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Recent Appearances... Rantburg

Syria-Lebanon-Iran
US diplomats arrive in Syria to talk to Islamist rulers about country’s future
2024-12-20
Lame duck tries to limp across the finish line. What odds incoming president Trump repudiates whatever agreements the [Biden]-[Harris] administration comes to with Hayat Tahrir al Sham?
[IsraelTimes] US envoys have arrived in Syria to speak directly to the new Islamist-led rulers, the State Department says, in the most formal US diplomatic mission since the start of the long civil war.

The State Department’s top Middle East diplomat Barbara Leaf, Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs Roger Carstens and newly appointed Senior Adviser Daniel Rubinstein, who is now tasked with leading the Department’s Syria engagement, are the first US diplomats to travel to Damascus since Syria’s opposition militias overthrew oppressive president Bashar al-Assad.

The diplomats will meet representatives of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) — designated a terrorist group by Washington — and civil society to discuss with Syrians “their vision for the future of their country and how the United States can help support them,” a State Department spokesperson says.
Update from the Times of Israel at 12:25 p.m. ET:
The diplomats will meet representatives of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) — designated a terrorist group by Washington — and civil society to discuss with Syrians “their vision for the future of their country and how the United States can help support them,” a State Department spokesperson said.

The visit comes as Western governments are gradually opening channels to HTS and its leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, and start debating whether or not to remove the terrorist designation on the group. The US delegation’s travel follows contacts with France and Britain in recent days.

In their meetings, the US officials will discuss with HTS representatives a set of principles such as inclusivity and respect for the rights of minorities that Washington wants included in Syria’s political transition, the spokesperson said.

The delegation will also work to obtain new information about US journalist Austin Tice, who was taken captive during a reporting trip to Syria in August 2012, and other American citizens who went missing during the Assad regime.

“They will be engaging directly with the Syrian people, including members of civil society, activists, members of different communities, and other Syrian voices about their vision for the future of their country and how the United States can help support them,” the department spokesperson said.

“They also plan to meet with representatives of HTS to discuss transition principles endorsed by the United States and regional partners in Aqaba, Jordan,” the spokesperson said.

The United States cut diplomatic ties with Syria and shut down its embassy in Damascus in 2012.

Forces under the command of al-Sharaa – better known as Abu Mohammed al-Julani – replaced the Assad family rule with a three-month transitional government that had been ruling a rebel enclave in Syria’s northwestern province of Idlib.

Washington in 2013 designated al-Sharaa a terrorist, saying al Qaeda in Iraq had tasked him with overthrowing Assad’s rule and establishing Islamic sharia law in Syria. It said the Nusra Front, the predecessor of HTS, carried out suicide attacks that killed civilians and espoused a violent sectarian vision.
Quizzing a bunch of jihadis and their future targets about plans to form a Western-style democracy strikes me as counterproductive. The following is intersting in a modified limited hangout progression kind of way:
US DOUBLES TROOP DEPLOYMENT TO SYRIA
The United States has more than doubled the number of its forces in Syria to fight the Islamic State group — a dramatic increase that the Pentagon revealed Thursday, acknowledging that the added troops have been there for months or even more than a year.

The US had said for years that there were about 900 troops in Syria, but Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, acknowledged there were roughly 2,000 there now.

The Pentagon was asked repeatedly about the US presence in Syria in the wake of the chaotic overthrow of Assad. It did not disclose the increase and instead kept repeating the 900 figure.

Speaking at a Pentagon press conference, Ryder said the additional forces had been in Syria “at a minimum months — it’s been going on for a while.” He said he only just learned the new number and that the increase was not related to the ouster of Assad or any hike in attacks either by or against IS.

Ryder blamed the secrecy on “diplomatic considerations” and sensitivities but declined to be more specific. There has long been friction between the US and Syria’s neighbors — Turkey and Iraq — about the ongoing presence of American forces in Syria and the need to keep them at a particular level.

Ryder said he is “not tracking” any additional adjustments to the force numbers in the future. That could change, however, as President-elect Donald Trump has said he does not support US forces getting more involved in Syria.

Ryder told reporters the increase in forces was temporary and they are there to augment US operations against the Islamic State group. He said US Army conventional and special operations forces make up the bulk of the additional troops.

