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ISIS: The Ghost of Saddam Hussein

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Are Washington and Tehran pursuing the same goals in Syria?

“Yes, there is a strategy,” US Secretary of State John Kerry said in his December 5th address at the Brookings Institution. The US strategy, he explained, has three components: “Mobilising a coalition to defeat Daesh” — the Islamic State; to “work diplomati­cally” with Iran, among other countries, “to bring an end to the war in Syria”; and “ensure that the instability created by the war in Syria does not spread”.

But are Washington and Tehran pursuing the same goals in Syria?

At first glance, there are reasons to suggest they are: the emer­gence of Iranian President Hassan Rohani, his promise of engaging in bilateral talks with the United States, the nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 and the menacing rise of the Islamic State (ISIS) have led some in the West to hope for a new alignment of strate­gic interests between Washington and Tehran.

Rohani, however, commands little influence over the Islamic Republic’s regional policies. The Is­lamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) owns this portfolio.

The public statements of IRGC commanders and the activities of the corps in Syria make it clear that, beyond a fleeting tactical convergence of interests, Tehran is pursuing goals that are the exact opposite of those of the Obama administration.

IRGC commander Major-General Mohammad Ali Jafari and Major- General Qassem Soleimani, head of the expeditionary Quds Force, have repeatedly expressed their support for Syrian President Bashar Assad and his regime, with Soleimani promising to stick with Assad “to the very end”.

Brigadier-General Hossein Hamadani, the field commander of the Iranian forces in Syria who was killed October 7th in the suburbs of Aleppo, not only praised Assad as “more obedient to the leader of the revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khame­nei, than some of our statesmen”, he also recalled the supreme leader stressing the importance of the “strategic depth” Syria provides for Iran.

With the aim of securing the sur­vival of the Assad regime, the IRGC is deploying troops and non-Iranian Shia militias in Syria. According to open source data, 210 Iranians, 179 Afghans and 33 Pakistanis — all Shias, with the exception of two Iranian Sunnis — were killed in combat in Syria between January 2012 and December 5, 2015.

While there is no reliable infor­mation about the scale of Iraqi Shia combat fatalities in Syria, Lebanese Hezbollah is believed to have lost 1,000-1,500 fighters in Syria in the same period.

As surviving militiamen return to their home countries, there is a very real risk of the spread or rekin­dling of sectarian conflicts in those nations, which is the opposite of Kerry’s expressed aim of prevent­ing further spread of the war.

Sharing ISIS as an enemy is not likely to bring Washington and Teh­ran closer to each other. As a means of keeping Assad in power, Tehran is concentrating its military re­sources against Syrian rebel forces threatening the Damascus regime, including the secular opposition, which might offer an acceptable alternative to Assad.

In the meantime, Tehran makes little military effort against ISIS, which the Islamic Republic consid­ers an alternative worse than As­sad. In this regard, too, Kerry looks in vain for support from Tehran.

Not even Kerry’s desire to bring an end to the war in Syria is likely to resonate with the IRGC leader­ship because continued war in Syria, the Middle East refugee crisis and the increased threat of terrorism from Beirut to Paris only increase Tehran’s leverage.

Once the Assad regime’s survival is secure, the IRGC benefits from a permanent low-intensity crisis in Syria, which not only legitimises its military presence there but also makes Tehran a desirable negotiat­ing partner for the United States and European powers desperate to end the slaughter in Syria.

In his Brookings address, Kerry emphasised the difficulties of achieving US goals in Syria but, by looking to Tehran for support, he may end up making those aims even less achievable.

Saddam still lives:

How Saddam’s men help Islamic State rule

MALA QARA, Iraq (Reuters) – Mohannad is a spy for Islamic State. He eavesdrops on chatter in the street markets of Mosul and reports back to his handlers when someone breaks the militant group’s rules. One man he informed on this year – a street trader defying a ban on selling cigarettes – was fined and tortured by Islamic State fighters, according to a friend of Mohannad’s family. If the trader did not stop, his torturers told the man, they would kill him.

Mohannad is paid $20 for every offender he helps to catch.

He is 14.

The teenager is one cog in the intelligence network Islamic State has put in place since it seized vast stretches of Iraq and neighboring Syria. Informers range from children to battle-hardened fighters. Overseeing the network are former army and intelligence officers, many of whom helped keep former Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party in power for years.

Saddam-era officers have been a powerful factor in the rise of Islamic State, in particular in the Sunni militant group’s victories in Iraq last year. Islamic State then out-muscled the Sunni-dominated Baath Party and absorbed thousands of its followers. The new recruits joined Saddam-era officers who already held key posts in Islamic State.

The Baathists have strengthened the group’s spy networks and battlefield tactics and are instrumental in the survival of its self-proclaimed Caliphate, according to interviews with dozens of people, including Baath leaders, former intelligence and military officers, Western diplomats and 35 Iraqis who recently fled Islamic State territory for Kurdistan.

