in northern Syria, there are also Special Forces soldiers in Iraq, carrying out raids on Islamic State targets.
  • Iraq’s elite counterterror forces are preparing to lead the assault on Falluja; they have long worked closely with the United States and are considered among the few forces loyal to the country and not to a sect.
  • A big question going into the battle is whether the Islamic State fighters will dig in and fight or, as they have in some other battles, throw away their weapons and try to melt into the civilian population.
  • For the United States, there is also the matter of history: Led by the Marines, its forces fought two bloody battles for Falluja in 2004. Mindful of this past, American officials would have preferred that the Iraqis left Falluja alone for now and focused on the Islamic State stronghold of Mosul in the north.
  • The American military’s assault on Falluja in April of 2004 was in retaliation for an episode that became an early symbol of a war spiraling out of control, the image of it as indelible as it was gruesome: the bodies of four Blackwater contractors dangling from the ironwork of a bridge.
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Germany's AfD Party and Its Anti-Islam Platform - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...484700 Germany Crisis Islam AfD
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  • After racking up historic gains in regional elections in March, the party this month adopted a new manifesto insisting that “Islam is not part of Germany.”
  • A meeting between the AfD and Muslim leaders broke down this week after the president of the Central Council of Muslims refused to retract previous comments comparing the AfD to Nazis.
  • It called for empowering national governments to ditch the euro, limiting state bailouts, and mandating national referenda for certain EU policies, alongside scintillating stipulations about European Central Bank maneuvers and alternative funding for renewable-energy subsidies.
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  • Last month’s manifesto not only declared Islam incompatible with German legal and cultural values, but also endorsed a ban on burqas and the call to prayer.
  • First, despite having a woman at the helm in the figure of Frauke Petry (as well as trigger-happy aristocrat Beatrix von Storch, who has advocated using deadly force  against illegal migrants at the border, as deputy party chief), AfD supporters are predominantly male.
  • As the German daily Die Zeit pointed out, that means AfD support follows roughly the same pattern as support for the intensely anti-Islamic pan-European movement PEGIDA (“Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West”).
  • Theories abound as to why and to what extent men are more likely to vote for far-right or xenophobic platforms than women—a pattern that holds with Trump supporters in the United States, as well as voters for Austria’s far-right presidential candidate Norbert Hofer, who just barely lost that country’s election this week.
  • A second trend in AfD demographics involves class. Originally, professors, journalists, and business leaders dominated the party, with over half the founding members in 2013 sporting a “Dr.” in front of their names.
  • Third comes age. “[AfD supporters] are youngish to middle-aged,” said Arzheimer. “Interestingly, voters over 60 seem to shy from voting for the AfD because they're still tied to the Christian Democrats,” Merkel’s center-right party.
  • When Bernd Lucke founded the AfD, he intended to win voters both from the Christian Democrats and Germany’s liberal party, the Free Democratic Party (FDP).
  • Crucially, Arzheimer pointed out, the AfD manages to attract NPD voters while also remaining “acceptable for a much larger group of the German population.”
  • Part of AfD’s strength so far has been its ability to capitalize on intense concerns about the economy and immigration with increasingly inflammatory rhetoric while maintaining a sheen of respectability—crucial in German politics, where incitement to ethnic or racial hatred is a criminal offense.
  • The AfD’s fragility may be what sets it apart both from right-wing parties further east and the newly nativist turn in the United States.
  • Art made a similar point, but turned westward. “There’s been a major containment of this far-right nativism in Germany … but it’s the United States in which it’s become in fact a part of the political system.”
  • There’s a term in German, he mused: ausgegrenzt, translating roughly to “excluded” or “marginalized,” but with a literal translation closer to “beyond limits” or “out of bounds.” Those who wanted the NPD banned wanted it “ausgegrenzt.”
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Militias in Libya Advance on ISIS Stronghold of Surt With Separate Agendas - The New Yo... - 0 views

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  • Fighters aligned with Libya’s United Nations-backed unity government are advancing along the Mediterranean coast toward the Islamic State stronghold of Surt
  • first major assault on territory
  • reduced the length of Libyan coastline controlled by the Islamic State to 100 miles from about 150 miles.
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  • either the strength or the will to push into Surt, which is thought to be heavily fortified and also harbor several thousand foreign fighters
  • also risks destabilizing the fragile peace effort by fostering violent competition between rival groups.
  • two groups were battling for control of the so-called oil crescent
  • has become a preoccupation for Western countries worried that it could become a refuge for militants fleeing Iraq and Syria.
  • small groups of American, British and French special operations forces have quietly deployed across Libya, making contact with friendly Libyan militias in an effort to gather intelligence on the Islamic State.
