al-qaida chief ayman al-zawahiri the coordinator 2015 part 19-118-caliphate-vs-regular armies-22

C de Waart; CdW Intelligence to Rent [email protected] In Confidence

Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2015 Part 19-118-Caliphate-vs-Regular Armies-22

Dec 15, Russia and the United States should find common ground to end Syria’s civil war and instability in eastern Ukraine, John Kerry has told Vladimir Putin as they met for talks in Moscow. “Together the United States and Russia have the ability to make a significant difference here,” Kerry told the Russian leader at the start of their meeting. “It’s been a good cooperative effort, and we’re very appreciative for what has been achieved so far,” Kerry said. Putin offered only brief remarks before the start of the closed-door meeting, saying, “We are seeking with you solutions to the most acute crises.”

ISIS, al Qaeda are ‘winning’: Study i Dec 07 The U.S. should engage in a dramatic revamping of the post-9/11 global war on terror, according to a new study published Monday in Washington that says major gains during recent years by both al Qaeda and the Islamic State in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and South Asia indicate the “extremists are no longer on the run and arguably are winning.”“Al Qaeda, in particular, has expanded its control and influence in the past few years, with affiliates and linked groups present in more than 20 countries,” states the study, authored by a team of nine high-level national security and counterterrorism analysts through the politically center-right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.

Dec 3, Cabinet ministers have warned in the aftermath of the first RAF Tornado bombing raids in Syria that it may take as long as two years to destroy Islamic State, saying it will require patience and persistence. A military breakthrough may first require diplomatic agreement on the formation of a new transitional government capable of uniting warring forces to drive Isis from northern Syria, government sources added.“We are going to need to be patient and persistent. This is going to take time. It is complex, it is difficult what we are asking our pilots to do, and our thoughts should be with them and their families,” David Cameron said.

The U.S. could use a breather to regroup and revisit strategies and tactics in its war against radical Islam. No, war is most definitely not a sport. It is a life-and-death struggle for survival, and that's why it is so important to reassess why and how we are losing so badly. The administration miscalculated nearly every situation in the battle against jihadists, largely because of feel-good politics that say the enemy will become a friend if only we extend a warm embrace. In every case – Yemen, Egypt, Libya and Syria – the U.S. sided with the wrong groups and further destabilized the Middle East and northern Africa. President Obama failed to support Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh in the 2011 Arab Spring uprising among al-Qaeda-linked rebels. The country has now a plunged into a ravaging civil war fought by Saudi Arabian and Iranian proxies. He and his advisers allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to remove longtime Egyptian President and U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak from power, even inviting members of the terrorist group to sit in the front row of his historic outreach speech to the Muslim world in Cairo.

The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.–Winston Churchill

CdW Intelligence to Rent of 16 03/05/2023

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In Libya, the U.S. trained, funded and supplied weapons to Islamist terror groups with American blood on their hands to depose dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who from 2003 to 2011 sided with the U.S. in the fight against jihadists.Syria may serve as the most dramatic example of where the U.S. armed and equipped a group that would develop into a JV team — as identified by Obama — to a varsity team, and now a professional team that controls great swaths of land and has established a caliphate in the Middle East. -- Commentary by Pete Hoekstra, who represented Michigan's second Congressional District from 1993 to 2011 in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The U.S. decision 12 years ago has provided the enemy with some of its best commanders and fighters. The Bush Administration tapped Paul Bremer to head the so-called Coalition Provisional Authority on May 11, 2003. Twelve days later, he issued an order wiping away the Iraqi military, with a pledge to build a new one from scratch, untainted by any ties to Saddam’s regime “When asked in 2006 by his biographer…about the decision, Bush replied ‘Well, the policy was to keep the army intact. Didn’t happen’.”

Over the past year, ISIS has seized hundreds of U.S.-built Iraqi military vehicles given to Baghdad by the U.S. government. But history shows that the U.S., beyond providing ISIS with war machines, also made a fateful decision that gave ISIS some of its best commanders and fighters.

The decision to dissolve the Iraqi army robbed Baghdad’s post-invasion military of some of its best commanders and troops. Combined with sectarian strains that persist 12 years later, it also drove many of the suddenly out-of-work Sunni warriors into alliances with a Sunni insurgency that would eventually mutate into ISIS. Many former Iraqi military officers and troops, trained under Saddam, have spent the last 12 years in Anbar Province battling both U.S. troops and Baghdad’s Shi’ite-dominated security forces, Pentagon officials say.

“Not reorganizing the army and police immediately were huge strategic mistakes,” said Jack Keane, a retired Army vice chief of staff and architect of the “surge” of 30,000 additional U.S. troops into Iraq in 2007. “We began to slowly put together a security force, but it took far too much time and that gave the insurgency an ability to start to rise.”

