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Category Archives: ISIS ISIL Islamic State Caliphate
ISLAMIC State has launched a bold new attack — this time in Sinai against Egypt. Are the Pryamids and Great Sphinx — along with countless other treasures — next on their hit list?
“When Egypt comes under the auspices of the Khalifa (Caliphate), there will be no more Pyramids, no more Sphinx, no more idolatry. This will be just”.
Just days after his show, Civilisation Under Attack, went to air in the UK, Islamic State has taken steps to turn them into reality.
Egyptian warplanes are launching air strikes and troops going house-to-house in the troubled Sinai Peninsula as the jihadist militants conduct an unprecedented, coordinated attack.
It’s just the latest action in a chain of events that threatens to topple the cradle of civilisation into internal chaos on a scale similar to that of Syria and Iraq.
And Islamic State is ready to seize the moment.
New wave of unrest
The combat in Sinai, described as “war” by Egyptian media and officials, has heightened tensions across the country.
Since the popular “Arab Spring” uprising against the 30-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak, Egypt has gradually been sliding towards chaos.
Today the troubled nation marks the second anniversary of the military’s overthrow of democratically elected Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.
It was a move that fanned dissent throughout Egypt and the insurgency in north Sinai.
It also follows the dramatic assassination this week of the country’s chief prosecutor in a car bombing in Cairo, prompting general-turned-politician President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to press for even harsher anti-terrorism laws targeting Islamic militants.
A special forces raid yesterday on a Cairo apartment killed nine members of Morsi’s outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.
The Brotherhood responded by calling for a “rebellion.”
It’s fertile ground for the Islamic State. It’s attempting to initiate exactly that.
The coordinated assault by scores of extremists on Wednesday focused on the town of Sheikh Zuweid. It included suicide bombings and an attack on its main police station, which also was shelled by mortars and rocket-propelled grenades in a firefight with police that lasted most of the day, the officials said.
The army said 17 troops and more than 100 militants were killed in the fighting.
It expects it to be just the start of a new military campaign.
Enormous heritage at stake
Islamic State has already telegraphed its attitude to Egypt’s rich cultural heritage.
They should be destroyed.
The dogma is simple: No object should be the subject of idolisation or worship.
According to a statement by preacher Ibrahim Al Kandari, as reported in the Egyptian Al-Watan daily, it is irrelevant that most of Egypt’s ancient monuments are cultural, not religious.
“The fact that early Muslims who were among prophet Mohammed’s followers did not destroy the pharaohs’ monuments upon entering Egypt does not mean that we shouldn’t do it now,” Al Kandari told the paper earlier this year.
Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has reportedly stated the demolition of historic monuments is a “religious duty”.
The jihadist extremists have already demonstrated its attitude towards relics of cultures other than its own. They point to Islamic prohibitions against depicting “living beings”: They are supposed to promote idolatry.
It has smashed statues in the museum of Mosul. It has brutally demolished the ancient cities of Hatra and Nimrud, and looted the city of Dur Sharrukin. It’s an extremist philospy reflected in the destruction of the enormous Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001 by Afghanistan’s Taliban.
But Islamic State recently moderated its stance, promising to protect the Roman ruins of the city of Palmyra. It has since blown up several medieval mausoleums in the area.
It’s not the first time Egypt’s Great Pyramids and Sphinx have been threatened.
While often attributed Napoleon, the destruction of the Great Sphinx’s nose is believed by many to have been caused by Muhammad Sa’im al-Dahar in the 14th century. He believed local peasants may have been worshipping the ancient monument.
In 2012 a cleric of Egypt’s radical Salafi movement declared a fatwa against the World Heritage site — citing the Prophet Mohammed’s destruction of idols in Mecca as precedent.
Egypt’s tourism industry was akin to “prostitution and debauchery”, he said.
Egypt’s military response
Air raids yesterday killed 23 extremists just south of Rafah, a key Sinai border town near the Gaza strip, Sinai Egyptian security officials said.
They added that the army was searching for militants in the town of Sheikh Zuweid, where a string of army checkpoints were attacked a day earlier.
Soldiers were de-mining roads in and around the area that had been booby trapped with mines and improvised explosive devices, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to talk to the media.
The army also raided a house in Rafah, killing six armed Isanuc State militants wearing military uniforms, the officials said, adding that it had cleared the area around the Sheikh Zuweid police station of mines and IEDs.
A newspaper close to the Egyptian government said Thursday the militants behind the Sinai attacks used sophisticated weaponry, including Russian-made Kornet antitank missiles. The el-Watan daily also said they also used mortars, anti-aircraft guns and other guided missiles.
The main insurgent organisation operating in Sinai, which calls itself the Sinai Province of the Islamic State group, claimed its fighters struck 15 army and police positions and staged three suicide bombings, two against checkpoints and one that hit an officers’ club in nearby el-Arish, the area’s largest city. The authenticity of the claim could not be immediately verified but it was posted on a Facebook page associated with the group.
Militants in northern Sinai have battled security forces for years, but they stepped up their attacks after Morsi’s ouster on July 3, 2013, which followed mass demonstrations against his rule. El-Sissi led the ouster and was elected president last year.
Political opposition blamed
Egyptian authorities and pro-government media have blamed much of the recent violence on the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been branded a terrorist group.
