Sinai and Libya models for the Islamic State’s expansion

Posted on February 16, 2015February 16, 2015 by Denise Simon

This post is part of the “Islamist Politics in the Shadow of the Islamic State” symposium.

The Islamic State announced several months ago that it was “annexing” territory in Algeria (Wilayat al-Jazair), Libya (Wilayat al-Barqah, Wilayat al-Tarabulus and Wilayat al-Fizan), Sinai (Wilayat Sinai), Saudi Arabia (Wilayat al-Haramayn) and Yemen (Wilayat al-Yaman). It is likely that the Islamic State plans to pursue a similar approach in Afghanistan and Pakistan following its announcement of accepting pledges of allegiance from former members of the Afghan and Pakistan Taliban to also try and “annex” territory there under the framework of a new wilayah called “Wilayat Khorasan.” On its face, this bold declaration of an expanding number of wilayat (provinces) resembles the announcements by al-Qaeda of creating numerous franchises in the mid-2000s. The Islamic State’s “wilayat” strategy differs in significant ways from al-Qaeda’s “franchise” strategy, however.

The academic literature has shed great light on the al-Qaeda franchising strategy. In a recent article Daniel Byman highlights a number of key factors within the al-Qaeda network regarding motivations for affiliation and franchising. Typically, affiliates joined up with al-Qaeda as a result of failure. Affiliation helped with financial support; offered a potential haven that could be exploited, along with access to new training, recruiting, publicity and military expertise; gave branding and publicity; and opened up personal networks from past foreign fighter mobilizations. It in turn helps al-Qaeda with mission fulfillment, remaining relevant, providing access to new logistics networks, and building a new group of hardened fighters.

But, Byman argues, those franchises often became as much a burden as an asset as local interests and views diverged with those of the parent organization. Leah Farrall argues that al-Qaeda increasingly came to view franchising “warily” in part due to its inability to always control its new partners such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and al-Qaeda in Iraq as well as because of backlash from unsuccessful cooptation of organizations such as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group or Egyptian Islamic Jihad. This is one of the reasons why, prior to Osama bin Laden’s death, the Somali jihadi group Harakat al-Shabab al-Mujahideen was not given franchise status. Bin Laden had apprehensions about the group’s utility due to past clan infighting and lack of unity. Following the death of bin Laden though, his replacement, Ayman al-Zawahiri, brought Shabab into the fold, but the results have been quite disastrous; Shabab has declined and also was in an internal feud between its foreign and local members. Will the Islamic State’s wilayat pose a similar burden?

There is one key difference between al-Qaeda’s and the Islamic State’s model for expansion. Al-Qaeda wanted to use its new franchises in service of its main priority: attacking Western countries to force them to stop supporting “apostate” Arab regimes, which without the support of Western countries would then be ripe for the taking. This has only truly worked out with its Yemeni branch, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). On the other hand, while the Islamic State does not have an issue with its supporters or grassroots activists attacking Western countries, its main priority is building out its caliphate, which is evident in its famous slogan baqiya wa tatamaddad (remaining and expanding). As a result, it has had a relatively clear agenda and model: fighting locally, instituting limited governance and conducting outreach. This differs from al-Qaeda’s more muddled approach – it hoped a local franchise would conduct external operations, but many times franchises would instead focus on local battles or attempts at governance without a clear plan, as bin Laden had warned. Moreover, the Islamic State has had a simple media strategy for telegraphing what it is doing on the ground to show its supporters, potential recruits and enemies that it is in fact doing something. This accomplishes more, even if it appears that the Islamic State is doing more than it actually is, in comparison with al-Qaeda’s practice of waiting for a successful external operation to succeed and then claiming responsibility after the fact.

How is this strategy working? So far, Libya and the Sinai appear to be the locations with the most promise, though the Islamic State’s presence in these areas should not be overstated. It certainly does not command the amount of territorial control as its base in Mesopotamia. That said, the Islamic State’s wilayat in Libya and the Sinai are following the same methodology on the ground and in the media as the Islamic State’s wilayat have in Iraq and Syria.

