Category Archives: al Qaida al Nusra Boko Haram

Homs. Syria: Today

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Context: New York City in 2014 had an estimated population of 8.49 million. Today in Syria, 11 million people have fled the country. Starvation is everywhere.

Iran and Russia have been long time friends with Bashir al Assad and both rogue countries continue to prop up Assad.

Every world leader is responsible for this and to blame. 5 years of Bashir al Assad, years of Islamic State, years of al Nusra. Russia continues to bomb those fighting against the Assad regime with wild abandon. This is 2016, how can a modern day holocaust be so real. No one can fully estimate the death tolls, 200,000 or 500,000?

 

 

 

What are the prospects for anyone to ever return? How can this be rebuilt?

Homs: Homs did not emerge into the historical record until the 1st century BCE at the time of the Seleucids. It later became the capital of a kingdom ruled by the Emesani dynasty who gave the city its name. Originally a center of worship for the sun god El-Gabal, it later gained importance in Christianity under the Byzantines. Homs was conquered by the Muslims in the 7th century and made capital of a district that bore its current name. Throughout the Islamic era, Muslim dynasties contending for control of Syria sought after Homs due to the city’s strategic position in the area. Homs began to decline under the Ottomans and only in the 19th century did the city regain its economic importance when its cotton industry boomed. During French Mandate rule, the city became a center of insurrection and, after independence in 1946, a center of Baathist resistance to the first Syrian governments.

Large parts of Syria are reduced almost entirely to rubble after five years of civil war.

As attitudes and policies towards refugees harden across Europe, a video has emerged that exposes the utter devastation Syrians are fleeing from.

Revealing in detail the consequences of the country’s five-year civil war, the drone footage shows the piles of rubble ruined buildings that Homs – previously Syria’s third largest city – has been reduced to.

While the video reflects the utter desolation in a city that was once home to more than 650,000 people, peace talks aimed at ending hostilities remain frustratingly unproductive.
The video that shows the Syrian peace talks cannot come soon enough
Arguments over who should or should not attend the negotiations overshadowed the continuous damage wrought in a war that has seen over 11 million Syrians flee, more than half the country’s entire population.

The video was shot by Alexander Pushin, a cameraman for Russian state television.

While his drone footage from Syria has been described as propaganda designed to promote Russia’s military involvement in the country, the startling scale of devastation it exposes is beyond question.
Even as news emerged of nine people who died attempting to reach the relative safe haven of Europe, anti-refugee sentiment appears to be growing across the continent.

Denmark recently introduced legislation that permits the seizing of refugees’ valuables, which drew comparisons to the treatment of Jews by Nazi Germany.
Sweden is rejecting applications from 80,000 people who sought asylum in the Scandinavian country last year, while Finland also intends to expel 20,000 of the 32,000 applications received in 2015.

Angela Merkel announced recently that Syrian refugees would be expected to return to the Middle East once the conflict is over, while British Prime Minister David Cameron dismissed those living in the squalor of Calais’ “Jungle” as “a bunch of migrants”.

Starting in 2011, the ongoing conflict in Syria pitches Bashar al Assad’s regime – aided by Russia – against a multitude of different and competing factions, including Islamist group Isis and associated militias.

The language of a continent that once appeared to welcome refugees no longer appears so accommodating, despite the evidently dire situation in Homs, Damascus and other Syrian cities reduced to ruins over the last five years.

Dutch Report: Life Under Islamic State

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Dutch Intelligence Report Exposes Horrors of Daily Life Under ISIS

by Abigail R. Esman

IPT: When the leaders of ISIS declared the caliphate of the Islamic State in June 2014, the world already had a strong idea of who they were: a jihadist group so violent, so barbaric, so extreme, that even al-Qaida, with whom they had once been affiliated, wanted nothing more to do with them.

But as the world soon learned, it would get even worse.

The founding of the Islamic State brought some of the most inhumane violence of modern civilization: captives held in cages and burned alive; beheadings captured on video and broadcast on the Internet; mass enslavement and rape of non-Muslim women; and the genocide of Iraq’s Yazidi tribe.

