al-qaida chief ayman al-zawahiri the coordinator 2017 part 19-138-caliphate- the state of...

CdW Intelligence to Rent In Confidence

Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2017 Part 19-138-Caliphate- The State of al-Qaida-45-Our Performance-65

“Out of every vacuum this war has created, it is al-Qaida and ultimately its patrons which have risen stronger still.”

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula women engaged U.S. Navy Seals during a Saturday raid in Yemen, a first for the terrorist group.

AQ leader Ayman al-Zawahiri called in August 2016 for Iraqi Sunnis to resume a “long guerrilla warfare” and urged AQ in Syria to support the rebuilding process in Iraq, as we noted in that essay.

There are early indicators that AQ is present in Iraq and may be establishing ties with insurgent groups.

Saudi Arabia is funneling arms shipments to Sunni tribes in Anbar in anticipation of a showdown with the Shi’a Popular Mobilization units, according to a CENTCOM official in December 2016.

Turkey's support of AQ and other Sunni opposition groups in the region, particularly in Syria, may allow or directly facilitate AQ’s return to Iraq, likely by way of Mosul.

AQ is likely to build upon or co-opt already present insurgent groups. AQ did so in Iraq between 2004 and 2006, and in Syria from 2011 to today. It may try to unify disparate Iraqi insurgent groups, as it did in 2006 under the Islamic State of Iraq. It has likewise been trying to unite groups in contemporary Syria by establishing military councils and merging with local groups.AQ’s efforts to rebuild its networks in Iraq will occur at a local level. We should expect AQ to interfere in local politics, especially as provincial and parliamentary elections approach in 2018. It may try to establish an assassination campaign against local politicians or tribal leaders, undermine the electoral process, or portray it as an ineffective method to address grievances. AQ and Sunni insurgents are likely to attack campaign rallies and voting stations. Changes in Sunni tribal relations and alliances may also indicate that AQ is leveraging its tribal connections and know-how to revive networks and increase its position. It may try to play tribes against each other, as it did in al-Qaim in 2007, or it may use inter-tribal disputes, such as the ongoing rivalry within the dominant Jubur tribe in northern Iraq, to eliminate resistance.

ISW has established named areas of interest (NAIs) in places where AQ had significant networks in 2007 to watch for the indicators above and anomalous activity. These areas will likely spawn a Sunni insurgency even without AQ because they face sectarian or ethnic tensions, have populations that are under-serviced by the Iraqi government, or have ideological propensities to support Salafi-jihadi movements.

The Caucasus Emirate branch Vilayat Kabarda, Balkaria, and Karachay (KBK) recently released a video in which fighters from the Caucasus Emirate’s (CE) wing in Syria are shown partaking in battles in northwestern Syria. The Caucasus Emirate, an al Qaeda-linked organization, has had at least two official representative groups inside Syria fighting alongside al Qaeda’s forces.

Jihadist groups now stand ascendant among the coalition battling Assad. JFS in particular has spent years ensuring its indispensability to the antiregime effort. Those opposing the JFS are unlikely to succeed in any open war against it.

BEIRUT (AP 14 Feb ) — Clashes between two extremist factions in northwestern Syria left dozens of fighters dead on both sides and raised fears of more deadly violence between groups battling President Bashar Assad's troops ahead of U.N.-brokered peace talks, activists and insurgents

1The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see. –Winston ChurchillCees de Waart: CdW Intelligence to Rent of 17

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said Tuesday.The fighting between the al-Qaida-led coalition known as the Levant Liberation Committee and the extremist Jund al-Aqsa group left nearly 70 fighters dead in some of the deadliest clashes between insurgents in years, an opposition monitoring group and a rebel commander said.The fighting centered in areas where the central province of Hama and the northwestern province of Idlib meet, they said. A Syrian rebel commander speaking from Turkey said Jund al-Aqsa has proven recently that it is a branch of the Islamic State group that is the arch-rival of al-Qaida's Fatah al-Sham Front. The commander, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, said Jund al-Aqsa fighters stormed several areas controlled by the Levant Liberation Committee and killed some of its members triggering intense fighting as of Monday. "There is no solution but to uproot Jund al-Aqsa," the commander said by telephone. Abdul-Rahim Attoun, a senior al-Qaida religious official in Syria, blamed in an audio released late Monday Jund al-Aqsa for being a group that paid allegiance to IS. He added that Jund al-Aqsa was blocking roads used by the Levant Liberation Committee to attack government forces.A Jund al-Aqsa commander who goes by the name of Karmo told The Associated Press that the fighting was triggered by Levant Liberation Committee attacks on Jund al-Aqsa positions.

CT: Update and Assessment: February 8, 2017 Key Takeaways:U.S. administration officials have signaled that the U.S. may take a more aggressive stance against the al Houthis in Yemen to counter Iranian influence. An aggressive position against the al Houthi movement, which is not an Iranian proxy, would further isolate the al Houthis and drive them further into Iran’s orbit. U.S. intervention against the al Houthis would strengthen the Saudi-led coalition and its preferred government in Yemen, led by internationally recognized President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi. The Hadi government has struggled to gain legitimacy even in territory in southern Yemen under its control. Former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, the al Houthis’ current partner, possesses significant political capital, military capabilities, and public support. [Read CTP Research Manager Katherine Zimmerman’s U.S. policy recommendations to counter Iran in Yemen. Stay up-to-date on Yemen


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with the latest Yemen Crisis Situation Report.] Al Shabaab may be expanding terrain under its control, using the sanctuary that it retained in south-central Somalia to support operations. Predicted food shortages may make conditions more permissive for al Shabaab. Somalia is suffering from a severe drought that may cause widespread hunger on par with the 2010-2011 famine, which killed more than 250,000 people. The Somali government is ill-prepared to address a crisis of this magnitude. An insufficient aid response from the government would allow al Shabaab to position itself as a legitimate source of relief and governance. External factors, including the likely expulsion of Somali refugees from Kenya before Kenyan general elections, may exacerbate the crisis in Somalia. [Read CTP’s assessment of al Shabaab’s territorial gains in central Somalia in late 2016.]

