ISIS Battle Plan, Memo to Barack Obama

Posted on by

Treasury’s Charge Sees Tehran Enabling al Qaeda in Syria

The Obama administration charged that Tehran has allowed senior al Qaeda members operating from Iranian soil to facilitate the movement of Sunni fighters into Syria.

There also is an unknown number of U.S. security contractors protecting State Department personnel in Iraq. They work from a $10 billion, 5-year Worldwide Protective Services contract the department signed with eight companies in 2010. They include defense giants like Dyncorp International and Triple Canopy. Dyncorp also signed a five-year deal with the State Department in 2010 that could be worth up to $894 million to provide a fleet of aircraft, including UH-1 utility helicopter and DHC-8 planes.

The CIA also ramped up its support of Iraqi counter-terrorism units last year, the Wall Street Journal reported.

While al Qaeda-linked groups in Syria have fought among themselves and with the secular opposition, the Free Syrian Army signed a truce with ISIS in late September, an acknowledgment of their efficacy on the battlefield. But divisions within the Islamist opposition camp remain stark.

ISIS declared a merger with Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda affiliate that has greater indigenous legitimacy in Syria, in April 2013. But Zawahiri, who succeeded bin Laden as head of so-called “core al-Qaeda,” annulled the merger, ruling that Baghdadi’s group’s operations be limited to Iraq. Baghdadi rejected Zawahiri’s ruling and questioned his authority, his group’s pledge of fealty to al-Qaeda notwithstanding. Various rival Islamist militant groups coalesced in late 2013 as the Mujahedeen Army with the common goal of forcing ISIS to cede territory and leave Syria.

CTC PERSPECTIVES

Al-Baghdadi’s Blitzkrieg, ISIL’s Psychological Warfare, and What It Means for Syria and Iraq
By Bryan Price, Dan Milton, and Muhammad al-`Ubaydi

The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant’s (ISIL) blitzkrieg-like advance across northern and western Iraq in the past 48 hours poses a serious security threat to the Nuri al-Maliki government. The organization now enjoys control over a strategic swath of territory spanning from eastern Syria into western Iraq, from Falluja in Anbar Province all the way to Mosul in northern Ninawa Province. After taking control of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, the group drove south to Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit, and it is currently fighting for control of Samarra and Balad just 50 miles north of Baghdad. The events in recent days have important implications for the future of Iraq, the ISIL, and the conflict in Syria.

Thus far, the overwhelming success of the ISIL’s march to the doorstep of Iraq’s capital was not based on sheer luck, but rather part of a carefully planned and executed expansion plan to make good on the group’s namesake goal—the creation of an Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. There are other factors beyond the ISIL’s military prowess, however, that also contributed to the success of this recent campaign.

Taking advantage of the widespread discontent toward al-Maliki’s government from Sunni Iraqis living in western and northern parts of the state, the group encountered relatively weak resistance from government security forces. The ISIL’s march was also assisted by tepid resistance from the local population, and in some cases active assistance from local Sunnis, including other minor Sunni insurgent groups like Jaysh Rijal al-Tariqa al-Naqshabandiya and Ansar al-Sunna. Once the top military leadership in Mosul fled north to Kurdistan via helicopter, many of the remaining Iraqi soldiers shed their uniforms and blended into the populace.

Additionally, the ISIL now enjoys the spoils of victory that will make it an even more potent organization and a thornier problem for the Iraqi government to address. After raiding several military bases in the region, the ISIL now possesses scores of Iraqi military equipment originally provided by the United States, from Humvees and cargo vehicles to small arms. There is already a picture on Twitter of Abu `Umar al-Shishani, the military commander of the ISIL in Syria, stepping out of his personal Humvee. Several posters on jihadist web forums and Twitter have sent out requests for helicopter pilots to potentially fly some of the aircraft that the ISIL captured in recent days.

According to the governor of Ninawa, the ISIL has looted several banks across the province, including an alleged $429 million dollar score from Mosul’s Central bank. The ISIL will also seek to profit from the Baiji oil refinery, one of Iraq’s largest, and a facility that produces more than 300,000 barrels per day.

The ISIL has also freed thousands of prisoners in its push south, including from four prisons in Mosul and one in Tikrit. According to the ISIL, the military commander behind the Mosul invasion, Abu `Abd al-Rahman al-Bilawi, was killed during the first day of fighting, and the ISIL has subsequently named the operation after him. Al-Bilawi was himself a former inmate freed in 2012.