Coupled with this has been a perverse propaganda campaign that makes the Caliphate look like a teenage summer camp, aimed at recruiting Westerners to join the jihad and enjoy life in their idyllic, Allah-blessed commune-on-the-sea. And for thousands of Western Muslims, it has worked, either by inducing them to make the journey, or hijrah, to Syria and Iraq, or by motivating them to carry out terrorist attacks on Western towns and cities.

This is what we know.

What we have not known has been the reality of life in the Islamic State, including the social order, the availability of housing and health care and other basic necessities and the treatment of women and children.

A new report by the Dutch Intelligence Service (AIVD) now shines a spotlight into the heart of the Islamic State, its workings, and the psychology of its leaders. The picture it paints is no less terrifying than one might expect, a society increasingly paranoid and totalitarian, devoid of human empathy, lacking in the most vital resources, and yet somehow, still surviving through a combination of propaganda, lies, oppression, violence, and the profound power of delusion.

It is that delusion which seems most apparent in the AIVD report: the myth of a life of comfort and companionship and a coziness with God that ISIS’s propaganda promulgates, promotes, and perpetuates on social media; the delusion of those who manage to equate murder and enslavement with religious duty and moral good; and those delusions with which ISIS leaders fill the minds of children raised in their domain – and so, build and secure the future of their narrative and their jihad.

“Violence is inherent to ISIS,” the report says. “On a daily basis, it is practiced, glorified, and preached.” Through that violence has emerged a state (such as it is) that is at once overbearing, tyrannical, and powerful and yet, at its core, vulnerable, fragile, and afraid.

Following are highlights of the AIVD report, which was compiled on the basis of 18 months of research.

DAILY LIFE

While many Westerners make hijrah not to fight, per se, but for the glory of living in a true Muslim state, the reality that greets them is not what they likely anticipate, the AIVD reveals. Constant bombardments from Assad troops, allied forces, and Russia mean that every day is lived in perpetual fear and danger. The trauma this brings to children, especially, and particularly those who travel to the caliphate with their parents from the West, is incalculable.

Moreover, despite photographs ISIS distributes on the Internet of houses with exquisite views and happy families, most homes are in disrepair. There are food shortages. Medical care is as minimal as one might expect in a war zone that receives no legal imports or medicines, where there are excruciatingly few doctors or nurses, and daily streams of wounded. Electricity is also scarce; most homes can rely on only an hour or two of power every day.

And while all men receive a state salary (with supplements for wives and children), those salaries were recently halved– an unwelcome development for Caliphate citizens at a time when oil income has fallen and prices for basic necessities, especially food, skyrocket.

MEN

Men and women are separated on arrival, according to the AIVD. Men are required to swear allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph, before being interrogated to ensure they aren’t spies. They are then sent into military training. Though not all men sign up to fight, all must be prepared to join the battle if called upon and participate actively “in ISIS-led executions, torture, and rape.”

From here, they are generally able to select their own roles, be it as marketing advisers, bus drivers, doctors, or warriors. Some, however, are assigned roles. Reports the AIVD, “specifically-selected men can be trained by ISIS and sent back to stage attacks in Europe.”

WOMEN

While many women make hijrah with the idea of joining in battle, in actuality women are forbidden to participate in what is viewed as men’s work. They also cannot work closely with men who are not family, a law that further bars them from the battlefield.

They have their own parts to play in the Caliphate, the most important of which is childbearing: as many and as fast as possible. Reports the AIVD, “Mothers are [then] required to raise their sons to be ISIS fighters. Daughters, for their part, are to marry fighters and, with the same purpose as their own mothers, to bear children.”

In addition, women can play an active role in recruiting, largely through social media. Others join the all-women Al-Khansaa brigade, which enforces sharia law as it applies to women, be it their manner of dress or their public behavior. “If a woman is apprehended by the brigade and convicted, then another woman carries out the punishment,” the AIVD report explains. “Hence even Western women who have joined Al-Khansaa will execute the lashings of women who have, according to ISIS, violated rules and boundaries.”