Anthony Zinni, a retired Marine general and chief of U.S. Central Command from 1997 to 2000, said keeping the Iraqi army intact was always part of U.S. strategy.

“The plan was that the army would be the foundation of rebuilding the Iraqi





military,” he says. “Many of the Sunnis who were chased out ended up on the other side and are probably ISIS fighters and leaders now.” One expert estimates that more than 25 of ISIS’s top 40 leaders once served in the Iraqi military.

General Ray Odierno, the Army chief of staff, says the U.S. could have weeded Saddam Hussein’s loyalists from the Iraqi army while keeping its structure, and the bulk of its forces, in place.

“We could have done a lot better job of sorting through that and keeping the Iraqi army together,” he told TIME on Thursday. “We struggled for years to try to put it back together again.”

Cees the US thinking today: U.S. policymakers in April 2015 appear to be returning to the position that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad represents the “least worst option in Syria” for American strategic interests. Assad is often compared to the Islamic State (ISIS) with the implication that Assad is the lesser of two evils. Senior administration officials including Secretary of State John Kerry signaled support for diplomatic negotiations with the regime in March 2015, rather than developing a committed strategy to remove Assad from power. American leaders’ ambivalence reflects the limitations of U.S. policy which attempts to treat Syria as the backdrop for a narrow counterterrorism problem rather than a comprehensive national security issue. This outlook is dangerously flawed. U.S. policymakers may be being captured by Bashar al-Assad’s own narrative. Assad’s political objective is to remain in power past the end of the Syrian war. However, the inability of regime forces to defeat the Syrian opposition decisively in battle has forced the regime to rhetorically embrace a negotiated solution to the conflict. The Syrian military





campaign has complemented such official statements by attempting to set conditions on the ground favorable to the regime’s negotiating position.Bashar al-Assad is neither a viable partner against the Islamic State (ISIS) nor the “least worst option” for U.S. national interests in Syria for three reasons. First, the Assad regime cannot control the territory that was Syria or win the Syrian war decisively. Second, the Assad regime is Iran’s strategic asset in Syria and Assad is beholden to Iran for keeping his military viable. Third, Assad’s brutal tactics and humanitarian abuses have accelerated the growth of jihadist groups regionally and globally.The Assad regime is not positioned to secure an outright military victory in 2015. These manpower limitations have led Assad to adopt a military strategy of an ‘army in all corners’ which involves the establishment and defense of remote regime outposts throughout Syria in order to pin the outer bounds of a contiguous post-war Syrian state. Assad likely hopes that this strategy will enable him to avoid decisive defeat while still outwardly claiming to control all of Syria, eventually translating into international political legitimacy. This approach may successfully prolong the staying power of President Assad, but it protracts violence and destruction throughout the country and allows jihadist groups to flourish. The passive posture maintained by Assad’s forces effectively cedes control over large swathes of countryside to ISIS, JN, and other Islamic extremist groups. - The current status quo trends in the Syrian Civil War are untenable for U.S. national interests. Allowing the Syrian regime to conduct its military campaign with impunity sows the seeds for generations of regional disorder to come and empowers the expansionist designs of the Iranian regime. The U.S. does possess additional cards that it could place on the table for resolving the Syrian conflict, including the imposition of a No Fly Zone over opposition-held areas or an expedited effort to train-and-equip Syrian opposition fighters alongside regional allies. If U.S. policymakers do not adopt a more forceful and focused approach to Syria, the only foreseeable outcome is a fragmented and failed Syrian state which menaces its neighbors and brutalizes its people

Could Iraq’s Baathists help in battle against Islamic State?N0V 2015, Despite intentions and plans to resuscitate the dissolved Baath Party in political and public life in several ways, the attempts of the United States, the regional





powers and the United Nations are facing obstacles. These include the division and bickering among the party’s wings, on the one hand, and the objections of the Shiite parties to the amendment of the Justice and Accountability Law, on the other hand, which uprooted the Baathists from government jobs and prevented their return to politics. An official at the National Reconciliation Committee of the Iraqi Council of Ministers told Al-Hayat on condition of anonymity, “Following the ongoing negotiations with top leaders of the dissolved Baath Party’s wings, these leaders expressed their readiness to recognize the political process and respect the applicable constitution, including the articles preventing the party's return to political life, and to fight the Islamic State (IS).”The official stated, “One of the prominent Baath leaders met with a third party in an Arab capital and informed him that the rules of procedure of the Baath Party allow the modification of the party’s categorization if necessary to continue to practice political action.”

The source revealed the existence of several issues that must be tackled to clear the name of this party, including dealing with judicial cases filed against a large group of its leaders and its members. He indicated that some proposed the issuance of a parliamentary or government decision to stop the prosecution against these [Baath] members while others proposed settling these cases through courts with a waiver by the litigating parties of the right to file a civil action in addition to the settlement of the de-Baathification cases.He pointed out that “negotiations lasted more than a year, and one of the objectives was determining [who were] the members objecting to the political process for personal gains and representing only themselves and those who control their popular bases and use their influence on the ground in order to determine their capacity to recruit or neutralize IS suitable environments in several usurped Sunni cities.”