  • Now, with the sudden move against the Islamic State, military action on the ground is moving faster than the country’s tangled politics.
  • attackers had captured both the Surt power plant and an area south of the city
  • The power plant where fighting raged on Wednesday is a significant prize because its loss to the Islamic State last June was seen as a significant step in the group’s domination of the Surt region.
  • That would bring his group, known as the Petroleum Facilities Guard, within 80 miles of Surt.
  • It is unclear whether foreign forces are playing a direct role in the offensive.
  • As the two-pronged assault on Islamic State territory unfolded, several analysts pointed to the role of the unity’s government’s new defense minister, Almahdi Al-Barghathi, who has been trying to bring rival militant factions under a central command that could become a national army
  • The coastal city is thought to be home to a majority of the Islamic State fighters in Libya, estimated to number between 3,000 and 6,500.
  • there is a danger of deepening divisions between east and west in Libya.
  • political mood in Libya had become increasingly confrontational during recent months as the United Nations,
  • In a sign of those divisions, the eastern branch of the country’s central bank this week announced that it had printed 4 billion Libyan dinars through a company in Russia
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This group believes Islam threatens America: 'It's a spiritual battle of good and evil.... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...6-9662-6eedf1627882_story.html islam fanaticism anti-Muslim culture politics
shared by Javier E on 17 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • “They should be hauled out of Congress and taken to Guantánamo!” a military veteran said of the few dozen elected officials — including Hillary Clinton and the only two Muslim members of Congress — identified in the film as having connections to terrorists. “Can’t we get a law passed so we can go in and get these people the hell out of our government?”
  • White and the filmmaker, Trevor Loudon, assured the group that there is “a new sheriff in town.”
  • Trump’s election has presented a “God-given opportunity,” Loudon said. “The fate of the Western world” now depends on how they use it.
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  • “We have four years — the most important four years of our lives — to redouble the efforts,” he said. “If we blow it, our kids live in slavery. If we succeed, we can have a new golden age, not just in America, but all over the world.”
  • White urged the group to start by calling, writing and visiting their lawmakers. He said he needed volunteers to “begin to do some deep research” into a list of about 400 addresses that he had compiled of mosques and Muslim-affiliated “entities” to begin to “connect the dots.”
  • At the next meeting, he added, a visiting speaker would talk to them about “how to push back against building mosques in your communities.”
  • White, a devout Christian, believes that sharia, the guiding laws and principles of Islam, are the embodiment of that evil; that the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni Islamic movement that is a force in Middle Eastern politics, is working to spread sharia throughout America; and that CAIR, the Islamic Society of North America, the majority of American mosques, and a host of other Muslim leaders and organizations are outgrowths of the Brotherhood on U.S. soil. The Trump administration has been considering adding the Brotherhood to its list of designated foreign terrorist organizations; ACT considers that a top priority.
  • White hopes that Trump’s travel ban will prevail and that other Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia and Egypt, will be added. He wants mosques and American Muslim groups to denounce sharia or be disbanded, and he wants the government to bar people who associate with those groups from public office.
  • The night before White visited the Capitol in Austin, a gunman who expressed support for nationalist and right-wing causes killed six people and wounded 19 others in an attack on a Quebec City mosque. The day before, a fire destroyed a mosque that had previously been burglarized and vandalized in Victoria, Tex. Earlier this month, a federal judge in Florida handed a 30-year sentence to a man who set a small-town mosque on fire because he saw the teachings of Islam as a threat.
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Can Islamists Be Liberals? - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...can-islamists-be-liberals.html islam liberalism democracy
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  • In Tunisia and Egypt, Islamists, who were long perceived as opponents of the democratic system, are now promoting and joyfully participating in it. Even the ultra-Orthodox Salafis now have deputies sitting in the Egyptian Parliament, thanks to the ballots that they, until very recently, denounced as heresy.
  • It was the exclusion and suppression of Islamists by secular tyrants that originally bred extremism.
  • as Fareed Zakaria warned in his 2003 book “The Future of Freedom,” there are illiberal democracies, too, where the majority’s power isn’t checked by constitutional liberalism, and the rights and freedoms of all citizens are not secured. This is a risk for the post-Arab Spring countries, and even for post-Kemalist Turkey. The real debate, therefore, is whether Islam is compatible with liberalism.
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  • The main bone of contention is whether Islamic injunctions are legal or moral categories. When Muslims say Islam commands daily prayers or bans alcohol, are they talking about public obligations that will be enforced by the state or personal ones that will be judged by God?