The “temporary” description, however, belies the fact that troops have been rotating in and out of Syria for nearly a decade, and for much of the last year, or possibly two, the number has consistently been higher than the 900 officials repeatedly insisted were there.

There have always been an undisclosed number of U.S. special operations forces deploying into Syria for short periods of time, but that would not account for the extra 1,100 forces.

Asked whether Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin knew the total was that high, Ryder said, “I’m confident that the secretary is tracking US forces deployed around the world.” When pressed on whether Austin directed his staff to keep the higher number secret, Ryder said no. He also said that Austin has not talked to Gen. Erik Kurilla, the top US general for the Middle East, about the matter.

Since Assad’s overthrow, Israel and Turkey have both launched military operations inside Syria’s borders, including Israeli airstrikes against weapons facilities in the east that belonged to Assad’s regime and Turkey’s offensive in the northeast against Kurdish forces, who have partnered with the US in its fight against the Islamic State.
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Iraq
Iraq issues a sentence of death against Al-Qaeda members
2022-03-01


Shafaq News/ On Monday, a Criminal Court issued a death sentence against two terrorists from Baghdad.

A security source told Shafaq News Agency, "The Criminal Court in Dhi Qar Governorate issued a sentence of death by hanging against two al-Qaeda members who were in prison for eight years for killing citizens in the Latifiya area in Baghdad."

It is worth noting that the Latifia- Mahmoudia-Yusufia area is known as the "Triangle of Death," where groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda were active and carried out massacres against citizens and security forces after 2004.

Al Qaeda in Iraq, or the Islamic State of Iraq as the group is also known, is one of several Sunni Islamist insurgent groups that had been very active just after the withdrawal of the US troops.

The group has claimed a string of attacks.

According to Reuters, the group was founded in October 2004 when Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden. An Egyptian, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, has become the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq after Zarqawi was killed in 2006.

In October 2006, the al-Qaeda-led Mujahideen Shura Council said it had set up the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), an umbrella group of Sunni militant affiliates and tribal leaders led by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi. Reuters reported.

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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
ISIS to choose Iraqi jihadi successor of al-Qurayshi, analysts
2022-02-11
Watch for the white smoke



QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – The Islamic State Organization (ISIS) is likely to choose a battle-hardened veteran from Iraq as new leader of ISIS and successors of Abu Ibrahim al-Qurayshi.

On February 3, al-Qurayshi blew himself along with members of his family up during a raid by US special forces on his place of residence in Atmeh town in Idlib city, northwest Syria.

Fadhil Abu Rgheef, an Iraqi expert who advises its security services, as saying there were at least four possible frontrunners, according to the Daily Mail.

“These include Abu Khadija, whose last known role was Iraq leader for Islamic State, Abu Muslim, its leader for Anbar province, Abu Salih, of whom there’s very little information but was close to Baghdadi and Qurayshi, and there’s also Abu Yasser al-Issawi, who is suspected to be still alive. He’s valuable to the group as he has long military experience,” Rgheef said.

Issawi’s death was reported in an air strike in January 2021 at the time the Iraqi forces and the US-led military coalition were fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

But an Iraqi security official confirmed there were strong suspicions that Issawi is still alive, according to the Daily Mail.

None of the four potential successors to al-Qurayshi had been captured by US forces, one security official and one army colonel told Reuters.

Both ISIS leaders Baghdadi and Qurayshi, were members of al Qaeda in Iraq from the start, and they did time in US detention in the mid-2000s.

The new leader would be a veteran Iraqi jihadist. “If they choose one in the coming weeks they’ll have to choose someone from among the same circle… the group that was part of the Anbari group which operated under (the name) of ISIS since the early days,” Hassan Hassan, editor of New Lines magazine which has published research on al-Qurayshi, said.

Reporting by Sara Youssef

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Terror Networks
U.S. Counterterrorism Strategy Risks Irrelevance in Face of Adapting Threat
2018-11-20
[Free Beacon] The U.S. counterterrorism strategy has not kept pace with the ever-evolving threat of jihadi extremism, yielding short-lived military victories against terrorists at the potential cost of losing the broader war, according to a new study.

Despite the constantly morphing nature of Islamist extremism, the U.S. approach to defeating groups like al Qaeda and the Islamic States has changed little from that established in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the American Enterprise Institute found in a report released this week.