By contrast, its wilayat in Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Yemen have yet to show any signs of activity. It is certainly possible that the Islamic State is playing a long game and preparing its soldiers and bureaucrats for future jihad, governance and dawa (propagation of Islam), but there are reasons to be skeptical as well. Following Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s announcement of the expansion of the Islamic State in mid-November, its media apparatus took over the media departments of all the local wilayat outside of Mesopotamia. This highlights that, at least on the media level, the Islamic State is in full command and control.

In Algeria, there were some signs of action that have since petered off. The leader of Wilayat al-Jazair, Abd al-Malik Guri (Khalid Abu Sulayman) was killed by the Algerian military on Dec. 22. Further, while northern Algerian-based jihadis have certainly conducted attacks over the years, they have had a difficult time operating or conducting sustainable campaigns that have resulted in gaining territory. Moreover, there have been no signs that Wilayat al-Jazair has conducted any military operations since it beheaded the French tourist Hervé Gourdel on Sept. 24, which was prior to the Islamic State accepting the group into the fold. It has also not been involved in any type of governance or dawa activities.

There have also not been any formal military or governance activities carried out by the Islamic State’s wilayat in Saudi Arabia or Yemen. The Saudi government claims the Islamic State was involved in an attack that killed several Shiites in al-Ahsa on Nov. 3 and Islamic State supporters claimed responsibility for an attempted assassination of a Danish businessman through a drive-by shooting on a highway in Riyadh on Nov. 22. The Saudis have a history of dealing with insurgency against al-Qaeda on its territory from 2002-06 so are ready for any fight if the Islamic State attempts to start a campaign there.

As for Yemen, AQAP is the strongest jihadi presence and took major issue with Baghdadi’s announcement of creating a wilayah in Yemen. On Nov. 19, AQAP’s top sharia official, Harith al-Nazari, released a video rejecting the Islamic State’s claims and calling for the dissolution of all groups so as to pledge baya (religiously binding oath of allegiance), stating: “We reject the call to split the ranks of the mujahid groups” and “export[ing] the fighting and discord [in Syria] to other fronts.” As a result, although there are indeed some supporters of the Islamic State in Yemen, they have yet to show any sign of activity. It is possible that the jihadi dynamics in Yemen might change after the Houthi coup, but unless the Islamic State is able to take the reins of the AQAP apparatus from the inside, it has an uphill battle due to AQAP’s roots going back a decade. Therefore, it is unclear how the Islamic State hopes and plans to operate in those environments.

This leaves the Sinai and Libya as the primary models for the Islamic State’s expansion. In the first six weeks since Baghdadi’s announcement, it appeared that the Islamic State in Sinai was continuing to operate in a similar manner to how its predecessor in name Jamaat Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis was acting by conducting attacks against the Egyptian military as well as gas pipelines. Since the beginning of 2015, there have been small signs of an expanded program including elements of Islamic State governance present elsewhere. For example, on Jan. 2, Wilayat Sinai burned marijuana after detaining drug traffickers and on Jan. 7 it distributed funds to residents of Rafah after the Egyptian military demolished their homes to create a buffer zone near the border with Gaza.

On top of these inchoate steps, similar to the promotion of Syria and Iraq as lands of opportunity for locals and locations for foreign fighters, the Islamic State has pushed similar narratives regarding the Sinai. When Baghdadi made his November announcement he stated that “we ask every individual amongst them to join the closest wilayah to him, and to hear and obey the wali [governor] appointed by us for it.” This further push illustrates the seriousness of this endeavor for the Islamic State. First, on Dec. 1, its semi-official media agencies al-Battar and al-Jabhah al-Ialamiyyah released the pamphlet “Come to the Sinai to Elevate the Foundations of Your State,” by Abu Musab al-Gharib, which echoes Baghdadi’s call. Further, on Jan. 16 the Islamic State’s official anashid (religiously-sanctioned a capella music) and Quranic recitation outlet Ajnad released a nashid titled “The Land of Sinai,” exhorting fighters and wannabe recruits to go forth. The Islamic State also has highlighted how it has scuttled gas deals, killed spies and built a foundation for tawhid(pure monotheism). Most recently, on Jan. 21, it released an ideological video, but it was not a stern lecture like those posted by al-Qaeda-styled groups. The video showed individuals in Wilayat Sinai hanging out together around a campfire, showing the life of a mujahid and the camaraderie involved, imbuing a particular ascetic for future members who join up.