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) may be facilitating the growth of a Salafi-jihadi insurgency within the Fulani ethnic group across borders in the Sahel region. The Macina Liberation Front (MLF), an ethnically Fulani AQIM-associated group, is challenging the state in central Mali by forcing secular schools to remain closed in Mopti region. Ansar al Islam, a related Salafi-jihadi Fulani group, is pursuing a similar campaign in Burkina Faso. A Fulani insurgency is also challenging the Nigerian state, though Salafi-jihadi organizations have not yet infiltrated this movement. AQIM and other Salafi-jihadi groups may use ties into the Fulani community to expand their area of operations in the Sahel. AQIM has tapped into Tuareg networks to advance its objectives in West Africa in the past. [Read more on AQIM’s use of ethnic networks in “Warning from the Sahel: Al Qaeda’s Resurgent Threat.”]

31 Jan, Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula women engaged U.S. Navy Seals during a Saturday raid in Yemen, a first for the terrorist group. Women at the site appeared trained for a raid, Pentagon


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Spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis told reporters Monday. “The [female fighters] ran to pre-established positions as if they’d trained to be ready and trained to be combatants and engage with us. So, some of the enemy killed in combat are in fact female,” he elaborated. Davis clarified the use of women in combat by the terrorist group was highly “unusual,” adding that “as far as my data shows, there are no instances of women having an operational role in AQAP.” The use of women in combat by an Islamic extremist group against the all-male Navy SEAL team 6 was particularly ironic.

A shift in U.S. policy against the al Houthis as part of a broader U.S. effort to counter Iran in the region may push the al Houthi-Saleh faction closer to Iran and further entangle the Yemeni civil war in regional conflicts. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is increasingly operating in southern Yemen as it expands its support base.The U.S. may take direct action against the al Houthis in Yemen as part of a regional strategy to counter Iranian influence. AQAP is regaining freedom of movement in southern Yemen. AQAP operates in a permissive environment in central and southern Yemen. The continuation of Yemen’s civil war and its increasing interactions with regional conflict, such as the Iranian-Saudi conflict, will perpetuate conditions that enable AQAP to expand its support base and that encourage the growth of Iranian influence within the al Houthi movement. The incorporation of a leading al Houthi faction into the Iranian network probably facilitates the transfer of asymmetrical capabilities to Yemen and permits this faction to consolidate control over the movement. The U.S. must use its leverage over the Saudi-led coalition to pursue a negotiated political solution.

Pakistan, a country with an unprecedented youth bulge, could be a massive recruitment pool for ISIS. Several Islamist terrorist organizations have already taken advantage of the country’s fragile situation. The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) has established a base in Pakistan. ISIS calls this Walayat-e-Khurasan and has considerably stepped up efforts to broaden its network there. However, the terrorism-ravaged and embattled Pakistani state is in no mood to allow another terrorist presence. The aim of this article is to give a bird’s eye view of the widening network of ISIS in Pakistan, analyze the current situation, and look at how the Pakistani state endeavors to root it out. Several Islamist terrorist organizations have already taken advantage of the country’s fragile situation. Al-Qaeda has been the principal beneficiary, as thousands of its militants flocked to its training camps in bordering Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001. Despite language and cultural barriers, a number of Pakistani Islamist terrorist organizations, such as Harkat al Jihad-e-Islami, Harkat al Mujahedeen, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), Jaish-e-Mohammad, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) have worked under al-Qaeda’s tutelage since 2001.With a population of 180 million, nuclear assets, close proximity to Afghanistan, and poor economic conditions, Pakistan is an attractive place for ISIS – evidenced most clearly by the exponential growth of ISIS cells in Pakistan in the past two years. There are now over 100 Islamist terrorist organizations listed by the Pakistani government.

Feb. 13 (Xinhua) -- The Iraqi warplanes struck a house where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the top leader of Islamic State (IS) group, was said to be holding a meeting with senior IS commanders in Iraq's western province of Anbar, killing some 13 of them with no word for the fate of Baghdadi himself, the Iraqi military said on Monday.The Iraqi intelligence tracked the movement of Baghdadi's convoy of three-vehicles from neighboring Syria to a village near the town of Qaim, on the border between Iraq and Syria, where the meeting was believed to be held at a house in an orchard, the Joint Operations Command (JOC) said in a statement.


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Baghdadi's presence in western Iraq was to meet the Iraqi and foreign senior IS commanders to discuss the collapse of the terrorist group in the eastern side of the city of Mosul in northern Iraq, and to choose his successor in case being killed, according to the statement.

Regards Cees***

"If Russia is cozying up to the Taliban — and that's a kind word — if they are giving equipment that we have some evidence that the Taliban is getting ... and other things that we can't mention in this unclassified setting? And the Taliban is also associated with al-Qaida? Therefore Russia indirectly is helping al-Qaida in Afghanistan," said Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.

Representative Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) has a suggestion for the US Congress: Stop arming terrorists. It seems like a pretty reasonable suggestion, but the US Congress is having none of it. Instead, they’ve decided to launch of a series of increasingly shrill and hysterical attacks on her for meeting with the Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, during her fact-finding trip to Damascus and Aleppo.

BEIRUT- Syrian President Bashar al Assad said the European Union won't be able to participate in the country's reconstruction efforts because "they supported the terrorists in the country since the beginning", speaking in an interview with Belgian journalists, according to state news agency Sana. Assad said the EU had supported "the terrorists" by backing different groups, including the so-called "moderates" and also "supported the al-Nusra Front and ISIS since the beginning". "You can't destroy and rebuild at the same time," Assad said.

Breitbart News Daily, White House Deputy Assistant Dr. Sebastian Gorka said the charge leveled by such critics as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer that terrorists will use President Trump’s immigration order as a recruiting tool was “absolutely absurd.”“The idea that any executive order, any government document, lessens or increases the hatred of the Islamist jihadis for America simply means you do not understand the threat,” he contended. “We are still infidels, whoever the president is, and whatever executive orders are signed. The idea that suddenly ISIS will be nice to us, if we behave a certain way – that makes our government hostage to these maniacs, and that will never happen.”