  • For those who believe the former, Saudi Arabia might look like the ideal state. Its religious police ensure that every Saudi observes every rule that is deemed Islamic
  • By contrast, rather than imposing Islamic practices, the ultra-secular Turkish Republic has for decades aggressively discouraged them
  • there are reasons to worry that illiberal democracy could emerge. For Turkey still suffers from a paranoid nationalism that abhors minority rights, a heavy-handed judiciary designed to protect the state rather than its citizens, and an intolerant political culture that regards any criticism as an attack and sees provocative ideas as criminal.
  • If Turkey succeeds in that liberal experiment, and drafts its new constitution-in-the-making accordingly, it can set a promising example for Islamist-led governments in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere. All of these countries desperately need not only procedural democracy, but also liberalism. And there is an Islamic rationale for it as well: Imposed religiosity leads to hypocrisy. Those who hope to nurture genuine religiosity should first establish liberty.
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TASS: Russia - Chechen leader says Islamic State poses threat to Russia - 0 views

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  • blaise_glowiak on 28 May 15
     
    GROZNY, May 28. /TASS/. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said on Thursday the Islamic State (IS) militant group poses a threat to both the Middle East and Russia. "The IS terrorists have nothing to do with Islam. Their path contrasts with our religion. This has been proven by the leading Islam researchers. They are cutting, beheading and shooting innocent people, including Muslims," Kadyrov was quoted by his press service as saying. "The enemies of Russia want to see the Chechen Republic hit by the war," he stressed.
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Boko Haram Generates Uncertainty With Pledge of Allegiance to Islamic State - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...legiance-to-islamic-state.html ISIS Terrorism Middle East
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  • With thousands of fighters and some parts of northeastern Nigeria under its control, Boko Haram is believed to be the largest jihadi group to pledge fidelity to the Islamic State
  • Some experts say that the pledge, or “bayat,” made by the leader of Boko Haram is a spiritually binding oath, which indicates that the Nigerian Islamist group has agreed to accept the authority of the Islamic State.
  • But as with similar pledges to the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, by other extremist groups, there are few details about how much direct control the Islamic State leaders have over their distant proxies.
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U.S.-Russia Deal on a Partial Truce in Syria Raises More Doubt Than Optimism - The New ... - 0 views

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  • The United States and Russia announced an agreement on Monday for a partial truce in Syria, though the caveats and cautious words on all sides underscored the obstacles in the way of the latest diplomatic effort to end the five-year-old civil war.
  • Under the terms of the agreement, the Syrian government and Syria’s armed opposition are being asked to agree to a “cessation of hostilities,” effective this Saturday. But the truce does not apply to two of the most lethal extremist groups, the Islamic State and the Nusra Front, raising questions about whether it will be any more lasting than previous cease-fires.
  • The agreement calls for the Syrian government and the opposition to indicate by noon on Friday whether they will comply with the cessation of hostilities, a term carefully chosen because it does not require the kind of agreement in a formal cease-fire.
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  • The United States is responsible for bringing the various opposition groups in line while the Russians are supposed to pressure the government. Washington and Moscow also agreed to set up a hotline to monitor compliance by both sides.
  • President Obama sealed the final terms of the arrangement in a phone call with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who has become perhaps the most influential player in the Syrian war since Russia thrust itself into the conflict in September on behalf of its client, Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad.
  • The diplomatic efforts did yield a small victory: Aid was delivered for the first time in months to several towns after the combatants gave permission under intense pressure.
  • On the ground in Syria, the prospects for an end to the bloodshed seemed even more elusive. In the last week alone, more than 100 people in Homs and Damascus were killed by suicide bombings by the Islamic State.
  • Airstrikes by the Syrian government and its Russian allies in Aleppo and elsewhere have killed scores of people, including in at least five hospitals, one aided by the international charity Doctors Without Borders.
  • Farther east, scores of civilians were said by locals to have been killed in airstrikes by the American-led coalition fighting the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.
  • The priorities, Mr. Obama told Mr. Putin, were to “alleviate the suffering of the Syrian people,” accelerate a political settlement and keep the focus on the coalition’s battle against the Islamic State.
  • hundreds of thousands of Syrians remain trapped in areas that are classified as besieged or hard to reach, without regular access to food and medicine. Humanitarian groups caution that the more access to aid is used as part of political deals, the less the combatants will provide it unconditionally, as required under international law.
  • The agreement came after one false start: Secretary of State John Kerry announced in Munich on Feb. 12 that the truce would take effect in a week, but the target date passed as the two sides wrestled over how to carry it out. On Sunday, in Amman, Jordan, Mr. Kerry spoke three times by phone with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, to iron out the details.