Moving west, the Islamic State’s activities and operations are even more sophisticated and closer to how it operates in Syria and Iraq, though on a smaller scale. Libya has the most potential to replicate the Islamic State’s model in Mesopotamia if things go right for it. Majlis Shura Shabab al-Islam, based in Derna and the named used prior to the Islamic State’s formal acceptance of its baya, was already involved in a variety of military, governance and dawa activities. Though in reality it only truly controls some neighborhoods in Derna, the activities have only increased and the Islamic State now also operates in Benghazi, Sirte, and Tripoli, and has created the self-styled Wilayat al-Barqah in the east, Wilayat al-Tarabulus in the west, and Wilayat al-Fizan in the south. There are also some signs that the Islamic State has siphoned off some of Ansar al-Sharia in Libya’s members, which could help accelerate its rise similar to how the Islamic State absorbed defecting Jabhat al-Nusra members in Syria.

Beyond the military fighting the Islamic State is doing in Derna and Benghazi, as well as its military parades in Sirte and an attack in Wilayat al-Fizan, it has also claimed to have executed two Tunisian journalists (though this has since been disputed by Tunisia’s ambassador in Libya), kidnapped 21 Christian Egyptians, and conducted an attack on the Corinthia Hotel in Tripoli. In terms of governance types of activities, the Islamic State in Libya has primarily only focused on cultural symbolism. For example, it has conducted a number of hisbah (accountability) patrols in markets in Derna and Sirte making sure they are sharia-compliant and are not selling rotten or spoiled food, taking away stores selling hookahs since they view smoking tobacco as against Islam, and telling stores to stop selling their products when it is time for daily prayers. The Islamic State in Libya has also conducted some dawa activities, the largest was the forum “The Caliphate Upon the Manhaj [methodology] of the Prophet” on Nov. 25. It has also provided aid to the poor and needy and given gifts and sweets to children in Benghazi. The Islamic State now is attempting to impose regulations on locals within the health industry, specifically those in pharmacies.

On top of this, unlike the other wilayat there are clear signs that there is a foreign fighter presence in Libya. This is not to the same extent as in Syria or Iraq, but the fact that there are foreigners there illustrates the theaters appeal. Although the Islamic State’s official presence in Libya did not begin until November, jihadi foreign fighters have been coming into Libya since 2012 when Algerians from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb began to make it another base of operations and a safe haven. There have also been a number of foreigners that have been members of Ansar al-Sharia in Libya in part due to the relationship and connections with its sister organization in Tunisia as well as its training for individuals to go fight abroad in Syria.

Most confirmed foreign fighters have come from surrounding countries to Libya, such as Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt and Sudan. Though there have also been cases of Saudi and Yemeni foreign fighters, as well as rumors of Palestinians and Syrians. It is difficult to know the total number of foreign fighters since some have left for other fights in Syria or the Sinai after receiving training or returned home to carry out attacks in Egypt or Tunisia. It is believed though that Tunisians make up the highest percentage of foreign fighters in Libya and that up to 20 percent of the jihadi fighters in Libya are of foreign origin.

Another sign of the importance and emphasis the Islamic State is placing on foreign fighter involvement in Libya is that its official media apparatus is beginning to announce martyrdom notices, as it has done in Iraq and Syria. Since it began two weeks ago, it has announced 10 cases, including six Tunisians, two Egyptians, one Saudi and one Sudanese all who died in the battles of Benghazi. Further, to encourage more emigration, the Islamic State released a story about how one Saudi fighter, Abd al-Hamid al-Qasimi, traveled to Libya to embark on the building of the “caliphate” in Wilayat Tarabulus. More importantly, and in line with the Islamic State’s media methodologies in Mesopotamia, it released a video message on Jan. 20 from two ethnic-Tuareg members of the Islamic State in Wilayat Tarbulus calling for individuals and jihadis in Azawad (a term used by some locals as a name for northern Mali) to pledge baya to Baghdadi and make hijrah (emigration) to the Islamic State in Libya. One of the men, Abu Umar al-Tawrigi, stated: “I call my Tuareg brothers to migrate to the Islamic State and that they give baya to emir al-muminin [leader of the faithful] Abu Bakr Al- Baghdadi.” Dozens of similar videos have come from the Islamic State’s foreign fighters based in Syria, from Bosnians to Canadians to French to Indonesians to Moldovans, among others that have produced videos in a similar vein.