Strange Bedfellows: US, Saudi, Al-Qaida & ISIS Interests Align In War On YemenThe people of Yemen continue to suffer amid a humanitarian catastrophe created by foreign and domestic forces alike -- almost all of whom stand to profit as long as war and chaos have a hold on the impoverished country.By Catherine Shakdam | January 23, 2017LONDON — (Analysis) As Yemen remains entrenched in the protracted, multi-fronted military conflict led by Saudi Arabia and funded by the United States, socio-political dynamics and economic realities have evolved according to the needs of competing factions — often to the detriment of civilian populations.Since the Saudi-led coalition began dropping bombs on Yemen on March 25, 2015, 3.2 million Yemenis have been displaced and more than half of the country is suffering from food insecurity and malnutrition.As of August, at least 10,000 civilians have been killed — that’s 13 civilians a day.The war has taken a particularly devastating toll on children. With hundreds of thousands of schools closed, 2 million school-age Yemenis are being denied an education. In its most recent briefing on


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Yemen, “Struggling to Survive: Stories from Yemen’s collapsing health system,” Save the Children reported that 14.8 million people, 55 percent of whom are children, are “currently deprived of access to even the most basic health care.”Emphasizing the human costs of war and the systematic targeting of vital civilian infrastructure, the children’s rights NGO warned:“Yemen is in the grip of the largest humanitarian catastrophe in the world right now. 18.7 million people — including 10 million children — are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance or protections — that’s more than one third of the entire population.”Edward Santiago, Save the Children’s Yemen director, noted:“Even before the war tens of thousands of Yemeni children were dying of preventable causes. But now, the situation is much worse and an estimated 1,000 children are dying every week from preventable killers like diarrhoea, malnutrition and respiratory tract infections.”Indeed, Yemen is a bleeding wound in the region, abandoned and shunned by the powers which profit most from the war waged by the Saudi-led coalition — namely, the United States and United Kingdom.

Double Standards by Carlos Latuff.While the war on Yemen has brought a litany of suffering to Yemenis, it has also given rise to a flourishing black market. This shadow economy is tied up and firmly embedded in the terrorism inspired by Wahhabism, the dominant faith of Saudi Arabia for more than two centuries and the cornerstone of the violent jihadist movement embodied by al-Qaida and Daesh (an Arabic acronym for the terrorist group known as ISIS or ISIL in the West). It’s the nexus of terrorism which calls for the annihilation of all those who oppose its diktat.Al-Qaida on the Arabian Peninsula, an al-Qaida offshoot of militant extremists known as Ansar al-Sharia in Yemen, has increasingly adopted the structure and behaviors laid out in Syria and Iraq by Daesh. Like so many Wahhabi-inspired terror groups, AQAP has reportedly taken its cues from Saudi Arabia, serving as a proxy of war for the kingdom and its foreign patrons.And with a weapons industry and political blank check that feed the Saudi military complex, the U.S. corporate empire sits at the very core of such dynamics. Data gathered from the Congressional Research Service, Department of Defense Fiscal Year Series, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, and Defense Security Cooperation Agency, revealed that the U.S. sold an excess of $100 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia from 2009 to 2015, Bryan Schatz reported for Mother Jones in September.Often overlooked by the mainstream media is the economic agenda carried out by Riyadh against its impoverished neighbor. Beyond the frenzied bombing of a nation and the systematic targeting of its institutions and infrastructure, has sat a cold determination to allow terrorist forces to usurp Yemen’s resources and capital.The Saudi-led war on Yemen operates far beyond any military or geopolitical narrative. It’s steeped in breathing new life into the most inhumane of trades on which the Saudi economy depends: human


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trafficking, sexual exploitation, drugs and weapons smuggling, and Wahhabi terror financing.Yemen has long been earmarked for complete annihilation so that the Gulf kingdom can achieve these ends. “Behind the slaughtering of a people, Riyadh is really testing world powers’ patience and Western capitals’ propensity to rationalize genocide under such labels as ‘national security,’” Sheikh Shabbir Hassanally, a U.K.-based political analyst and commentator on Middle East affairs, told MintPress News.The war on Yemen has become a struggle for national survival against state actors like Saudi Arabia and non-state actors like Daesh and AQAP. In this new paradigm of asymmetrical warfare driven by a neo-imperialistic agenda, the grand Wahhabist kingdom of Saudi Arabia has worked to anchor its caliphate’s economic system deep within Arabia, establishing a new, violent form of hyper-capitalistic imperialism through heinous exploitation. ‘War … is a blessing for al-Qaida’With its territorial and national identity compromised by a rising narrative of sectarianism, tribalism, and regionalism, Yemen’s descent into socio-economic, political, and even sovereign instability has empowered radical elements within its borders. Groups like al-Qaida and Daesh have found an ever-expanding space in which to live and breed.Forced into a reactionary economy, Yemen’s resistance movement has had to withdraw behind enemy lines to find economic breathing space. From behind an iron curtain, the movement has staked its survival on the reinvention of its institutions outside the matrix of the global economy. Under siege by the Saudi-led coalition, Yemen was forced to break away and affirm its sovereign rights, as did Iran, Argentina, Cuba, and other nations targeted by imperialism’s onslaught.Yemen’s resistance movement, represented by Ansarullah, is a loose coalition of tribal leaders, clerics, and political parties united in the rejection of Saudi Arabia’s military interventionism. It’s an umbrella for groups including the Houthis, members of the General People’s Congress (the former ruling party) still loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, as well as a slew of tribes and activists. Like Yemen itself, the movement is socially, politically, and religiously diverse.Speaking through his office, Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, president of the Revolutionary Committee, which currently controls Yemen, told MintPress: “Out of every vacuum this war has created, it is al-Qaida and ultimately its patrons which have risen stronger still.”He continued:“Yemen’s war has become too much of a liability to regional stability for parties to still entertain the notion that further military entrenchment will generate positive results. War at this stage is a blessing for al-Qaida and those parties benefitting from the annihilation of Yemen’s national sovereignty. Such an eroding of Yemen’s nation-state could have terrible repercussions, since it could allow for the rise of another socio-political system – that of the Islamic Caliphate. Beyond all blame and culpability, Yemen’s biggest threat remains terror.”