Regarding the conferences held in several capitals in 2015, he said, “These conferences provided a great service for those calling for the reconciliation from among Iraqis, Arabs or foreigners. Our friends told us that their impressions of the existence of an opportunist group whose inclination is far from the national interest has been consolidated.”The source continued, “It appeared from the course of events of the recent Doha conference that disputes among the participants were significant to the point that one of our attending foreign friends told us that they (the participants) — throughout the days of the meeting — were divided into three parties, and all efforts including Qatar’s efforts failed in bringing them together in a single session. The situation reached the point of withdrawal of the Association of Muslim Scholars from the conference.” He continued, “Our friends had the impression that this conference was only held for businessmen.”

Within the scope of attempts by the US and regional parties to unite forces opposing the political process forces, led by the dissolved Baath Party, information confirmed that the Tanzania conference that followed the Doha Conference consecrated the division and alienation between the party’s wings. Abu Wissam al-Jashaami, a leader in Izzat al-Douri wing, told al-Hayat, “The party managed to keep away Mohammed Younis al-Ahmed (a Baathist wing leader known for refusing Douri policies) from the conference and to bring in a representative of the Army of the Men of the Naqshbandi Order.”

A senior leader in the General Command of the Armed Forces-Iraqi Army, which is a Sunni armed faction affiliated with the wing of Al-Ahmad, told al-Hayat, “The military council that participated in the Doha conference, through the team of Lt. Gen. Sabah al-Ojaili and Maj. Gen. Najem Abdullah Zahwan al-Ojaili, represents the Association of Muslim Scholars headed by Muthana Harith al-Dhari and not the General





Military Council.” He accused the team of Lt. Gen. Abdul-Jawad Zanon and the team of Lt. Gen. Sabah Alwan of having sold their country cheap. He also blamed al-Dhari and the Baath wing of Izzat al-Douri and Abdul Samad al-Gherairy (a senior leader with Douri) for being responsible for the destruction and occupation of the country and for turning it into a stronghold of Zionists and all Arabs who do not wish Iraq well. The leader said, “The al-Douri wing will never return to power.”

The group threatened “the Islamic Party, which it considered the representative of the Muslim Brotherhood and the oil sheikhs, notably Ali Hatem and Ali al-Dabbash, representing the Muslim army that only exists in Qatar. The majority of members pledged allegiance to IS and other groups.” The group said that “the former Iraqi army that fought the occupier will fight its agents represented by their meager entities.”

Mohammed Madlool, legal consultant for the Accountability and Justice Commission, told Al-Hayat that “there are ongoing talks aimed at settling the Baathist issue between the commission and the government.” He explained that “amendments have been made to the commission law that was submitted to the government for approval and referral to parliament.”

Some leaks indicate that the proposed amendments to the Accountability and Justice Law constitute a great opportunity for the government and the political forces to end this thorny issue.These amendments include a proposal to change the text of Article 6, which stipulates taking severe actions against senior Baath members serving as state employees. According to the amendments, these would only have “their service ended if they are branch members and will be referred to retirement in compliance with the Service and Retirement Act in force. Meanwhile, all former division members in the Baath Party occupying special grades (director general, an equivalent or higher position) will be referred to retirement. The security personnel convicted of suppressing the Iraqi people under imperative judicial decisions shall be referred to retirement in compliance with the Service and Retirement Act.”

The new amendments deprive “volunteers in the Fedayeen Saddam apparatus of any pension rights with the exception of military soldiers and staff who were transferred to the said apparatus based on orders issued by a higher authority.”These amendments allow “all staff members who do not occupy special grades in the Baath party to return to their departments and pursue their jobs or be referred to retirement depending on their will, in compliance with the Service and Retirement Act.” This was restricted to group members only.

According to the amendments, “division members shall be banned from keeping their jobs in the three presidential bodies, the Supreme Judicial Council, the ministries, the security agencies and the foreign and finance ministries.” Those who belong to these departments will be transferred to other departments, and no pension or grant shall be paid to those who joined the Baath Party after March 20, 2003.The amendments revoke a clause stipulating that “the rights contained in the previous paragraphs shall not be granted to people who took part, when proven by the judiciary, in crimes against the Iraqi people, or people who enriched themselves at the expense of public money.”In response to these amendments, Shiite forces have shown some objections as former MP Taha Dereh Saadi described in a statement to Al-Hayat the amendments as “a US reward granted to Baathists for the blood that they shed, be it directly or indirectly, on Iraqi territory before and after April 2004.” He believed that “the amendments will face great difficulty in parliament due to objections on the part of Shiite blocs that occupy more





than two-thirds of the seats.”It should be noted that a number of senior Baath Party leaders mentioned in the 55-

member-list [of most-wanted Iraqis] are still at large. These include Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, vice chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council and north region commander, Hani Abd al-Latif Tilfah — nephew of former Minister of Defense Adnan [Khayr Allah], Saddam [Hussein]’s cousin — and director of special forces.

