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The Islamic state

Idris2002 said:
AFAIK the Bokes are a fully home-grown Nigerian product. I wouldn't read too much into BH releasing a vid with some ISIS bloke in it. These sorts of things circulate throughout the Muslim world, including the Muslim bits West Africa, but that doesn't mean that local factors aren't the most important one. Probably Benson and Hedges are looking at ISIS and saying "well played, we tip our fedoras to you", though.
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Bokes just released some ISIS style beheading videos.
 
Nice of the daily mail to headline today with 'Jihadi Johns Family 20 years on benefits'. Focus on the important things eh.

Anyway I thought JJ's family were wealthy and he had lived in maida vale :hmm:
 
I was just looking at the Facebook page Lions of Rojava, and they talked about a joint Turkish army/YPG/J operation to evacuate the guards and remains at the Tomb of Suleyman Shah.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_of_Suleyman_Shah#Events_during_the_war_in_Syria

I found this outbreak of cooperation somewhat . . . surprising. Anyone else heard about this one?

E2A: Here's a pic from the aforementioned facebook page:

10959841_340312389509617_6943506183198100818_n.jpg
 
Idris2002 said:
I was just looking at the Facebook page Lions of Rojava, and they talked about a joint Turkish army/YPG/J operation to evacuate the guards and remains at the Tomb of Suleyman Shah.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_of_Suleyman_Shah#Events_during_the_war_in_Syria

I found this outbreak of cooperation somewhat . . . surprising. Anyone else heard about this one?

E2A: Here's a pic from the aforementioned facebook page:

QUOTE]

.
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From what I can gather, Turkish forces gave YPG a heads-up that they would be moving through their territory - both sides were aware that it was a limited, specific mission, and shouldn't be perceived as an attack. The surprising co-operation was between the Turkish military & ISIS - ISIS had surrounded the Tomb in 2014, but after some initial bluster, left its contents & custodians unmolested. I'd not seen that picture before - a taste of things to come in the proposed 'buffer zone' if/when it becomes a reality
 
butchersapron said:
Wow - and this is "the Guardian's defence and intelligence correspondent". Ill-informed about the conflict, the groups and the wider issues. Which is what got him the job i suppose.
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MacAskill most likely got the job because of his thick book of contacts at NATO and in Washington. How he got so many contacts will have nothing to do with him being a willing conduit for intelligence disinformation.

Honest.
 
butchersapron said:
Wow - and this is "the Guardian's defence and intelligence correspondent". Ill-informed about the conflict, the groups and the wider issues. Which is what got him the job i suppose.
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and what will frighten you most is that the Granuid is probably, currently, the most informed/interested in defence and wider FP issues among what we rather charitably call 'the press'.
 
Article here on Assad's role in the rise of ISIS, and how he benefits

Little attention has been given to the nature of the war between Assad and extremist groups. The lack of ground battles between Assad forces and ISIS in territories controlled by ISIS has catalysed anti-Assad conspiracies of direct cooperation. The barrel bombs thrown by Assad’s air force on residential areas are yet to hit ISIS headquarters—which are covered in black banners and easy to spot.

Without endorsing such conspiracies, Assad’s military and diplomatic strategies leave enough room for speculation regarding Assad’s strategic intent on reducing the revolution to a war and the war to a war against extremists.

In early 2014, reports emerged from western intelligence agencies that the Syrian regime had funded and co-operated with al-Qaeda in a complex double game. This was what they alleged was happening back when rebels were on the outskirts of Damascus.

One of the most obvious fields of co-operation between the two sides is oil and gas trade. ISIS and the al-Qaeda affiliate, al-Nusra Front, occupied several major oil fields in Syria. The extremist groups had to sell their oil, and the only available buyer was across the battlefront. In March 2013, al-Nusra Front seized control of significant oil fields in the eastern province of Deir al-Zour. Since then, al-Nusra has managed to sell oil for millions of dollars to help fund its operations.