CHILDREN

It is the children, however, who suffer most in the Islamic State – children whose lives are made of daily confrontations with death and agony and fear. Nonetheless, shockingly more and more Western families are making their way to ISIS territory with their children, or with pregnant mothers wishing to give birth there. And then there are the children born not just to ISIS brides, but to rape victims and sexual slaves such as the Yazidis.

But where most boys of 7- or 8 years of age may go on fishing trips with their fathers or play soccer in local parks, these frequently are brought to observe public executions and beatings. Parents may pose their child with the head of a beheaded enemy. At school, they learn English, Arabic, and the tenets of ISIS doctrine alongside lessons in the use of firearms and “execution practice.” By the age of 9, girls are expected to cover themselves in public, while their male schoolmates are ushered off to training camps to learn to fight.

“Children take an increasingly frequent role in ISIS propaganda,” states the report. “In various execution videos made by the group in the first half of 2015, boys between the ages of ten and twelve served as executioner, shooting or beheading prisoners. The use of children in propaganda fits the strategy of ISIS, which largely hopes to use media images to shock and so, gain attention. Through this propaganda, which is often picked up by regular mass media, it becomes clear that parents who travel to the ISIS territory have a fully realistic view of what awaits their children when they get there.”

The Overview

Increasingly, it appears that life in the Caliphate is becoming tougher. A growing paranoia and fear that disillusioned fighters might leave and counter their propaganda with the truth – not to mention a concern about spies attacking from within – haunts ISIS leaders. They are cracking down in response. It is becoming harder and harder to leave the Islamic State, even for temporary, medical reasons.

Similarly, contact between residents of the Caliphate and those on the outside is being increasingly controlled. “Since July, 2015, it is no longer permissible to use wireless internet in Raqqah,” according to the report. “The Internet can only be accessed through ISIS-approved Internet cafes, where careful watch is kept over which sites are visited. In some cases, permission must be granted by a military leader or emir to spread information to the outside. Whoever fails to observe these rules must appear before a sharia court.”

Such measures ensure that the myth of an idyllic state continues, along with the flow of new warriors and the women who will give birth to them.

Ultimately, concludes the intelligence agency, “the so-called caliphate of ISIS stands far from what the organization purports it to be. The region that is occupied by ISIS is not a holy state or ideal society in its infancy. ISIS functions as a totalitarian regime. Whoever emigrates to the ISIS territory makes a conscious, deliberate choice to take part in an organization, an institution that commits terrorist activities and conducts attacks in Europe. In practice, this means that men as well as women who join the Islamic State, armed or otherwise, take part in ISIS’s jihad.”

Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, ofRadical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New York and the Netherlands.

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Bikers Vs. ISIS: Dutch Motorcycle Gang Fighting ISIS In Syria After Getting Legal Green Light

ISIS will now be facing a new foe as the terror group continues its brutal and bloody campaign to take over Syria and bring it under the so called Islamic State “caliphate.” Members of a Dutch biker gang known as “No Surrender” have already joined the battle against ISIS in Iraq, and on Tuesday authoities in the Netherlands gave them a legal green light to keep up the battle.

“Joining a foreign armed force was previously punishable, now it’s no longer forbidden,” said Wim De Bruin, a spokesperson for the Dutch public prosecutor, to the French Press Agency Agency. “You just can’t join a fight against the Netherlands.”

 

According to Klaas Otto, the leader of the notorious motorcycle thug gang, said that three No Surrender members made the trip to Syria last week and had taken up the fight against ISIS alongside Kurdish forces, such as those struggling to fend off heavily armed ISIS militants now besieging the crucial town of Kobani, on the border between Syria and Turkey.

A biker identified only as Ron was recently seen on Kurdish television alongside Kurdish fighters. Ron was shown dressed in battle fatigues and wielding a Kalashnikov rifle and is heard to say, “the Kurds have been under pressure for a long time.”

About 70,000 Kurds, the majority of them political refugees from Turkey, now live in Holland.

De Bruin made clear, however, that while Dutch bikers or other citizens would not be prosecuted for joining the Kurdish fight against ISIS, any Dutch national leaving the country in order to fight on the ISIS side of the conflict would be prosecuted as a criminal.