"The U.S. approach to countering the Salafi-jihadi base has yielded fleeting results because the foundational understanding of the enemy is wrong," the report said. "Military victories against groups such as al Qaeda in Iraq certainly eliminated the terrorist threat to the United States from that group for a time, but have proved insufficient to prevent the return of a threat."

Katherine Zimmerman, an AEI research fellow and author of the report, said the "crack in the foundation" of American counterterrorism strategy is the "oversimplification of the enemy into a series of discrete groups." She said U.S. policy largely ignores the fact that Islamist extremists do not exist primarily to attack America or Europe, but to replace the governance systems of Muslim-majority countries with their hardline vision of governance and Islam.

"America's view of the enemy still centers on the terrorist threats that specific Salafi-jihadi groups pose to the United States homeland or American interests," Zimmerman wrote. "It misses that these groups are part of a global movement that persists beyond the defeat of specific organization or death of a set of individuals."

Zimmerman said U.S. and European government officials and analysts wrongly point to the jihadi movement's reprioritization away from attacking Western countries toward establishing itself in local communities as a sign they have weakened. Rather, Islamist extremists move closer toward their overarching goal of regional hegemony by currying local support.

She noted that the jihadi movement assesses its success on its ability to transform society locally rather than its ability to attack globally‐"the exact inverse" of how the United States assesses its counterterrorism strategy.
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Intelligence Estimate and Forecast: The Syrian Theater
2017-10-23
[Institute for the Study of War] EXECUTIVE SUMMARY - The United States will continue to risk its vital strategic interests in the Middle East unless it changes its policies in Syria and Iraq. President Donald Trump and his administration inherited a weakened U.S. position, with Russia imposing constraints on American freedom of action and options. The Trump administration has taken initial steps to advance U.S. prestige in the region by reassuring America’s traditional allies and acting more firmly against its enemies and adversaries. The tactical tasks of recapturing Mosul and liberating Raqqa from the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (ISIS) are complete and nearly complete, respectively. Nevertheless, its efforts to define and execute policies that secure America’s vital interests are moving more slowly than those of America’s enemies, adversaries, and spoilers who are more agile than the U.S. These actors include Russia, Iran and its proxies, Turkey, ISIS, al Qaeda, and some Kurdish elements, who are pursuing goals that threaten American objectives and are exploiting the current situation to make strategic gains as the U.S. champions short-term gains and tactical success.

The Trump administration has not yet broken with its predecessor’s approach to the Middle East, particularly in Syria and Iraq. It has prioritized conducting counterterrorism operations against ISIS to recapture ISIS’s territory. American military forces have accelerated this campaign by relying on the most readily available local forces, including Kurdish forces in northern Syria that are aligned with terrorists targeting Turkey. The administration has eschewed a U.S. role in addressing the regional war’s underlying drivers, including the role of the Bashar al Assad regime in Syria and sectarianism in Iraq stoked by Iran. The main effort of the counter-ISIS fight must become preventing the organization from reconstituting and its rivals from inheriting its leadership of the Iraqi and global jihad. ISIS re-emerged from a defeated al Qaeda in Iraq and controlled Iraqi cities only three years after American troops departed in 2011.

The Trump administration has also acquiesced to an expanding Russian and Iranian ground campaign in Syria and a growing role for Iran inside Iraq. Its diplomatic efforts to end the wars have focused on the most expedient political outcomes shaped by dominant local and regional actors. It does not appear committed to shaping a long-term stabilization congruent with a wider set of American regional interests. The administration has expressed that it will confront and roll back Iran’s destabilizing campaign but has neither set the conditions for such a campaign nor undertaken sufficient policy action that will set conditions for such an outcome.
A quite lengthy EXSUM. Full PDF available at the link.
Link


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Intelligence Estimate and Forecast: The Syrian Theater
2017-09-29
[Institute For The Study of War] EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The United States will continue to risk its vital strategic interests in the Middle East unless it changes its policies in Syria and Iraq. President Donald Trump and his administration inherited a weakened U.S. position, with Russia imposing constraints on American freedom of action and options. The Trump administration has taken initial steps to advance U.S. prestige in the region by reassuring America’s traditional allies and acting more firmly against its enemies and adversaries. The tactical tasks of recapturing Mosul and liberating Raqqa from the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (ISIS) are complete and nearly complete, respectively. Nevertheless, its efforts to define and execute policies that secure America’s vital interests are moving more slowly than those of America’s enemies, adversaries, and spoilers who are more agile than the U.S. These actors include Russia, Iran and its proxies, Turkey, ISIS, al Qaeda, and some Kurdish elements, who are pursuing goals that threaten American objectives and are exploiting the current situation to make strategic gains as the U.S. champions short-term gains and tactical success.