The Brotherhood denies involvement, although it and other President Morsi supporters have faced a sweeping crackdown that has led to thousands of arrests, mass convictions and death sentences.
The democratically elected Preisdent is among those condemned to die, but he has appealed.
The Brotherhood has called for a “rebellion” and described the special forces killings as “a turning point that will have its own repercussions.”
“It will not be possible to control the anger of the oppressed,” the Brotherhood said in a statement.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned of the growing threat to the region from Islamic State militants and expressed condolences to Egypt over the deadly IS-linked attacks in Sinai.
“We see in front of our eyes IS acting with extraordinary cruelty both in our northern border and at our southern border,” he said. “Our hearts are with the Egyptian people, we send our condolences to the Egyptian government and the families of those who were killed in battle with the cruel terror.”
GW Bush said it was going to be a long war when the top enemy was al Qaeda. Defeat was realized until the rules of engagement and strategy were altered dynamically month by month beginning in 2009.
There is Russia and Ukraine as noted by the Institute for the Study of War.
Then there is the Baltic Balance as summarized by the Rand Corporation.
Non-state actors, like ISIS, are among the Pentagon’s top concerns, but so are hybrid wars in which nations like Russia support militia forces fighting on their behalf in Eastern Ukraine threaten national security interests, Dempsey writes.
“Hybrid conflicts also may be comprised of state and non-state actors working together toward shared objectives, employing a wide range of weapons such as we have witnessed in eastern Ukraine,” Dempsey writes. “Hybrid conflicts serve to increase ambiguity, complicate decision-making, and slow the coordination of effective responses. Due to these advantages to the aggressor, it is likely that this form of conflict will persist well into the future.”
Dempsey also warns that the “probability of U.S. involvement in interstate war with a major power is … low but growing.”
“We must be able to rapidly adapt to new threats while maintaining comparative advantage over traditional ones. Success will increasingly depend on how well our military instrument can support the other instruments of power and enable our network of allies and partners,” Dempsey writes.
The strategy also calls for greater agility, innovation and integration among military forces.
“[T]he 2015 strategy recognizes that success will increasingly depend on how well our military instrument supports the other instruments of national power and how it enables our network of allies and partners,” Dempsey said Wednesday.
The military will continue its pivot to the Pacific, Dempsey writes, but its presence in Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa will evolve. The military must remain “globally engaged to shape the security environment,” he said Wednesday.
The Russian campaign in Ukraine has military strategists questioning if traditional U.S. military force as it is deployed globally is still — or enough of — a deterrence to hybrid and non-state threats like today’s terrorism. “If deterrence fails, at any given time, our military will be capable of defeating a regional adversary in a large-scale, multi-phased campaign while denying the objectives of – or imposing unacceptable costs on – another aggressor in a different region,” Dempsey writes.
The chairman also criticizes Beijing’s “aggressive land reclamation efforts” in the South China Sea where it is building military bases in on disputed islands. In the same region, on North Korea, “In time, they will threaten the U.S. homeland,” Dempsey writes, and mentions Pyongyang’s alleged hack of Sony’s computer network.
Dempsey scolds Iran, which is in the midst of negotiating a deal with Washington to limit its nuclear program, for being a “state-sponsor of terrorism that has undermined stability in many nations, including Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.”
Russia, Iran, North Korea and China, Dempsey writes, are not “believed to be seeking direct military conflict with the United States or our allies,” but the U.S. military needs to be prepared.
“Nonetheless, they each pose serious security concerns which the international community is working to collectively address by way of common policies, shared messages, and coordinated action,” Dempsey said.
Prepare for a long war. General Dempsey is retiring as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and will likely move on to academia. Meanwhile, on July 9, the Senate Armed Services will hold a confirmation hearing for General Joseph Dunford.
As General Dempsey is making his farewell rounds, his words speak to some liberation in saying what needs to be said in his swan song.
In a new National Military Strategy, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff warns the Pentagon to reorganize its global footprint to combat prolonged battles of terrorism and proxy wars.
The U.S. military needs to reorganize itself and prepare for war that has no end in sight with militant groups like the Islamic State and nations that use proxies to fight on their behalf, America’s top general warned Wednesday.
In what is likely his last significant strategy direction before retiring this summer, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the Pentagon that “global disorder has trended upward while some of our comparative advantages have begun to erode,” since 2011, the last update to the National Military Strategy.
“We are more likely to face prolonged campaigns than conflicts that are resolved quickly… that control of escalation is becoming more difficult and more important… and that as a hedge against unpredictability with reduced resources, we may have to adjust our global posture,” Dempsey writes in the new military strategy.
Dempsey, the president’s senior military advisor, criticizes Russia, Iran, North Korea and China for aggressive military actions and warns that the rapidly changing global security environment might force the U.S. military to reorganize as it prepares for a busy future.
The military has been shrinking since 2012, when the Obama administration announced plans to pivot forces to the Asia-Pacific region as troops withdrew from Afghanistan and Iraq. But since then, Obama slowed the Afghanistan withdrawal as fighting continues there, and thousands of American military forces have found themselves back in the Middle East and North Africa conducting airstrikes, gathering intelligence and training and advising Iraqi soldiers that are battling ISIS. Since U.S. forces are not deployed to Iraq in a combat role, significantly fewer numbers are needed compared to the hundreds of thousands troops that were sent to Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade. Still, U.S. commanders have repeatedly said it will take decades to defeat ISIS, and a stronger nonmilitary effort to defeat the ideology that fuels Islamic extremist groups.