Of Islamic State’s 23 portfolios – equivalent to ministries – former Saddam regime officers run three of the most crucial: security, military and finance, according to Hisham al-Hashimi, an Iraqi analyst who has worked with the Iraqi government.

Iraq’s Finance Minister Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd who spent years opposing Saddam’s regime, said the ex-Baathists working with Islamic State provide the group with highly effective guidance on explosives, strategy and planning. “They know who is who, family by family, name by name,” he said.

“The fingerprints of the old Iraqi state are clear on their work. You can feel it,” one former senior security official in the Baath Party said.

In many ways, it is a union of convenience. Most former Baathist officers have little in common with Islamic State. Saddam promoted Arab nationalism and secularism for most of his rule.

But many of the ex-Baathists working with Islamic State are driven by self preservation and a shared hatred of the Shi’ite-led government in Baghdad. Others are true believers who became radicalized in the early years after Saddam’s ouster, converted on the battlefield or in U.S. military and Iraqi prisons.

One former intelligence commander who served in Iraq’s national intelligence service from 2003 to 2009 said some ex-Baathists pushed out of state agencies by Iraq’s government were only too happy to find new masters. “ISIS pays them,” he said.

A few Sunni lawmakers hope that former Saddam-era officers might be persuaded to abandon their Islamic State allies. But a senior official close to Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said dealing with them was difficult because the Baathists are so deeply split, with some supporting Islamic State and some opposed. “Who are they?” he asked. “Some wave olive branches. Others still wave a gun.”

A spokesman for Abadi, Saad al-Hadithi, said the Iraqi government opposes negotiations with the Baath Party. “There is no space for them in the political process,” he said. “They are banned under the constitution.”

TURNING POINT IN TIKRIT

Baathists began collaborating with al Qaeda in Iraq – the early incarnation of what would become Islamic State – soon after Saddam Hussein was ousted in 2003. Saddam had run a brutal police state. The U.S. occupation dissolved the Baath Party and barred senior and even middling party officials from joining the new security services. Some left the country, others joined the anti-American insurgency.

But then the Baathists and jihadists disagreed over who should be in charge. Many ex-Baathists struck an alliance with the U.S. military and turned on the jihadists.

By 2014, the Baathists and the jihadists were back to being allies. As Islamic State fighters swept through central Iraq, they were joined by the Army of the Men of the Naqshbandi Order, a group of Baathist fighters.

The Naqshbandi and smaller groups of Saddam-era officers made up the majority of fighters in the initial stages of last year’s military onslaught, according to Sunni tribal leaders, Baathists and an Iraqi security commander. It was the Naqshbandi who rallied locals in Mosul to rise up against Baghdad, and who planned and commanded many of last year’s military advances, according to Iraqi officials and Abdul al-Samad al-Ghrairy, a senior official in what’s left of the Baath Party.

Within days, though, Islamic State “took the revolution from us,” said Ghrairy. “We couldn’t sustain the battle.”

In Tikrit, Islamic State fighters opened a jail and released up to 200 followers. More Islamic State fighters poured into the city, many of them with heavy machine guns. These men “took all the army’s weapons and didn’t give the Naqshabandi any. They kicked them aside,” a senior security official in Salahuddin said.

Soon after the fall of Tikrit in June 2014, leaders from the main factions of the Sunni rebellion met in the house of a Baath Party member. According to the senior security official, Tikrit tribal leaders and Baath officials, Islamic State told Baathists they had a choice: Join us or stand down. Some Baathists abandoned the revolt. Others stayed, swelling the ranks of Islamic State with mid-level security veterans.

That has boosted Islamic State’s firepower and tactical prowess. “This is not the al Qaeda we fought before,” said a prominent Sunni from Mosul who battled Islamic State’s forerunners. “Their tactics are different. These are men educated in military staff college. They are ex-army leaders. They are not simple minds, but men with real experience.”

Both Ghrairy and Khudair Murshidy, the Baath Party’s official spokesman, told Reuters that the party’s armed wing is frozen in the aftermath of its defeat. Islamic State, they added, had killed some 600 Baath supporters and Naqshbandi fighters. “Their policy is to kill everyone, destroy everyone,” Murshidy said. “They create fear and death everywhere and control areas. Many people have joined them now. At first they were a few hundred, now they are maybe more than 50,000.”

“THE WALLS HAVE EARS”

Emma Sky, a former adviser to the U.S. military, believes Islamic State has effectively subsumed the Baathists. “The mustached officers have grown religious beards. I think many have genuinely become religious,” she said.

Among the most high profile Baathists to join Islamic State are Ayman Sabawi, the son of Saddam Hussein’s half brother, and Raad Hassan, Saddam’s cousin, said the senior Salahuddin security official and several tribal leaders. Both were children during Saddam’s time, but the family connection is powerfully symbolic.