The reason for the difference is simply that ISIS is classified as a terrorist organization, and joining a terrorist group is illegal under Dutch law. By the same token, even Dutch bikers who fight against ISIS, but do so by joining with the Kurdistan Workers Party — generally known as the PKK — are also committing a crime.

The PKK is categorized as a terrorist group by the Dutch, as well as by most of the international community. The United States State Department has listed the PKK on its roster of foreign terrorist organizations since 1997.

De Bruin cautioned that the Dutch bikers fighting ISIS do not have a free hand to commit other crimes, such as rape, or torturing captives. But De Bruin conceded that even such heinous offenses would not likely be prosecuted because the fight against ISIS “is happening a long way away.”

Pathetic, Kerry is Begging Russia

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As Syria Talks Fizzle, ‘War Has No Meaning Anymore’

NYT: GENEVA — Four Syrian rebel commanders huddled in a knot, all broad shoulders and shiny gray suits, surveying the hotel lounge. Gigantic portraits of Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix gazed down at the carpet, a checkerboard of faux zebra-hide in squares of orange and magenta. On a low sofa, a couple snuggled to the sounds of Amy Winehouse. The fighters decamped to a smokers’ enclosure behind a plate-glass window, its back wall a trompe-l’oeil image of electric-blue waves that made it seem as though they were submerged in a fish tank. It was an effect that fit their mood. They were in Geneva, notionally at least, for peace talks, but back in Syria, the government and its Russian allies were battering insurgents with scores of airstrikes. With their men under fire, the commanders were asking themselves how much longer they could credibly stay.

“Maybe a day,” one, Maj. Hassan Ibrahim, said on Monday night.

By Wednesday, the talks were indeed suspended, as the intense fighting on the ground proved there was as little to talk about as ever.

In an interview earlier, under the watchful eye of an adviser from Saudi Arabia, Major Ibrahim had dutifully projected strength and determination. But when the Saudi man walked away, the Syrian, who had defected from the government army in 2011, leaned forward and confided that the fighters he led in southern Syria were struggling. Supplies of weapons and salaries from the United States and its allies are dwindling. Moving in and out of Jordan is getting harder.

“They are doing it to put pressure on us to accept a political process,” he said, one in which he doubted that the Syrian government — or Russia, a sponsor of the talks — would make any compromise.

Major Ibrahim was reflecting a growing foreboding among the opposition’s fighters and civilians, mirrored by growing hope on the government side, that Washington, interested only in bombing the Islamic State militant group, is ceding the field to Russia and leaving the opposition on its own.

So much in Geneva this week was exactly like the last round of Syria peace talks in the city two years ago. Soft-lit hotel lobbies sweltered in the heat of glass fireplaces. Room service offered staple Syrian food — “Oriental mezze” — for about $40, which in Syria might constitute two weeks’ decent wages. Government and opposition delegates still seemed to be coming from different planets and witnessing different wars. Continue here.

Russia ignores Kerry plea to stop Syria bombing, deploys advanced fighter jets

FNC: Russia seemingly has ignored Secretary of State John Kerry’s appeals to stop bombing civilians and allow critical humanitarian aid to starving Syrians – and is instead escalating its military involvement, deploying four of its most capable fighter jets to Syria, two defense officials confirmed to Fox News.

The decision to send the Su-35S jets poses yet another hurdle for Kerry’s efforts to proceed with peace talks. The Su-35S is Russia’s most advanced warplane, capable of air-to-air and air-to-ground missions, one official familiar with the jet said.

Already, continued Russian airstrikes against Syrian opposition fighters, some backed by the CIA, were enough to derail proposed peace talks in Geneva Wednesday.

Despite backing two U.N. resolutions in support of a ceasefire, Russia reneged on its promise to stop bombing civilians in Syria, a prerequisite for the U.N.-backed talks in Geneva.

“[T]here will be a ceasefire,” Kerry predicted Tuesday in Rome. “We expect a ceasefire. And we expect adherence to the ceasefire. And we expect full humanitarian access.”

Two days later, the Russian bombing hasn’t stopped and thousands of Syrians remain starving.

Kerry said he was assured by his Russian counterpart the Russians would stop bombing.