Non-state actors, like ISIS, are among the Pentagon’s top concerns, but so are hybrid wars in which nations like Russia support militia forces fighting on their behalf in Eastern Ukraine threaten national security interests, Dempsey writes.
“Hybrid conflicts also may be comprised of state and non-state actors working together toward shared objectives, employing a wide range of weapons such as we have witnessed in eastern Ukraine,” Dempsey writes. “Hybrid conflicts serve to increase ambiguity, complicate decision-making, and slow the coordination of effective responses. Due to these advantages to the aggressor, it is likely that this form of conflict will persist well into the future.”
Dempsey also warns that the “probability of U.S. involvement in interstate war with a major power is … low but growing.”
“We must be able to rapidly adapt to new threats while maintaining comparative advantage over traditional ones. Success will increasingly depend on how well our military instrument can support the other instruments of power and enable our network of allies and partners,” Dempsey writes.
The strategy also calls for greater agility, innovation and integration among military forces.
“[T]he 2015 strategy recognizes that success will increasingly depend on how well our military instrument supports the other instruments of national power and how it enables our network of allies and partners,” Dempsey said Wednesday.
The military will continue its pivot to the Pacific, Dempsey writes, but its presence in Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa will evolve. The military must remain “globally engaged to shape the security environment,” he said Wednesday.
The Russian campaign in Ukraine has military strategists questioning if traditional U.S. military force as it is deployed globally is still — or enough of — a deterrence to hybrid and non-state threats like today’s terrorism. “If deterrence fails, at any given time, our military will be capable of defeating a regional adversary in a large-scale, multi-phased campaign while denying the objectives of – or imposing unacceptable costs on – another aggressor in a different region,” Dempsey writes.
The chairman also criticizes Beijing’s “aggressive land reclamation efforts” in the South China Sea where it is building military bases in on disputed islands. In the same region, on North Korea, “In time, they will threaten the U.S. homeland,” Dempsey writes, and mentions Pyongyang’s alleged hack of Sony’s computer network.
Dempsey scolds Iran, which is in the midst of negotiating a deal with Washington to limit its nuclear program, for being a “state-sponsor of terrorism that has undermined stability in many nations, including Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.”
Russia, Iran, North Korea and China, Dempsey writes, are not “believed to be seeking direct military conflict with the United States or our allies,” but the U.S. military needs to be prepared.
“Nonetheless, they each pose serious security concerns which the international community is working to collectively address by way of common policies, shared messages, and coordinated action,” Dempsey said.
Today on CBS: “Thousands of law enforcement officers in New York will spend July 4 trying to prevent a terror attack that could come from supporters of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller called it one of their biggest operations ever.
“I think if you look at history, they’re looking at big events, they’re looking at symbolic dates. They’re looking at military, police, intelligence,” Miller said Thursday on “CBS This Morning.”
PlayVideo
CBS This Morning
FBI and Homeland Security warn of potential July 4th terror attacks
Federal authorities are urging local law enforcement to step up security and be vigilant ahead of the holiday weekend. CBS News senior security c…
CBS News senior security contributor Mike Morell said Monday the FBI and Department of Homeland Security’s warning of a potential July 4 attack is “nothing routine.” ”
• ISIS is dead set on attacking America and its allies. With the recent attacks in France and against tourists in Tunisia, ISIS has now been linked to 47 terrorist plots or attacks against the West, including 11 inside the United States. The rate of ISIS terror plots against the West has more than doubled in 2015 (19 plots in all of 2014; 28 already this year).
• The number of post-9/11 jihadi terror plots in the United States has surged. There have been more U.S.-based terror plots or attacks in the first half of 2015 (a total of 24) than in any full year since 9/11. Overall, homegrown jihadi plots have tripled in just the past five years (from 36 plots/attacks in June 2010 to 118 today).
• Islamist terrorists are getting better at recruiting Americans. Ten U.S.-based ISIS supporters have been arrested in the last month, bringing the total to 55 ISIS-inspired individuals arrested and charged in America (not including two who have been charged in absentia). ISIS followers have now been arrested in at least 19 states.
• Foreign fighters continue to pour into terrorist safe havens overseas—and represent a threat to the United States and its allies. More than 4,000 Westerners and 200+ Americans have traveled or attempted to travel to join Islamist terrorists in Syria, figures which have nearly doubled in the past year. Around 40 have already returned to the United States, according to authorities, one of which was arrested plotting a terrorist attack in Ohio.
• Islamist terror safe havens and franchises are proliferating rapidly, giving groups like ISIS and al Qaeda a base for operation and further expansion. Libya in particular has deteriorated quickly becoming a training ground for terror recruits. ISIS now has a direct presence, affiliates, or groups pledging support in at least 18 countries or territories, including Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Lebanon, Nigeria, the Palestinian territories (Gaza), Pakistan, Philippines, Russia (North Caucasus region), Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen.
TERROR PLOTS AGAINST THE WEST
ISIS is not a regional phenomenon but a global menace whose targeting against the West has surged in 2015.