More senior officers now in Islamic State include Walid Jasim (aka Abu Ahmed al-Alwani) who was a captain of intelligence in Saddam’s time, and Fadhil al-Hiyala (aka Abu Muslim al-Turkmani) whom some believe was a deputy to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi until he was killed in an airstrike earlier this year.

 
A boy walks past a picture of Iraq’s former president Saddam Hussein on a street in Tikrit, Iraq …

The group’s multi-layered security and intelligence agencies in Mosul, the biggest city in northern Iraq, are overseen by an agency called Amniya – literally ‘Security’. The agency has six branches, each responsible for maintaining a different aspect of security.

The overall head of Amniya in Iraq and Syria is a former Saddam-era intelligence officer from Fallujah called Ayad Hamid al-Jumaili, who joined the Sunni insurgency after the U.S.-led invasion and now answers directly to Baghdadi, according to Hashimi, the analyst.

A vice squad known as Hisba enforces order on the streets. Hisba officers punish everyone from cigarette traders to women not fully covered. They also run a network of informants, placing children such as 14-year-old Mohannad in mosques and markets, and women at funerals and family gatherings, according to residents of Mosul.

“The work of these children is rewarded with gifts or small cash prizes,” said the former intelligence officer. “Women, on the other hand, are recruited mostly from (Islamic State) families and they gather information for no reward.” The repression has become so intense in Mosul, residents said, people have revived a phrase used in Saddam’s era: “The walls have ears.”

Interviews with 35 men who recently escaped from Islamic State-held villages around Mosul offer rare details of what is happening inside Islamic State territory. Reuters sat in on debriefings of the men by Staff Lieutenant Colonel Surood Abdel Salal, a Kurdish intelligence official at a base behind the frontline south of Erbil. Most of those questioned were former members of the Iraqi security forces defeated by Islamic State in Mosul.

The 35 men described a life of increasing deprivation under Islamic State and a climate of paranoia in which they could trust no-one, even their own relatives.

One man in Mosul told Reuters his brother had been executed in early October after he cursed Islamic State and the Caliphate while arguing with his son, who wanted to join the group. “My brother’s shouting was heard by the neighbors. During that time there was a group of children who were playing in front of the house,” said the man. “Not a week had passed and my brother was arrested on charges of cursing God and the Islamic State.”

Islamic State execution squads often arrive in a large bus with tinted windows, another resident said. Police seal off streets surrounding the place where a killing is to be carried out. Men dressed in black with balaclavas either shoot people, or behead them with swords.

The bodies of those deemed to have committed the worst offences – cursing God or the group – are thrown in an area called al-Khafsa, a deep natural crater in the desert just south of Mosul, residents in the city said. Those killed for lesser crimes are returned to their families wrapped in a blanket.

A WEB OF INFORMANTS

In September, according to several of the men who fled, Islamic State’s Amniya agency rounded up around 400 former members of Iraq’s security forces and executed them. Families of those dumped in al-Khafsa were then sent a kind of receipt to notify them of the execution. Among those who described the massacre was a 21-year-old from a village east of Mosul whose cousin’s corpse was returned on the second day of the Muslim Feast of Sacrifice. “They brought it wrapped in a blanket with three bullet wounds,” he said.

Some of the 35 escapees said people are banned from leaving Islamic State territory; those caught leaving are routinely killed. Two escapees recounted the fate of a group of men who tried to leave recently. Islamic State caught them and executioners dropped a concrete blast wall on top of them. The killing was filmed and replayed on large screens the militants have erected in public spaces.

According to the fugitives’ testimony, Islamic State has embedded itself in almost every village, converting the homes of former Iraqi military officers into bases and creating a web of informants. Mobile phones are banned as is access to the Internet.

“They had an informant in each area who said so-and-so didn’t go to prayers,” said Fathi, a 30-year-old former policeman from a village east of Mosul. Many of the escapees had been on the run for months, carefully avoiding Islamic State checkpoints, especially those equipped with laptops the militants use to look up names on a database. Some hid in woodland along the Tigris River.

Ahmed, 32, said he was wanted by Islamic State for belonging to a tribal militia that fought the insurgents before the fall of Mosul. He said he had not been home for months because he feared one of his young daughters would betray his presence. “Maybe someone will come and ask my children (where I am) and they don’t know any better,” he said.

Local Islamic State leaders send their own children out as scouts, some of the escapees said. One man said the militants paid cigarette sellers to inform on their customers. So pervasive is Islamic State’s surveillance network that even at home people cannot let their guard down, according to 31-year-old policeman Saad Khalaf Ali. He was arrested and accused of speaking against the militants. He denied it, but the militants produced footage of him in his own home saying he wished for government forces to retake the area. The video had been secretly filmed by a boy from the village, the policeman said. “They take advantage of small children most of all because people don’t suspect them.”