The Trump administration has not yet broken with its predecessor’s approach to the Middle East, particularly in Syria and Iraq. It has prioritized conducting counterterrorism operations against ISIS to recapture ISIS’s territory. American military forces have accelerated this campaign by relying on the most readily available local forces, including Kurdish forces in northern Syria that are aligned with terrorists targeting Turkey. The administration has eschewed a U.S. role in addressing the regional war’s underlying drivers, including the role of the Bashar al Assad regime in Syria and sectarianism in Iraq stoked by Iran. The main effort of the counter-ISIS fight must become preventing the organization from reconstituting and its rivals from inheriting its leadership of the Iraqi and global jihad. ISIS re-emerged from a defeated al Qaeda in Iraq and controlled Iraqi cities only three years after American troops departed in 2011.

The Trump administration has also acquiesced to an expanding Russian and Iranian ground campaign in Syria and a growing role for Iran inside Iraq. Its diplomatic efforts to end the wars have focused on the most expedient political outcomes shaped by dominant local and regional actors. It does not appear committed to shaping a long-term stabilization congruent with a wider set of American regional interests. The administration has expressed that it will confront and roll back Iran’s destabilizing campaign but has neither set the conditions for such a campaign nor undertaken sufficient policy action that will set conditions for such an outcome.

The Russo-Iranian coalition is exploiting the continuity in American strategy from President Obama to President Trump’s administration. It is now strengthening its grip in Syria while enabling the Assad regime to extend its positions. Vladimir Putin’s dependence on Iran for securing Russia’s most important interests in Syria ‐ its airbase at Latakia and naval base at Tartous ‐ will continue to ensure that he will remain intertwined in a deepening partnership with Tehran. The "de-escalation" agreements brokered in Syria will allow Russia to remain in the driver’s seat for shaping the overall political settlement. These agreements will also fail to prevent Iranian expansionism. Russian and Iran share the ambition to weaken and ultimately expel the U.S. from the region. They are continuing to position themselves to make that outcome a reality.
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Terror Networks
Al Qaeda is back
2017-02-06
[WASHINGTONEXAMINER] Don't call it a comeback. Al Qaeda, the group responsible for the worst terrorist attack in United States history, never really left. Instead, while news media coverage inordinately focused on the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
, al Qaeda re-tooled and re-established itself for a new age.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of al Qaeda's death were greatly exaggerated. Anticipatory obituaries appeared after the death of al Qaeda founder the late Osama bin Laden
... who is now sometimes referred to as Mister Bones...
 on May 2, 2011. Then-President Barack Obama
I am not a dictator!...
, for instance, said on Sept. 10, 2011 that al Qaeda was "on a path to defeat." Similarly, then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta
...current SecDef, previously Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Panetta served as President Bill Clinton's White House Chief of Staff from 1994 to 1997 and was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1977 to 1993....
 said in July 2011 that the U.S. was "within reach of strategically defeating al Qaeda."

The rise of the Islamic State -- an al Qaeda branch itself until an official split in 2014 cemented a long-standing rivalry -- received considerable attention from news hounds, pundits, and policymakers, as well as the public they influence.

But as terror analysts Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and Bridget Moreng pointed out in an April 2015 op-ed, "The Islamic State's offensive through Iraq and Syria last year has dominated the headlines, but the jihadist group that has won the most territory in the Arab world over the past six months is Al Qaeda."

The two analysts cited the Islamic State's comparatively greater emphasis on media and more highly-developed media capabilities as part of the reason. This difference however, has worked to al Qaeda's benefit.