Also wanted are his brother Rafik Abd al-Latif Tilfah, director of the general security service, Sayf al-Din Fulayyih Hassan, chief of staff of the Republican Guard forces, Tahir Jalil Habbush, director of the intelligence service, Rukan Razuki Abdul Ghafar Sulayman al-Majid, chief of tribal affairs in Saddam's office, Yahya Abdullah al-Aboudi, Baath Party chairman in the province of Basra, Nayif Shindakh Thamir, former head of the Baath Party in Salahuddin province, Rashid Taan Kazim, Baath Party chairman in Anbar province and Khamis Sirhan al-Muhammad, Baath Party chairman in Karbala.Add to these a number of members against whom arrest warrants were issued on terrorism charges, including Mohammed Younis al-Ahmed, leader of the second-largest wing in the dissolved Baath Party.

Cees Comments: As the Islamic State continues its march through Syria and Iraq, the jihadist group is quietly utilizing a network of former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party to help militarize a fighting force that has effectively erased the border between both nations and left roughly 6 million people under its rule.The extent of this seemingly mismatched alliance is detailed in a new report by the New York-based intelligence firm, The Soufan Group. Despite a deep philosophical divide between ISIS and the Baath Party, the two sides have found “sufficient coincidence of interest to overcome any ideological disagreement,” the analysis, which will be released on Wednesday, found.This “marriage of convenience,” as the report’s author, Richard Barrett describes it, can be seen throughout the ISIS hierarchy. The current head of the group’s military council, for example, is believed to be Abu Ahmad al Alwani, an ex-member of Saddam Hussein’s army. So too was al Alwani’s predecessor. Another member of the military council, Abu Muhanad al Sweidawi, was once a lieutenant colonel in Hussein’s air defense intelligence,





but by early 2014 was heading ISIS operations in western Syria, according to the report.Similarly, two deputies to the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliph, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, are former Baathists: Abu Muslim al Afari al Turkmani is believed to have been a senior special forces officer and a member of military intelligence in Hussein’s army. Today, as Baghdadi’s number two, he supervises ISIS operations in Iraq. The second deputy, Abu Ali al Anbari oversees operations in Syria. Both men are also thought to serve on the Islamic State’s main governing body, known as the Shura Council. Even the appointment of al Baghdadi to lead the Islamic State of Iraq in 2010 is reported by an ISIS defector to have been engineered by a former Baathist: Haji Bakr, an ex-colonel from the Iraqi Revolutionary Guard. Bakr “initially attracted criticism from fellow members of the group for his lack of a proper beard and lax observance of other dictates of their religious practice,” the report notes, “But his organizational skills, knowledge of the Iraqi Army and network of fellow ex-Baathists made him a valuable resource.”

Dec 15, Turkey’s military deployment in Bashiqa, near Mosul, Iraq, on Dec. 3, provoked another self-imposed crisis for the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.This column reported two weeks ago that Turkey was more isolated than ever following its shooting down of a Russian fighter jet on Nov. 24. But once in a hole, it seems, Erdogan cannot stop digging. The military deployment of 400 troops and 25 tanks to a Turkish training camp for Iraqi and Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces in Bashiqa to battle the Islamic State (IS) was considered by Baghdad as beyond the scope of "training." Semih Idiz suggests that Turkey’s deployment was a likely attempt by Erdogan “to establish a Sunni sphere of influence in and around Mosul.” Metin Gurcan adds that in addition to seeking to “be among the key actors to decide on the future of Mosul,” Turkey is seeking to balance Iranian influence and “is particularly uneasy with the PKK [Kurdistan Workers Party] gains in Iraq and Syria. Turkey wants to militarily dominate the Shengal region, which has been a bridge between the PKK and the Kurdish nationalist Democratic Union





Party [PYD] in Syria, to cripple that link.”The Turkish action elicited a formal protest from the Iraqi government and

provoked a wave of denunciations and demonstrations led by Iraq’s Shiite political parties and militias, including a condemnation from Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq’s most influential Shiite cleric. Fehim Tastekin reports that “among Iraqi political circles, Turkey’s policies are held responsible for the fall of Mosul and empowerment of IS.”Erdogan termed Iraq’s complaint to the United Nations “not a sincere step,” adding that Turkey does not have the “luxury” to wait for the Iraqi central government on threats to Turkish national security.