By the numbers
• Since early 2014, there have been 47 planned or executed ISIS-linked terror plots against Western targets, including 11 inside in the United States.1
• There have been more ISIS-linked plots against Western targets in the first half of this year (28) than in all of 2014 (19).2
Recent Developments
• June 27: ISIS recruiter and computer hacker Junaid Hussain attempted to enlist a trainee to target the Armed Forces Day parade in London, England, in a bombing attack. Hussain is suspected to have been in social media contact with at least one of the perpetrators of the May 2015 attack on a Muhammad cartoon contest in Garland, Texas.
• June 26: Yassine Salhi, 35, decapitated his employer and attempted to blow up an American chemical company’s factory near Lyon, France, before being subdued. He had previously been under French authorities’ scrutiny over his jihadist ties. Salhi maintained regular contact with and sent pictures of the decapitated body to a Syria-based French citizen reportedly fighting for and in contact with ISIS leaders.
• June 26: Seifeddine Rezgui, 23, attacked a public beach and luxury resort complex frequented by Western tourists in Sousse, Tunisia, killing 39 individuals. He was eventually shot by security 1 forces. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack. Tunisian officials believe Rezgui attended the same terror training camp in Libya as the attackers who targeted the National Bardo Museum in Tunis in March. This figure is based on open-source data compiled by the Majority Staff of the Homeland Security Committee.
2 This figure is based on open-source data compiled by the Majority Staff of the Homeland Security Committee.
• June 23: ISIS spokesman Abu Muhammad al Adnani issued an aggressive call urging followers around the world to launch terror attacks and turn the month of Ramadan (June 17 – July 17) into a “calamity for the infidels…Shi’ites and apostate Muslims.” Adnani proclaimed that martyrdom during Ramadan would bring “tenfold” rewards to jihadists.
• June 19: Justin Nolan, a 19-year-old from Morganton, North Carolina, was arrested for plotting assassinations and a large terror attack on behalf of ISIS using a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle. Nolan expressed his support for ISIS, acquired a gun silencer, desired to kill “as many as 1,000 people,” and planned to send footage of an attack to ISIS.
• June 17: Fareed Mumuni was arrested after attempting to stab FBI agents searching his home in connection with an investigation stemming from the arrest of Munther Saleh. Authorities believe Mumuni conspired with Saleh to construct a pressure-cooker bomb, similar to those used in the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013. Mumuni told federal investigators that he pledged allegiance to ISIS, planned to travel to ISIS-controlled territories to join the group, and intended to attack law enforcement officers if his efforts to join ISIS failed.
• June 16: Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem was indicted for providing weapons to Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi for use in May 2015 Garland, Texas attack. Kareem also traveled with Simpson and Soofi to a remote desert area near Phoenix to practice shooting. He was charged with conspiracy, making false statements and interstate transportation of firearms with intent to commit a felony. The indictment noted that the three men “and others known and unknown to the grand jury” plotted the attack.
• June 13: Munther Omar Saleh, a 20-year-old college student, was arrested after he and an unidentified co-conspirator ran towards an undercover law enforcement car near the Whitestone Bridge in New York. Saleh came under scrutiny after a Port Authority police officer saw him walking near the George Washington Bridge in New Jersey this past March. Saleh conducted online research on preparing explosive devices— including research on pressure cooker bombs and other weaponry— in the New York metropolitan area on behalf of ISIS. Saleh was active on Twitter and tweeted his concern that al Qaeda was becoming “too moderate” in 2014. He also espoused pro-ISIS sympathies online and endorsed the Charlie Hebdo massacre in France and the Garland, Texas shooting attack.
• June 2: Ussamah Abdullah Rahim of Roslindale, Massachusetts, was initially planning to behead an individual at some point in the future but advanced the timing of his plot and changed the target to law enforcement personnel. Rahim attacked Boston police officers and FBI agents who were attempting to question him before being neutralized. He was radicalized by ISIS and had been on authorities’ radar for several years. His nephew, David Wright, conspired with Rahim and was initially arrested for obstructing the investigation. A third associate, Nicholas Rovinski from Warwick, Rhode Island, also in contact with ISIS recruiters overseas, was arrested June 11th and charged as a co-conspirator.
HOMEGROWN ISLAMIST EXTREMISM
Homegrown terror has reached unprecedented levels as extremist groups work to infiltrate the United States and remotely recruit and radicalize Americans.
By the numbers
• Since September 11, 2001, there have been 118 U.S. terrorist cases involving homegrown violent jihadists. Over 80 percent of these cases, which include plotted attacks and attempts to join foreign terrorist organizations, have occurred or been discovered since 2009.3
• Authorities have arrested or charged at least 44 individuals in the United States this year – 57 since
2014 – in ISIS-related cases. The cases involve individuals: plotting attacks; attempting to travel to Syria; sending money, equipment and weapons to terrorists; falsifying statements to federal authorities; and failing to report a felony.4
• FBI Director James Comey has said authorities have hundreds of open investigations of potential ISIS-inspired extremists that cover all 56 of the bureau’s field offices in all 50 states. He stated there may be hundreds or thousands of Americans who are taking in recruitment propaganda over social media applications: “It’s like the devil sitting on their shoulders, saying ‘kill, kill, kill.’”
