Category Archives: Middle East

How a Terrorist Thinks

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مركز المسبارal Mesbar Studies and Research Center

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   The Grey Zone:  Giulio Meotti writes on the April 4, 2016 Gatestone Institute website about the disturbingly high support among young European Muslims for suicide bombings and the Islamic State’s pursuit of establishing a new Caliphate.  Mr. Meotti writes that “among young European Muslims, support for suicide bombings range from 22 percent in Germany, to 29 percent in Spain, 35 percent in Britain, and 42 percent in France,” according to a recent PEW Research poll.  “In Britain, one in five Muslims have sympathy for the Caliphate; and, today, more British Muslims join ISIS than the British Army.  In the Netherlands,” the PEW Research poll showed that “80 percent of the Dutch Turks see “nothing wrong,” in ISIS.”  And, according to a ComRes report, commissioned by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), 27 percent of British Muslims have sympathy for the terrorists who attacked the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris.  An ICM poll, released by Newsweek, revealed that 16 percent of French Muslims support ISIS; and, the number rises to 27 percent among those aged 18-24.  In dozens of French schools, the “minute of silence,” was interrupted by Muslim pupils who protested it,” Mr. Meotti wrote.

”How deep is ISIS’s popularity in Belgium?,” Mr. Meotti asks.  “Very deep,” he warns.  “The most accurate study is a report from The Voices From the Blogs, which highlights the high degree of pro-ISIS sympathy in Belgium.  The report monitored and analyzed more than two million Arabic messages around the world via Twitter, FaceBook, and blogs regarding ISIS’s actions in the Middle East.”

“The most enthusiastic comments about ISIS come from Qatar at 47 percent, then Pakistan at 35 percent, third overall was Belgium — where 31 percent of the tweets in Arabic on the Islamic State are positive — more than Libya (24%), Oman (25%), Jordan (19%), Saudi Arabia (20%), and Iraq (20%).”

    Overall, some 42 million people in the Arab world sympathize with the Islamic State, according to polling data examined by The Gatestone Institute.

     As Mr. Meotti notes, “even if these polls and surveys must be taken with some caution, they all indicate a deep, and vibrant “gray zone,” which is feeding the Islamic Jihad in Europe and the Middle East.  We are talking about millions of Muslims who show sympathy, understanding, and affinity with the ideology and goals of the Islamic State.”

     The shockingly high support for the Islamic State among the youth of Europe is a foreboding sign.  As eminent British historian Max Hastings recently wrote, the influx of millions of Muslim migrants into Britain and the rest of Europe, may fundamentally alter the character and culture of Europe — and, not necessarily for the better.  While Mr. Hastings appreciates and understands that Britain and the rest of Europe and the West need to accept a large number of these displaced refugees as new citizens — he has this recent warning in London’s The Daily Mail Online:  “If any significant fraction of the hundreds of millions suffering hardship, persecution and famine in Africa and the Middle East succeed in transferring themselves to Europe, I fear that our civilization will be transformed in ways most of us cannot endorse, nor even find tolerable.”

     “How many [more] Muslims will this ISIS virus be able to infect in the vast European “gray zone?” Mr. Meotti asks.  “The answer will determine our future,” he adds.

There is more from IPTNews:

For weeks, Farid Bouamran, a Dutch-Moroccan immigrant who has lived 30 years in Amsterdam, watched as his son Achraf became increasingly radicalized, tuning in to videos and Twitter accounts online. Within two months, Achraf had traded in his jeans for a dishdasha, or robe, grown a beard, and begun spending time online with Belgian youth his father once called “men with long Arabic names: Abou this and Abou that.”

Panicked, Bouamran took every measure he could think of to intervene: he brought Achraf to his own mosque to hear the imam speak of a peaceful Islam. He canceled his son’s Internet account, forbid him to see his radical Muslim friends, and even followed him when he went out at night.

It was no use. Just after Christmas 2013, Farid Bouamran sat in his living room with officers from Dutch intelligence agency AIVD and told them he believed Achraf was about to leave for Syria to join in the jihad. Please, he begged them. Take his passport. Stop him.

Not to worry, the officers assured him, he won’t get past our borders.

But he did get past, flying out of Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport the next night to Turkey, and from there, making his way to the Islamic State.