A Map of Bab-el-Mandeb, the world’s primary oil route connecting the Red Sea to the Aiden Sea. (Wikimedia commons)Yemen sits on Bab-al-Mandeb, the world’s primary oil route, and its waterways offer openings to Africa, Europe, and Asia, so the country on the tip of the Arabian Peninsula cannot be allowed to further fall. While assigning blame and demanding accountability are important, sovereign restoration — economic, institutional, or social — is vital.Whether world powers have the courage to realize it or not, the Saudi leadership is attempting to institutionalize the caliphate’s black economy and breathe into existence an atrocious new financial network.


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Speaking to MintPress, Sheikh Shabbir Hassanally stressed: “Yemen’s run-in with terror today is more than an ideology, it is becoming an institutional reality hungering for sovereignty — there lies a danger too great for any of us to ignore.” “It is our ability to see through the muddied waters of imperialism and engineered terror which ultimately will determine whether we will defeat this new evil or fall under its yoke.”Hasan al-Sa’adi, an official with the former ruling party, the General People’s Congress, told MintPress:“While it has often been assumed that only the Houthi/Saleh complex, aka Yemen’s resistance movement, has dabbled into less than holistic activities to sustain their war efforts, careful investigating determined that while individuals within the resistance had a hand in the looting of Yemen’s sovereign economy, the resistance movement, as a whole, has proven loyal to its goal: freeing Yemen. As for those parties in league with Riyadh, their default setting has been criminality.”Further, a certain fluidity has been observed between self-proclaimed warring factions as far as financial interests are concerned. Where very clear lines may have existed in the early stages of the conflict (individuals, tribal entities, political factions, and coalition groups sat on very distinct sides), military and humanitarian needs and an imperious desire to generate money to overpower the opposition have often led opposing sides to negotiate “access” to resources.For example, weapons dealers based in southern Yemen, areas which are under Saudi occupation, have smuggled weapons, ammunition, diesel, and other supplies to northern Yemen via old tribal trading routes, thus betraying their alliance to resigned President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, Riyadh’s patsy in Yemen.While such activities betray immediate military interests, it appears the war has created a space too lucrative for any one party to ignore, except maybe those invested in peace. ‘Criminality has been a default setting for many of the parties involved’Yemen’s national economy suffered a series of crises and mismanagement well before the current chaos erupted. Yemen has not only been economically starved, its national currency been targeted so the country is unable to survive the Saudi-led, U.S.-backed war.War has been a driving factor in Yemen’s national impoverishment, but it’s certainly not the only factor. Political factions on all sides have greatly benefited from the chaos and instability generated by the conflict, notwithstanding a widespread lack of judicial accountability. In short, this chaos allowed an already grand degree of criminality to reach new heights, elevating embezzlement into an artform.No party can claim innocence in the race to control Yemen’s resources and institutions. Officials on all sides, at all levels, all across the country have much to answer for, as the Yemeni people have been held hostage by war capitalists and others for whom civilian interests are no matter of importance.War profiteers, both foreign and domestic, have graced all sides and played every narrative to ensure their paydays.More often than not, malfeasance and wrongdoing have overlapped and financial interests have aligned, making it more difficult to prosecute any single party. It would be morally and legally hypocritical to hold one party to certain standards and offer another immunity on account of politics. Ultimately, Yemenis will have to decide how justice should be served.When speaking about the crisis in Yemen, the media has focused its coverage on pitting former President Ali Abdullah Saleh and the Houthis against the renegade, twice-resigned, Saudi-backed


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President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who is described as the head of “the legitimate government.”However, Kim Sharif, a lawyer and activist heading Human Rights for Yemen, told MintPress that Hadi’s claim on power “remains subject to contention as per Yemen’s customary law, one needs to stress that criminality has been a default setting for many of the parties involved.”She further noted that if Yemen is to heal its broken institutions, closure needs to take place. But there can be no closure without some degree of justice. Yemen would need a grand political cleanse — the departure of the state, individuals, and entities who drove Yemen to its financial death — to begin anew on healthy footing.The northern governorates of Yemen have suffered under an unprecedented liquidity crisis that has been worsening since June, following calls by Hadi loyalists for the head offices of the Central Bank of Yemen to be moved in Aden. The move, which took place in September, ambitioned to starve Yemen’s currency market and cripple the Ansarullah resistance movement — including the Houthis, in particular.Hadi has so far escaped scrutiny, yet his financial dealings and those of his close associates demand close inspection. Often painted as a grand criminal among grand criminals, Hadi is said to have systematically dipped his hands into the proverbial cookie jars, leaving his people to starve in a landscape of fire and lead.A former Saleh man, Hadi is in the process of recreating his predecessor’s nepotist oligarchy and building himself a fortune from behind Riyadh’s shadow bank. All sides operate in the shadow economy, drain the national economyEven before Saudi Arabia declared war on Yemen in March of 2015, the Ansarullah movement was unable to sell Yemen’s oil due to a series of sabotage attacks and structural damage. And Yemen faced a security crisis posed by al-Qaida and AQAP well before the resistance assumed power over the capital, Sanaa, and by extension the running of the country.Hadi and his loyalists have benefited from this instability. Tribal sources told MintPress that Hadi has sold several Yemeni provinces to al-Qaida in exchange for cash since the Saudi-led bombing campaign started in March of 2015. His network has amassed a fortune on the black market, dealing in weapons, drugs, and other contraband. Speaking to MintPress, Abdullah Shaban, a high-ranking Houthi officer, confirmed these allegations. Cut off from the world oil market, the resistance turned to the shadow economy.Yemen has a natural right to resist foreign oppression, and true legitimacy can only be rooted in popular will — a concept adherents to the notion of American exceptionalism have been keen to reject so they could better claim to exercise it.While the resistance has syphoned millions of dollars out of the mainstream economy, it has also used state funds to run the country’s affairs — at least, as much as it could. The same cannot be said of Hadi, whose sole aim has been to exploit, loot, and disappear Yemen’s riches.Hasan al-Sa’adi, the official linked to the General People’s Congress, told MintPress that the Houthis and Saleh first looked abroad for funding for their efforts against Hadi. Both Russia and Iran were approached as early as March of last year, shortly before Riyadh moved in against Yemen. Despite some reports in mainstream media of a proxy war set-up involving Iran or Russia, there have been no indications that any deals were reached.Indeed, other than to offer political support, Iran and Russia have stayed out of the Yemeni theater. In the light of developments in Syria and Iraq it would be logical to assume that both powers would acknowledge it if they had any involvement in Yemen.In December of 2015, Gareth Porter, a historian and investigative journalist focusing on U.S. foreign policy, exposed this construct when he debunked Saudi Arabia’s war narrative and the concept of an