Recent Developments
• Ten ISIS supporters were arrested in the United States in June, including individuals listed in the previous section tied to ISIS-linked plots or attacks against the West, including David Wright (MA),
Nicholas Rovinski (RI), Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem (AZ), Akmal Zakirov (NY), Munther Omar Saleh (NY), and Fareed Mumuni (NY). Other arrestees include:
• June 29: Alaa Saadeh, a 23-year-old from West New York, New Jersey, was arrested in connection with his involvement with an ISIS-supporting cell in New York and New Jersey. Saadeh intended to travel to join ISIS and previously assisted his brother in going overseas for the same purpose.
• June 19: Amir Said Abdul Rahman al Ghazi (previously Robert McCollum), a 38-year-old from Sheffield Lake, Ohio, was arrested after pledging support to ISIS, attempting to persuade individuals to join ISIS, expressing a desire to launch terror attacks, attempting to purchase an AK-47, and selling marijuana. Ghazi expressed his radical views through social media tools, including Facebook,
Twitter, and Google+.
• June 18: Samuel Rahamin Topaz, a resident of Fort Lee, New Jersey was arrested for his intent to travel abroad to join ISIS in Syria and for providing material support to the terror group. Topaz was a friend and coconspirator of Munther Saleh, arrested June 13. The two watched ISIS propaganda 3 This figure is based on open-source data compiled by the Congressional Research Service and the Majority Staff of the Homeland Security Committee. 4 This figure is based on open-source data compiled by the Majority Staff of the Homeland Security Committee. videos online depicting beheadings and discussed their plans to fight with ISIS by transiting different countries to ISIS-controlled territory in Syria.
• June 11: Ali Shukri Amin, 17, of Manassas, Virginia, pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to provide material support to ISIS after facilitating the travel of Reza Niknejad to Syria to join the group in January. Amin’s Twitter account, which at one time counted more than 4,000 followers, provided advice and encouragement to ISIS and its supporters, including instructions on how to use virtual currency Bitcoin to raise funds for the terror group.
FOREIGN FIGHTERS
Jihadists are flocking to overseas battlefields unabated, acquiring terror connections and capabilities and representing a near-term threat to their home countries, including the United States.
By the numbers
• More than 22,000 fighters from 100 countries have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join extremists—the largest convergence of Islamist terrorists in world history. The number of foreign fighters who have traveled to battlefields globally exceeds 25,000.
• Approximately 4,000 Western fighters have traveled to Syria and Iraq.5
• An estimated 550 Western women have traveled to the conflict zone.
• More than 200 Americans are estimated to have traveled – or attempted to travel – to Syria to fight.
This figure is up 33 percent from the beginning of 2015.
• Around 40 American fighters who traveled to Syria have returned to the United States as of March 2015.
• In addition to fighters joining Sunni extremist groups like ISIS and Jabhat al Nusrah in Syria, an estimated 5,000-7,000 Lebanese Hezbollah members and other Shi’a militants are fighting alongside the Bashar al Assad regime.
• A senior State Department official said almost all foreign fighters are still entering Syria through Turkey.
• France continues to be the top European source for fighters joining extremists in Syria (~1,200).
French authorities estimate that nearly 500 French fighters are currently in Syria and Iraq. The top overall source for foreign fighters is Tunisia (~ 3,000).
FOREIGN JIHADIST NETWORKS & SAFE HAVENS
5
National Counterterrorism Center Deputy Director John Mulligan, testimony before the House Homeland Security
Committee, June 3, 2015.
Islamist terror groups are carving our greater sanctuary across the Middle East. ISIS is accelerating its global expansion while al Qaeda deepens its roots in the region.
By the numbers
• ISIS now has a direct presence, affiliates, or groups pledging support in at least 18 countries or territories, including Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Lebanon, Nigeria, the Palestinian territories (Gaza), Pakistan, Philippines, Russia (North Caucasus region), Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen.6
• ISIS controls 11 cities in Iraq and 10 cities in Syria as of late June.7
Recent Developments
• ISIS lost control of Tel Abyad, Syria, to Syrian Kurdish and Free Syrian Army-linked forces. The border town had served as a key ISIS line of communication from Turkey to its northern Syrian stronghold of Raqqa. ISIS has been launching counter-attacks against the border town.
• ISIS has maintained control of Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s largely Sunni-populated Anbar province along the Syrian border, after seizing it in May. It is preparing to defend the area by digging trenches and emplacing improvised explosive devices, among other tactics.
• ISIS-affiliated militants have been consolidating control in and around Sirte, Libya. ISIS was recently pushed out of the coastal city of Darnah, which was at one point the top source of foreign fighters for al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), ISIS’s predecessor. An estimated 3,000 fighters in Libya are aligned with ISIS. ISIS has reportedly sent fighters in Libya funding and military trainers over the last several months. The terrorists who separately attacked the National Bardo Museum and a coastal resort in Tunisia this year reportedly attended training camps in Libya.
• ISIS formally accepted a pledge of allegiance from followers in Russia’s North Caucasus region. As many as 2,500 fighters from this region have joined extremists in Syria and Iraq.
• Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has been forging alliances with and co-opting local Sunni tribes in southern Yemen since it defeated Yemeni security forces there in April. A recent prison break in Taiz, Yemen, reportedly freed more than 1,200 prisoners, including suspected AQAP militants.