Russia immediately and formally jumped to Iraq’s defense against what it termed Turkey’s “illegal intrusion” into Iraqi territory, accelerating the free fall in Ankara-Moscow ties over their policies in Syria. Kadri Gursel explains that Russia is succeeding in isolating Turkey. “As a prerequisite for the Russian intervention to achieve its goals, Moscow seems to have decided that Ankara should be deterred by any means necessary from maintaining its current Syria policy, and shaped its game plan around this political objective. Russia thus used crisis engineering to drag Turkey into a confrontation, which, at the end of the day, would be detrimental to Turkey,” writes Gursel.

The time may be coming for Turkey to make a choice between its "surface policy" of support for the global coalition against IS, and its “hidden policy" of taking out Assad, breaking the PKK and PYD, and promoting a fundamentalist Sunni Islam that matches the orientation of the Justice and Development Party (AKP). This "hidden policy," however, is hard to hide, and is more like an open secret. The miscalculations with regard to Russia and Iraq are increasingly alarming, with potentially devastating consequences. Such moves might, for example, push Russia and Iran to encourage direct or indirect actions where these Turkish forces start taking casualties. The Iraqi protests against Turkey could foreshadow a Hezbollah-type Iraqi resistance movement, extremely well armed and trained, merged somehow with the ever-ready forces linked to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Turkey has already drawn first blood with Russia. Meanwhile, Turkey makes its way to the agenda of the UN Security Council, not only for its recent actions in Iraq, but also for its possible violations of Security Council resolutions dealing with foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria. Gursel reminds us of what is now an open secret: “Without Turkish soil being available for the indiscriminate use of jihadists since 2011, the conditions that gave rise to IS would have not taken hold in northern Syria, and IS would have not grown strong enough to become a major security threat for the whole world.”There are reports that Turkey may be seeking to defuse the crisis by placing the training camp under the authority of the anti-IS coalition and seeking deeper cooperation with Iraq on border security and intelligence cooperation. If so, all to the good, as this column has been calling for such cooperation since January 2014. The burden, of course, is on Erdogan to finally step back from his not-so-hidden disastrous and sectarian approach to the region, and join the global coalition against IS without the caveats and feints that have characterized Turkish policy to date.





Turkey’s Kurds express "simmering anger" against stateTurkey’s intervention in Iraq comes in the context of an escalation in its war against the PKK. Irfan Aktan writes that the killing of Kurdish human rights lawyer Tahir Elci on Nov. 28, in the context of a massive government campaign targeting the PKK, “has stoked not only fear but also a simmering anger against the state in the region.”Aktan writes, “The toll from the clashes since July is indeed dramatic, though it varies according to sources. At least 14 districts have seen around-the-clock curfews, including Diyarbakir’s Sur district where Elci was gunned down. According to daily reports by the Turkish Human Rights Foundation, at least 67 civilians and members of the PKK’s youth branches have been killed in places under curfew. The Human Rights Association, for its part, tallies 63 summary executions, 43 unsolved killings as well as 10 civilians, 105 members of the security forces and 104 PKK militants killed in armed clashes in the southeast in the first nine months of the year. According to pro-government media, 925 people, mostly PKK members, were killed between July 22 and Oct. 14. Some 3,600 people were detained in security operations, including 864 who were put behind bars to await trial. The pro-government media do not shy away from revealing that the death toll includes 169 civilians, among them seven children.”Aktan concludes, “Given that government officials keep pledging an unrelenting security crackdown in the southeast, ‘democratic Turkey’ remains an unrealistic prospect for Turkey’s Kurds in the near future. Whether they come to see independence as a more realistic option in light of developments in Iraqi Kurdistan and Rojava (the term Kurds use to refer to western Kurdistan in Syria) will again depend on how the AKP government and the state treat them.”

Is Iraq facing a "long ethnic war"?Mohammed Salih writes, “The escalation of the conflict between Turkish security forces and the PKK has put the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of Iraq in a tough position, adding another potential element of instability to the difficult circumstances it is already grappling with. The Iraqi Kurds are faced with the threat posed by IS along a frontier of over 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) and are gripped with a serious economic crisis. The spillover of the PKK-Turkish conflict into Iraqi Kurdish territory presents another major challenge for the KRG.”

Barzani’s alignment with Turkey is unpopular with most Iraqi Kurds, who support the PKK and the Syrian PYD. It should not be surprising that there is little "grass-roots" support for Turkey in Iraqi Kurdistan. This all occurs in the midst of a political and economic crisis in Iraqi Kurdistan, including declining oil prices and no trust or traction in dealings with Baghdad. Denise Natali wrote in September, “As the financial crisis deepens, corruption continues, political legitimacy is ignored and calls for decentralization go unheeded, the KRG may have an administrative breakup, even in de-facto form.”Ethnic tensions seem to be approaching a full boil across Iraq. Mohammed A. Salih, reporting from Sinjar, Iraq, explains how “competing interests and agendas present a major challenge to the future stability of the Yazidi-dominated region.”