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Iranian proxy war in Yemen. He wrote in Truthout:“The allegation of Iranian arms shipments to the Houthis – an allegation that has often been mentioned in press coverage of the conflict but never proven – was reinforced by a report released last June by a panel of experts created by the UN Security Council: The report concluded that Iran had been shipping arms to the Houthi rebels in Yemen by sea since at least 2009. But an investigation of the two main allegations of such arms shipments made by the Yemeni government and cited by the expert panel shows that they were both crudely constructed ruses.” Forging alliances despite diverging agendasWith no hope for foreign help, Yemen’s resistance took steps to fix the country’s faltering economy.In August of 2015, Mohammed Ali al-Houthi announced a new tax of four Yemeni rials per liter on sales of all petroleum products. The tax immediately generated an estimated $237 million.By October of 2016, 20 liters (5.28 gallons) of gasoline sold for 3,600 rials (just over $14) through legitimate sources and for as much as 7,000 rials on the black market. And since October, Abdel-Malek al-Houthi, a Houthi leader, has overseen the fuel black market to ensure that all profits are directed to the war efforts.If the resistance has clearly played into illegal markets to generate income, the group has largely done so to sustain its war efforts against Saudi Arabia and allow for civilian life to return to some degree of normality under the humanitarian blockade. Suffocated under a punishing blockade, Yemen, which imports 90 percent of all of its food, has been starved so that Riyadh could win its colonial war.Though accused of looting and property damage, Yemen’s resistance movement is actually a model of restraint compared to Hadi’s cold capitalistic ambitions. Where the resistance has, for example, re-routed humanitarian aid toward resistance forces to feed the war efforts and allow for fair distribution in parts of northern Yemen made most vulnerable by famine, Hadi loyalists in Aden have committed grand treason.In the summer of 2015 residents in Aden complained that food aid was being sold to supermarkets with links to Hadi’s militias rather than distributed to the poor. Speaking to MintPress from Aden, Dr. Abdel-Mageed Kulaib said, “Whatever aid the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia sent to the seaport of Aden never actually made it, as it was requisitioned by the military under strict orders from Hadi’s high-ranking officers.”It would be wrong to look upon the Houthis and Saleh as more than an alliance forged out of political and military necessity. Despite their alliance, it’s important to note that the resistance movement and Saleh are pursuing very different agendas.Unlike Saleh, who has reverted to his default setting of corruption, the Houthis seek to fundamentally reform Yemen and restore political self-determination to the country. They also yearn for social justice — a basic human right the former regime long denied its people. And where Saleh seeks to replenish his personal coffers with the profits of war, the Houthis and the broader resistance movement are working to ensure their political survival.Humanitarian aid has been used by the Houthis and Saleh to create profits. In a December 2015 interview with Fatik al-Rodaini, a former journalist who now serves as co-director of the Mona Relief Organization, he explained how the NGO has established that the Houthi-Saleh complex accelerated their withholding of humanitarian aid to civilians to boost sales on the black market in the city of Taiz.Meanwhile, Hadi has exploited his al-Qaida connections to oppose the advances of resistance troops. This allowed for AQAP to establish pockets of influence in and around Taiz as a buffer against Sanaa.More troubling still is Hadi’s insistence on appointing al-Qaida affiliates to government positions within the territories he controls. Hadi has repeatedly shown a propensity to support AQAP in southern Yemen, using terror as a weapon of asymmetrical warfare. There, one must say, Hadi has taken his cue from Riyadh.