A year later, disillusioned by the realities of the life he found there, Achraf determined to return home. But en route to the Netherlands in January 2015, a U.S. missile attack on Raqqa took his life. He was 17 years old. More on the post is here.

 

Historical Monastery in Syria Destroyed by ISIS

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Christian saint’s bones unearthed in monastery destroyed by ISIS

FNC: A Christian saint’s bones have reportedly been unearthed amid the rubble of an ancient Syrian monastery destroyed by Islamic State.

Mar Elian monastery appears ravaged after heavy fighting between Syrian Army and the Islamic State group in Qaryatain, Syria, Monday, April 4, 2016. (AP Photo/Natalia Sancha)

Mar Elian monastery appears ravaged after heavy fighting between Syrian Army and the Islamic State group in Qaryatain, Syria, Monday, April 4, 2016. (AP Photo/Natalia Sancha)

Much of the fifth-century St. Elian, or Mar Elian, monastery in the town of Qaryatain has been reduced to stones by ISIS. Qaryatain was recaptured by Syrian government forces Sunday.

Channel Four News journalist Lindsey Hilsum reports that the bones of saints were clearly visible among the wreckage of the monastery, a once-cherished pilgrimage site.

The bones of Christian saints in the rubble of St Eliane monastery in . blew it up last August.

The bones are thought to be those of St. Elian, also known as St. Julian of Emesa, which is the ancient name for the Syrian city of Homs. St. Elian was martyred in 284 A.D.  after his refusal to renounce Christianity.

The U.K.-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights reported that ISIS destroyed the monastery in August 2015. “They pulled it down using bulldozers claiming that ‘the monastery is worshiped beside Allah,’ SOHR said in a statement released Aug. 20 2015.

Militants also trashed an ancient church next to the Assyrian Christian monastery, and desecrated a nearby cemetery, breaking the crosses and smashing name plates.

Bones of saints, chucked into a room, after destroyed their resting place at St Eliane monastery

Related: Syria works to save Palmyra’s treasures as ISIS advances on ancient city

Midway between the ancient city of Palmyra and the Syrian capital, Damascus, Qaryatain  was once home to a sizeable Christian population. Before IS took it over last August, it had a mixed population of around 40,000 Sunni Muslims and Christians, as well as thousands of internally displaced people who had fled from the nearby city of Homs.

As it came under militant attack, many of the Christians fled. More than 200 residents, mostly Christians, were abducted by the extremists, including a Syrian priest, the Rev. Jack Murad, who was held by the extremists for three months.

During the eight months that Qaryatain was under IS control, some Christians were released and others were made to sign pledges to pay a tax imposed on non-Muslims. Some have simply vanished.

Syrian forces recaptured Palmyra from ISIS last month, ending their reign of terror at the UNESCO World Heritage site. Palmyra, located about 150 miles northeast of Damascus, dates back to the second millennium B.C. The city was one of the most important cultural centers of the ancient world and has been home to Arabic, Aramaic, and Greco-Roman culture.

ISIS took control of Palmyra last year and subsequently demolished some of its best-known monuments, such as the Temple of Ba’al. The jihadists, who beheaded the city’s former antiquities chief, also used Palmyra’s ancient amphitheater for public executions.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

      

Who are Those Wearing Blue Helmets?

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I have been saying for years that those that make up the U.N. Peacekeepers are the worst of the worst that member nations offer up and finally, The New York Times figured it out. I bet that Donald Trump actually meant the United Nations rather than NATO when he spoke about breaking it up or did he?

Armies Used by U.N. Fail Watchdog Group’s Test

NYT: The militaries of the 30 countries that provide the most soldiers and police officers to United Nations peacekeeping operations also are among those most susceptible to corruption, according to a study released Sunday by an anti-corruption monitoring organization.

The organization, Transparency International, known for its annual corruption rankings of governments around the world, said that in its A-to-F grading for the armed forces of the top troop-contributing countries, only Italy scored higher than a D.

Six of the countries — Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Egypt, Morocco and Togo — received F grades, Transparency International said.

The three countries that contribute the most troops, Bangladesh, Ethiopia and India — which together provide about 25,200 uniformed personnel, roughly a quarter of the total in United Nations peacekeeping operations — also scored poorly in the study’s rankings. Bangladesh and India each received a D, and Ethiopia an E.