The Islamic State does therefore seem to be attempting to follow the same tactics and strategies on the ground in Libya (and to a lesser extent in the Sinai) as it has already done in Iraq and Syria. There is still a long way to go before either is consolidated in terms of territorial control or full monopoly on governance and security. Libya has the highest likelihood of success since there is no state, though there are limitations too since there is a multi-polar devolution of a variety of armed actors. The Islamic State will likely have more problems in the Sinai since the actors are stuck between two strong military states in Egypt and Israel as well as a Hamas-led Gaza government that fears the jihadis’ threat to its legitimacy. That said, if the Egyptian government continues to operate in a brazen manner militarily it will create new local recruits that could sustain the Islamic State in north Sinai. How this all ends is impossible to predict, but as of now, the Islamic State has indeed set itself up on a limited base in the Sinai and has established a growing movement in Libya more than two months following the announcement of its expansion.

Aaron Y. Zelin is a PhD candidate at King’s College London. He is the Richard Borow Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the Rena and Sami David Fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence.

The White Helmets, also known as the Syrian Civil Defense

Posted on February 16, 2015February 16, 2015 by Denise Simon

While most of the citizens of the West think that Syrians are jihadist, now is the time to rethink that. Syria had and in some cases still has It was just a few months ago, that Syrian Christians were begging the West to help Syria such that they could stay in their country and not flee as refugees. Their pleas have fallen on ears of the West that refuse to hear and it must be noted that the recent White House proposal of Authorization of Use for Military Force does not even mention Syria such that Assad would be removed from power. While the turmoil and the civil war continues there remains some good people in Syria.

Unpaid, Unarmed Lifesavers in Syria

WHO would have thought there could be an uplifting story from Syria?

Yet side by side with the worst of humanity, you often see the best. In Syria, that’s a group of volunteers called the White Helmets. Its members rush to each bombing and claw survivors from the rubble.

There are more than 2,200 volunteers in the White Helmets, mostly men but a growing number of women as well. The White Helmets are unpaid and unarmed, and they risk their lives to save others. More than 80 have been killed in the line of duty, the group says, largely because Syrian military aircraft often return for a “double-tap” — dropping bombs on the rescuers.

Wearing simple white construction helmets as feeble protection from those “double-tap” bombings, the White Helmets are strictly humanitarian. They even have rescued some of the officers of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad who are bombing them.

Since the White Helmets began in 2013, its members have saved more than 12,500 lives by its count.

One video taken by the group shows White Helmets frantically pulling aside rubble as a baby wails beneath. Finally, a rescuer is able to reach with his arm deep into a crevice and pull out an infant, crying lustily but not obviously injured.

A reputation for nonpolitical humanitarianism has allowed the White Helmets to work across lines of rival militias, including the Islamic State. In a land short of heroes and long on violence, many rally round the White Helmets. Syria may be notorious today for cruelty and suffering, but these men and women are a reminder of the human capacity for courage, strength and resilience.

“They have been doing extraordinary work in a terrible situation,” notes Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma in Norman.

“They are the real deal,” says Lina Sergie Attar, a Syrian-American architect engaged in humanitarian aid in Syria.

One of the leaders of the White Helmets is Farouq al-Habib, 33, an English-speaking former banker with a doctorate in business. When the Syrian revolution began peacefully in 2011, he emerged as a leader of the movement in the city of Homs, thinking that, within a few months, the Assad regime would be overthrown.

It didn’t work out that way, and Habib was imprisoned and tortured in 2012. Friends bribed the authorities to limit the torture and eventually free him, but the experience seared him. “Every day there were dead bodies from torture” in the prison, he said.

Now Habib helps manage the White Helmets, who survive on modest financing from the United States, Britain and private donors. Women were incorporated into the White Helmets last year, partly because some conservative Syrians didn’t want men digging through rubble to find women who might not be fully dressed.