  • On Monday, while flying back to Washington, Mr. Kerry briefed ministers from Britain, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey about the agreement, according to a senior State Department official. He is expected to discuss the truce when he testifies at a budget hearing Tuesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
  • Mr. Kerry has tended to be more optimistic than the White House about the prospects for a diplomatic solution in Syria. But his statement on Monday was also notably reserved. He did not mention the Feb. 27 date and said that while the agreement represented a “moment of promise,” the “fulfillment of that promise depends on actions.”
  • Analysts expressed skepticism about the deal, noting that in the five days before the truce takes effect, the Syrian forces and their Russian allies could inflict a lot more damage to Aleppo through bombing raids. Some speculated that Russia might expand its military campaign to Idlib, southwest of Aleppo, where Nusra fighters are also operating.
  • “This depends entirely on the good faith of Russia, Iran and the Assad regime, none of whom have shown much good faith in the last five years,” said Frederic C. Hof, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who worked on Syria policy during the first term of the Obama administration.
  • In Riyadh on Monday, a Saudi-backed consortium of Syrian opposition groups and political dissidents said they would agree to the terms of the truce. But Riad Hijab, who coordinates the group’s efforts, did not expect the Syrian government, Iran or Russia to abide by it since, he said, Mr. Assad’s survival depended on “the continuation of its campaign of oppression, killing and forced displacement.”
  • For the Obama administration, a partial truce in Syria may simply be a way to keep a lid on the violence there while it turns its attention to planning and carrying out military operations against Islamic State fighters in Libya.
  • Some analysts said the agreement was less an effort to end the fighting in Syria than to ease the bloodshed enough to allow more humanitarian aid to reach stricken cities like Aleppo.
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Islamic State says 'Schweppes bomb' used to bring down Russian plane | Reuters - 0 views

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  • Islamic State's official magazine carried a photo on Wednesday of a Schweppes soft drink can it said was used to make an improvised bomb that brought down a Russian airliner over Egypt's Sinai Peninsula last month, killing all 224 people on board.
  • The photo showed a can of Schweppes Gold soft drink and what appeared to be a detonator and switch on a blue background, three simple components that if genuine are likely to cause concern for airline safety officials worldwide.
  • "The divided Crusaders of the East and West thought themselves safe in their jets as they cowardly bombarded the Muslims of the Caliphate," the English language Dabiq magazine said in reference to Russia and the West. "And so revenge was exacted upon those who felt safe in the cockpits."Western governments have said the Airbus A321 operated by Metrojet was likely brought down by a bomb and Moscow confirmed on Tuesday it had reached the same conclusion, but the Egyptian government said it has still not found evidence of criminal action.
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  • Explosives experts said it was feasible the device shown in the photo could bring down a plane, depending on where it was located and the density of explosives in the soft drink can. The most vulnerable locations include the fuel line, the cockpit or anywhere close to the fuselage skin.
  • Experts added that the photo could also provide a key clue in tracking Islamic State as the detonator pictured was a commercial one, which could be traced back to its manufacturer.
  • State Department spokesman John Kirby said on Wednesday the U.S. government was not in a position to confirm "the veracity" of the magazine's claim.
  • activity is likely the reason," he said, referring to the crash.
  • "We do believe that terrorist
  • also published a photo of what it said were passports belonging to dead Russians "obtained by the mujahideen". It was not immediately possible to verify the authenticity of the published photos.The group, which has seized large swathes of Syria and Iraq, said it had exploited a loophole at Sharm al-Sheikh airport, where the plane originated, in order to smuggle a bomb on board.
  • The airport is widely used by budget and charter airlines to fly tourists to the nearby resorts on the Sinai coast.
  • said it had initially planned to bring down a plane belonging to a country participating in the U.S.-led coalition bombing it in Syria and Iraq, but it changed course after Moscow started its own air strikes campaign in Syria.
  • Islamic State's Egyptian branch, Sinai Province, claimed responsibility for the attack the day it happened but Egyptian officials were quick to dismiss talk of a bomb as premature.
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ISIS: What does it really want? - CNN.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html politics crisis policy culture isis
shared by lenaurick on 12 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • The group's rise in Iraq -- and its capture of thousands of square miles of land -
  • "We have not defeated the idea," he is reported to have said. "We do not even understand the idea."
  • A global caliphate secured through a global war. To that end it speaks of "remaining and expanding" its existing hold over much of Iraq and Syria. It aims to replace existing, man-made borders, to overcome what it sees as the Shiite "crescent" that has emerged across the Middle East, to take its war -- Islam's war -- to Europe and America, and ultimately to lead Muslims toward an apocalyptic battle against the "disbelievers."