Perhaps the greatest benefit derived from the ISIL’s recent operation is its enhanced credibility. The combination of the ISIL’s ferocious and bloodthirsty reputation and the glaring ineptitude of Iraq’s security forces are likely to push some disgruntled Sunnis, including those who were previously on the fence, over to the ISIL’s side. The group has been a long-time critic of what it believed to be a corrupt and incompetent Shi`a-led government, and it has continuously declared al-Maliki’s forces incapable of protecting the Iraqi people. The performance of the government’s security forces thus far only strengthens the ISIL’s argument.

An aspect of the ISIL’s expansion plan that has been somewhat overlooked in most mainstream media accounts is the group’s skillful use of psychological warfare. Virtually all Islamic extremist groups make use of social media to advance their causes, but the ISIL’s media production team is especially adept, and its target audience extends beyond the Arabic-speaking world. Less than 24 hours after their successful campaign against Mosul, the ISIL published the third issue of its English-language magazine, Islamic State News, complete with pictures detailing its military victory and various economic development programs helping the people of Iraq. Launching this a day after a major military campaign shows that the group is media savvy and intent on improving its image among its supporters and new recruits, including those in the West.

Like most extremist groups fighting in the region, the ISIL is active on web forums and social media, including Facebook and Twitter. A recent propaganda video released by the group, however, deserves special mention. Its implicit goal was to instill fear and terror in the populace, and may be a contributor to the lack of meaningful resistance from both the security forces and the populace. A little over three weeks ago, the ISIL’s media wing, al-Furqan, released a professionally-edited film called Sounds of the Swords Clashing 4 that has since gone viral in Iraq. The graphic nature of the film showcases both the ISIL’s ruthlessness and its organizational capability.

The hour-long film depicts ISIL members dressed in the same uniforms worn by Iraqi Special Forces units conducting late-night house calls to prominent Iraqi Army officers and government counterterrorism officials. To quickly resolve what they believe to be some sort of mistaken identity mix-up, the unsuspecting victims openly reveal their government affiliations and their official counterterrorism duties, only to realize their interrogators are ISIL operatives. The film graphically shows several gruesome executions, including one where ISIL members decapitate a top official in Samarra’s counterterrorism unit in his own bedroom. Another grizzly scene shows ISIL members taunting a father and son while they are forced to dig their own graves prior to their executions.

The ISIL’s military capability and its prowess in psychological warfare put the al-Maliki government in a difficult situation. In the short-term, rolling back the ISIL’s territorial gains will not be easy without external support. That said, even if al-Maliki regains the territory lost in recent days, military successes will not solve Iraq’s deep sectarian cleavages or its underlying problems of ineffective governance.

The ISIL’s recent victories have made the group more popular and more powerful, but it too faces daunting challenges in the days ahead. It is difficult to fight an enemy on two fronts, yet the ISIL finds itself fighting multiple enemies on multiple fronts. In Syria, the ISIL is not only battling pro-Assad forces, but it is fighting sister extremist groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qa`ida affiliate it once tried to subordinate, Kurdish groups like the PKK in northeastern Syria that are vying for control of the resource-rich al-Hasakah Province, and other Islamic and nationalist opposition groups. On June 11, the ISIL kidnapped the head of the Turkish consulate in Mosul and more than 40 of his staff members, a move that is sure to intensify the Turkish government’s efforts to combat the ISIL. According to a post on al-Fida’, a prominent jihadist web forum, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was willing to send two divisions into Iraq to prevent the collapse of the Iraqi government. The IRGC’s website quoted Qassim Suleimani, the commander of the elite Quds Force, but the announcement has since been taken down.

Finally, the ISIL faces the difficult challenge of governing the territory it now controls. The ISIL has steamrolled over the government’s security forces and secured valuable resources that have enhanced its popularity and its capability, but is the ISIL’s proposed alternative of an independent state governed by Shari`a law attractive to Iraqis in the long-term? In view of the ISIL’s recent successes, the answer is probably no. For example, although the ISIL enjoyed surprising success during its January 2014 campaign in Anbar Province, an operation in which it gained and maintained control over much of Falluja and Ramadi, it was unable to fully exploit these victories in other parts of the province. Despite fighting in an overwhelmingly Sunni province known for its staunch criticism of the al-Maliki government, the ISIL faced powerful tribal leaders in Anbar who saw the group as a threat to their autonomy and their own personal interests. It is one of the reasons why the ISIL’s current thrust to Baghdad is coming from the north, from Mosul down to Samarra, rather than west to east through Anbar.