The White Helmets, also known as the Syrian Civil Defense, are campaigning to pressure President Assad to stop dropping so-called barrel bombs, which are full of shrapnel and take a tremendous toll on civilians. They argue that the West is so focused on the Islamic State that it is ignoring the far greater killing by Assad.

“We can only ease the suffering of our people,” says Raed Saleh, the chief of the White Helmets. “Only you in the international community can end it.”

President Obama’s greatest foreign policy failing has been Syria. It’s not clear that other approaches would have succeeded, but his policy and the world’s have manifestly failed.

“When we started the revolution, we thought we shared the same values as the West,” Habib said. “But I’m ashamed to say our friends failed us. We should have had friends like China, Russia, Iran, because they were credible.”

Now Obama and other leaders are focused on military solutions in Syria. The problem is that there may not be one. Arming rebels might have worked in 2012, but it may be too late now. Sadly, there are more problems in international relations than there are solutions.

But what we can do is provide more support for the White Helmets and, above all, do far more to help Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. The majority of Syrian refugee children are not attending school, according to the United Nations, and an entire generation of young Syrians is growing up impoverished, uneducated and, in some cases, radicalized.

“They’re going to be like the Palestinians, floating around the Middle East for decades,” Landis warns.

The United States is withdrawing troops from the Ebola fight in West Africa — a very successful deployment, for which Obama deserves credit — so how about now dispatching them on a temporary mission to Jordan to build schools for Syrian refugees?

Every day there are scores of bombings or missile strikes across Syria — for months, the beautiful ancient city of Aleppo was enduring 50 attacks a day — and, each time, these are the crews that extinguish the fires and help the injured.

Operation Avarice, Iraq Chemical Weapons

Posted on February 15, 2015February 15, 2015 by Denise Simon

Operation Avarice was a difficult military mission to purchase and destroy Iraq’s chemical weapons. Since the beginnings of the take-over of Islamic State in Iraq, infrequent stories have been published about the chemical weapons but nonetheless the truth is bubbling to the surface. Through a FOIA request, some documents have been declassified and turned over for Operation Avarice. Now comes the New York Times with additional revealing truths.

The Central Intelligence Agency, working with American troops during the occupation of Iraq, repeatedly purchased nerve-agent rockets from a secretive Iraqi seller, part of a previously undisclosed effort to ensure that old chemical weapons remaining in Iraq did not fall into the hands of terrorists or militant groups, according to current and former American officials.

The extraordinary arms purchase plan, known as Operation Avarice, began in 2005 and continued into 2006, and the American military deemed it a nonproliferation success. It led to the United States’ acquiring and destroying at least 400 Borak rockets, one of the internationally condemned chemical weapons that Saddam Hussein’s Baathist government manufactured in the 1980s but that were not accounted for by United Nations inspections mandated after the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The effort was run out of the C.I.A. station in Baghdad in collaboration with the Army’s 203rd Military Intelligence Battalion and teams of chemical-defense and explosive ordnance disposal troops, officials and veterans of the units said. Many rockets were in poor condition and some were empty or held a nonlethal liquid, the officials said. But others contained the nerve agent sarin, which analysis showed to be purer than the intelligence community had expected given the age of the stock.

A New York Times investigation published in October found that the military had recovered thousands of old chemical warheads and shells in Iraq and that Americans and Iraqis had been wounded by them, but the government kept much of this information secret, from the public and troops alike.

These munitions were remnants of an Iraqi special weapons program that was abandoned long before the 2003 invasion, and they turned up sporadically during the American occupation in buried caches, as part of improvised bombs or on black markets.

The potency of sarin samples from the purchases, as well as tightly held assessments about risks the munitions posed, buttresses veterans’ claims that during the war the military did not share important intelligence about battlefield perils with those at risk or maintain an adequate medical system for treating victims of chemical exposure.

The purchases were made from a sole Iraqi source who was eager to sell his stock, officials said. The amount of money that the United States paid for the rockets is not publicly known, and neither are the affiliations of the seller.

Most of the officials and veterans who spoke about the program did so anonymously because, they said, the details remain classified. The C.I.A. declined to comment. The Pentagon, citing continuing secrecy about the effort, did not answer written questions and acknowledged its role only obliquely.