• AQAP leader Nasir al Wuhayshi was killed in a targeted strike in Yemen. Wuhayshi served as deputy to al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri and helped build AQAP following a 2006 prison break. AQAP military commander Qasim al Raymi has been named his successor.
6 Data compiled by the Majority Staff of the Homeland Security Committee.
7
These figures are derived from assessments of territorial control conducted by the Institute for the Study of War.
• Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, Jabhat al Nusra, is a prominent force in the anti-Assad regime coalition – supported by Qatar, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia – that has captured Idlib and other areas in northern Syria since March.
• A cell of veteran al Qaeda operatives in Syria plotting external attacks (Khorasan Group) has maintained a presence in northwest Syria, where U.S. and coalition forces targeted buildings and training camps associated with it in May.
OTHER DEVELOPMENTS
ISIS aggressively exploits social media in order to recruit fighters, disseminate propaganda, and trigger attacks in the West.
• Since the beginning of this year, ISIS has pushed out more than 1,700 “products,” including videos, photographic reports, and magazines over social media.8
• There are an estimated 200,000 pro-ISIS messages posted on Twitter every day.
• ISIS released the 9th issue of its English-language magazine “Dabiq” in May. The articles praises the attackers who targeted the Garland, Texas, cartoon contest, exhorts followers to commit terrorist acts in the United States and other Western countries, and touts the “benefits” it offers people living in its territory.
The risk of Islamist terrorists exploiting refugee and migrant flows to travel freely remains high as underscored in a recent arrest.
• Italian authorities arrested Abdel Majid Touil, a 22-year-old Moroccan terror suspect who arrived in Italy on a migrant boat and spent several months there. Touil is suspected of being part of the terror network behind the March National Bardo Museum attack in Tunisia.
• ISIS-aligned militants have been taxing migrant boat smugglers and using them to transport militants, according to a Libyan government adviser citing conversations with smugglers. Reports in 2014 indicated that ISIS operatives had discussed using refugee flows into Europe as a “Trojan Horse” for its operatives. Italian officials have reportedly expressed concerns over terrorists’ potential exploitation of these flows.
The Obama Administration released additional detainees from Guantanamo Bay in June and is formulating a broader plan to shutter the facility.
• Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said he is working with the White House on a closure plan for Guantanamo to be submitted to Congress.
8
National Counterterrorism Center Deputy Director John Mulligan, testimony before the House Homeland Security
Committee, June 3, 2015.
• The Defense Department announced it transferred six al Qaeda detainees – several who reportedly served as bodyguards for Osama bin Laden – from Guantanamo to Oman. Almost 30 percent of released detainees from Guantanamo are known or suspected to have returned to the battlefield.
• The travel ban on the “Taliban Five” – freed in exchange for now-charged Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl – will remain in place temporarily. Restrictions enforced by the Qatari government were set to expire on June 1, 2015, but will now be extended until negotiations involving the U.S., Qatar, and Afghanistan are concluded.
In 2013, Obama declared: I extend my best wishes to His Highness Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani as he assumes his new role as the Amir of Qatar. Qatar is an important partner of the United States, and we look forward to further strengthening our cooperation in the years ahead. I also extend my appreciation to His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani for his friendship and leadership. The United States looks forward to working with Sheikh Tamim to deepen the ties between our two countries, and to continue our close partnership on issues of mutual interest.
When Emir Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani visits the White House on February 24, President Obama will have to contend with a Qatari diplomatic scorecard that has significant marks on both sides of the ledger. Given its historically awkward relations with neighboring Saudi Arabia and its shared ownership with Iran of the world’s largest offshore natural gas field, Qatar looks to the United States as its main security guarantor. That has suited the U.S. military, which has used the giant al-Udeid Air Base outside Doha for operations over Iraq and Afghanistan. But Qatar, with a population of around two million, of which only some 10 percent are citizens, has an often quirky tendency to demonstrate itsindependence. Past sins include parading Stinger missiles illegally acquired from Afghanistan mujahedin, allowing its Aljazeera satellite television channel to broadcast inflammatory and false reports that led to American deaths, and financing terrorism. Indeed, as deputy CIA chief David Cohen told a Washington audience last March while serving as the Treasury Department’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, “Distressingly, Iran is not the only state that provides financial support for terrorist organizations. Most notably, Qatar, a longtimeU.S. ally, has for many years openly financed Hamas, a group that continues to undermine regional stability. Press reports indicate that the Qatari government is also supporting extremist groups operating in Syria. To say the least, this threatens to aggravate an already volatile situation in a particularly dangerous and unwelcome manner.”
Okay, it is really festering in Qatar with terrorism. So the National Security Council, the White House, the State Department and the United Nations are cool with this?
The ruler of Qatar, Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, hosted a gaggle of religious leaders at his palace in Doha to break the Ramadan fast on Tuesday of last week.
The emir physically embraced and accorded seats of honor to some of the most hateful clerics in the Gulf, religious leaders who together have a long record of intolerance toward women, Christians, Shiites, and Jews.
Footage from the event showed Tamim kissing the head of iconic Muslim Brotherhood ideologue Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who was seated even closer to the ruler than his ministers or brother, the deputy emir.