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  • Dabiq is a town in northern Syria currently held by ISIS where, according to Islamic prophecy, the armies of Rome will mass to meet the armies of Islam.
  • And according to those prophecies, the Islamic armies will ultimately conquer Jerusalem and Rome.
  • Libya is the only other country where ISIS holds territory -- the coastal town of Sirte and other patches along the Mediterranean
  • The revival of the caliphate is the launching pad for a global battlefield. No caliph can govern without pursuing offensive jihad, and that jihad will continue, as Dabiq put it, until "the shade of the blessed flag will expand until it covers all eastern and western extents of the Earth."
  • "There will come a time when three armies of Islam shall simultaneously rise, one in the Levant, one in Yemen and one in Iraq."
  • It is powerful motivation to ISIS supporters, and it's also a message to Muslims: The end of times is at hand, and if you want to be a true Muslim, on the right side of history, you had better join us.
  • Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi said it was an obligation to establish the caliphate and therefore to recognize him as caliph.
  • A caliphate can only exist if it holds territory: ISIS' raison d'etre is to sustain and expand
  • ISIS followers -- and Dabiq -- are fond of quoting the words of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- the "spiritual" father of the movement and leader of al Qaeda in Iraq until he was killed in 2006.
  • No matter that the majority of Muslims -- even many jihadists - see ISIS' interpretations of the Quran and the hadith as manipulations or distortions.
  • Libyan territory can also be (and has been) the platform for launching terror attacks in neighboring Egypt and Tunisia.
  • But ISIS' ambitions run much further -- it has established a presence in Yemen, Afghanistan and the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt.
  • ISIS does not recognize the borders of nation states that make up the modern world nor the idea of a democratic state or citizenship.
  • "The Islamic State does not recognize synthetic borders, nor any citizenship besides Islam," he declared in 2012.
  • "We won't enjoy life until we liberate the Muslims everywhere, and until we retrieve Al-Quds (Jerusalem) and regain Al-Andalus (Andalucia in Spain), and conquer Rome," Adnani said in 2013.
  • ISIS wants to stir religious hatred in Europe and the United States -- so that Muslims no longer feel they belong in the West, and either carry out attacks in their homelands or leave to join the caliphate.
  • It has already shown extreme cruelty toward Shiites -- most notably slaughtering more than 1,500 Iraqi air force cadets in Tikrit in June 2014.
  • And it sees the United States as complicit in supporting a Shia government in Iraq.
  • Embroiling the U.S. and the West in a land war -- ISIS reasons -- would give Muslims no choice but to come to the defense of the caliphate, setting up a global confrontation.
  • "Now that it has taken Dabiq, the Islamic State awaits the arrival of an enemy army there, whose defeat will initiate the countdown to the apocalypse,"
  • "We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women. If we do not reach that time, then our children and grandchildren will reach it."
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Today's Paper - The New York Times - 0 views

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shared by Javier E on 20 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • In urging more aggressive action against the group, some Republican presidential candidates, like Donald J. Trump, have expressed a willingness to attack targets even if civilians are present. Senator Ted Cruz seemed to suggest in a Republican debate last week that a Cruz administration would be able to “carpet-bomb” militants without harming civilians. But White House and Pentagon officials have made it clear that obvious civilian targets are off limits — and that attacking them would not only violate international law but undermine the effort to defeat the Islamic State.
  • More than 260 civilians have been killed in coalition strikes in Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group based in Britain that tracks the conflict through a network of contacts in Syria. And the Islamic State has worked hard to exploit those deaths.
  • despites its limits, the bombing does appear to have blunted the advance of Islamic State fighters in most areas of Syria and Iraq by forcing them to disperse and conceal themselves. Mr. Obama said at the Pentagon that the Islamic State had lost 40 percent of the territory it originally seized in Iraq in June last year.
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  • The coalition has in recent weeks also increased attacks on the Islamic State’s oil wells, refineries and more than 400 tanker trucks that ferry the illicit cargo. American aircraft dropped warning leaflets and made strafing runs near the trucks to persuade the civilian drivers to abandon their vehicles before the bombing began, military officials said.
  • “The U.S. has indeed been successful in minimizing civilian harm in its airstrikes against ISIS, and should continue to take precautions even as they intensify airstrikes,” said Federico Borello, the executive director of the Center for Civilians in Conflict, an advocacy group.
  • The three-month-old Russian air campaign has stood in stark contrast to the caution of American military planners. The Russian campaign has mostly targeted rebel groups in northwestern Syria that are opposed to the government of President Bashar al-Assad, and it has deployed fighter jet that use largely unguided bombs to strike their targets, killing hundreds of civilians, human rights groups say.