“I talked to Foreign Minister Lavrov a couple of days ago and I specifically discussed a ceasefire with him, and he said they are prepared to have a ceasefire,” Kerry said.

But Kerry’s counterpart responded the next day saying the strikes would continue.

“Russian strikes will not cease [in Syria] … I don’t see why these airstrikes should be stopped,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday in Oman. Hours later, the U.N. talks fell apart.

Kerry continued calling on Russia to stop bombing Thursday in London.

“It could not be more clear. That is an obligation that is not tied to talks. It is an obligation accepted by all parties in the United Nations resolution. Russia voted for that, Russia has a responsibility, as do all parties, to live up to it,” he said.

The Russians have carried out 270 airstrikes since Monday, according to its defense ministry.

On Wednesday, a United Nations special envoy suspended the peace talks, which include participation from Russia and Iran, just hours after they began.

“It is not the end and it is not a failure of the talks,” said U.N. Special Envoy to Syria Staffan di Mistura.

The State Department denied the peace conference was a waste of time.

“It’s not a charade because they were there and because there was a beginning,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday.

The top U.S. general in Iraq said the U.S. wants to avoid a confrontation with Russia, despite Russia bombing U.S.-backed rebels.

“I wouldn’t characterize it as a proxy war. I would say that we are pursuing different goals,” Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland told reporters, speaking from Baghdad earlier this week.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Syrians are starving inside the country, besieged by Russian airstrikes preventing humanitarian aid from reaching them.

The U.N. chief humanitarian coordinator says close to 500,000 Syrians are cut off from food assistance surrounded by Bashar Assad’s forces. Fifty-one people have died of hunger in Madaya, a town of 20,000, located an hour outside Damascus and just 10 miles from Lebanon and 40 miles from the Israeli border.

Aid workers who arrived with the first and only food convoy last month said they have never seen such devastation.

“We saw people who are clearly malnourished, especially children, we saw people who are extremely thin, skeletons, that are now barely moving,” said Yacoub El Hillo, the U.N. resident and humanitarian coordinator in Syria to Reuters.

There are currently no plans for the U.S. military to help the U.N. get food to the hundreds of thousands trapped in Syria.

“There are no plans for that at this time,” said Col. Steve Warren, a U.S. military spokesman for the coalition based in Baghdad. “We’ll, of course, support them if asked and able, but our focus is the defeat of ISIL.”

“We haven’t seen a catastrophe like this since World War II,” said Kerry in Rome. “[I]n recent months its people have been reduced to eating grass,” he added.

A Washington Post editorial blamed Secretary Kerry’s compromise with Russia in the pursuit of peace talks, in part, for the prolonged starvation crisis: “Unfortunately, the Obama administration’s handling of the Syrian crisis appears to be enabling those very war crimes.”

In a statement late Wednesday, the State Department said the peace talks in Geneva were “paused” and would resume later this month.

About that Mosque that Barack Visited Today

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A deep investigation was performed on the Muslim Brotherhood and organizations in the United States under that umbrella. The full summary is here.

Mosque Obama Visiting Graduated Terrorist Who Targeted Federal Building

The Al-Rahmah School at Islamic Society of Baltimore as seen in 2007. The mosque is hosting President Obama on Wednesday. (AP) According to CIA Director John Brennan ‘jihad’ means struggle…..

InvestorsDaily: Islamophilia: President Obama is conferring legitimacy on a Baltimore mosque the FBI just a few years ago was monitoring as a breeding ground for terrorists, after arresting a member for plotting to blow up a federal building.

IBD has learned that the FBI had been conducting surveillance at the Islamic Society of Baltimore since at least 2010 when it collared one of its members for plotting to bomb an Army recruiting center not far from the mosque in Catonsville, Md.

Agents secretly recorded a number of conversations with a 25-year-old Muslim convert — Antonio Martinez, aka Muhammad Hussain — and other Muslims who worshipped there. According to the criminal complaint, Martinez said he knew “brothers” who could supply him weapons and propane tanks.

“He indicated that if the military continued to kill their Muslim brothers and sisters, they would need to expand their operation by killing U.S. Army personnel where they live,” FBI special agent Keith Bender wrote. Martinez said that in studying the Quran he learned that Islam counsels Muslims to “fight those who fight against you.”

Sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2012, Martinez also stated in a social media posting that he wanted to join the ranks of the “mujahideen” in “Pakistan or Afghanistan (a country that struggle[sic] for the sake of allah).” Most of ISB’s board members are from Pakistan.

To help disrupt the plot, the FBI reportedly put an undercover agent in the mosque, which upset the leadership there. After protests, the FBI sent an official to ISB to take questions and mollify concerns the bureau was spying on Muslims.

Members of the mosque complained that the FBI tried to “entrap” Martinez and other Muslim terrorism suspects by sending “spies with Muslim names” into the mosque.

“If I was the president of the mosque, I would not let you come here without strip(-searching) you,” one member angrily told the FBI official, “because you might drop something (like a bug) to hear what’s going on here.” “The Muslim Link” newspaper described the questioner as Pakistani.

This is the mosque that will be honored with a visit from Obama on Wednesday, the first U.S. mosque visit of his presidency.

It’s now abundantly clear the White House failed to properly vet the venue. Reportedly, it let the Council on American-Islamic Relations choose the site, even though the FBI has banned CAIR from outreach because of known ties to the Hamas terrorist group.

“For a number of years we’ve been encouraging the president to go to an American mosque,” CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said. “With the tremendous rise in anti-Muslim sentiment in our country, we believe that it will send a message of inclusion and mutual respect.”

As we reported Tuesday, ISB is affiliated with the Islamic Society of North America — which federal prosecutors in 2007 named a radical Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas front and an unindicted terrorist co-conspirator in a scheme to funnel more than $12 million to Hamas suicide bombers — and ISB has helped organize the terror-tied ISNA’s conferences.

The Shariah-compliant mosque was led for 15 years by a radical cleric — Imam Mohamad Adam el-Sheikh — who once represented a federally designated al-Qaida front group. El-Sheikh also has argued for the legitimacy of suicide bombings, according to the Washington Post.

We also first reported that ISB board member and vice president Muhammad Jameel has blamed American foreign policy — namely, U.S. support for Israel — for terrorism and the rise of Osama bin Laden.

“I hope (his death) does not camouflage the bigger picture, which is to look at what gave rise to OBL and what are the root causes of terror,” Jameel said in a local 2011 interview. “Just eliminating him does not resolve the longer-term problems, which I consider to be (U.S.) foreign policy.”

ISB board members are required to have “an in-depth understanding of the Shariah,” and “must take Islam as the way of life,” according to recently amended articles of incorporation papers filed with the state of Maryland.

We have also learned that ISB invited one of the imams of the Boston Marathon bombers’ mosque to headline a 2013 fundraiser for its Islamic school.

Then-Islamic Society of Boston imam Suhaib Webb spoke at the 25th anniversary banquet of ISB’s Al-Rahmah School — even though two days before 9/11, according to an FBI surveillance report, Webb was raising cash for a Muslim cop-killer together with al-Qaida cleric Anwar Awlaki, the hijackers’ spiritual leader.

So let’s recap. The mosque that is hosting the commander in chief, while receiving his historic benediction graduated a terrorist who plotted to blow up a local Army recruiting station, hired an imam who condoned suicide bombings and blames American “foreign policy” for terrorism.

Obama has to be willfully blind not to see all these ties to terror.

Libya, to Be or Not to Be, Mercenaries

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ISIS Recruits Poor Africans as Fighters for Libya with Cash Bonus

The Islamic State is offering people from Chad, Sudan and Mali up to $1,000 cash bonus to join its army in Libya.

The Islamic State is recruiting from three African countries, offering prospective soldiers up to a $1,000 signing bonus to swell its army in Libya, according to Libyan intelligence.

The Islamic State’s chapter in former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s home town of Sirte is recruiting from Chad, Sudan and Mali, countries where typical wages can be as little as a dollar a day and where the sums offered by ISIS are very enticing.

Similar mercenaries from impoverished African countries were used by Gaddafi for his armies.

ISIS has controlled Sirte for a year and is believed to have raised an army of 2,000 to 3,000 fighters. Of these, 70 percent are believed to be non-Libyans.