“Without speaking to any specific programs, it is fair to say that together with our coalition partners in Iraq, the U.S. military worked diligently to find and remove weapons that could be used against our troops and the Iraqi people,” Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said in a written statement.

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Richard P. Zahner, the top American military intelligence officer in Iraq in 2005 and 2006, said he did not know of any other intelligence program as successful in reducing the chemical weapons that remained in Iraq after the American-led invasion.

Through the C.I.A.’s purchases, General Zahner said, hundreds of weapons with potential use for terrorists were quietly taken off the market. “This was a timely and effective initiative by our national intelligence partners that negated the use of these unique munitions,” he said.

An image from the 1990s showing the destruction of Iraqi nerve-agent weapons. Credit UNSCOM

Not long after Operation Avarice had secured its 400th rocket, in 2006, American troops were exposed several times to other chemical weapons. Many of these veterans said that they had not been warned by their units about the risks posed by the chemical weapons and that their medical care and follow-up were substandard, in part because military doctors seemed unaware that chemical munitions remained in Iraq.

In some cases, victims of exposure said, officers forbade them to discuss what had occurred. The Pentagon now says hundreds of other veterans reported on health-screening forms that they believed they too had been exposed during the war.

Aaron Stein, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said the belated acknowledgment of a chemical-rocket purchases, as well as the potentially worrisome laboratory analysis of the related sarin samples, raised questions about the military’s commitment to the well-being of those it sent to war.

“If we were aware of these compounds, and as it became clear over the course of the war that our troops had been exposed to them, why wasn’t more done to protect the guys on the ground?” he said. “It speaks to the broader failure.”

The first purchase under Operation Avarice, according to veterans and officials familiar with the effort, occurred in early September 2005, when an Iraqi man provided a single Borak. The warhead presented intelligence analysts with fresh insight into a longstanding mystery.

During its war against Iran in the 1980s, Iraq had fielded multiple variants of 122-millimeter rockets designed to disperse nerve agents.

The Borak warheads, which are roughly 40 inches long and attach to a motor compatible with the common Grad multiple rocket launcher system, were domestically produced. But no clear picture ever emerged of how many Iraq manufactured or how many it fired during the Iran-Iraq war.

In confidential declarations in the 1990s to the United Nations, Iraq gave shifting production numbers, up to 18,500. It also claimed to have destroyed its remaining stock before international inspectors arrived after the Persian Gulf war.

No clear evidence ever surfaced to support Iraq’s claim, which meant that questions about whether Boraks remained were “carried forward as one of the big uncertainties,” said Charles A. Duelfer, a senior United Nations inspector at the time who later led the C.I.A.’s Iraq Survey Group. There was “a big gap in the information,” he said.

The mystery deepened in 2004 and early 2005, when the United States recovered 17 Boraks. The circumstances of those recoveries are not publicly known. Then came Operation Avarice and its promise of a larger haul. It began when the Iraqi seller delivered his first Borak, which the military secretly flew to the United States for examination.

The Iraqi seller would then periodically notify the C.I.A. in Baghdad that he had more for sale, officials said.

The agency worked with the Army intelligence battalion and chemical weapons specialists, who would fly by helicopter to Iraq’s southeast and meet the man for exchanges.

The handoffs varied in size, including one of more than 150 warheads. American ordnance disposal technicians promptly destroyed most of them by detonation, the officials said, but some were taken to Camp Slayer, by Baghdad’s airport, for further testing.

One veteran familiar with the program said warheads were tested by putting them in “an old cast-iron bathtub” and drilling through their metal exteriors to extract the liquid sarin within.

The analysis of sarin samples from 2005 found that the purity level reached 13 percent — higher than expected given the relatively low quality and instability of Iraq’s sarin production in the 1980s, officials said. Samples from Boraks recovered in 2004 had contained concentrations no higher than 4 percent.

The new data became grounds for concern. “Borak rockets will be more hazardous than previously assessed,” one internal report noted. It added a warning: the use of a Borak in an improvised bomb “could effectively disperse the sarin nerve agent.”