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On Dec. 28, 2015 Hadi appointed Nayif Salih Salim al-Qaysi as governor of al-Bayda. The U.S. Department of the Treasury identified the well-known al-Qaida supporter as responsible for providing financial support to terrorist organizations in May of 2016.“As of 2016, al-Qaysi was a senior AQAP official and a financial supporter of AQAP,” according to the statement issued by the State Department, which further accuses al-Qaysi of raising money for AQAP, delivering aid to AQAP, facilitating access through his position as governor of al-Bayda, and enabling the terror group’s expansion in the province and beyond through infiltration.Hadi also favored another target for Treasury sanctions, Abd al-Wahhab Muhammad, aka Abd al-Rahman al-Humayqani, secretary general of al-Rashad Union, a Salafi political party with ties to al-Qaida.His name was added to the list of al-Qaida supporters in December of 2013, around the same time that Hadi nominated al-Humayqani as a member of the National Dialogue Conference, giving al-Qaida a foothold in Yemen’s political arena. In 2015, al-Humayqani represented the “government in exile” in U.N.-sponsored peace talks in Geneva.Here, one must discuss Taiz. The city sat at the heart of violent controversy in which mainstream media, activists, and politicians have been keen to portray the efforts of the resistance toward “breaking Taiz” as criminal, genocidal, and tyrannical.Yet the presence of al-Qaida forces within the walls of the city has gone largely ignored. Voices echoing in the mainstream have failed to clarify al-Qaida’s ambitions of gaining a foothold in the key strategic chokepoint in Yemen. In Syria, it’s Aleppo; in Yemen, it’s Taiz.Behind the mainstream media’s subservient peddling of Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabist agenda lies a truth few have had the courage to acknowledge, let alone internalize: the rise of al-Qaida and Daesh which Riyadh seeks to enable in Yemen.In a letter dated Nov. 11, 2016, Brig. Adnan al-Hamadi, commander of the 35th armoured camp in Taiz, asks Hadi to approve the promotion of Sheikh Adel Abdo Faria, aka Abo al-Abas, to the rank of colonel, citing Hadi’s verbal promise to do so. Known as one of al-Qaida’s princes by Yemeni security services, Abo al-Abas was among al-Qaida’s jihadi fighters in Afghanistan.The kingdom realized long ago that Wahhabism would need to take hold of Yemen if the Saudi elite were ever to control the whole of Arabia. To this end, the House of Saud has become a grand architect of terror, planning the death of a nation-state with total impunity. The terror economy goes digitalLast year, sources, including the U.N. Security Council, attested to a rising trend of asset flight in Yemen through previously unidentified channels.Facing heightened pressure from the United Nations in regards to unlawfully obtained financial holdings, members of Yemen’s deep state and militants have sought new ways to hide their transactions and holdings.According to a forthcoming report which this writer helped to prepare for the United Nations Security Council’s Yemen Panel of Experts, al-Qaida — specifically, AQAP — has resorted to the “dark web” and the use of bitcoins to conduct several high-volume financial dealings, including cash transfers through a series of agents and shell companies. Recent scrutiny has forced al-Qaida to pursue more sophisticated technologies to prevent these transactions from being traced and their locations being uncovered.Meanwhile, like so many average people who have turned to bitcoin instead of corporate banking and paper trails, the cryptocurrency has long been considered criminals’ preferred method for laundering money, trading in counterfeit currencies, and committing credit card fraud. In 2013, Stephen Mihm reported for Bloomberg: “Criminals, it turns out, really like bitcoins, which can be exchanged for nefarious purposes on the ‘Dark Web,’ with complete anonymity and, it seems, impunity.”


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Those criminals, of course, include al-Qaida.This writer conducted research in association with the Shafaqna News Association, an English-language Shiite news organization based in the United Kingdom, which established that al-Qaida traded weapons, precious artifacts, and drugs with bitcoin as the currency.Once purchased, the items would be trafficked in and out of Yemen by smugglers via the Horn of Africa and Oman. Yet Yemen is under a complete blockade. As that blockade is manned by Saudi Arabia, it is safe to assume that Riyadh knows exactly what is happening. (The full findings of this report will be presented in February at the New Horizon Conference in Tehran.)According to research conducted in association with Shafaqna and shared with the UNSC’s Yemen Panel of Experts, while the resistance has been instrumental in collecting new taxes by playing the black market to generate revenue and other schemes, it has done so to finance its legitimate war efforts against both Saudi Arabia and al-Qaida. Although it is evident that individuals within the resistance movement have abused their positions of power to embezzle funds, the resistance movement as a whole is not to blame.Sources in southern Yemen have pointed to terrifying developments, including accusations that Hadi has been trading Yemen’s state secrets for a profit. Selling out his nation for a buck is a particular type of treachery that Yemenis will certainly have a difficult time getting over.If such claims may seem far-fetched in that they betray an imperialistic agenda, one should note that Yemen is not terrorism’s first victim. Since grabbing hold of Afghanistan, then spreading through the Greater Middle East, terror has developed a sophisticated financial system. Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan all attest to this reality.Yemen is merely the newest piece of the puzzle, another cog into the terror machine.

No. 027/2017 dated 10 February 2017The Rise of Trump and Its Global ImplicationsAmerica At War With ItselfBy Han Fook Kwang

SynopsisThe running war of words between the White House and the mainstream media is bad news for the fight against fake new. It will lead to an even more divided America and will have consequences for the rest of the world.CommentaryPRESIDENT DONALD Trump wasted no time declaring war on his first day in the White House. It wasn’t against Islamic State, not yet at least. Not China or Mexico. Not even the Democratic Party. The war he started immediately was with the American media. The first salvo was fired over what he alleged as their false reporting of the size of the crowd at his inauguration. Newspapers and television networks said it was much smaller than President Obama’s and showed pictures of the two ceremonies. The new president fired back accusing them of producing fake news. Not mincing his words, he declared: “I have a running war with the media. They are among the most dishonest human beings on earth.”Grave ImplicationsSince then it has been a non-stop volley of accusations and counter-accusations over issues such as his comments on the number of illegal voters in the election and the media’s reporting of his rift with the American intelligence community. The battle lines were drawn by his chief strategist in the White House, Steve Bannon, who declared: “The media here is the opposition party. They don’t understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the President of the United States.”The battle between the mainstream media and the right-wing conservative elements of American society which form a large part of President Trump’s base has been going on for some time, long before he was elected. Both sides fought such a sustained hate-filled campaign to discredit the other, it became part of the political landscape in America, as commonplace as pork-barrel politics and gerrymandering. But now, with the president himself