The terror group, led since 2011 by bin Laden-successor Ayman al-Zawahiri
... Formerly second in command of al-Qaeda, now the head cheese, occasionally described as the real brains of the outfit. Formerly the Mister Big of Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Bumped off Abdullah Azzam with a car boom in the course of one of their little disputes. Is thought to have composed bin Laden's fatwa entitled World Islamic Front Against Jews and Crusaders. Currently residing in the North Wazoo area assuming he's not dead like Mullah Omar. He lost major face when he ordered the nascent Islamic State to cease and desist and merge with the orthodx al-Qaeda spring, al-Nusra...
, has employed a less flashy strategy that stands in contrast to its competitor's use of gruesome, and accordingly well-publicized, atrocities. Nor has al Qaeda, for the most part, attempted to hold and govern wide swaths of territory. The Islamic State's decision to do so and to declare a caliphate under His Supreme Immensity, Caliph of the Faithful and Galactic Overlord, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
...formerly merely the head of ISIL and a veteran of the Bagram jailhouse. Looks like a new messiah to bajillions of Moslems, like just another dead-eyed mass murder to the rest of us...
 resulted in its split from al Qaeda.

By adopting a more covert approach, al Qaeda has been able to expand while flying under the radar as the West and its Arab government allies have focused on the Islamic State. Ironically, al Qaeda has taken a page from the counterinsurgency strategy employed as part of the "surge" in Iraq to defeat it. By embedding with local populations, selling itself as less of a threat than the Islamic State, and relinquishing the scorched-earth tactics it had once employed as al Qaeda in Iraq, Zawihiri has led his organization to steady gains.

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Terror Networks
ISIS is losing the war
2016-05-13
That's a very narrow view of the situation. Al Qaeda plans to pick up the dropped baton of jihad, so the war will continue. And ISIS expects to be driven back and nearly destroyed before the tempered remnant bursts out with Allah's aid to conquer the entire world. Either way, the war will continue until those infected with the virus of Triumphalist Islam are either killed or surrender.
[CNN] The Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
 in Iraq and Syria, ISIS, as an organized military force in Iraq and Syria, is losing -- even losing badly. This does not mean the end of ISIS, and we may see organized (as in Libya and Afghanistan) and unorganized (as in Gay Paree and San Bernardino) bands carrying the ISIS label and banner for some time yet.

But these will be a mere echo (and perhaps even a mockery) of the force that carried out the shocking seizure of terrain in Iraq, threatening even Baghdad, a year and a half ago. However,
nothing needs reforming like other people's bad habits...
 the end of ISIS does not mean the end of Islamic extremism, and we should expect to see a resurgence of al Qaeda and its affiliates, as its splinter rival begins its death spiral.

Simply put, despite its quite impressive debut on the international stage, ISIS is out of its league. By trying to bring about the "caliphate" as a tangible entity, it has given its opponents, both local and international, a fixed target to strike.

The territory it controls in Iraq and Syria is now being attacked from the southeast by the Iraqi Army and Hashd al Shabi popular mobilization units (militia units of varying loyalites, mostly Shia Arab), from the northeast by the KDPand PUK Peshmerga (militias of the two ruling parties in Iraqi Kurdistan) forces, from the northwest by the Syrian YPG (People's Protection Units) Kurdish forces, and from the southwest -- at least nominally -- by the Syrian regime and its Iranian/Russian allies.

Further, all the Iraqi forces (save the Hashd) are being supported by U.S. airpower, the Syrian forces by Russian airpower, and the YPG forces by both. In Iraq, two major cities have been reclaimed from ISIS (Tikrit and Ramadi), in addition to a number of significant towns. In December, the Iraqi defense minister stated that ISIS control of Iraqi territory was down from 40% at its height to only 17% then. While no cities have yet been reclaimed on the Syrian side of the border, ISIS continues to lose territory, with the coalition in January claiming about a 20% reduction. ISIS' enemies are far closer to their "capital" of Raqqa then they were six months ago.

So long as ISIS (or its predecessors, the Islamic State in Iraq and al Qaeda in Iraq) remained in the shadows as a terrorist group, and stuck to its core competencies of liquidation and suicide bombs, it was very difficult to find and root out, subject only to intelligence-driven raids by the commandos of the Joint Special Operations Command (Delta Force and SEAL Team 6, mostly). But ISIS' strategy of creating a political entity on the ground has also made it vulnerable to both airpower and conventional armies, while--as events of the last 24 hours show--it is still subject to JSOC kill/capture operations. So while the implementation of the U.S. strategy has been scandalously slow, it is now clearly demonstrating its effectiveness.