Qaradawi notoriously asked God in a 2009 sermon broadcast on Qatar’s Al Jazeera network to “take the Jews, the treacherous aggressors” and to “count their numbers, and kill them, down to the very last one.”
He has also chaired a network of charities called the Union of Good that is under US terror finance sanctions on charges of being a front for Hamas. Qaradawi then bragged that he himself had avoided being sanctioned because Tamim’s father, the previous emir, stood up on his behalf.
Qaradawi has ceased giving televised sermons in the country. This was reportedly one of Qatar’s concessions last year to end a diplomatic breach with its Gulf neighbors, a standoff exacerbated by the cleric’s condemnation of those countries’ anti-Brotherhood policies. Yet Qaradawi’s peck from the prince suggests that the hardline preacher still continues to have access to Qatar’s ruling circle.
Qatar’s ruler also embraced a trio of Saudi preachers who were profiled in a March report on Saudi incitement and human rights abuses that I helped write for the nonprofit group Human Rights First. Mohammed al-Arifi, Aidh al-Qarni, and Nasser al-Omar have a combined 23 million followers on Twitter, in part because of the tolerance or support they receive from Gulf rulers.
Al-Arifi was recorded last Tuesday exchanging kisses with Tamim and speaking into his ear. Also last week, Qatar’s Ministry of Islamic Affairs and Endowments announced it was “delighted to invite” guests to several events featuring Arifi at Qatar’s massive state-controlled Grand Mosque.
Yet Mohammed al-Arifi has been accused of describing Shiites as “non-believers who must be killed,” and of decrying them for “treachery” and “evil.”
The Middle East Media Research Institute says he has also proclaimed “one’s devotion to jihad for the sake of Allah and one’s will to shed blood, smash skulls, and chop off body parts … constitute an honor for the believer.” On Al Jazeera he called Osama bin Laden a “sheikh” and insisted members of Al Qaeda “do not tolerate bloodshed.” According to Saudi women’s rights activist Eman al-Nafjan, Arifi has also delivered guidance on how to beat one’s wife.
Another Saudi preacher who exchanged kisses with Tamim that same evening was Aidh Abdullah al-Qarni, who was visiting the country to deliver several lectures for Ramadan. Qarni has previously stated that when Jews and Christians claim God loves them, “they are lying, Allah’s wrath upon them.” He also has hailed fighters of the US-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization Hamas as holy warriors, and maligned Jews as “the brothers of apes and pigs.”
Finally, Saudi preacher Nasser al-Omar was also photographed holding hands with a grinning Tamim and sitting next to Qatar’s Minister for Islamic Affairs and Endowments.
According to CNN Arabic, al-Omar once sought a meeting with the Saudi king to warn against “the danger” of granting women the right to drive, which the preacher warned would “open the door of evil.” He also allegedly signed a petition in 2008 that called the “Shi[ite] sect an evil among the sects of the Islamic nation, and the greatest enemy and deceivers of the Sunni people.”
On his website, al-Omar endorsed the Islamic Front in Syria in 2013, even though one of the group’s leaders had already advocated ethnic cleansing of Shiites and Alawites, and its members had possibly participated in the summary execution of Alawite villagers.
Raising further questions about the Qatari government’s views and priorities, on June 28th the country’s prime minister graced with his presence a lecture by another Saudi cleric, Salman al-Oudah, who has suggested that Jews eat human blood in their Passover matzah.
On the most recent anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Qatar agreed to participate in a coalition against the Islamic State, specifically pledging to repudiate the group’s hateful ideology.
Perhaps it is time for Washington to remind Qatar of its commitment.
As it has been proven by countless authorities, chemical weapons used in Syria still continues today with future conditions ripe for more death events by chemical weapons.
Bashir al Assad is a desperate man today and nothing is beyond desperate decisions including more chemical weapons or attempting to kill his Vice President.
Assad Chemical Threat Rises
U.S. intelligence agencies believe there is a strong possibility the Assad regime will use chemical weapons on a large scale as part of a last-ditch effort to protect key Syrian government strongholds if Islamist fighters and other rebels try to overrun them, U.S. officials said.
Analysts and policy makers have been poring over all available intelligence hoping to determine what types of chemical weapons the regime might be able to deploy and what event or events might trigger their use, according to officials briefed on the matter.
Last year, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad let international inspectors oversee the removal of what President Barack Obama called the regime’s most deadly chemical weapons. The deal averted U.S. airstrikes that would have come in retaliation for an Aug. 21, 2013, sarin-gas attack that killed more than 1,400 people.
Since then, the U.S. officials said, the Assad regime has developed and deployed a new type of chemical bomb filled with chlorine, which Mr. Assad could now decide to use on a larger scale in key areas. U.S. officials also suspect the regime may have squirreled away at least a small reserve of the chemical precursors needed to make nerve agents sarin or VX. Use of those chemicals would raise greater international concerns because they are more deadly than chlorine and were supposed to have been eliminated. Read more here.