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leading the charge, the consequences of such a war are far greater. There are three important implications for the US, and the rest of the world.First, it is going to be much more difficult to contain the spread of fake news. After President Trump’s election, social media such as Facebook were heavily criticised for their role in disseminating them. In one well-documented case, false news of Pope Francis endorsing candidate Trump was shared a million times on Facebook. In contrast, when the New York Times ran an investigative scoop on Trump’s tax returns, the groundbreaking story was shared fewer than 200,000 times.Facebook and others promised to do more to filter out these falsehoods but their task has been made impossible because the new administration has a different spin on what is fake and what isn’t. Kellyanne Conway, a White House aide when asked why the administration had insisted the inauguration crowd size was larger than Obama’s despite photographic evidence to the contrary, said their version was based on “alternative facts”.Who Is The Gatekeeper?When even the most documented facts are being disputed, who can play gatekeeper? Even more troubling, anti-Trump websites speaking on behalf of the progressive left in the US have upped their fake news output in response. Speaking to the Atlantic magazine, Brooke Binowski, managing editor of the fact-checking Snopes, said she had seen more fakes news emerging now directed at liberal audiences. So, both sides are now adding to the mountain of falsehoods. The result of all this will be an even more divided America – that’s the second consequence of this damaging war. There is now almost no hope the political divisions will heal after one of the most divisive presidential elections. The media can be a powerful medium for unity even in a diverse country like the US. It did so after the September 2001 terrorist attack. But the US media is now a participant in the war and has itself become a divisive force. For the rest of the world, a divided America is bad news because it will result in more uncertainty in American foreign policy.Third, how the American mainstream media respond will determine whether they emerge from this war with credibility enhanced or damaged even more. Newspapers like the New York Times and TV networks like CNN had to eat humble pie when they called the election wrongly.It wasn’t just that their polls were off (many got theirs wrong as well) but they shaped their news coverage and commentaries accordingly, reflecting their disinclination for Trump. Even after his victory, they continue to be active participants in the war, in their selection of stories and their slant. Of course, no one can accuse them of producing fake news and their professionalism isn’t in doubt. But they are clearly partisan and contributing to the division in the country. Perhaps they have no choice because the White House attacks against them go to the very heart of their existence. When someone attacks your brand and the very thing you stand for, the natural instinct is to counter-attack and discredit the attacker or you could be destroyed.No-Win SituationBut what if the attacker is none other than the president? And what if in mounting your counter-attack you risk betraying the values of impartiality and fairness that underpin your reputation? Mainstream media in the US is now in this no-win situation. It is a sorry state and will make the battle against fake news even harder to win. When there is so much falsehood, mainstream newspapers and television should capitalise and benefit from it by being the paragon of accuracy and fairness that they have always claimed to be.They can and should become the most trusted source of information counting on their established reputation and brand developed over the years. But how can they play this role if their integrity is constantly being undermined by the White House and they are actively engaged in the war of words against the president?An America at war with itself cannot be great again, not for President Trump, or the media, or the rest of the world.

Han Fook Kwang is Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Regards Cees***


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TWI: The Islamic State in Pakistan: Growing the Network Pakistan, a country with an unprecedented youth bulge, could be a massive recruitment pool for ISIS. Several Islamist terrorist organizations have already taken advantage of the country’s fragile situation. The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) has established a base in Pakistan. ISIS calls this Walayat-e-Khurasan and has considerably stepped up efforts to broaden its network there. However, the terrorism-ravaged and embattled Pakistani state is in no mood to allow another terrorist presence. The aim of this article is to give a bird’s eye view of the widening network of ISIS in Pakistan, analyze the current situation, and look at how the Pakistani state endeavors to root it out. Pakistan, a country with an unprecedented youth bulge, could be a massive recruitment pool for ISIS. Several Islamist terrorist organizations have already taken advantage of the country’s fragile situation. Al-Qaeda has been the principal beneficiary, as thousands of its militants flocked to its training camps in bordering Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001. Despite language and cultural barriers, a number of Pakistani Islamist terrorist organizations, such as Harkat al Jihad-e-Islami, Harkat al Mujahedeen, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), Jaish-e-Mohammad, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) have worked under al-Qaeda’s tutelage since 2001. With a population of 180 million, nuclear assets, close proximity to Afghanistan, and poor economic conditions, Pakistan is an attractive place for ISIS – evidenced most clearly by the exponential growth of ISIS cells in Pakistan in the past two years. There are now over 100 Islamist terrorist organizations listed by the Pakistani government. Despite the Pakistani government's desire to prevent ISIS from taking root, it will be difficult to do so given these conditions and the wide range of Islamist terrorist groups already operating in the country. The Pakistani foreign office acknowledged that this is an issue in Pakistan, and revealed that authorities are “establishing a special cell on [ISIS] at the National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA).” According to Lt. General Asim Saleem Bajwa, the former official spokesperson of the Pakistani military’s media wing, 309 ISIS members have been arrested by Pakistani law enforcement and paramilitary forces. The detained include foreign nationals from Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq. Despite these numbers, the Lt. General denies claims of an official, organized presence in Pakistan. Rather, he claims that “the group now operates on the Afghan side of the border.” Spreading its Tentacles: Reach and Grasp Regardless of government claims, three former al-Qaeda-linked Pakistani Islamist terrorist groups, scores of TTP commanders, and breakaway factions from LeT have all pledged allegiance to ISIS’ caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi since 2014. These groups are not merely aligning themselves – their support goes much deeper. For example, while a former Guantanamo Bay detainee Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost, once a follower of Juhaiman al-Otaibi in Saudi Arabia and participant in the Grand Mosque Siege of 1979, was nominated as ISIS’ Emir of Wilayat-e-Khorasan (comprising of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia), he was soon replaced by Hafiz Saeed Khan Orakzai, a former TTP commander, in September 2014. Saeed was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Nangarhar province in Afghanistan in July 2016, and his replacement has yet to be appointed. A number of TTP commanders