The organization cited poor anti-corruption practices and inadequate training as factors in assessing the rankings.

The study comes against a backdrop of new allegations against some peacekeepers. The most recent catalyst for concern has been a growing sex-abuse scandal that has implicated peacekeepers deployed to the Central African Republic, in episodes dating to 2013, many involving children.

Transparency International did not cite any examples of peacekeeper corruption in the study.

United Nations officials did not dispute the findings but said the study did not reflect steps the organization had taken to prevent corruption by peacekeepers.

“There are a full range of audit and independent oversight systems that are in place to protect against such risks once individual units deploy to peacekeeping operations,” Nick Birnback, a spokesman for United Nations peacekeeping, said.

A few years ago there was the genesis of the Syrian civil war, Somalia, Libya and more. This speaks to not only the peacekeepers being criminals and corrupt but the leadership of the United Nations as well. Neither Kofi Annan or Ban Ki Moon have taken the UN up to levels where it becomes meaningful. It is not for lack of intelligence, the UN building in New York is full of international spies and well connected to world leaders, it becomes a lack of will and management.

2012, Ignatius of WaPo in part: The Somalia mess made the United Nations so nervous about intervention that it ignored an appeal a few months later from its own representative in Rwanda that a genocidal massacre was about to begin there.

In January 1994, Gen. Romeo Dallaire, the French Canadian commander of a small force called UNAMIR, cabled New York that the Hutu-led government in Kigali was planning the “extermination” of Tutsis. He concluded his message, “Allons-y.” Let’s go. The United Nations did nothing. Three months later, 800,000 Rwandans were dead.

Annan was running peacekeeping operations at the time, and his deputy cabled the brave Dallaire insisting on “the need to avoid entering into a course of action that might lead to the use of force and unanticipated consequences.” That’s a sorry U.N. chapter, and it’s to Annan’s credit that he tells this and other stories so honestly.

The third debacle was Bosnia. In April 1993, the Security Council demanded that the town of Srebenica, filled with 60,000 Muslim refugees and encircled by Bosnian Serb forces, become a “safe area . . . free from armed attacks.” The refugees waited more than two years for the United Nations to deliver. In July 1995, Gen. Ratko Mladic committed his infamous massacre. A month later, UNPROFOR finally intervened.

When Annan became secretary-general, the United Nations tried to bolster its peacekeeping efforts. It did better in East Timor, Kosovo and Libya in putting some teeth in the concept of a “responsibility to protect.” But the abiding story has been the United Nations’ limitations — in dealing with Iraq, the Palestinian issue, Iran and now Syria.
What to do? Albright and 15 other former foreign ministers just sent a letter to President Vladimir Putin saying they were “gravely disappointed” by Russia’s failure to support the U.N. mission and pleading for action to stop the war in Syria. Albright’s office says that the Russians responded negatively. As the whole of this revealing book demonstrates, there’s got to be a better way to prevent ruinous conflicts.

NATO members Pay Billions

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There is no doubt the NATO member countries have offered aid and support in the war on terror. Could countries do more? Yes, yet member countries are hardly free riders. NATO does coordinate more than what is realized in current conditions of hostilities in the Middle East.

NATO: The first group of officers from Iraq’s national security forces started their NATO training course at the King Abdullah Special Operations Training Centre in Amman, Jordan, on 2 April 2016. Their training is part of NATO’s effort to help Iraq build up its defence capacities, reform its security sector and increase its ability to contribute to regional stability. In the next six months, 350 Iraqi officers will be trained in the NATO course. Training will begin with a focus on military medicine, civil military planning and on countering improvised explosive devices.

NATO Intelligence Fusion Cell Operations since 2006

Trump Willing to Break Up NATO

AtlanticCouncil: Donald J. Trump on Saturday went further than ever before in his criticism of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, telling a crowd here that he would be fine if NATO broke up.

Mr. Trump had previously questioned the need for the organization, and on Saturday he reiterated his criticism that other NATO countries were “not paying their fair share” in comparison with the United States.

“That means we are protecting them, giving them military protection and other things, and they’re ripping off the United States. And you know what we do? Nothing,” Mr. Trump said at a subdued rally here on the outskirts of Milwaukee. “Either they have to pay up for past deficiencies or they have to get out.”