So long as ISIS (or its predecessors, the Islamic State in Iraq and al Qaeda in Iraq) remained in the shadows as a terrorist group, and stuck to its core competencies of liquidation and boom-mobiles, it was very difficult to find and root out. But ISIS' strategy of creating a political entity on the ground has made it vulnerable to both airpower and conventional armies. And while the implementation of the U.S. strategy has been scandalously slow, it is now clearly demonstrating its effectiveness.

Iraqi Army forces are moving to djinn-infested Mosul
... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn...
, already nearly surrounded on the northern side by Kurdish forces, while the Hashd are clearing the more rural areas west of Samarra/Tikrit and south of Mosul. The liberation of Mosul is no longer in doubt.

An optimistic timeline would have the operation occurring this summer, a pessimistic timeline next spring. But its eventual outcome is as close to certainty as exists. When tens of thousands of troops, supported by U.S. airpower, mass against a few thousand defenders, it is clear how that story ends, militarily.

And we are already seeing ISIS react to this eventuality. Late last month, we saw ISIS return to its terrorist roots and launch suicide bombs into the Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad. In so doing, ISIS is demonstrating its weakness and regressing from a military force back to a terrorist one.

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Iraq
Iraq: Going Through Some Needed Changes
2015-09-20
[StrategyPage] In Iraq the Shia militias, many of them with Iranian advisors, are increasingly being seen as a problem by the new Iraqi government and Iraqis in general. The previous Maliki government had long worked closely with Iran but lost power because Maliki and his allies would not do anything about the corruption that is largely seen as the main reason ISIL made such rapid advances in 2014. Iraqis are discovering, as the anti-corruption efforts now accelerate, that a lot of that corruption, especially in the military, was encouraged, and sometimes paid for, by Iran. This has caused public opinion among the majority Shia Arabs in Iraq to turn against Iran. Another reason for that is the Iran supported (and often armed and paid) Shia militiamen are seen as fanatics and undisciplined who are mainly loyal to Iran. These Shia militiamen are largely motivated by revenge (for years of Islamic terrorist attacks on Shia civilians) and their Iranian advisors encourage that. The Iran backed Shia militias are now seen as a potential threat to the Iraqi government. While the Shia militiamen have less training they are more fanatics and undisciplined. To the Americans the biggest risk is the Shia militiamen terrorizing (kidnapping, murdering, looting and so on) Sunni civilians in areas ISIL (al Qaeda in Iraq and the Levant) is driven out of. The Americans realize that the key to regaining control of Anbar is gaining the support of the Sunnis (who comprise nearly all the Anbar population).

Iran is not happy with this new attitude. It got worse recently when Iraq got its first few F-16s into service. While being used mainly for attacking ISIL on the ground, the F-16s can also use air-to-air missiles and the Iraqi pilots can go after Iranian cargo aircraft transiting Iraqi airspace on their way to Syria and force them to land or turn back. Iraq could never do this before and Iran was able to pretty much use Iraqi air space for these flights without any fear of the transports being threatened. Iraq has always tolerated this Iranian use of Iraqi airspace to rapidly supply the Assad government in Syria. Iraq did this despite constant pressure from the United States to block the Assad aid. Now the Iraqis are paying more attention to their American allies than their Iranian neighbors.
Any truth to that last sentence?
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
At high tide in fight for Kobani, Obama calls Erdogan
2014-10-20
[JPOST] The fight between Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
 and Western allies for the Syrian border city of Kobani intensified over the weekend, as Islamic State forces bore down on three sides and shelled Kurdish strongholds within.

Eye witness reports indicate that municipality buildings, as well as a market place, were targeted. The group fired 44 shells, some of which hit Turkish territory, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The US-led air coalition over Syria engaged in the battle by striking Islamic State targets around Kobani at least six times. With dozens of countries across Europe and the Middle East participating in strikes, the campaign has focused on Kobani more than any other city or asset, including Erbil and the djinn-infested Mosul
... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn...
 Dam in Iraq at the launch of the campaign.

