Saudi Arabia Diving into Islamic State War?

Carter: Saudis to Contribute More in Counter-ISIL Fight

WASHINGTON, February 5, 2016 —The Saudi Arabian government has indicated its willingness to do more with the coalition in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said yesterday at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.

Speaking with reporters after addressing airmen at the Air Force installation, Carter said he looks forward to discussing contributions to the accelerated anti-ISIL fight with the Saudis and 25 other nations next week in Brussels.

“The United States has very much indicated our desire to accelerate the campaign to defeat ISIL, [and] we’ll do that better, and it’ll be easier to sustain the defeat … if other countries that are part of the coalition accelerate their efforts at the same time,” Carter said.

Positive Contribution

Saudi Arabia also has said it’s willing to take the lead in marshaling some Muslim-majority countries, he added, noting that the local population in Syria and Iraq will sustain the defeat of ISIL.

“The Saudis indicated that they and other countries would be best positioned to help make those arrangements,” the secretary said. “I think that’s a very positive contribution as well.”

On other contributions, Carter said the Dutch also have said they are willing to join in the counter-ISIL campaign in Syria, as they have done in Iraq.

“So you see others stepping up,” he added, “and the reason I’m going to Brussels next week is to bring the full weight of the coalition behind accelerating the defeat of ISIL.”

Budgetary Priority

To the airmen in Nevada, Carter previewed the Air Force portion of the fiscal year 2017 DoD budget proposal, noting that the Pentagon is adding another $1 billion over the next five years for the kind of training available at Nellis, home of the Air Force Warfare Center.

“Nellis is incredibly important to the Air Force, now and in the future, [and] they can expect increased investments in the quality of the range, in the intensity of the training, the number of exercises conducted here, the variety of aircraft that will be coming here and will need to be maintained here,” Carter said.

“This is a critical place,” he added. “It’s going to stay a critical place, and it’s going to get budgetary priority. The key is readiness — that’s the key to the Air Force today and tomorrow.”

***

Saudi Arabia vs Iran: The view from Turkey, stuck in the middle

ISTANBUL – Turkey should avoid picking sides in the current diplomatic crisis between Saudi Arabia and Iran, according to experts.

“I hope that Turkey doesn’t feel that it needs to rush in and take sides in this issue. It’s not in the interests of the region that everyone lines up on one side or the other,” said Stephen Kinzer, a visiting fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies and a former bureau chief for the New York Times in Istanbul.

Sunni-majority Saudi Arabia terminated diplomatic ties with its longtime rival Iran, which has a Shi’a majority, on Sunday following an attack by protestors on its embassy in Tehran. The protestors, who the Saudi foreign minister said were supported by the Iranian government, were angry at Saudi Arabia’s execution of prominent Shi’a cleric and critic of the Kingdom Nimr Al-Nimr on Saturday.

“This certainly heralds a more acute period of confrontation between the two,” said Sinan Ülgen, former Turkish diplomat and chairman of The Centre for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies in Istanbul.

Turkey, majority-Sunni, has relations with Saudi Arabia and Iran, and has called for restraint from both sides. Ankara criticized Saudi Arabia for “political death penalties” without specifically mentioning Nimr, and said Iran must protect all diplomatic missions in its country, calling the attacks on the Saudi embassy “unacceptable.”

Ülgen told The Media Line that since the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the ensuing instability, “we have seen a rise in sectarian tension between Tehran and Riyadh.”

However, both Ülgen and Kinzer say that dismissing the conflict purely as religious sectarianism is overly simplistic.

“Sectarianism is being used as a façade, behind which Saudi Arabia and Iran are jousting for power in the Middle East,” Kinzer told The Media Line. “Basically these are the only remaining powers in the [region]. You’d like to think the Middle East is big enough for both of them, but it doesn’t seem that way.”

El Chapo’s America: Flooded with Heroin-Fentanyl

The DEA operation, called “Project Cassandra,” is meant to disrupt and dismantle Hezbollah’s global network that supplies drugs to the U.S. and Europe as well as cut into the terror organization’s ability to fund its activities through drug trafficking.

In the investigation, authorities uncovered a network of money couriers who collect and transport millions of euros in drug proceeds from Europe to the Middle East. The currency is then paid in Colombia to drug traffickers using the Hawala disbursement system, which makes it difficult to track. ***

Last spring, Brazil’s Civil Police arrested Hamzi Ahmad Barakat in the city of Curitiba under allegations that he had connections to a network of front companies that fleeced Lebanese immigrants who had recently moved to Brazil.