In part from Congressional documents: When Yeltsin took office in January 1992, the US forced his public admission that there had been an offensive Soviet BW program and that it had continued until March 1992. Yeltsin promised the US president and the British prime minister to abolish the program, which he apparently presumed to think would be possible by decree, and to dismiss the military officials who had run the program for the preceding decades. However, he did not do any of these things. These same military officials who advised Yeltsin in January 1992 to continue the BW program remained in their positions. Following additional defections from the program, the US and UK stated that the BW program continued as of September 1992, and they forced Russian agreement to the Trilateral Statement, signed in Moscow in September 1992. Russia committed itself in the document to allow access to the biological weapon facilities of the Russian Ministry of Defense. However Russian negotiating teams ran these negotiations into the ground between 1993 and 1996, at which point they were discontinued. An unconcerned and essentially oblivious Yeltsin had long before this point simply washed his hands of the issue despite repeated appeals by President Clinton and his senior officials.
US and EU assistance programs for the conversion of the Biopreparat and Ministry of Agriculture facilities led to access to these and assurance that they were subsequently performing legitimate civilian research and commercial activities. Virtually no proliferation apparently took place from the Soviet BW program. Official annual US government declarations continue to question Russian compliance with the BWC, and the three major Ministry of Defense facilities remain closed to this day.
In a somewhat bizarre development in February and March 2012 Putin and then-Russian Minister of Defense Anatoly Serdyukov publicly referred to 28 tasks that Putin established for the RF-MOD in order “to prepare for threats of the future.” Putin wrote that Russia needed to be prepared for “quick and effective responses to new challenges,” and one of the 28 tasks that Putin specified as “The development of weapons based on new physical principles: radiation, geophysical, wave, genetic, psychophysical, etc.”2 “Genetic” weapons would obviously be forbidden by the Biological Weapons Convention, and the remainder are an arms control nightmare that would explicitly contravene another multilateral arms control treaty that was championed by the Brezhnev administration, the Convention on the Prohibition of Military or any other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Technologies, signed on May 18, 1977 and entered into force on October 5, 1978.
The three primary issues of current concern regarding Russia and biological weapons are therefore the following:
1) Russia destroyed the Trilateral negotiations that followed from the September 1992 US-UKRussian Trilateral Agreement.
2) As a corollary, the three Russian Ministry of Defense BW laboratories remain closed to international examination. There is no way of knowing whether these institutions continue an offensive BW program, and if so, to what degree.
3) The statement by President Vladimir Putin in February-March 2012 to develop genetic weapons is extremely problematic and troubling. Putin’s remarks were never revoked or clarified to this date.
What real explanation can Barack Obama offer that he turned to Putin to deal with the matter in Syria? How much more genocide will there be and will it be confined just to Syria?
In part: “Ken Alibek was Dr. Kanatjan Alibekov, the first deputy chief of research and production for the Soviet biological-weapons program. He was the top scientist in the program, a sprawling, clandestine enterprise known as Biopreparat, or The System, by the scientists who worked in it. Biopreparat research-and-production facilities were flung all across the Soviet Union. As Dr. Alibekov, Ken Alibek had thirtytwo thousand scientists and staff people working under him. Alibek has a Doctor of Sciences degree in anthrax. It is a kind of superdegree, which he received in 1988, at the age of thirty-seven, for directing the research team that developed the Soviet Union’s most powerful weapons-grade anthrax. He did this research as head of the Stepnagorsk bioweapons facility, in what is now Kazakhstan, which was once the largest biowarfare production facility in the world. The Afibekov anthrax became fitfly operational in 1989. It is an amber-gray powder, finer than bath talc, with smooth, creamy particles that tend to fly apart and vanish in the air, becoming invisible and driffing for miles. The Alibekov anthrax is four times more efficient than the standard product. Ken Alibek is part of a diaspora of biologists who came out of Russia foflowing the breakup of the Soviet Union. Government funding for research decreased dramatically, and scientists who were working in the biowarfare program found themselves without jobs. Some of them went looking abroad. A few have come to the United States or Great Britain, but most went elsewhere. “No one knows where they are,” Alibek says. One can guess-that they’ve ended up in Iraq, Syria, Libya, China, Iran, perhaps Israel, perhaps India–but no one really knows, probably not even the Russian’ government. No doubt some of these biologists have carried the Alibekov formi4a in their heads, if not master seed strains of the anthrax and samples of the finished product in containers. The Alibekov anthrax may be one of the more common bioweapons in the world today. It seems plausible that Iraqi biologists, for instance, know the Alibekov formula by now. One day, Ken Alibek and I were sitting in a conference room near his office taMng about the anthrax he and his research team had developed. “It’s very difficult to say if I felt a sense of excitement over this. It’s very difficult to say what I felt like,” he said. “It woulddt be true to say that I thought I was doing something wrong..l thought I had done something very important. The anthrax was one of my [outstanding] scientific personal result.” I asked him if he’d tell me the formula for his anthrax. “I cadt say this,” he answered. “I won’t publish it. I’m just curious,” I said. “Look, you must understand, this is unbelievably serious. You can’t publish this formula,” he said. When I assured him I wouldn’t, he told me the formula for the Alibekov anthrax. He uttered just one sentence. The Alibekov anthrax is simple, and the formula is somewhat surprisingi not quite what you’d expect. Two unrelated materials are mixed with pure powdered anthrax spores. It took a lot of research and testing to get the trick right, and Afibek must have driven his research group hard and skdmy to arrive at it. “There are many countries that would to know how to do this,” he said.”