In the short-term, however, the ISIL will try to appeal to the people’s deep frustration over al-Maliki’s lack of governance and a pervasive sense of disenfranchisement common in Iraqi politics. The ISIL already has enjoyed some success in providing public goods and local governance throughout Syria in places like Raqaa, and the ISIL will likely adopt a similar model in Mosul. Despite a day of chaos in Mosul that saw thousands flee the city and others afraid to go to work, the ISIL allegedly went door to door around the city to calm citizens and reassure them that the ISIL has their best interests at heart. The ISIL published a wathiqat almadina, a list of rules for the city based on Shari`a law, and today there are reports that many have returned to work in Mosul and the city is functioning somewhat normally. It will be a crucial test of the ISIL’s capabilities if they are able to maintain this sense of normalcy in the days and weeks ahead.

It is impossible to forecast how this crisis will end. By centralizing power and marginalizing meaningful Sunni political participation, Nuri al-Maliki may have dug a hole that his security forces cannot pull him out of without outside help. On the other hand, the ISIL has significantly increased its relative power in the past few days, but only time will tell if its gamble will pay off or whether it has overestimated its ability to effectively govern the territory it now controls.

Bryan Price is the Director of the Combating Terrorism Center at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

Dan Milton is an Assistant Professor at the Combating Terrorism Center at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

Muhammad al-`Ubaydi is a research assistant at the Combating Terrorism Center and monitors Arabic jihadist websites.

The views presented are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Department of Defense, the U.S. Army, or any of its subordinate commands.

Combating Terrorism Center

Obama’s Rebuke to Iraq

Posted on by

Syria mapThe blood and treasure of valiant U.S. troops and allied forces spent in Iraq are fading away. We are sadly witnessing a complete shift to supremacy in the Middle East such that the entire Obama National Security team must be fired, and NOW.

Maliki has begged for air support from NATO and the United States for more than a year. Barack Obama, simply said no. Instead Barack Obama chose to sell Iraq military assets that include fighter jets, weapons and surveillance equipment. There is no other plan to stop the caliphate. except between Barack Obama and John Kerry the only solution is a $5 billion Counter-terrorism Partnership Fund for the Overseas Contingency Operation. This Fund and its design has yet to be fully crafted, it is likely only in concept mode. This does not help Iraq nor does it help NATO.

Meanwhile Turkey is on full alert as their consulate in Iraq has been seized and at least 24 employees of the diplomatic staff there have been kidnapped.

ISIL is moving towards Baghdad, and one of the largest embassies of the U.S. is there. Currently the most proactive measure so far to protect our embassy is to put out travel warnings.

Since the invasion of Iraq by the coalition forces in 2003, Iraq had been the mandate of a multi-national contingent led by the U.S. However, as control began to slip away from this multi-national contingent, and later U.S. troops also started to pull out of Iraq, the Quds Force, which is the special-ops unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) of Iran, under the leadership of the enigmatic Major General Qasem Soleimani, by taking advantage of the situation managed to replace the multi-national force.

Dozens of comprehensive reports published in the past couple of years show that Soleimani has been wielding considerable power in Iraq and been enjoying a privileged position behind the political scene in that country. As it seems, he has under his thumb both Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister of Iraq, and Masoud Barzani, the President of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region. By exploiting his immense clout in Iraq, he has been tirelessly setting up numerous Shi’ite militia bands and training and equipping them, not only to enhance his influence and maintain his empire in Iraq but also to keep the road to Syria, where many pro-Islamic Republic contingents fight for the Assad regime, secure.

So, perhaps it is easier to explain by just looking at maps. The question now is what comes next? The power struggle is convoluted but it does include Iran’s al Quods force, Kurds, al Nusra, AQIM, Haqqani, Taliban, ISIS, which make up the whole region.

AQ map and affiliatesisil map

The Child Incursion

Posted on by

Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson is a busy man spinning the disaster at the Southern border laying blame on Congress.

illegals

Although the Obama administration labels the flow of children a “humanitarian” crisis rather than an enforcement problem, Mr. Johnson said he has directed agents to go after the smuggling networks that control the traffic across the border and are thought to be responsible for encouraging Guatemalans, Hondurans and Salvadorans to cross the U.S. border.

He also said the U.S. needs a “robust” public relations campaign to discourage Central Americans from attempting the journey and to warn of the dangers along the way.

Sadly however, Johnson is so wrong on every front as this insurgency was concocted by the White House exclusively and effectively advertised and sold to Central and South America effectively.

Newspapers in El Salvador and Honduras are promoting policies by the Obama administration that defer deportation to minors brought to the United States as children by their parents — known as “Dreamers” — and those that are housing illegal children at military bases in the South and West.

Signed by President Barack Obama in 2012, the policy grants temporary legal status to many young illegal immigrants, ending the threat of deportation for at least two years.

The policy, however, does not entitle the immigrants to state services. It was renewed for two more years.