  • The fear among many in Syria and the West is that the Russian campaign is handing the Islamic State and other militants a major propaganda victory. American officials say that if the United States were to go the same route, it would be likely to alienate the local Sunni tribesmen whose support is critical to ousting the militants, and the Sunni Arab countries that are part of the fragile American-led coalition.
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How Joko Widodo Responded to the ISIS Attacks in Jakarta - The Atlantic - 0 views

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shared by Javier E on 16 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • On Thursday, militants affiliated with ISIS set off a series of explosions in the Indonesian city of Jakarta, killing at least two civilians. The country’s president, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, responded in a remarkable way.
  • Three days after the rampage, the French president stood before Parliament and proclaimed that “France is at war.
  • “The people do not need to be afraid and should not be defeated by these terrorist acts,” he added. “I hope that people remain calm because it is all controllable.”
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  • On Friday, as the authorities heightened security and anti-terror forces conducted raids, Jokowi visited the site of the attack and approvingly noted that things had returned to “normal.”
  • First, notice the subdued yet serious way Jokowi describes the impact of the attacks: They disrupted public security. They disturbed the peace. The government’s response is characterized as a policing matter.
  • He focuses on counteracting the primary goal of terrorism—to terrorize the broader population, to mess with people’s heads.
  • Then there’s what Jokowi omits: He does not declare that Indonesia is at war with the Islamic State, radical Islam, or terrorism. He does not suggest the future of Indonesia is at stake. He does not sound alarms.
  • “We condemn actions that disrupt public security and disturb the peace of the people and sow terror,” Mr. Joko said
  • Linger on Hollande’s words, and they become less reassuring than they first appear: France must destroy terrorism and its otherworldly practitioners, he seems to be saying, because otherwise terrorism could destroy the Republic and endanger the world.
  • But Indonesia arguably has as much to fear from such a terrorist attack as France does, if not more. Indonesia has the world’s largest Muslim population, and ISIS is aggressively trying to recruit supporters there.
  • And yet Jokowi, a Muslim himself, advocates combining military might with a “soft approach” to Islamic extremism that leverages religious and cultural forces.
  • This involves working with moderate Islamic organizations in Indonesia on educational and public-awareness campaigns about Islam and the ways it can be perverted, and addressing socioeconomic sources of terrorism.
  • Asked about ISIS and how he’d assess the current terrorist threat in Indonesia, he responded, “I think [the threat is] more or less declining.” (Jokowi is more alarmist and hardline about other criminal activities in the country, such as drug trafficking.)
  • Mayor Joko Widodo told us that he continues to work on efforts to deradicalize militants and others in Solo. Widodo said he holds constant meetings with the Solo public to educate them on the threat posed by terrorists and extremists. (
  • Jokowi’s approach isn’t necessarily the “right” one, or the one he’d adopt if Indonesia were to experience an attack on the scale of Paris’s. But it serves as a reminder that there’s more than one way to respond to terrorism—that societal resilience can be emphasized just as much as military resolve, that the threat of terrorism can be scoped and contextualized alongside the various other threats a country faces.
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The Role of Islam in African Slavery - 1 views

www.thoughtco.com/islam-in-african-slavery-44532 islam slavery
shared by g-dragon on 23 Nov 17 - No Cached
  • Slavery has been rife t
  • hroughout all of ancient history. Most, if not all, ancient civilizations practiced this institution and it is described (and defended) in early writings of the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Egyptians.
  • The Qur'an
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  • prescribes a humanitarian approach to slavery -- free men could not be enslaved, and those faithful to foreign religions could live as protected persons, dhimmis, under Muslim rule (as long as they maintained payment of taxes called Kharaj and Jizya). However, the spread of the Islamic Empire resulted in a much harsher interpretation of the law.
  • Although the law required owners to treat slaves well and provide medical treatment, a slave had no right to be heard in court (testimony was forbidden by slaves), had no right to property, could marry only with permission of their owner, and was considered to be a chattel, that is the (moveable) property, of the slave owner. Conversion to Islam did not automatically give a slave freedom nor did it confer freedom to their children.
  • Whilst highly educated slaves and those in the military did win their freedom, those used for basic duties rarely achieved freedom.
  • Black Africans were transported to the Islamic empire across the Sahara to Morocco and Tunisia from West Africa, from Chad to Libya, along the Nile from East Africa, and up the coast of East Africa to the Persian Gulf. This trade had been well entrenched for over 600 years before Europeans arrived, and had driven the rapid expansion of Islam across North Africa
  • By the time of the Ottoman Empire, the majority of slaves were obtained by raiding in Africa. Russian expansion had put an end to the source of "exceptionally beautiful" female and "brave" male slaves from the Caucasians -- the women were highly prised in the harem, the men in the military.