“The majority – I cannot tell you exactly how many – are Tunisians, while the rest are made up mostly of Sudanese, Egyptians and then people from the Sub-Saharan countries stretching from Chad and Nigeria, along with a few from Algeria and the Gulf,” the head of military intelligence in Misrata, Colonel Ismail Shukri, told The Telegraph.

“Sadly, we have big open borders and long open areas, and through the routes for illegal immigration, we now have all this ideology coming through. That is one of the reasons why Isil has come to Libya.”

The Islamic State is also recruiting from the growing unemployed population in Tunisia, the International Business Times reported in January.

Gen. Dunford wants ‘decisive military action’ against ISIS in Libya

Washington (CNN)President Barack Obama’s top military adviser has begun to talk openly about stepped-up U.S. military action against ISIS in Libya as the terror group expands its operations in the North African country.

The U.S. wants to “take decisive military action” to “check” ISIS in Libya, while still supporting the political process to form a functioning government, Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters while traveling in Europe.

U.S. military reconnaissance flights over Libya and covert intelligence-gathering missions are now focusing sharply on tracking and locating ISIS’s growing presence in that country, according to a senior defense official.

Dunford hopes to develop recommendations in the next several weeks that would offer options for U.S. military action in conjunction with allies such as France, Italy and Britain, the official said.

At the same time, Dunford is working on recommendations for additional U.S. and coalition troops to help the Iraqis retake the city of Mosul in the coming weeks and months.

READ: United Nations warns of ISIS expansion in Libya

CNN was not present for the session with reporters, but Dunford’s spokesman confirmed the details of his remarks.

The chairman did not specify any U.S. military options. But other defense officials have made clear that they would involve targeting ISIS forces inside Libya, as well as possibly training Libyan forces outside the country to go back in and fight the group.

Concern has grown in recent weeks as the latest intelligence assessments show the number of ISIS operatives inside Libya could now number in the low thousands. The U.S. also believes some senior ISIS leaders have gone there.

ISIS fighters are going to Libya when they cannot get into Syria and Iraq, but some are also leaving those areas in the face of ongoing airstrikes and fighting against them in place like Raqqa, ISIS’ self-declared capital in Syria. The U.S. also is concerned that ISIS will make a move against Libyan oil installations in order to restore cash flow it has lost in U.S. bombings.

READ: Hillary Clinton’s other Libya problem

In November, the first U.S. airstrike against ISIS in Libya killed Abu Nabil, a senior operative. Now, however, the U.S. is privately pressing allies to also take more action against ISIS in Libya.

By getting better intelligence on where ISIS is located in Libya and acting against the group, the U.S. hopes to put a “firewall” around its presence inside the country so it cannot expand further into Africa or move toward southern Europe, the defense official said.

Dunford’s remarks came as another top U.S. military leader weighed in on ISIS in Libya.

“There is concern about Libya,” said Gen. Joe Votel, head of U.S. Special Operations Command. “It can’t all be about Iraq and Syria.”

Votel has been nominated to take over Central Command, which is running the U.S.-led campaign in Iraq and Syria.

UK awaits outcome of Libya talks as it weighs military options

Downing Street waiting to see whether peace efforts succeed before joining US and France in calling for intervention

A British decision on whether to join western powers considering direct military intervention against Islamic State in Libya is likely to rest on whether long-running efforts to form a viable Libyan national unity government will materialise in the coming weeks.

The Pentagon and the French government have been pressing for direct action following a meeting in Paris last week, and Italy has said it would consider involvement. Downing Street said on Monday that no decisions had been taken regarding British troops and fended off questions about whether they would be deployed in a combat or training role.

The Ministry of Defence has not confirmed reports it is willing to send as many as 1,000 troops to the country, which has fallen into chaos following the violent overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi and allied air strikes in 2011.

Agreement on a Libyan national unity government was reached in December but so far has been rejected by rival Libyan parliaments, including the one recognised by the international community, in a dispute about ministries.

David Cameron will be reluctant to seek cross-party support in the Commons for further UK military action so soon after investing much political capital in winning support for airstrikes in Syria.