“Although senior Iraqi-Kurdish political and military leaders alleged the ground leg of the offensive was solely carried out by the peshmerga forces, the PKK, its allies and some smaller Yazidi groups such as the Ezidkhan Protection Force (HPE), played a significant role in forcing IS out of Sinjar,” he writes.

Salih explains, "When IS attacked Sinjar in 2014, peshmerga forces abandoned their positions leading to widespread atrocities against the religious minority by the jihadist organization. That disaster created a rift between certain segments of the Yazidi





community and the KDP [Kurdistan Democratic Party], led by Massoud Barzani, whose tenure as the president of the Kurdistan region is currently disputed by some Kurdish factions that say his term has expired. The KDP had tried to mend fences with the Yazidi community ever since, by assigning a more prominent role and authority to figures such as Qasim [Shesho]. There are still around a dozen Yazidi districts and villages south of Sinjar in IS hands, but conflicting visions between Kurdish and Yazidi groups as to how to administer post-IS Sinjar are well underway. During a victory press conference on Nov. 13 near the town of Sinjar, Barzani promised to exert efforts to turn Sinjar into a province inside Iraqi Kurdistan's territory.”

Adnan Abu Zeed reports on clashes between peshmerga and Arab and Turkmen forces in the multi-ethnic city of Tuz Khormato, still nominally under the control of the central government in what is known as the "disputed territories" in Iraq. The animosity in the disputed areas has spread to the Iraqi capital. Abu Zeed writes that “attacks were conducted Nov. 29 in Baghdad against the Kurds, as armed groups affiliated with Shiite factions coerced Kurdish families from their houses and asked them to travel toward the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, in the north of Iraq. The Kurds strongly condemned the action, which was followed by meetings between both sides in Baghdad mediated by Iran and parties within the Iraqi government. The result was a relative calm in Tuz Khormato.”

Abu Zeed speculates that distrust of Iraqi Kurds is rising and that “the Kurdish [KRG peshmerga] forces’ control of the disputed areas could spark a long ethnic war, most notably over Kirkuk, after IS is forced out of the Iraqi territory. Based on that, some people might be skeptical of the KRG's claim that it intends to end the fighting against IS. Some, in fact, suspect just the opposite: that the KRG is seeking to extend the fighting, to consolidate the Kurdish presence in the disputed areas, including Tuz Khormato.”Meanwhile, the House Foreign Affairs Committee passed a bill to directly arm the Iraqi Kurdish forces, requiring the United States to only "consult" with Baghdad. The legislation was slammed by the Iraqi Embassy in Washington as “unwise and unnecessary,” adding in a statement that the bill promotes “artificial divisions among Iraqis [that] can only distract from the struggle against our common enemy,” as reported by Julian Pecquet.

Russia rejects "terrorists" in Syrian oppositionThe Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Dec. 12, that it “cannot agree with an attempt made by the group that gathered in Riyadh to monopolise the right to speak on behalf of the entire Syrian opposition.”Russia rejects “terrorists of all stripes” participating in the Syrian political process. The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is tasked, per the Vienna declarations, with considering which Syrian armed groups are "terrorists" and therefore excluded from the negotiations. Russia considers Ahrar al-Sham and Jaish al-Fatah as worthy of consideration as potential terrorist entities. Moscow’s position is that UN Syria envoy Staffa de Mistura, not Saudi Arabia, should convene the Syrian parties, as stipulated in the Vienna accords.This column has registered concerns for nearly two years about a trend toward the mainstreaming of Salafi groups, including Ahrar al-Sham.Abu Mohammed al-Golani, the head of Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, condemned the Riyadh meeting, declaring it a “plot” that must be “foiled.” A question is whether those groups that collaborate with Jabhat al-Nusra “on the ground,” such as Jaish al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham, will cut their Jabhat al-Nusra ties, or succumb to Jabhat al-Nusra’s pressure to resist political negotiations, or perhaps split themselves into factions. There is also the possibility that the Saudi initiative could lead to an open war between IS





and Jabhat al-Nusra on the one hand, and the other factions that participated in the Saudi meeting on the other.

15 IS suicide car bombs targetting Iraq forces 'repelled'Dec 15, A wave of 15 suicide car bomb attacks by the Islamic State group (IS) against Iraqi security forces was repelled east of the flashpoint city of Ramadi Tuesday with limited casualties, officials said. The onslaught was the latest in a series of attacks by jihadists defending positions in Ramadi, which Iraqi forces, backed by US-led coalition air strikes, are trying to retake.