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Opinion | This Is How Theocracy Shrivels - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...sm-afghanistan-Islamicism.html theocracy turning point history Culture revolution islamism terrorism survey effects
shared by Javier E on 28 Aug 21 - No Cached
  • Certain years leap out as turning points in world history: 1517, 1776 and 1917. These are years when powerful ideas strode onto the world stage: the Reformation, democratic capitalism and revolutionary Communism.
  • The period around 1979 was another such dawn. Political Islam burst onto global consciousness with the Iranian revolution, the rise of the mujahedeen after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Islamization program in Pakistan and the popularity of the Muslim Brotherhood across the Arab world.
  • By 2006, in an essay called “The Master Plan,” Lawrence Wright could report in The New Yorker how Al Qaeda had operationalized these dreams into a set of sweeping, violent strategies. The plans were epic in scope: expel the U.S. from Iraq, establish a caliphate, overthrow Arab regimes, initiate a clash with Israel, undermine Western economies, create “total confrontation” between believers and nonbelievers, and achieve “definitive victory” by 2020, transforming world history.
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  • The ideas that seized the imagination of millions had deep and diverse intellectual roots. For example, the mid-20th century thinker Sayyid Qutb mounted a comprehensive critique of the soulless materialism of America, tracing it in part to the separation of church and state — the fatal error, he believed, that divided the spirit from the flesh. In the Muslim world, he argued, body and soul should not be split asunder, but should live united in a resurrected caliphate, governed by Shariah law.
  • When political Islamists tried to establish theocratically influenced rule in actual nations, their movement’s reputation was badly hurt. In one of extremism’s most violent, radical manifestations, the Islamic State’s caliphate in Iraq and Syria became a blood-drenched nightmare.
  • In his 2011 book, “The Missing Martyrs,” Charles Kurzman showed that fewer than one in every 100,000 Muslims had become an Islamist terrorist in the years since 9/11. The vast majority rejected the enterprise.
  • If extremists thought they could mobilize Muslim opinion through acts of clarifying violence, they have failed. Across 11 lands in which Pew surveyed Muslims in 2013, a median of only 13 percent had a favorable opinion of Al Qaeda.
  • even in more moderate places, political Islam is losing favor. In 2019, The Economist surveyed the data and concluded, “Across the Arab world people are turning against religious political parties and the clerics who helped bring them to power.
  • Many appear to be giving up on Islam, too.” Ayatollah Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah Yazdi of Iran noticed the trend in his own country: “Iranians are evading religious teachings and turning to secularism.”
  • Globally, terrorism is down. Deaths from attacks fell by 59 percent between 2014 and 2019. Al Qaeda’s core members haven’t successfully attacked the U.S. homeland since 9/11. In 2017, the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, began a process of marginalizing radical Wahhabism.
  • “most Islamist terrorism today tends to be local — the Taliban in Afghanistan, Boko Haram in Nigeria, al-Shabab in the Horn of Africa. That’s a major reversal from the glory days of Al Qaeda, when its leaders insisted that the focus must be not on the ‘near enemy’ (the local regimes) but rather the ‘far enemy’ (the United States and the West more broadly).”
  • it’s obvious that even local conflicts can create incredible danger. But the idea of global glory — a fundamental shaking of the world order — that burst on the world stage roughly 40 years ago has been brought low.
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Islamic Views on Western Culture - 0 views

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  • Majorities of residents in all nine countries surveyed in Gallup's Poll of the Islamic World say Western nations do not care about poorer nations
  • Western nations do not treat the minorities in their own countries fairly,
  • they say Western nations do not respect Arab/Islamic values, do not support Arab causes in international organizations and do not exhibit fairness toward Arab/Islamic countries in general.
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  • four of the nine countries surveyed believe that citizens of Western nations do have equal rights and duties.
  • Residents also express considerable admiration for the West's political values and structures
  • Respondents are most likely to say they admire the West for its scientific and technological expertise,
  • In Indonesia, Kuwait, and Iran, more than half of those interviewed refer to the West's technological accomplishments, as do nearly as high a percentage of Jordanians and Moroccans.
  • five of the nine countries say that Western nations produce enjoyable films and music (although in three of the nine countries, Pakistan, Iran and Morocco, the vast majority of residents disagree with this statement).
  • respect for human values, rights, freedom, and democracy are the most frequently occurring responses.