According to a report in The Telegraph, an intelligence source from western secret services said that, “the regime was paying al-Nusra to protect oil and gas pipelines under al-Nusra’s control in the north and east of the country, and is also allowing the transport of oil to regime-held areas”. To be fair, the same source admitted that the relationship between Assad and extremist groups is hostile but opportunistic. The Times quoted Robin Mills, from Manaar Energy in Dubai, suggesting that the group is directly doing business with the regime.

...

Other than the oil trade, one supposed act of kindness by the Syrian regime in the early days of the Syrian revolution was actually a strategic step to empower extremist groups over the democratic mobilisation in Syrian towns and cities. Assad strategically released prisoners affiliated with extremist groups, and they are now leading rebel groups such as al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham.

Numerous leading Syrian fighters in the current war had already fought in Iraq. Islamist extremists did not come out of the blue, nor were they parachuted in from Gulf countries. They were given grounds to mobilise, organise, and go fight in Iraq by the Syrian regime at a time when Assad felt that he was next after Saddam Hussein. After toppling Saddam, “Bush thinks the war in Iraq has ended”, Bashar said, “but we believe it has just started”. Afterwards, fatwas all over Syria were issued urging Syrians—Muslims of course—to go fight in Iraq against the Americans and their allies.

At that time, busloads carried new jihadists from Syria to Iraq, from the Damascus International Exhibition across the Iraqi borders. This, logistically, couldn’t have happened without the consent of the last Baathist regime in the region that was desperate to survive a “new Middle East,” as Condoleezza Rice once averred. Cities across Syria mobilised under the banner of Islam.

Mohammed Habash, a Syrian scholar and politician, interviewed Sheikh Abu Al Qaaqaa Qul Agassi, who galvanised Aleppo’s young men with his scorching speeches in Al Sakhur Mosque. After mobilising men in Aleppo, he led military training at the same mosque. He was later supported by Major General Dib Zaitoun, chief of intelligence in Syria, to go with his men and fight over the borders.

Habash claims that Zaitoun himself admitted that he personally facilitated Abu al Qaaqaa’s trip to Afghanistan. The role that the Syrian regime played in making the life of the Americans in Iraq a living hell is perceived by Zaitoun as one of “Syrian security’s shining successes”.

Returning from Iraq disillusioned and devastated from a losing war, Syrian fighters were imprisoned en masse and put in torture chambers, and their earlier hatred towards the west turned into hatred towards the Syrian regime.

Years after the war in Iraq, the Sednaya prison in the North of Damascus became the hub of jihadist movements. In 2008, the prisoners started a major rebellion that lasted for months, with dozens of casualties and hostages.

Those same 'rebels' were later freed by the regime at the beginning of the peaceful revolution of the Syrian people. Zahran Aloush, Hassan Abboud, Ahmad Issa Al Sheikh, Abu Mohammed Al Joulani and Abu Huzaifa Al Daeshi—now leaders of Syria’s major rebel groups—all had their spell in the Islamist cells of Baathist prisons.

Even if the regime did not directly plan their reemergence as leaders of extremist rebels in the war, Assad at least knew that these fighters would be soon fighting his forces, as well as eradicating what was left of the poorly armed revolutionaries.

Syria Air Force intelligence chief General Jamil Hasad, who defected in 2011, told Michael D. Weiss that the “[infiltrated] jihadist groups and brigades were very useful for the regime because they provided a justification for the regime’s insistence on a military solution, and provided some legitimacy under the cover of the War on Terror”.
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One of the most obvious fields of co-operation between the two sides is oil and gas trade. ISIS and the al-Qaeda affiliate, al-Nusra Front, occupied several major oil fields in Syria. The extremist groups had to sell their oil, and the only available buyer was across the battlefront. In March 2013, al-Nusra Front seized control of significant oil fields in the eastern province of Deir al-Zour. Since then, al-Nusra has managed to sell oil for millions of dollars to help fund its operations.
Click to expand...

Reports on Al Jazeera that the Al-Nusra Front is to break all links with Al-Qaeda.
 
agricola said:
One notes that they apparently looted it first, so perhaps this was more about criminality rather than their vehement opposition to gods that have been dead for three thousand years.
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Going to be some seriously rich Gangsta Jihadis when they are eventually defeated, disgusting what they have done, its only buildings and not humans, but of course they have destroyed both.
 
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