The C.I.A. is said to have bought and destroyed at least 400 Iraqi nerve-agent weapons like these Borak rockets, which were discovered separately. Credit U.S. Army

An internal record from 2006 referred to “agent purity of up to 25 percent for recovered unitary sarin weapons.”

Cheryl Rofer, a retired chemist for the Los Alamos National Laboratory, said such purity levels were plausible, because Iraq’s sarin batches varied in quality and the contents of warheads may have achieved an equilibrium as the contents degraded.

Military officials said that because the seller was a C.I.A. source they did not know his name or whether he was a smuggler, a former or current Iraqi official, a front for Iraq’s government, or something else. But as he continued to provide rockets, his activities drew more interest.

The Americans believed the weapons came from near Amarah, a city not far from Iran. It was not clear, however, if rockets had been retrieved from a former forward firing point used by Iraq’s military during the Iran-Iraq War, or from one of the ammunition depots around the city.

Neither the C.I.A. nor the soldiers persuaded the man to reveal his source of supply, the officials said. “They were pushing to see where did it originate from, was there a mother lode?” General Zahner said.

Eventually, a veteran familiar with the purchases said, “the guy was getting a little cocky.”

At least once he scammed his handlers, selling rockets filled with something other than sarin.

Then in 2006, the veteran said, the Iraqi drove a truckload of warheads to Baghdad and “called the intel guys to tell them he was going to turn them over to the insurgents unless they picked them up.”

Not long after that, the veteran said, the relationship appeared to dry up, ending purchases that had ensured “a lot of chemical weapons were destroyed.”

Obama Approves Minsk Agreement, Great for Putin

Posted on February 15, 2015February 15, 2015 by Denise Simon

The new Minsk ceasefire agreement empowers Russia-backed separatists with a number of leverages over Ukraine. If implemented, the agreement could provide a functioning framework for a mutually acceptable political settlement. In the event of non-implementation, a re-eruption of hostilities is highly likely.

In Minsk on 12th February, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande managed to reach an agreement on the ceasefire in Eastern Ukraine, and the outlines of a conflict settlement.

Formally, the document was signed not by the heads of state, but by the Trilateral Contact Group (composed of representatives of Ukraine, Russia and the OSCE) as well as the leaders of the Donetsk and Luhansk separatists. This indirect scheme allowed Kyiv to reach an agreement with the separatists without formally recognizing them as legitimate partners.

The document, composed of thirteen points, refers to the separatist entities as “particular districts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts”, using the same wording as the September 2014 Minsk agreement. Hence, neither their self-proclaimed names, Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, nor the Russian term Novorossiya are used, which is a strong signal that none of the parties questions that these regions belong to Ukraine.

*** So what else needs to be known? Who is still supporting Putin and why….

The segments of the Russian population that, arguably, have the best chance to dissuade President Vladimir Putin from his actions in Ukraine are business leaders and the rich. But despite having lost millions of dollars because of sanctions against Russia , the falling ruble and low oil prices, they still rally behind their leader-both privately and publicly.

‎

Despite a cease-fire announced Thursday , Western sanctions on Russia over its support of insurgents in neighboring Ukraine have already pushed Russia’s borrowing costs higher and crushed its currency (Exchange: RUBUSD=). The problems have been made worse by the price of oil, whose fall since September has further undercut the petro-state’s ability to fund itself. Yet Putin still enjoys broad domestic support, and experts tell CNBC that the country’s monied class is no exception. Timothy Ash, who heads emerging markets research at Standard Bank (Johannesburg Stock Exchange: SBK-ZA), summarizes the phenomenon in a few words: “Nationalism plays very well with many people,” he told CNBC

Alexander Kliment, director of Russia research at Eurasia Group, said the sanctions have actually strengthened elite support for Putin because they have bolstered the government’s position as a last-resort lender for them. “Also, sanctions have inflamed patriotic sentiment and been a convenient scapegoat for economic woes,” Kilment told CNBC.

“If you are an oligarch, it’s bad to suffer sanctions from the West,” he said, “but you’re still pretty well-off as part of the Russian system. It’s an awfully big leap to turn your back on that, which would risk literally everything you have.” Read More Total CEO: US will not become energy independent Edward Mermelstein, a New York-based attorney who works with Russian business clients, told CNBC that Putin’s popularity is no longer dependent on finance as much as the might of Russia.