“And if it breaks up NATO, it breaks up NATO,” he concluded.

The role of the United States in NATO has become a point of contention here between Mr. Trump and his chief rival, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, as the candidates battle to win the state’s 42 delegates in Tuesday’s primary. Mr. Cruz has criticized Mr. Trump’s comments on NATO, saying that the United States needed to support the organization’s fight against terrorism and to counterbalance Russia’s influence….

Later, at an event in Wausau, Wis., Mr. Trump seemed to acknowledge the controversy his initial remarks about NATO had prompted.

“I said here’s the problem with NATO: it’s obsolete,” Mr. Trump said, recounting his comments. “Big statement to make when you don’t know that much about it, but I learn quickly.”

**** WSJ:

Paying up? Well yes, no free-riders

In part from Bloomberg: Even before being pinched by the global financial crisis, most NATO nations repeatedly cut their defense budgets, failing to meet the 2 percent benchmark. On the other hand, this viewpoint — part of what my colleague Eli Lake calls the Obama-Trump Doctrine — ignores some facts.Japan, Korea and European countries to some extent subsidize the U.S. troop presence inside their borders; Germany pays over $1 billion and Japan upped its 2016 contribution by 1.4 percent, to $1.6 billion. Recall, too, that the allies have been there for American-initiated wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Consider NATO. According to the latest annual report from Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, 16 members spent more on defense last year than in 2014. While the Baltic states and other smallish countries living in Russia’s shadow generally had the largest percentage increases, Germany has approved boosts of $2.1 billion per year through 2019, and the U.K. has pledged an additional $18 billion over a decade.

More important, perhaps, NATO nations are spending a lot more on actual fighting equipment rather than staffs and pensions — eight allocated more than 20 percent of their military budgets to hardware. Readiness is also being stressed: Last year’s Exercise Trident Juncture in Southern Europe was the largest joint drill in over a decade, involving 36,000 troops, 140 aircraft and 60 ships.

Just as Russia has shaken Europe out of its defense stupor, so have China and North Korea energized the rest of East Asia. Japan has allocated a record $42 billion in fiscal 2016 (although a sluggish yen means its global spending power has increased at a lower rate). The budget includes purchases of six next-generation Lockheed-Martin F-35s and three Global Hawk drones, and funding for building a new guided missile destroyer. For more information and charts on funding NATO.

Gitmo Detainees Released to Senegal

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Both of these detainees are Libyan. DW: According to their leaked prisoner files, the men had ties to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and al Qaeda. A US official told Reuters news agency they were the first of a group of around a dozen inmates who are expected to be moved from the detention center in the next few weeks.

Secretary of State John Kerry thanked the west African country of Senegal for offering “humanitarian resettlement” to the two men after US authorities approved their release.

Senegal is not without jihad terror threats. US Wary of Africa ‘Terrorist’ Threat, Senegal Detains Suspects

Detainee Transfers Announced

Press Operations

Release No: NR-118-16
April 4, 2016

The Department of Defense announced today the transfer of Salem Abdu Salam Ghereby and Omar Khalif Mohammed Abu Baker Mahjour Umar from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to the Government of Senegal.

As directed by the president’s Jan. 22, 2009, executive order, the interagency Guantanamo Review Task Force conducted a comprehensive review of this case. As a result of that review, which examined a number of factors, including security issues, Ghereby was unanimously approved for transfer by the six departments and agencies comprising the task force.

On Aug. 20, 2015, the Periodic Review Board consisting of representatives from the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice, and State; the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence determined continued law of war detention of Umar does not remain necessary to protect against a continuing significant threat to the security of the United States. As a result of that review, which examined a number of factors, including security issues, Umar was recommended for transfer by consensus of the six departments and agencies comprising the Periodic Review Board. The Periodic Review Board process was established by the president’s March 7, 2011 Executive Order 13567.

In accordance with statutory requirements, the secretary of defense informed Congress of the United States’ intent to transfer these individuals and of the secretary’s determination that these transfers meets the statutory standard.

The United States is grateful to the Government of Senegal for its humanitarian gesture and willingness to support ongoing U.S. efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. The United States coordinated with the Government of Senegal to ensure these transfers took place consistent with appropriate security and humane treatment measures.

Today, 89 detainees remain at Guantanamo Bay.