Barakat, who allegedly has ties to the infamous Triple Frontier region, is listed in the United States as a member of Hezbollah and is suspected of trafficking arms, drugs, explosives and counterfeit bills.

“He was preying on his own countrymen, using their identities to create companies to carry out schemes,” said Cassiano Aufiero, the police investigator in charge of the case.

Aufiero added that while he knew of Barakat’s purported ties to the Islamic militant group, he said that he was under arrest for different matters, including embezzlement and the creation of false documents.

Barakat’s arrest shed more light on the Triple Border region, which has become a hotspot for smugglers and drawn the attention of the U.S., Israel and governments throughout South America.

The region has drawn a number of immigrants for the Middle East, particularly from Lebanon, and is believed to be one of Hezbollah’s major areas of operation outside of the Islamic world, due to its seclusion, loose borders, rampant political corruption and weak judicial system. Brazil has one of the largest Lebanese population’s outside of Lebanon with at least 7 million people from that country residing there and some estimates claiming closer to 13 million.

In 2004, Barakat’s brother, Assad Ahmad Barakat, was named by the Treasury Department as one of Hezbollah’s “most prominent and influential members” and was believed to have used an electronics wholesale store in the Triple Frontier as a cover for raising funds for Hezbollah. The Brazilian police arrested him in 2002 and deported him to Paraguay, where he went to prison for tax evasion.

The Department of Justice National Drug Threat Assessment report.

Fentanyl: drug 50 times more potent than heroin ravages New Hampshire

Of 69 fatal overdose victims last year, 68% had taken the synthetic opioid, which Mexican cartels have learned to make and smuggle to interstate highways. The drug ‘is what is killing our citizens,’ says Manchester’s police chief

Guardian: to the Drug Enforcement Administration, fentanyl is a synthetic opioid 100 times more powerful than morphine, and 30-50 times more powerful than heroin.

“Fentanyl is what is killing our citizens,” said Manchester’s chief of police, Nick Willard, in testimony before Congress last week.

In 2013, the city of Manchester had 14 fatal overdoses, one of which (7%) involved a victim with fentanyl in their system, according to Willard. In 2015, 69 people fatally overdosed, 68% of whom had taken fentanyl. The state statistics are no more cheery. Officials at the office of the chief medical examiner in New Hampshire say they have yet to receive testing results from 36 suspected overdoses, but they’ve counted 399 fatal overdose victims so far, more than two-thirds of whom died with fentanyl in their system.

“It’s not like Mario Batali,” said Willard from his office in Manchester, comparing heroin dealers cutting their supply with the famed chef. “These guys are just throwing it in a mixer. You could get a bag that’s perfect and no one is going to die from it. You could also get a bag [that’s] straight fentanyl and that would kill you.”

Willard said that during a recent raid in Manchester, he found a dealer mixing fentanyl with whey protein. In another sting that led to a seizure in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the dealer was allegedly mixing heroin and fentanyl in a kitchen blender.

For the most part, said Willard, the story of opiate use in Manchester follows the same patterns as the rest of the country. The crisis was ushered in by the rise of prescription painkillers like OxyContin. Addicts looking for a cheaper high frequently turned to the more dangerous, yet significantly cheaper, heroin.

The turning point, he says, happened sometime after 2010, when Purdue Pharma altered the medication to make it more difficult to tamper with and get high. Suppliers in Mexico were quick to keep up with the burgeoning market, and addicts in Manchester, which sits near Interstate 93, Route 3, Route 81, and Route 9, had no problem tapping into the supply. More here.

Chicago:

“What Al Capone was to beer and whiskey, Guzmán is to narcotics,” Art Bilek, the commission’s executive vice president, said at the time. Except, Bilek added, Guzmán “is clearly more dangerous than Al Capone was at his height.” (Zambada is plenty dangerous, too: Prosecutors say he commanded logistics and security for the cartel, including assassinations. He is suspected in a number of slayings, including the murders of government officials.)

The cartel’s scope is staggering. About half of the estimated $65 billion worth of illegal cocaine, heroin, and other narcotics that Americans buy each year enters the United States via Mexico, according to law enforcement experts (though the drugs often originate in South or Central America). More than half of that is believed to be supplied by Sinaloa. Drug enforcement experts estimate, conservatively, that the cartel’s annual revenues exceed $3 billion: more than those of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group.

In Chicago, the cartel has a near monopoly. “I’d say 70 to 80 percent of the narcotics here are controlled by Sinaloa and Chapo Guzmán,” says Jack Riley, director of the DEA’s Chicago office. “Virtually all of our major investigations at some point lead back to other investigations tied to Sinaloa.”