"Aircraft of the international coalition and Iraqi ground forces... repelled a violent attack from Daesh," police Captain Ahmed al-Dulaimi said, using an Arab acronym for IS.He said 15 cars driven by suicide bombers from central Ramadi towards Husaybah were destroyed.Dulaimi said Iraqi forces controlled the area attacked but that two members of the Anbar police died defending it. Ibrahim al-Fahdawi, the head of the security commission in the local Khaldiya council, said six local policemen were also wounded.He said several of the explosives-packed cars were stopped with Russian-made Kornet guided missiles. Last week, forces led by Iraq's elite counter-terrorism service retook a southwestern neighbourhood of Ramadi, of which IS had taken full control in mid-May.The offensive marked a significant step in long-delayed efforts to recapture the city, around 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of Baghdad and capital of the vast province of Anbar. Truck bombs loaded with up to 10 tonnes of explosives and driven by suicide attackers were a key weapon in IS's capture of Ramadi.Analysts have described the vehicle-borne explosive devices as the jihadist group's "air force".Since retaking the neighbourhood of Tameem and other positions last week, Iraqi forces have been mostly consolidating their gains and planning the next offensive.

Nov 4, Iran’s increasing military involvement in Syria to sustain President Bashar Assad’s regime is costing more and more casualties and top commanders of the elite Revolutionary Guards force have been charged with mutiny and treason for refusing orders to fight there, a pan-Arab daily newspaper reported on Wednesday. A source quoted by the London-based Asharq al-Awsat daily said several Revolutionary Guard generals from Ahvaz province which has a significant Arab population, have chosen to retire or go into business rather than fight in Syria. An official investigation has been launched into the large numbers of generals from that region suddenly retiring from service, the source told the paper, which backs Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia, a rival of Iran’s Shiite regime.

Regards Cees ***Superbad: ISIS & Al Qaeda Joining Forces Jan 2015, The Paris attacks carry hints that the world’s two most fearsome terrorist organizations are cooperating. The situation on the ground in Syria makes that even more apparent.ISTANBUL — For a year now, there





has been a civil war within the civil war in Syria, one that pitted jihadi against jihadi, al Qaeda against the upstart group that calls itself Islamic State run by the self-proclaimed “caliph” known as Abu Bakr al Baghdadi.One week ago, all that seemed to be turned on its head during the bloody terror attacks around Paris. Two men who slaughtered journalists at the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo claimed they owed their allegiance, and were assigned their mission, by the most militant heirs of Osama bin Laden: the Yemen-based leaders of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). But a third killer, who murdered a policewoman and then four Jewish shoppers in a kosher grocery, and who claimed he “synchronized” his attacks with the others after helping them fund their operations, announced he owed his allegiance to Islamic State, widely known as ISIS.Do the Paris attacks signal some sort of rapprochement or coordination between the two bitterly opposed branches of the same jihadi lineage? Could they augur a new wave of attacks throughout Europe or, indeed, the West?On Thursday night, a series of counterterror raids in Belgium targeting fighters returning to Europe from Syria seemed a further confirmation of the risks ahead. Two suspects were killed and one wounded in a shootout in the normally placid little Belgian town of Verviers.Intelligence analysts in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States are searching for answers in the various communiqués issued since the Paris attacks, including an 11-minute video from AQAP released Wednesday that claimed responsibility for the murder of the cartoonists as revenge for their caricatures of Muhammad. But the delphic declarations of the Paris murderers themselves, who had worked together long before ISIS existed, probably are not clear indicators of a broader reconciliation among al Qaeda and ISIS.What’s much more important is what’s happening on the ground in Syria, and there, to borrow a phrase or two from the business pages, the attempt by ISIS to stage a hostile takeover of the global jihad movement and squeeze out al Qaeda seems to have slowed. And while it may be far too early to talk about a merger, the two groups have begun talking.So, the AQAP video claiming credit for the Charlie Hebdo attack is studiously diplomatic. It embraces the slaughter carried out by the brothers Chérif and Saïd Kouachi, but distances itself from the murders committed at the kosher grocery by ISIS-affiliated Amédy Coulibaly. These were a “coincidence,” says the AQAP leader in the video, who nonetheless calls Coulibaly a “brother.”A Syria-based Salafi cleric with links to both ISIS and al Qaeda tells The Daily Beast that this moderate, fraternal language is significant. He points out that only a few weeks ago al Qaeda luminaries were calling anyone associated with ISIS khawarij, meaning deviant Muslims serving an anti-Islamic agenda.For most of 2014, fighters from al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra, joined moderate and Islamist Syrian rebels in battling ISIS. Al Qaeda-aligned theologians denounced al Baghdadi’s theological presumption in declaring himself the “caliph” and demanding fealty from all Muslims everywhere. ISIS relentlessly sought to cajole affiliates like AQAP to break from al Qaeda and coaxed non-aligned jihadis to swear allegiance to al Baghdadi. The most significant to date to align with ISIS being the largest Egyptian jihad group, Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis (Champions of Jerusalem), which renamed itself the caliphate’s Sinai Province. Even today, some analysts interpret the AQAP video claiming credit for the attack on Charlie Hebdo as an example of continuing jihadi rivalry rather than as evidence of softening competition between the archrivals. According to intelligence analyst Bruce Riedel of the Washington-based think tank