“With the renewal of DACA, we act according to our values and code of this great nation,” Johnson said. “But the biggest task of comprehensive immigration reform is yet to come.”
In November 2011, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the U.S. was pledging $100 million to support Latino entrepreneurs through a public-private partnership dubbed La Idea. The effort, Clinton said, “brings together diaspora communities, the private sector, and public institutions to work on some of the toughest issues we face.” She noted her excitement about one of the central elements of La Idea: a pitch competition calling for “ideas for new businesses that will create jobs and promote trade and investment” in Latin America.

Similar to other entrepreneurship programs backed by the U.S. government in Africa and the Caribbean, the La Idea contest revolves around the idea that the more than 2.3 million Latino entrepreneurs in the U.S. have plenty to teach their counterparts in Latin America, and vice-versa. The big idea is to encourage them to form partnerships and expand their ventures across the Americas to spur economic development, says Jane Buhks, a marketing and communications specialist at New York-based Accion U.S. Network, which is handling the contest’s administration.

The borders of North America under the Obama administration are only implied now and have no significance. There are many government agencies that are part of the edict from the Obama White House such that it involves, DHS, State, DoJ, Department of Education and Health and Human Services, all these secretaries have signed on. The rewards for the illegals are wide and deep at the expense of the taxpayer all without notice or approval.

A new federal policy allows young unauthorized immigrants who are low enforcement priorities to remain in the country temporarily. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy allows the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to exercise prosecutorial discretion in granting administrative relief from deportation for young people covered by the policy. A person who receives deferred action is considered to be lawfully present. Deferred action status, however, does not grant the immigrant any substantive rights, legal immigration status or a pathway to citizenship. Deferred action recipients are not eligible for the Children’s Health Insurance Program or Medicaid, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Deferred action is permitted for a period of two years and can be renewed.

Those granted deferred action may apply for work authorization. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) began to accept applications for deferred action as of Aug. 15, 2012. This policy change was made via a policy memorandum issued June 15, 2012, by the secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The most important document of all is from the State Department, which demonstrates and aggressive and proactive objective to reach out to other countries, any country and encourage them to come to the United States, joining all races and cultures into one and the very easy path to U.S. citizenship.

Sovereignty is damned, the definition of ‘citizen’ is damned, law are damned and the taxpayer is damned.

 

Obama’s 2012 Pen, Today’s Border Insurgency

Posted on by

The truth is fleeting but the other scandal that is surfacing now beyond the boatload of others from 2012 orchestrated by the Barack Obama re-election team is the border insurgency by children.

Barack Obama ordered Janet Napolitano to instruct Border Security agents on deferred action and she complied. There were restrictions to this new lawless order, yet compliance is occurring which is no surprise.

So, now Barack Obama’s pen is about to cost tax payers at least $2 billion to handle the insurgency. This is going to cause chaos that had yet to be fully realized that includes illness, disease, food, shelter, investigations, transportation, education and burdens on states and the military that are not poised to handle.

Immigration agents are so overwhelmed that some children are being kept in detention and being processed during a longer time period than the 72-hour maximum requirement, these senior administration officials acknowledged. The officials briefed reporters on condition of anonymity.

Although they said they had been prepared for an increase this year in the Rio Grande Valley, the influx was much greater than anticipated. As many as 90,000 minors are forecast to enter the U.S. this year without their parents or guardians, the officials said.

The legacy definition of the word ‘citizen’ has been re-defined. The tangible and implied borders of the United States have vanished and the fact is there is no crisis in Central America causing the influx of this trafficking. This is all a condition of politics that was concocted in 2012 such that the wake of the disaster is being realized today and creating huge challenges for states and a handful of military  bases where Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has ordered some military bases to handle a humanitarian crisis.

One must remember the Mariel Boatlift was a crisis where Carter took a stand and reversed to influx of Cubans.

insurgency

This is human-trafficking sanctioned by Barack Obama and deemed so by a Judge.

‘Many of the children there were sleeping on plastic boards. According to the Associated Press, toothbrushes and toothpaste hadn’t arrived yet and were expected Monday. Hundreds of children had not bathed in days, and were taking turns using just four showers. Tony Banegas, Honduras’ honorary consul in Phoenix, told the AP that there were 236 Honduran children there on Saturday, including an 8-year-old’.  Read more here and take a look at the disgusting conditions Barack Obama, Janet Napolitano and Jeh Johnson created.

An estimated 60,000 such children will pour into the United States this year, according to the administration, up from about 6,000 in 2011. Now, Washington is trying to figure out how to pay for their food, housing and transportation once they are taken into custody.