In August 2009, five months after Zambada’s capture, a federal grand jury in Chicago indicted him and 45 others tied to a Sinaloa-led drug ring in the city. Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney at the time, called the indictments “the most significant drug importation conspiracies ever charged in Chicago,” claiming that the cartel imported and distributed nearly $6 billion worth of illegal narcotics mostly to the Chicago area between 1990 and 2008.

North Korea Missile or Satellite Launch?

IAEA on North Korea

Countdown to Launch: New Activity at the Sohae Horizontal Processing Building

By

Editor’s Note: With North Korea’s recent notifications to the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and International Telecommunication Union (ITU) that it would launch an “earth observation satellite” between February 8 and February 25, 38 North has initiated a series of brief imagery analysis updates to closely follow developments at the North’s Sohae Satellite Launching Station (“Tongchang-dong”). This is the first of these updates.

Activity at the Horizontal Processing Building

Recent commercial satellite imagery indicates that the level of activity at the Horizontal Processing Building at the Sohae Satellite Launching Station (“Tongchang-dong”) is suggestive of preparations for a space launch and supports North Korea’s announced launch window of February 8 through 24. During past launches, this building has been used to receive the various rocket stages. Once received, they are assembled in the horizontal position to test all connections, perform final testing of subsystems and prepare the stages for mounting on the launch pad. Specifically, on February 1, there are nine vehicles present, of which two are likely to be buses. Compared with only one vehicle present on January 25, this level of activity is similar to that seen prior to the previous launch in 2012 and is suggestive of launch preparations.

At the nearby covered rail station, the shed roof obscures the view of any activity within. On February 1, a small utility pole (i.e., for lighting or communications) has been erected near the northeast corner of the shed.

Figure 1. Increased activity at the Horizontal Processing Building and rail station. 

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No New Activity at the Launch Pad

Recent imagery indicates no significant changes at the Sohae launch pad since last viewed on January 25. The work platforms on the gantry tower remain folded forward, with the environmental covers in place, obscuring any activity that might be taking place within. It is also not possible to see whether a space launch vehicle (SLV) is already present within the utility platforms.

No personnel or vehicles appear present elsewhere on the launch pad or in the fuel/oxidizer bunker. The rail-mounted transfer structure, which will likely be used to move the various rocket stages from the underground station or the stationary processing building to the launch pad, remains at the south end of the pad adjacent to the stationary processing building. Although there is no activity indicating an imminent launch, the gantry tower and launch pad complex appear to be in a condition capable of conducting a launch within the announced launch window of February 8 through 24.

Figure 2. Environmental covers still obscure any activity that might be taking place inside the gantry tower.

Image includes material Pleiades © CNES 2016. Distribution Airbus DS / Spot Image, all rights reserved. For media licensing options, please contact thirtyeightnorth@gmail.com.

Image includes material Pleiades © CNES 2016. Distribution Airbus DS / Spot Image, all rights reserved. For media licensing options, please contact [email protected].

Low Activity at other Key Launch related Facilities

Recent imagery indicates a still low level of activity at other key facilities likely to be involved in a space launch when compared to January 25. Specifically:

  • There are no significant changes at what is believed to be the launch control building. The structure appears to be in good condition. Activity at this facility should increase as the launch date grows closer.
  • No activity is noted at the building North Korea has previously identified at the Satellite Control Building. On January 25, there were five vehicles present in the two buildings in the VIP housing area. By February 1, only one vehicle is present. Extended vehicle activity in this area—seen prior to the 2012 launch—could mean that scientists and engineers are present.
  • There are no significant changes at what is believed to be the National Aerospace Development Administration (NADA) Auditorium between January 25 and February 1, although the adjacent helicopter pad had been cleared of snow. Guests, dignitaries and workers would view the launch from this location.

Vertical Engine Test Stand Appears Ready

Activity noted at the vertical engine test stand during the last month indicates that an engine test could be conducted at any time and with little prior notice. There are no significant changes noted at the vertical engine test stand between January 25 and February 1. The rail-mounted environmental shelter remains immediately adjacent to the test stand. No personnel are visible and there are no indications that an engine test has recently taken place. The complex appears capable of conducting a test at any time.

Figure 3. Engine test stand appears ready for use. 

Image includes material Pleiades © CNES 2016. Distribution Airbus DS / Spot Image, all rights reserved. For media licensing options, please contact thirtyeightnorth@gmail.com.

Image includes material Pleiades © CNES 2016. Distribution Airbus DS / Spot Image, all rights reserved.

For media licensing options, please contact [email protected].

Homs. Syria: Today

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

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.

***

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.”