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And next, Syria?

The Case Against Qatar
Amid the initial euphoria of the Arab Spring, many expected the nascent summer protests in Syria to quickly topple the Assad regime. Presidents in Tunisia and Egypt had lasted just weeks before resigning, after all, and the world had quickly rallied to oust a more persistent Qaddafi. By August, Washington was calling on Assad to step down as well. Not long thereafter, Qatar began its Syrian operation, modeled on the Libyan adventure.

Like the tendering of a contract, Doha issued a call for bidders to help with the regime’s overthrow. “When we started our battalion [in 2012], the Qataris said, ‘Send us a list of your members. Send us a list of what you want — the salaries and support needs,'” Hossam, the Syrian restaurant owner, remembers. He and dozens of other would-be rebel leaders submitted a pitch. He doesn’t say how much his brigade received, but says his own fundraising efforts for humanitarian goods have yielded hundreds of thousands of riyals.

Qatar’s friends abroad were also at work. Throughout 2012 and early 2013, activist Salafists in Kuwait teamed up with Syrian expatriates to build, fund, and supply extremist brigades that would eventually become groups such as al-Nusra Front and its close ally, Ahrar al-Sham. Using social media to tout their cause and a deep Rolodex of Kuwaiti business contacts, clerics and other prominent Kuwaiti Sunnisraised hundreds of millions of dollars for their clients. They were able to work essentially unhindered thanks to Kuwait’s lax counterterrorism financing laws and its freedoms of association and speech.

One such donor was the young Kuwaiti Salafi cleric Hajjaj al-Ajmi, who on Aug. 6 was designated by the U.S. Treasury Department as a funder of terrorism for backing al-Nusra Front. Ajmi runs the so-called People’s Commission for the Support of the Syrian Revolution, many of whose campaign posters on Twitter spoke of charity work — giving food or medicine to the needy and displaced. But back in June 2012, Qatar’s Ministry of Endowments and Islamic Affairs invited the cleric to speak in the coastal city of Al Khor, 30 miles outside Doha, where he argued that humanitarian support alone would never topple the Syrian regime.

“Did you know that bringing down Damascus would not cost more than $10 million?” he intoned, wagging his fingers from his chair in front of the old Syrian flag adopted by revolutionaries. “The priority is the support for the jihadists and arming them.”

In the months that followed, many of Ajmi’s campaigns in Kuwait ran parallel collections in Qatar. Donations could be placed through a representative named Mubarak al-Ajji, according to campaign posters, which affirm he is under Ajmi’s “supervision.” Ajji’s Twitter bio describes him as loving Sunni jihadists who hate “Shiites and infidels.” His timeline is flush with praise for Osama bin Laden.

One of Ajmi’s Kuwaiti colleagues, a cleric named Mohammad al-Owaihan, also used Qatar as a base, calling it his “second country” in a tweet in August. As recently as April, Owaihan solicited Qataris to help prepare fighters for battle on the Syrian coast. “Our jihad is a jihad of Money in Syria,” one poster read, offering contact numbers in Kuwait and Qatar.

These fundraising efforts were well-honed appeals, for example placing donors in special categories for donations of varying sizes. A “gold” gift was 10,000 Qatari riyals ($2,750), while a “silver” donation came in at 5,000 riyals. When particularly generous donations arrived, Ajji and others reported them on Twitter, for example posting photos of jewelry turned over to fund the cause.

Among the grateful rebel brigades that released videos thanking the Kuwaiti cleric Owaihan is Ahrar al-Sham, a Salafi group that counted an al Qaeda operative as one of its top commanders until he was killed this year: “O the kind people of Qatar, O people of the Gulf, your money has arrived,” an October 2013 video from the brigade proclaims. Ajmi boasted of his proximity to Ahrar al-Sham on Sept. 9 in atweet showing the private online message the group’s leader sent him when the Kuwaiti cleric was designated and sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department.

All of these fundraising activities were orchestrated by individuals — not the government — as Qatar has noted in its defense in recent weeks. But this is also exactly the point: By relying on middlemen, Doha not only outsourced the work but also the liability of meddling. And even where it wasn’t involved directly, Qatar is not unaware of what’s going on in its network.
 
ISIS is having morale problems. Benefit cuts are tough.
According to a new report by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, recovered ISIS documents show the group is suffering from financial pressures amid coalition airstrikes and struggling to keep costs down and retain employees after “reductions in benefits for Islamic State fighters.” From CNN:

The internal directives also call on ISIS fighters to reduce their electricity consumption and to stop driving official vehicles for personal use, a curbing of “perks” [report author Aymenn] al-Tamimi said was indicative of an organization under financial strain.

Documents obtained earlier had shown that ISIS members stationed in Raqqa, Syria, ISIS’ de facto capital, had to undergo a 50% pay cut.

One surprising document suggests that a number of ISIS members have even been trying to get falsified doctor’s notes “in order to avoid frontline duty,” according to Al-Tamimi.
http://gawker.com/report-isis-fighters-seeking-fake-doctors-notes-to-get-1773291297
 
Prisoners took control of Hama prison earlier in the week. Looks like the regime are gearing up to take it back, so expect a massacre.
 
I expect a gassing then a massacre.

No one mentioned the lovely secular airstrike on a refugee camp yet?

More than 30 displaced Syrians were killed on Thursday in an airstrike on a refugee camp, in what a senior UN official said may be a “war crime”.

By the logic of flage - the one he used to justify barrel bombs on civilian areas (are barrel bombs any worse than hi-tech US weapons?) - he should appear later today justifying this attack on the basis that the US has bombed similar targets. So let's have it. Or deny it happened of course. That's the other one they've used.
 
Couple of intereting posts over on Moon of Alabama

Syria: An "Airstrike" That Wasn't One - some interesting observations about this airstrike. I don't know if the article is true, decide for yerself if you can be bothered to look into it.

The "Free Syrian Army" Media Efforts Are A British Government Operation - something to bare in mind at all times whenever the Syrian war is discussed of course, particularly in light of questions like those raised here:



There's no point wasting time debating tools, I guess when it doesn't matter any more the historians might get to what really went down. For now, the propaganda flies thick and Britain’s keyboard army push the squares in accordance with the desired outcome. Enjoy your soup.
 
..and bang on time. Hey maybe it was a missile then? Maybe the rebels did it? Maybe the displaced did it to themselves? Lost and drowning in the sewer. Barely alive. Barely human.

Of course, you're just posting for info - so where's the info?

The regime line is denial that they targeted the camp, not that they hit it. But that they know that rebels were planning to do this sort of thing and blame them.
 
The people behind that video claim the that white helmets are al-qaeda btw, the people who flew the planes into the tin towers and the pentagon (to be strict they don't think any such attack took place, and if it did it was done by the US). What's beneath the sewer?
 
..and bang on time. Hey maybe it was a missile then? Maybe the rebels did it? Maybe the displaced did it to themselves? Lost and drowning in the sewer. Barely alive. Barely human.

Of course, you're just posting for info - so where's the info?

The regime line is denial that they targeted the camp, not that they hit it. But that they know that rebels were planning to do this sort of thing and blame them.

Not bad, needs more onion.
 
Maybe you can't bring yourself to see the world in terms of anything other than a big video game with robots and fighting and explosions, i can though. As i said, barely human anymore.
 
The people behind that video claim the that white helmets are al-qaeda btw, the people who flew the planes into the tin towers and the pentagon (to be strict they don't think any such attack took place, and if it did it was done by the US). What's beneath the sewer?

Al Nusra has only a small presence around Aleppo. Plus some croutons.
 
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