Ali begged the militants for forgiveness and was released. But they detained him again several months later on charges of informing Kurdish and Iraqi forces about Islamic State positions. This time, he said, his own nephew and a cousin informed on him. He would have been executed but for a joint raid by American and Kurdish Special Forces in October which rescued him and 68 others.

UNDER PRESSURE?

It will be difficult for Baghdad to lure away ex-Baathists and Saddam-era officers working with Islamic State. The Iraqi government itself is bogged down by internal divisions, while the parts of the Baath party that have not joined Islamic State cannot agree on whether they want talks, or even who should represent them.

Meantime the war drags on.

In October, Baghdad created a special office to share intelligence between Iraq, Iran, Russia and the Syrian government. That office is providing Iraq’s airforce with information on Islamic State positions. Baghdad has also stepped up efforts to squeeze Islamic State financially by attacking oil facilities, pressuring businessmen who have helped the militants, and stopping salaries to government employees in areas under Islamic State rule.

Iraqi Finance Minister Zebari said Islamic State in Mosul had responded by “extorting more money from the public. They are going more towards criminal actions and kidnapping.” The group’s surveillance network is testament to its resourcefulness and ability to survive.

After his release from prison, Ahmed al-Tai’i, the cigarette salesman reported by 14-year-old Mohannad, confronted the boy’s father. The father admitted that Islamic State militants had paid Mohannad and other youngsters to help them, according to a friend of Tai’i.

The cigarette salesman says his arrest and imprisonment have left him paranoid. “Since I left prison a constant fear has lived with me. If I want to say or do something that contravenes the orders and instructions of Islamic State I look around to check there is nobody, even my friends, and especially small children,” he said. “I have lost trust in everyone around me.”

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How Saddam’s men help Islamic State rule (Web version) http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/mideast-crisis-iraq-islamicstate/

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(Coles reported from Mala Qara and Parker from Erbil; Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed, Stephen Kalin and Michael Georgy in Baghdad and Phil Stewart in Washington; Editing by Michael Georgy and Simon Robinson)

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Obama Announces a New Sorta-Czar

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Obama’s ‘ISIL czar’ tasked with getting US response in sync

 WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama’s new “ISIL czar,” Robert Malley, has a long and sometimes controversial history at the center of U.S. policymaking in the Middle East. He’s now taking on one of the toughest jobs in Washington: getting the struggling campaign against Islamic State militants on track while Obama refuses to entertain any wholesale strategy change.

Nearly 25 years after they were students together at Harvard Law School, these days Obama and Malley cross paths mostly in the Situation Room, where Malley’s role is to ensure the countless U.S. agencies fighting IS work in tandem despite differing time zones, capabilities, even views about the conflict. At stake is an extremist threat that has started exporting violence from Syria and Iraq deep into the West, raising fears that the U.S. is losing a battle that Obama concedes will still be raging when he leaves office.

Elevated to the role with little fanfare in late November, Malley’s appointment reflected an attempt to show that when it comes to IS, Obama wasn’t leaving anything to chance. The White House said Malley will serve as counterpart to Brett McGurk, the State Department official tasked with outreach to some five-dozen countries contributing to Obama’s coalition.

For Malley, the promotion completed an unusual return to the highest echelon of government, seven years after a political stir over revelations he’d met with the militant group Hamas.
At the time, Malley was working for the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit that studies violent conflicts like the one that has divided Israelis and Palestinians for generations. The U.S. considers Hamas a terrorist group, and amid the dust-up, Malley terminated his role as an informal adviser to Obama’s presidential campaign.

Malley said then that he’d never hidden the meetings, which he argued were appropriate for a researcher in his capacity. Still, the incident was one of many in Malley’s career that pointed to a willingness to engage with less-than-savory characters who — like it or not — are key players in conflicts the U.S. hopes to resolve.

“Today the U.S. does not talk to Iran, Syria, Hamas, the elected Palestinian government or Hezbollah,” Malley wrote in Time Magazine in 2006. “The result has been a policy with all the appeal of a moral principle and all the effectiveness of a tired harangue.”

Whether Malley’s stance on engaging with questionable entities will influence Obama’s anti-IS campaign remains to be seen. Obama has steadfastly insisted that Syrian President Bashar Assad be excluded from any future Syrian government, even though many coalition partners say eliminating IS, not Assad, must be the priority. Another key issue in diplomatic talks to end Syria’s war is which opposition groups should be deemed extremists and barred from negotiations.

“Rob has an appreciation for the need, if you’re going to make diplomacy succeed, to deal with the most important actors,” said Philip Gordon, a Council on Foreign Relations fellow who worked with Malley in the Obama White House.