Turkey, however, has yet to participate, a month into the battle over a city in its sights across the border. Ankara wants coalition partners to also target the regime of Bashir al-Assad, the embattled president of Syria at the center of the civil war there that has killed over 200,000 people.

After fighting intensified on Saturday, US President Barack Obama
My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. I hope you'll join with me as we try to change it...
spoke with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan by phone on Sunday to discuss the battle and to strategize "steps that could be taken to counter [Islamic State] advances," according to the White House.

"The two leaders pledged to continue to work closely together to strengthen cooperation against [Islamic State]," the White House said in a readout.

But the weekend was also marked by a series of suicide kabooms from Kobani to Baghdad, Iraq, where Islamic State first mastered the boom-mobile-- or vehicle borne improvised bomb (VBIED)-- in its original incarnation as al Qaeda in Iraq in 2004.

Two such boom-mobiles were detonated in Kobani on Sunday, targeting Kurdish positions. The city is predominantly Kurd and has provided refuge to minorities across Syria fleeing the civil war there.

And in Baghdad on Sunday, one jacket wallah killed 19 and maimed 28 others outside a Shi'ite mosque, where mourners were attending a funeral.

Islamic State has not yet taken credit for the attack. But it comes among a marked spike in suicide kabooms in Baghdad since a US-led coalition began bombing the group across Iraq and Syria last month.

"The attacker approached the entrance of the mosque and went kaboom! among the crowd," one police officer said. The mosque is reportedly intact.
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Terror Networks
Declaring an Islamic State, Running a Criminal Enterprise
2014-07-09
A taste:
[The Hill] The United States and its allies beat al-Qaeda on the battlefield several years ago, but ISIS has financed a resurgence in Syria and Iraq that poses no less a threat to regional stability.

When the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) stormed into Iraq and captured djinn-infested Mosul
... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn...
, the largest city in northern Iraq, the group not only walked away with a tremendous amount of abandoned military hardware, but also raided the city's central bank and took off with some $425 million. Perhaps even more amazing is that the group was already one of the best-funded terrorist groups in the world.

ISIS, which has renamed itself the Islamic State and unilaterally declared the reestablishment of an Islamic caliphate, has been financially self-sufficient for at least eight years, according to U.S. government estimates. Remember that before it renamed itself the Islamic State, the group was known as ISIS, as the Islamic State of Iraq, as al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), as Majlis Shura al-Mujahidin and as Jamaat al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad. And unlike other groups, which are reliant on state sponsors, major donors or abuse of charity, the group now calling itself the Islamic State has been financially independent by virtue of engaging in tremendously successful criminal activity enterprises.

By 2006, when the group was still known as AQI, it was already bringing in approximately $70 million through criminal activities. According to a November 2006 U.S. government assessment cited in The New York Times
...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize...
, AQI and other groups had successfully created a self-sustaining insurgency in Iraq, raising from $70 million to $200 million a year from illegal activities alone. The assessment highlighted oil smuggling, kidnapping for ransom and political corruption as the most significant and profitable enterprises. Even during the height of the Iraq War — and in large part because of it — AQI had established an independent financial structure.
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Terror Networks
Washington Intel community AQ weasel words
2014-02-19
Information dense, long article. Ignoring the politics around defining whether or not the various more or less interconnected branches of the jihadi movement are actually Al Qaeda or not, there's a lot of meat here, not to mention a fairly useful graphic. The article closes with these paragraphs:
[WashingtonTimes] The rhetoric dovetailed with an analysis given to Congress last week by Bill Braniff, a terrorism analyst at the University of Maryland, who told lawmakers that 2012 was "the most active year of terrorism on record," with more than 6,800 attacks killing more than 11,000 people worldwide.

"Strikingly," said Mr. Braniff, "the six most lethal groups in 2012 -- the Taliban, Boko Haram, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan, al Qaeda in Iraq and al-Shabab -- are generally considered fellow travelers of al Qaeda, and yet al Qaeda itself was not responsible for a single attack in 2012."

"What should we take from these seemingly contradictory developments?" he said. "Did al Qaeda succeed by inspiring widespread jihadism, or has it lost to a variety of more parochial, albeit popular, actors?"
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