“As long as the country is perceived as strong, he will continue to dominate domestically. The Russian citizen can withstand famine, but they cannot withstand the appearance of weakness,” he said.

While some companies are getting hit hard by what Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has acknowledged is an economy in “dire straits,” others are finding ways to benefit.

*** Now comes the alternate banking system. Almost 91 domestic credit institutions have been incorporated into the new Russian financial system, the analogous of SWIFT, an international banking network.The new service, will allow Russian banks to communicate seamlessly through the Central Bank of Russia. It should be noted that Russia’s Central Bank initiated the development of the country’s own messaging system in response to repeated threats voiced by Moscow’s Western partners to disconnect Russia from SWIFT.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev meeting with miniters

SWIFT (The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) is a Belgium-based international organization that provides services and a standardized environment for global banking communicating that allows financial institutions to send and receive messages about their transactions. Earlier this month Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov expressed confidence that Russia would not be disconnected from SWIFT. In her turn, Russian Central Bank First Deputy Chair Ksenia Yudaeva called upon Russian civilians and financial institutions not to dramatize the current situation.Russian experts point to the fact that Western businesses would face severe losses if they expelled Russia from the international SWIFT system. On the other hand, the alternative system launched by Russia might reduce the negative impacts caused by measures imposed by the West, including possible disconnection from SWIFT, and diminish Western financial dominance over Russia.

Denmark Killer had Criminal History

Posted on February 15, 2015February 15, 2015 by Denise Simon

He is now dead but at the time The gunman suspected of killing two people after opening fire on a free speech debate and a synagogue in Copenhagen on Saturday was identified tonight as 22-year-old Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein, a Danish national with a history of gang violence.

Copenhagen Police said the alleged terrorist, who was killed in a shootout with officers in the early hours of Sunday morning, had previously committed “several crimes” including assault and the possession of weapons.

At least two other people were arrested on Sunday, being led out in handcuffs from an internet café in Copenhagen, as part of the police investigation into how the gunman came to arm himself and pick his targets.

Jens Madsen, the head of Denmark’s security service, said he may have been “inspired by militant Islamist propaganda issued by IS [Islamic State] and other terror organisations”. It is not yet known. *** Now it is known.

Danish jihadi murderer freed from prison 2 weeks ago after knife attack by Robert Spencer:

10 Comments

“We do not have concrete knowledge of him being a traveller to conflict zones.” So he is just a believer in a belief system that all Western authorities insist has nothing to do with attacks like this one, although the attackers themselves continually point to it as their motivation.

“Pictured: Danish lone wolf ‘jihadi’ who was gunned down by police after terror shootings which killed film director and Jewish security guard – weeks after he was released from prison over knife attack,” by Sophie Jane Evans, Laurie Hanna, Flora Drury, Jennifer Smith and Mark Duell, MailOnline, February 15, 2015:

This is the first picture of the terror suspect believed to have killed a film director and Jewish security guard in two attacks in Copenhagen.

Danish-born Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein, 22, was killed after opening fire on officers who had closed down the area surrounding Norrebro metro station at about 5am today.

The man – whom police said is known to them due to past violence, gang-related activities and and possession of weapons – is thought to have killed two people in separate attacks at a free speech event and a synagogue.

Film director Finn Noergaard, 55, was killed yesterday at a cafe. Hours later, 37-year-old security employee Dan Uzan was shot in the head as he stood outside a building belonging to the city’s Great Synagogue.

Also, it was revealed tonight that El Hussein was released from prison two weeks ago after serving part of a jail sentence for a knife attack on a teenage train passenger in 2013.

This afternoon two people were led out of an internet cafe in handcuffs as part of the probe.

Earlier, at 5am police closed in on Norrebro station as the suspect emerged with a weapon from an address police were watching.

The man was killed in the street after opening fire on those who had cornered him, his body seen lying on the pavement as forensic teams swooped the scene at dawn.

Asked if the suspect was linked to any known terrorist groups, a police spokesman said: ‘We do not have concrete knowledge of him being a traveller to conflict zones.’…

Revealing the Pentagon’s Long-Held Secrets