Malley also raised eyebrows in 2001 with an article alleging that peace talks at Camp David failed not only because of then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, but also Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Malley had been part of President Bill Clinton’s negotiating team, and his article challenged the prevailing opinion at the time that Arafat had spoiled the opportunity for peace.

Malley, 52, was born in New York but grew up partially in France, where his father — an Egyptian journalist born to a Jewish family — ran a magazine. He returned to the White House last year to oversee Mideast policy.

Critics continue to claim the U.S. lacks a coherent strategy to defeat IS, and the White House hopes that designating a point-man will reinforce the notion that Obama does, in fact, have a plan. To that end, the White House planned on Friday to launch a Twitter account, @RobMalley44, through which Malley can update the public on the campaign.

Although Malley doesn’t officially hold the title of czar — the White House prefers the wonkier “senior adviser” — the title has informally stuck. Like the Ebola, drug and health care “czars” before him, his job description entails coordinating the various U.S. agencies playing a role.

“Rob’s not somebody who’s consumed with turf-battling, but he’s a very capable defender of his points of view,” said former Ambassador Thomas Pickering, who worked with Malley in the Clinton administration. “He’s not somebody who gets easily pushed around.”

While the Pentagon bombs targets in Iraq and Syria, the Treasury is working to cut off terrorist financing. The State Department is trying to broker a cease-fire in Syria’s civil war as a special envoy manages a 65-country coalition and the White House seeks to reassure an increasingly anxious American public.

When it comes to getting everyone on the same page, Obama’s administration has thus far been criticized for coming up short.

“I will tell you, am I satisfied with the level of integration? No,” Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress last week. He added: “We’re working on that.”

*** More on Hamas

U.S. Taxpayer-Funded Group Gives $100,000 to Terrorism-Tied Islamic Charity

USAID gives cash to Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood-linked group

FreeBeacon: A U.S. taxpayer-funded aid organization has awarded $100,000 to an Islamic charity that has been banned in some countries for providing assistance to Hamas and other terrorism-linked organizations, according to grant information.

The U.S. Agency for International Development, also known as USAID, has pledged a federal grant of $100,000 for the charity Islamic Relief Worldwide, which has been repeatedly linked to the financing of terrorism.

Under USAID’s Foreign Assistance for Programs Overseas, Islamic Relief will be given $100,000 in 2016 for various foreign projects, according to grant information.

The award has generated controversy among critics of Islamic Relief’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and the terror group Hamas.

Both Israel and the United Arab Emirates have banned the Islamic charity since 2014 following investigations that determined that the organization was tied to the Muslim Brotherhood and entities providing support to Hamas, according to reports.

Islamic Relief has also been caught in a financial relationship with al Qaeda and other radicalized individuals.

The charity’s “accounts show that it has partnered with a number of organizations linked to terrorism and that some of charity’s trustees are personally affiliated with extreme Islamist groups that have connections to terror,” according to research conducted by Samuel Westrop, a terrorism analyst, and published by the Gatestone Institute.

Israeli authorities determined in 2006 that the charity was providing material support to Hamas.

“The IRW provides support and assistance to Hamas’s infrastructure. The IRW’s activities in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip are carried out by social welfare organizations controlled and staffed by Hamas operatives,” according to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “The intensive activities of these associations are designed to further Hamas’s ideology among the Palestinian population.”

Israeli authorities arrested the charity’s Gaza coordinator, Ayaz Ali, in 2006 due to his work on Hamas’s behalf.

“Incriminating files were found on Ali’s computer, including documents that attested to the organization’s ties with illegal Hamas funds abroad (in the UK and in Saudi Arabia) and in Nablus,” according to Israel’s foreign affairs ministry. “Also found were photographs of swastikas superimposed on IDF symbols, of senior Nazi German officials, of Osama Bin Laden, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, as well as many photographs of Hamas military activities.

A review of Islamic Relief’s accounts have shown that it donated thousands of dollars to a charity founded by a leading al Qaeda terrorist, according to Westrop’s research.

Islamic Relief Worldwide was co-founded by a Muslim Brotherhood-linked individual who formerly worked for the Clinton Foundation. That individual, Gehad el-Haddad, was arrested by Egyptian authorities in 2013 and sentenced to serve five years for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.

American law enforcement officials also have expressed concerns about the organization’s ties to Hamas.

“We know that these Muslim leaders and groups are continuing to raise money for Hamas and other terrorist organizations,” one U.S. law enforcement official told Patrick Poole, a terrorism analyst, in 2011. “Ten years ago we shut down the Holy Land Foundation. It was the right thing to do. Then the money started going to KindHearts. We shut them down too.”

“Now the money is going through groups like Islamic Relief and Viva Palestina,” the official said. “Until we act decisively to cut off the financial pipeline to these terrorist groups by putting more of these people in prison, they are going to continue to raise money that will go into the hands of killers.”