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in Peshawar and tribal areas in Pakistan were soon killed as well, including Hafiz Quran Dolat, Gul Zaman, Mufti Hassan, Khalid Mansoor, and former TTP spokesperson Shahidullah Shahid. While some groups attempted to wholeheartedly ingratiate themselves with ISIS, other groups voiced support. Other factions of TTP, for example, responded with reconciliatory tones, but did not take the step of pledging allegiance to ISIS. The spokesperson of TTP’s Fazalullah faction, the strongest among all TTP branches, spoke of ISIS in a similar fashion in October 2014: “Oh our brothers, we are proud of you in your victories. We are with you in your happiness and your sorrow… All Muslims in the world have great expectations of you... We are with you, we will provide you with mujahideen [fighters] and with every possible support.” Clearly, TTP, the strongest al-Qaeda-linked non-state actor in Pakistan, has been careful in its relationship with and treatment of ISIS. While some have decided to remain closer to al-Qaeda, other factions such as the Islamic Union of Uzbekistan (IMU), which shifted from tribal areas of Pakistan to the Nangarhar province, have pledged allegiance to ISIS. This outcome, in particular, stems from the wrath of the Afghan Taliban, which launched a major offensive encompassing several eastern Afghan provinces, effectively wiping out most of IMU’s cadre. Likewise, the Afghan Taliban’s onslaught against ISIS in these eastern provinces - coupled with US and Afghan forces' retaliatory airstrikes and military operations after the July Kabul suicide attack - significantly weakened ISIS in Afghanistan. Thus, ISIS will probably attempt to invest in its network in Pakistani cities. ISIS claimed the August 9 suicide attack in Quetta that killed 70, indicating that they are trying to make a strong public impression. Although ISIS may be suffering due to the military operations on both sides of the borders, it will attempt to capitalize on an enormous potential recruitment pool: Pakistani Islamist groups. In other words, despite the operations, ISIS’ network in Pakistan will continue to grow at a steady rate. Jundullah and Tehreek-e-Khilfat Pakistan When ISIS captured Mosul in July 2014, Jundullah and TKP were the first two organizations that pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Little is known of TKP, but Jundullah, a splinter of Jamaat-e-Islami’s student union, gained much media attention when it attacked the cavalcade of Lt General Ahsan Saleem Hayat, the corp commander of Karachi, in 2004. While both groups were affiliated with al-Qaeda and part of TTP’s broader network, the TKP publicly stated this when swearing fealty to ISIS: “From today, Sheikh Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi shall consider Tehreek-e-Khilafat and mujahideen fighters of Pakistan as one of the arrows among his arrows which he has kept for his bow….” On the other hand, Jundullah’s spokesman Fahad Marwat pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on his group’s behalf. As a small group of highly motivated and educated jihadists linked with al-Qaeda since its inception in 2004, Jundullah is much more credible in the eyes of the jihadi constituency. The organization was previously part of the al-Qaeda-linked network of Punjabi Taliban groups operating in mainland Pakistan. Based in Karachi, most of Jundullah terrorists were former members of Islamist political party Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan.


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Due to Jundullah’s strong ties to al-Qaeda, their decision to shift alliances was probably a difficult one. However, because the group lost most of its core leadership due to severe actions taken by Pakistani law enforcement after Jundullah’s attack in 2004, this move indicates a policy of self-reinvigoration through ISIS. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi Some jihadi terrorist organizations with even older roots may also be interested in this policy. LeJ has been operating in Pakistan since 1990 and, characterized by a sectarian quality, has much in common with ISIS. As a splinter of Sipah-e-Sahaba, which is an anti-Shiite movement founded by Jhangvi in the late 1980s, they aim to transform Pakistan into a Sunni Islamic state under Shariah law. LeJ was led by Malik Ishaq, an overtly anti-Shiite militant involved in more than 100 murder cases of sectarian nature. On July 29, 2015, Malik Ishaq, along with his two sons and deputies, was killed in an alleged encounter at a forest near Muzaffargarh district of Punjab province after it was reported that Ishaq was to publicly pledge allegiance to Baghdadi. Surfacing of Cells Besides the defection of Islamist terrorist groups to ISIS in Pakistan, the more serious threat is the surfacing of small cells in the country’s urban centers. At least four such cells have been discovered by law enforcement agencies since the establishment of ISIS in 2014. Karachi, Sindh Province On May 15, 2015, six armed men on motorcycles stopped an Ismaili-Shiite community service bus in Safoora and shot 43 Ismaili-Shiite civilians in cold blood, scattering ISIS leaflets before speeding off. After their arrest, the highly educated Islamist radicals of ethnic Punjabi origins revealed they were showcasing their resolve before pledging allegiance to ISIS. The cell was led by Tahir Minhas aka Saeen, a veteran al-Qaeda militant from Bahawalpur, who trained at al-Qaeda-run training camps in Afghanistan. Subsequent police raids also led the investigators to a network of 14 women involved in recruitment and logistics for aiding ISIS activities in Pakistan. Sialkot, Punjab Province The Punjab Police’s Counter Terrorism Department has hitherto remained fairly successful in uncovering ISIS cells. An ISIS recruitment network was dismantled, for example, in the industrial city of Sialkot during January 2016. According to a provincial government statement, 42 members were arrested for their alleged activities with ISIS. A huge cache of weapons, laptops, explosives, and ISIS leaflets were recovered. The cell members were inspired by ISIS ideology and wanted to bring about the caliphate under the banner of ISIS in Pakistan. The cell had pledged online allegiance to Baghdadi and were all former members of Jamaat ut Dawa, the political wing of LeT. Islamabad Capital Territory Another ISIS cell, led by Amir Mansoor, was discovered in Islamabad. During interrogations, he provided a list of people who received training in Afghanistan under ISIS commander Mullah Muhammad Abdul Rauf. He also revealed that ISIS pays Pakistani militants PKR 35,000-40,000


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($330-380) per month to fight alongside ISIS in Syria. Another situation emerged when radical cleric Maulana Abdul Aziz of the notorious Red Mosque in Islamabad expressed his support to ISIS’ mission in December 2014. Moreover, a group of female students of a Red Mosque-affiliated madrasa also pledged allegiance to Baghdadi in the same month. Baluchistan It issuspected that ISIS is penetrating the Baluchistan province of Afghanistan. This became evident when the Home Minister of Baluchistan province arrested 6 ISIS militants from the Noshki district and recovered a huge cache of arms, jihadi literature, and explosives in August 2016. The Pakistani government has taken considerable effort to not allow any space for ISIS to take root. The dismantling of scores of ISIS cells is evidence that law enforcement agencies and intelligence bodies have developed - at least in the case of ISIS - some level of working relationship. Despite this effort, the ISIS network continues to pop up at several different times and places throughout Pakistan. There must be a separate and concrete counter-terrorism strategy to deal with ISIS. The Counter Terrorism Departments in all provinces have to develop a strong bond based on mutual trust as well as borrow each other’s expertise and intelligence in dealing with this threat. The US government must also help Pakistan to raise the standards of training Pakistani law enforcement for the fight against ISIS.


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