  • The image that dominates respondents' negative perceptions of the West is clear-cut: the immoral lifestyles, a weakening of family structure, a decline in social courtesy, and the loss of traditional deference to elders in Western nations
  • they perceive as negative Western attitudes toward Muslims generally or Arabs specifically.
  • are arrogant and believe their societies and civilization are more superior and advanced are excessively prone to interfere in the internal and political affairs of other nations are insufficiently attached to their own religion, religious beliefs, and ethnicity
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Allies Set Sights on Raqqa in Battle Against Islamic State - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...ainst-islamic-state-1477399477 battle us terrorism isis stronghold Raqqa Mosul
shared by ethanmoser on 28 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • Allies Set Sights on Raqqa in Battle Against Islamic State
  • The U.S. and its allies are preparing to launch the invasion of Islamic State’s Raqqa stronghold before the recapture of Mosul in Iraq is complete
  • U.S. officials hope to start the invasion of Raqqa as soon as the coming weeks, provided the Mosul campaign proceeds as planned, though the push for the militant group’s de facto capital in Syria remains complicated by regional political sensitivities that haven’t appeared in the fight for Mosul.
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Iraqi forces raise flag at Mosul University in push against ISIS | Fox News - 0 views

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shared by ethanmoser on 16 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • Iraqi forces raise flag at Mosul University in push against ISIS
  • Published January 14, 2017 FoxNews.com Facebook0 Twitter0 Email Print A member of Iraqi Special Operations Forces (ISOF) stands in a military vehicle at the University of Mosul during a battle with Islamic State militants, in Mosul, Iraq, January 14, 2017. REUTERS/Ahmed Saad - RTSVHSV Iraqi special forces raised the Iraqi flag above the buildings at the Mosul University complex on Friday as they continued the battle for control of the city against Islamic State militants.
  • "We congratulate the Iraqi Security Forces on their continued progress in Eastern Mosul,” U.S. army Col. John Dorrian, a spokesman for the U.S.-led anti-IS coalition said in a statement. “Work still needs to be done but ISIL's days in Mosul are quickly coming to an end.
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  • The U.S.-led coalition supporting the Iraqi forces offensive on Mosul told The Associated Press on Friday that the Islamic State group "warped the purpose of a beloved institution of higher learning when they used the university for military purposes."
  • "The entire university has been burned,"
  • "I think it will take at least two or three years to rebuild," he added
  • The extremist group, which controls most of Deir el-Zour province, has kept the provincial capital under siege since 2014. Government forces have withstood the encirclement thanks to air-dropped humanitarian assistance and weapons and ammunition flown into the airport. Remaining residents have reported malnourishment and starvation amid severe shortages of food, water and fuel. The Islamic State group, which in 2014 seized large parts of Iraq and Syria and established a so-called Islamic caliphate straddling both sides of the border, is under intense pressure in both countries where it has lost significant territory in recent months.
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Militias in Libya Advance on ISIS Stronghold of Surt With Separate Agendas - The New Yo... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...urt-with-separate-agendas.html US libya aircraft
shared by Megan Flanagan on 02 Jun 16 - No Cached
  • dvancing along the Mediterranean coast toward the Islamic State stronghold of Surt, signaling the first major assault on territory that
  • the terrorist group’s largest base outside of Iraq and Syria.
  • reduced the length of Libyan coastline controlled by the Islamic State to 100 miles from about 150 miles
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  • advance did signal a new setback for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, at a time when it is already under concerted attack in Falluja, Iraq, and in parts of Syria.
  • risks destabilizing the fragile peace effort by fostering violent competition between rival groups
  • slamic State fighters have presided over a brutal rule in the city, with public executions and floggings, as well as shortages of food and medicines
  • a potential plan for extensive airstrikes against the militant group’s camps,
  • faltered badly as the unity government, which arrived in the capital, Tripoli, in March, has failed to gain broad political acceptance.
  • a significant prize because its loss to the Islamic State last June was seen as a significant step in the group’s domination of the Surt region.
  • seized the coastal town of Bin Jawad and claimed on Tuesday to have moved on nearby Nawfaliyah.
  • principally involved in intelligence gathering and reconnaissance.
  • such efforts are being frustrated by the tribal and personal rivalries that have fueled chaos in Libya since the fall of Colonel Qaddafi in 2011
  • “These forces lack crucial capabilities,”
  • The coastal city is thought to be home to a majority of the Islamic State fighters in Libya, estimated to number between 3,000 and 6,500.
  • the eastern branch of the country’s central bank this week announced that it had printed 4 billion Libyan dinars through a company in Russia, drawing a furious reaction from the main central bank in Tripoli.
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