While the charity attempted to perform an internal audit in 2014 in a bid to clear its tainted name, experts have cast doubt on the integrity of the investigation.

“The information provided by [Islamic Relief] on its internal investigation is insufficient to assess the veracity of its claims,” NGO Monitor, a watchdog group, wrote in a 2015 analysis. “NGO Monitor recommends that a fully independent, transparent, and comprehensive audit of IRW’s international activities and funding mechanisms be undertaken immediately.”

Kyle Shideler, director of the Center for Security Policy’s Threat Information Office, expressed shock that the U.S. government would be funding such a controversial organization, particularly in light of recent efforts to boost the fight against international terror organizations.

“The fact that the U.S. government would provide funding to an organization which two of our allies view as a terrorism finance entity is obviously highly problematic both for our domestic security, but also for foreign relations,” said Shideler, who has written extensively about the charity.

“Both Israel and the UAE consider IRW a threat to their security. And we’re funding them. The fact that this administration is aware of the role IRW plays, and yet sees fit not only to associate with, but actually funds them should be an outrage.”

The grant is particularly troubling given that Congress as Congress seeks to label the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group, Shideler said.

“Given that there’s currently a bill before Congress to designate the Muslim Brotherhood, and Congress is currently in discussion over an Omnibus spending bill, it would seem to me that now would be an opportune time to call for a total defunding of organizations linked to terror finance or Muslim Brotherhood activity,” Shideler said. “One would think such a move wouldn’t be necessary, but unfortunately it appears that this administration will continue to do so unless restrained by Congress.”

USAID did not respond to a request for more information about the grant.

Confirmed Farook Terror Cell

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Sohiel Kabir is a naturalized citizen and was charged in 2012 with providing material support to the Taliban.

CNN: FBI investigators say they believe San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook had ties to one of four Riverside, California, men who were charged in 2012 with planning to join al Qaeda in Afghanistan, two U.S. law enforcement officials said on condition of anonymity Thursday.

The officials said Farook was in the social circle of Sohiel Kabir, who the FBI has said recruited and helped radicalize the other three men in the Riverside group.

Kabir, who was apprehended in Afghanistan in 2012, was sentenced this year to 25 years in prison for his role in the case.

FBI investigators who are probing the San Bernardino shooting are taking a new look at Kabir, the two officials said.

The FBI says the husband-and-wife team behind the San Bernardino attacks had developed extremist views before they even met.

“They were actually radicalized before they started courting or dating each other online, and online as early as the end of 2013, they were talking to each other about jihad and martyrdom before they became engaged and then married and lived together in the United States,” FBI Director James Comey said at a Senate oversight hearing Wednesday.

“We also believe they were inspired by foreign terrorist organizations,” he added. “We’re working very hard to understand exactly their association and the source of their inspiration.”

Investigators are also looking at whether Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik had “other plans either for that date (last week) or earlier,” Comey said.

When asked by the Senate panel whether a terrorist operative or group arranged the couple’s marriage, Comey stated: “I don’t know the answer to that yet.”

When pressed whether such an arranged marriage would be a “game changer” in the FBI investigation, Comey added, “It would be very, very important thing to know.”

***

It is becoming apparent that the dating sites that jihadis join are not for meeting or dating at all, it appears they are created as cover to merge like-minded terrorist together. Clues are pointing to this notion in the case of Farook and his arranged wife, Tashfeen Malik.

In part DailyMail: The FBI is investigating whether the marriage between San Bernardino killers Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik was set up by a terror group such as ISIS.
Senator Lindsey Graham raised the possibility that the pair could have been brought together by terrorists in Congress today, after it was revealed they were radicalized before they started dating.
When Graham put the prospect to FBI Director James Comey, he said: ‘I don’t know the answer to that yet,’ but added that it is ‘a very, very important thing to know’.

It was previously believed that Malik, from Pakistan, had become radicalized long before her husband, perhaps dating back to her time at university in 2009 when family members say she became much more conservative and started wearing a full-body veil.
Malik was then thought to have sought out American-born Farook online, before moving to the U.S. on a fiancee visa and passing her murderous ideology on to him.
However, Comey today revised that narrative, telling a Senate Judiciary Committee that the pair began discussing jihad and martyrdom in late 2013, before they began their relationship.
Comey added that his agency believes the pair were inspired by foreign terror organizations, but is still investigating which group they were affiliated with.
The pair professed their loyalty to ISIS during their December 2 attack on the Inland Regional Center in California which killed 14 and injured another 21.
But Comey raised doubt over whether ISIS was behind the pair’s initial obsession with jihad, as it had yet to rise to prominence in 2013 when they began discussing the subject online.
It is also still unclear whether either partner had contact with a terrorist organization, or whether they simply viewed radical material via the internet.