The flow is expected to grow. The number of unaccompanied, undocumented immigrants who are under 18 will likely double in 2015 to nearly 130,000 and cost U.S. taxpayers $2 billion, up from $868 million this year, according to administration estimates.

The shortage of housing for these children, some as young as 3, has already become so acute that an emergency shelter at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, has been opened and can accommodate 1,000 of them, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said in an interview with Reuters.

The issue is an added source of tension between Democrats and Republicans, who disagree on how to rewrite immigration laws. With comprehensive legislation stalled, President Barack Obama is looking at small, administrative steps he could take, which might be announced this summer. No details have been outlined but immigration groups are pressing him to take steps to keep families with children together.

The minors flooding over the border are often teenagers leaving behind poverty or violence in Mexico and other parts of Central America such as Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. They are sometimes seeking to reunite with a parent who is already in the United States, also without documentation.

“This is a humanitarian crisis and it requires a humanitarian response,” Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski said in an interview. The Maryland Democrat, a former social worker, has likened the flood of unaccompanied children to the “boat people” of past exodus movements.

Barack Obama and his team broke a system, broke the law, broke enforcement and had no plan or intention to fix it, now when this crisis has reached an epic status, it will cost the taxpayers big bucks.

VA, Gang-Green-Gate

Posted on by

Too bad Eric Shinseki left government service at the lowest point of his career, he should have and he deserves a scarlet letter for shame.

Alas, the VA audit report is here, it does virtually nothing to solve what the whistleblowers have revealed.

For reference, the House Veteran Affairs Committee did their job and contacted Shinseki by letters more than once. While letters seem feeble or shallow, they are in fact a part of Congressional record, such that Shinseki could never claim ignorance of the gigantic malfeasance that required and begged for his attention and action.

White House now says the VA is deploying “mobile medical centers,” hiring staff to try to address 57,000 patients waiting for health appointments, this is coming from an audit report.

 

The House passed at least 6 bills in the last several years in an earnest attempt to fix the VA. By virtue of these bills alone should have gained the attention of Shinseki as every government agency has a congressional liaison that keeps pace with all legislative actions. All the legislation passed by the House, arrived in the Senate and well, Harry Reid and of course Senate Veterans Affairs Chairman Bernie Sanders were too busy at lashing out at other matters like the Koch Brothers to take up the measures.

VA death

Given the gravity of the VA and the solutions passed by the House, there is zero excuse for the Senate leadership to claim stupid on the matters, there is a paper trail and congressional record to prove the actions. Both Harry Reid and Bernie Sanders belong before ethics committees for violations, they belong in an investigation by FBI for being complicit in perpetuating death, sickness and actually falsifying government documents.

Where is the outrage? How many moral compasses are broken? What were the DNC’s talking points? Where was Barack Obama? Where was the White House Chief of Staff?

A whistleblower in Arkansas reported a patient choked on his own vomit and died the next day because emergency equipment was not properly stocked at the Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Little Rock.

Another whistleblower said a patient died from a heart attack at a veterans’ hospital in Maine after the on-duty doctor failed respond to an emergency code, delaying proper treatment for more than two hours.

—-

The Democratic-led Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs failed to hold sufficient oversight hearings into problems at the Department of Veterans Affairs despite Republican demands dating back more than a year to do so.

The VA, moreover, failed to provide the committee with information necessary to address problems, congressional insiders say.

The committee, chaired by independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who caucuses with the Democratic Senate majority, held only seven oversight hearings to address problems, three legislative hearings to discuss new bills, and two markups to rewrite legislation in the 113th Congress that began in January 2013.

The committee’s lack of initiative angered Republicans on the committee, who wanted to address health-care issues like the kind that led to secret waiting lists and preventable veteran deaths at the Phoenix, Arizona VA Medical Center.

In Jackson, Miss., seven whistleblowers came forward with allegations that patients’ health was jeopardized by filthy conditions and unread imaging tests like X-rays.

Other practices in Jackson included scheduling patients to see doctors in fictional “ghost” clinics or double booking appointment times, which often resulted in the veteran going unseen.

It got so bad at the Jackson hospital that the Drug Enforcement Administration suspended prescription-writing authority for some of the staff at the facility.

The whistleblowers continue to investigate and report VA issues and yet there have been no immediate solutions offered. But hey the proposed Senate bill includes the construction of a new VA care facility in Hawaii and perhaps as many as 37 more new locations CONUS at a cost of $500 million. Oh, so more places and more money spent but no real method of fighting past the fraudulent paperwork, the secret lists or frankly the smell of disease, gangrene and death?

The outrage must continue and be placed at the feet of the White House and the two stewards of the White House, Sanders and Reid.