Brookings Institution, “the most interesting part of the video is the prominence it gives to al Qaeda’s emir, Ayman al Zawahiri, whose orders it says led to the ‘implementation’ of the blessed Battle of Paris.” Riedel notes that by singling out Zawahiri’s leadership, AQAP “implicitly snubs Abu Bakr al Baghdadi’s claims to be the caliph of the global jihad.”But in recent weeks there have been signs of a mood shift between the rival jihadis amid efforts to broker a rapprochement championed by some al Qaeda veterans linked to AQAP. And there has been evidence of increasing operational collaboration in Syria with recruiters and people smugglers working for both groups at the same time. Al Nusra and ISIS-aligned fighters have cooperated in the Qualamoun, the mountainous region along the Lebanese-Syrian border, where both groups have been battling Hezbollah, the radical Lebanese Shia movement supporting the government of President Bashar al-Assad.Last November, the Khorasan network of al Qaeda veterans in northern Syria—they were targeted in two waves of U.S. airstrikes last autumn—brokered a meeting between al Nusra leaders and ISIS, according to senior members of other rebel factions. Al Nusra’s overall commander, Abu Mohammad al-Julani, attended the meeting.According to the rebel sources, Khorasan was an outlier on the rapprochement front, seeing a role for itself in securing an end to the internal conflict between the archrivals. The Khorasan veterans have close ties to AQAP’s overall leader, Nasser al-Wuhayshi, an authoritative figure across al Qaeda, who was appointed by Zawahiri in 2013 as his deputy and is considered his likely successor. Results became evident on the ground in northern Syria soon after the November meeting as a detachment of ISIS fighters joined al Nusra in an offensive on two rebel militias favored by Washington.Since then, ISIS fighters have avoided interfering with al Nusra’s self-declared emirate in Idlib. And, noticeably, the al Qaeda affiliate has adopted harsher governance tactics in territory it controls in northern Syria, including more beheadings that mirror the barbarity ISIS employs. One Islamist rebel, Muhammad al-Amin, complained in a Facebook statement recently that “moderates” in al Nusra had been sidelined as the group’s leadership focused on prioritizing an ISIS-like emirate and appeared intent on imitating al-Baghdadi. This convergence in governing style may have helped the Khorasan veterans pull off last November’s meeting between rivals.Current and former U.S. officials who are trying to piece together a full picture of the Paris terror attacks remain highly skeptical that archrivals ISIS and al Qaeda can bury the hatchet completely and develop serious collaboration—and they say they are sure a merger can’t take place for as long as al Baghdadi insists he is a caliph and thus the boss of all Muslims.But a Mideast-based French intelligence official says accepting the AQAP claims that it was just “coincidence” that the Kouachi and Coulibaly attacks took place at the same time “stretches credulity.” “The Kouachis and Coulibaly were recruited by the same 19th arrondissement cell and are part of the same terror network; Coulibaly’s wife and Chérif’s wife called each other 500 times and those conversations are likely to have included their husbands—and at no time do they jointly plan or even mention to each other what they are going to do?” That is unbelievable. Aside from the meeting AQAP elements brokered last November in northern Syria, the leaders of the al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen have been careful to offer the prospect of jihadi unity while rebuking publicly al Baghdadi for claiming leadership of the global jihadi movement. One of AQAP’s top clerics, Harith bin Ghazi al-Nadhari, mixed condemnation and conciliation in a video posted by the group last year. He criticized ISIS for claiming Yemen for its caliphate while denouncing the U.S.-led airstrikes on the Islamic State, saying, “Their blood is our blood, and their





wounds are in our hearts, and supporting them is a duty upon us.”Whatever their role in the Paris slaughter, the two most fearsome terrorist organizations in the world are trying to find common interests and pursue a common cause: the fight against the West.

ISIS, al Qaeda are ‘winning’: Study Dec 07 The U.S. should engage in a dramatic revamping of the post-9/11 global war on terror, according to a new study published Monday in Washington that says major gains during recent years by both al Qaeda and the Islamic State in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and South Asia indicate the “extremists are no longer on the run and arguably are winning.”“Al Qaeda, in particular, has expanded its control and influence in the past few years, with affiliates and linked groups present in more than 20 countries,” states the study, authored by a team of nine high-level national security and counterterrorism analysts through the politically center-right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.




i http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/dec/7/isis-al-qaeda-are-winning-study/

al-qaida chief ayman al-zawahiri the coordinator 2015 part 19-118-caliphate-vs-regular armies-22

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