It is also important to integrate yet another fact and that is the neighbor and gun buyer for Farook, Enrique Marquez, he is married to a Russian who came to the United States on a J1 visa and they don’t live together.

Going back to 2014:

 An Islamic rights organization has asked for the public’s help in gathering information about a secret FBI informant whose claims led to a homegrown terrorism conspiracy indictment, with trial set to start Tuesday, Aug. 12, in Riverside for two Inland men charged with plotting to meet with the Taliban and al-Qaida and murder Americans overseas.
An attorney for the Greater Los Angeles area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said Monday the organization “can’t say we won’t” expose the identity of the informant, if it comes across verifiable information.
“It will come down to what is in the best interest of our community,” said Fatima Dadabhoy, senior civil rights attorney for the Los Angeles office of CAIR.
The organization asked for those with information to call its Anaheim office’s civil rights hotline, or call the federal public defender investigator’s office in Riverside.
The federal public defender investigator’s office is not working in cooperation with CAIR, said Jeffrey A. Aaron, the deputy federal public defender who is one of the attorneys representing Sohiel Omar Kabir of Pomona, whom prosecutors have identified as the leader of the conspiracy.
Dadabhoy said her organization believes the FBI has used confidential informants to entrap people, and that a majority of terrorist plots are fabricated or provoked by the FBI.
“We want to make sure that our community is aware,” she said. “When the FBI sends in people with this criminal background into our community, we want to know how they are acting and who is vulnerable to them. Our best way is to identify this and the tactics that are being used.”
U.S. Attorney spokesman Thom Mrozek declined to comment Monday. The FBI also declined to comment Monday, citing the pending case.
In court papers, defense attorneys have described the FBI informant as a “convicted drug trafficker” who has been paid “‘over’ a quarter million dollars” and was being allowed to stay in the United States, although he should be deported for his felony conviction.
The CAIR-Los Angeles news release issued Sunday said the amount paid to the informant is now $356,645 and that the informant’s conviction was for trafficking pseudoephedrine, a decongestant used to make methamphetamine.
Whether the informant – referred to as a “confidential human resource” in court papers – will testify during the anticipated 20-day trial is unknown; like many documents in the case that started in late 2012, the government’s witness list is sealed.
Dadabhoy said she knew of no existing positive identification of the informant. “There is no picture of him. If there is information, then maybe we will put together an advisory for the community about who this person may be,” she said.
The case broke in November 2012 with the arrests of Kabir in Afghanistan and three others – Ralph Deleon of Ontario, Arifeen David Gojali of Riverside and Miguel Santana of Upland, who authorities said were about to leave for the first leg of their trip from the United States to Afghanistan.
The government’s case brief says the defendants’ alleged conspiracy was underway before they met with the informant in February 2012, when one of them told him of a plan to travel overseas “to engage in violent jihad.”

Confirmed: Terrorists Have Tried to Exploit Refugee Program

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We cant being to measure the trouble and failed government programs and how it fully impacts national/domestic security.

Primer: During a hearing today in the House with the Director of USCIS (Citizenship and Immigration Services), it was told that Tashfee Malik, one of the two killers in San Bernardino was not processed through the system at the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan managed by the State Department as mandated by law. Further it appears cases presented to embassies are rubber-stamped where already during testimony, 80% of refugee applications have been approved by alleged Syrians. Additionally, 23,000 asylum applications have also been approved, year to date for 2015.

What was most curious is Citizenship and Immigration Services has 25 international offices. Most are in countries that are essentially failed countries, which is yet a compounded diplomatic failure of the United Nations, USAID and the U,S, State Department. Consequently failed diplomatic efforts further cost the American taxpayers much more than it ever should.

ODNI Confirms Terrorists Tried to Enter U.S. as Syrian Refugees

JudicialWatch: Individuals with ties to terrorist groups in Syria have tried to infiltrate the United States through the Obama refugee program that will admit at least 10,000 Syrians, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has confirmed.

The disturbing admission comes amid robust assurances by the administration that the refugees are thoroughly vetted before entering the country. In fact, the State Department publicly guarantees that every Syrian refugee is rigorously screened because “nothing is more important to us than the security of the American people.” The agency also addresses public concerns involving resettling Syrian refugees by asserting that it’s a “myth” that “all Syrians are dangerous.” In fact, “none have been arrested or removed on terrorism charges,” the State Department writes in a bulletin. Admission is only granted “after the most extensive level of security screening of any category of traveler to the United States,” according to the agency.

Nevertheless, in early October the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Matthew Emrich, admitted during a congressional hearing that there’s no way to adequately screen the new arrivals from the war-torn Muslim nation that’s a hotbed of terrorism. That’s because the Syrian government doesn’t have an intelligence database to run checks against so there’s no reliable method to accurately verify the identity of the new arrivals. Emrich did ensure during his congressional testimony that “we check everything that we are aware of” and that “we are in the process of overturning every stone.” This may not sound all that reassuring to most Americans.

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Assistant Director Michael Steinbach has also conceded that the U.S. government has no system to properly screen Syrian refugees. “The concern in Syria is that we don’t have systems in places on the ground to collect information to vet,” Steinbach said. “That would be the concern is we would be vetting — databases don’t hold the information on those individuals. “You’re talking about a country that is a failed state, that is — does not have any infrastructure, so to speak. So all of the data sets — the police, the intel services — that normally you would go to seek information don’t exist.” Judicial Watch reported on these two alarming revelations back in October.

Now we have the ODNI, the broad agency that serves as an umbrella for the intelligence community and advises the president, verifying that indeed terrorists have tried to exploit Obama’s Syrian refugee initiative. The ODNI is composed of more than a dozen spy agencies, including Air Force, Army, Navy, Treasury and Coast Guard intelligence as well as the FBI and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). This week the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Michael McCaul, released unclassified excerpts of information provided to him by the ODNI regarding possible terrorist exploitation of Syrian refugee flows. It’s scary but, unfortunately, not surprising.

The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) has identified “…individuals with ties to terrorist groups in Syria attempting to gain entry to the U.S. through the U.S. refugee program,” the ODNI tells the Texas congressman in a document that contains classified information the lawmaker could not make public. The NCTC also wrote this to the congressman: “The refugee system, like all immigration programs, is vulnerable to exploitation from extremist groups seeking to send operatives to the West. U.S. and Canadian authorities in 2011 arrested several refugees linked to what is now ISIL. Early in 2011, Canadian authorities arrested dual Iraqi-Canadian citizen Faruq ‘Isa who is accused of vetting individuals on the internet for suicide operations in Iraq. The FBI, in May of the same year, arrested Kentucky-based Iraqi refugees Wa’ad Ramadan Alwan and Mohanad Shareef Hammadi for attempting to send weapons and explosives from Kentucky to Iraq and conspiring to commit terrorism while in Iraq. Alwan pled guilty to the charges against him in December 2011, and Hammadi pled guilty in August 2012.”

The recent attacks in Paris were executed by terrorists who made it to Europe as refugees and the same could feasibly happen in the U.S. But national security has never stopped the Obama administration from assisting potential terrorists to settle in the U.S. Earlier this year JW reported on a “temporary” amnesty the administration is offering to nationals of Yemen, another Islamic Middle Eastern country well known as an Al Qaeda breeding ground. Under Temporary Protected Status (TPS) illegal aliens from Yemen, headquarters of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), get to stay in the U.S. for at least 18 months. In its latest Country Reports on Terrorism, the State Department reveals that AQAP militants carried out hundreds of attacks including suicide bombers, vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs), ambushes, kidnappings and targeted assassinations. The media has also documented this for years with one in-depth report confirming that “Yemen has emerged as the breeding grounds for some of the most high-profile plans to attack the U.S. homeland.”

 

Old is New Again, the Terror Alert System

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Jeh Johnson admits the NTAS has never been used but now, we need it?

Wonder when it will be launched and how:

Action Center

National Terrorism Advisory System Public Guide

NTAS Public GuideThe National Terrorism Advisory System, or NTAS, replaces the color-coded Homeland Security Advisory System (HSAS). This new system will more effectively communicate information about terrorist threats by providing timely, detailed information to the public, government agencies, first responders, airports and other transportation hubs, and the private sector.

It recognizes that Americans all share responsibility for the nation’s security, and should always be aware of the heightened risk of terrorist attack in the United States and what they should do.

US To Roll Out New Terror Alert System

SkyNews: The announcement comes after President Obama tells the American people that a new phase of terror threats has emerged.

The United States will launch a new terror alert system aimed at better informing Americans about the nation’s security posture, Homeland chief Jeh Johnson has said.

Details about the new system – the country’s third since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks – will be announced soon, Mr Johnson said at a Defense One magazine forum on Monday.

Colour-coded US threat advisory system

The much maligned colour-coded system was replaced in 2011

The Homeland Security boss did not provide specifics, but said the changes will keep the public better informed.

His comments come on the heels of President Barack Obama telling Americans that the US is witnessing a “new phase” of terror threats.

President Obama

In a rare address from the Oval Office on Sunday night, Mr Obama explained how the threat that terrorism posed to the US had changed from the “multi-faceted” attacks of 9/11, to simpler methods such as mass shootings.

Mr. Johnson echoed the President’s words on Monday, telling the forum that terrorist threats to the US have evolved and terrorist-inspired threats are a growing concern.

Since 2011 the US has used the National Threat Advisory System (NTAS), which replaced the much maligned colour-coded system put in place after 9/11.