Category Archives: Russia

Dabiq, Syria: Cubs and Pearls

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Cubs and Pearls: A generational war, there is no end.

Dabiq is the sophisticated online magazine for Islamic State. What is Dabiq?

Dabiq

TheGuardian: Dabiq is a small, rather nondescript town in northern Syria, close by the border with Turkey. It’s more of a large village really, with just a few thousand inhabitants.

And it is of limited strategic interest. Not far south, in the sprawling city of Aleppo, where battle rages, Bashar al-Assad continues to drop his untargeted barrel bombs on its Sunni population, thus rallying more and more jihadis to the black flag. Yet it is Dabiq after which Islamic State (Isis) names its glossy recruiting magazine. For this is the place where the world will come to an end.

Like Judaism and Christianity – and strongly influenced by them – Islam has a powerful eschatological strain. It anticipates the end of the world and a final historical confrontation between good and evil, after which human life is set to be miraculously transformed. And according to one reading of Islamic tradition (hadith), the place where this final malahim (apocalypse) will happen is – of all places – Dabiq. This is where the Muslim and Christian armies will finally face each other and the Crusaders will be destroyed. And this is why Dabiq is the name on the lips of Isis recruiting sergeants.

It is worth noting that Isis is extremely selective in its use of hadith. For instance, other parts of the tradition have it that Jesus, dressed in yellow robes, will return east of Damascus and will join forces with the Islamic messiah, the Mahdi, in a battle against the false messiah, the Dajjal. After the death of the Mahdi, it is the Muslim Jesus who will rule the Earth. This hadith is less useful to Isis, though its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, looks to many observers to be trying to style himself as the Mahdi.

The Battle of Marj Dābiq (Arabic: مرج دابق‎, meaning “the meadow of Dābiq”; Turkish: Mercidabık Muharebesi) was a decisive military clash in Middle Eastern history, fought on 24 August 1516, near the town of Dabiq, 44 km north of Aleppo, Syria.[1] The battle was part of the Ottoman–Mamluk War (1516–17) between the Ottoman Empire and the Mamluk Sultanate, which ended ultimately in an Ottoman victory, the conquest of most of the Middle East by the Ottoman Empire, and the end of the Mamluk Sultanate. The Ottoman Empire’s victory in this battle gave it control of the entire region of Syria.

Abraham Ortelius - Tvrcici imperii descriptio.jpg

 

The Ottoman–Mamluk War of 1516–1517 was the second major conflict between the Egypt-based Mamluk Sultanate and the Ottoman Empire, which led to the fall of the Mamluk Sultanate and the incorporation of the Levant, Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula as provinces of the Ottoman Empire.[1] The war transformed the Ottoman Empire from a realm at the margins of the Islamic world, mainly located in Anatolia and the Balkans, to a huge empire encompassing the traditional lands of Islam, including the cities of Mecca, Cairo, Damascus and Aleppo. It continued to be ruled however from Constantinople

Russian Threats Mount, Include Propaganda Machine

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‘Nothing is real, anything is possible’: Inside Putin’s propaganda machine

 

State Official: Russian Nuclear-Armed Drone Sub Threatens US

Moscow questioned on secret drone program

FreeBeacon: Russia’s development of a nuclear-armed drone submarine capable of inflicting widespread damage on U.S. coasts poses a serious threat, a senior State Department official testified on Tuesday.

Rose Gottemoeller, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, told a House hearing that she has raised the issue with the Russians.

“I know we are concerned about it; of course we are concerned about it as threat to the United States,” Gottemoeller said under questioning from Rep. Mike Turner.

The undersecretary, who is the key policymaker for arms control issues, said the system would be a greater threat if “widely put into operation.”

The comment prompted Turner to reply: “One would probably be sufficiently troubling.”

“I think it is a troubling system, sir,” Gottemoeller said. Much more here.

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Putin’s False Narrative

ISW: President Vladimir Putin is actively misinforming his domestic audience and the international community about Russia’s first military intervention outside the former Soviet Union since Afghanistan. Putin has created a false narrative about the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) to disguise the true objectives behind Russia’s intervention Syria and is using this narrative to manipulate the international community. Putin encapsulated this false narrative in his UN speech calling for an alternate international coalition against ISIS on September 28, two days before the start of Russia’s air campaign in Syria.  Russia intervened in Syria on September 30 not to defeat ISIS, but rather to curb U.S. influence in the Middle East and to project Russian military power into the region to a historically unprecedented degree.
Russia’s air campaign is focused on targeting Syrian armed opposition groups fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad rather than ISIS. Russia has grounded the rhetoric surrounding its military intervention in Syria in the immediate domestic terror threat posed by ISIS. ISIS includes an estimated 7,000 foreign fighters from the former Soviet Union and declared its own governorate in Russia’s restive North Caucasus region. Moscow does view ISIS as a legitimate security concern, but the dissonance between Russia’s claimed objectives and its actual behavior reveals that Russia uses anti-ISIS rhetoric as a pretext to pursue its larger strategic objectives. Russia seeks to preserve the Syrian regime and diminish the influence wielded by the U.S. and its regional allies, which support the Syrian opposition. Regime preservation in Damascus is a core Russian objective that enables Russia to cement its foothold in the Middle East and the eastern Mediterranean Sea while simultaneously expanding its influence through partnerships with Iran and the Iranian network of regional proxies. Putin is leveraging disinformation in order to obfuscate his true objectives in Syria and thereby manipulate the U.S. and regional actors into inadvertently helping Russia achieve its goals.

Meet the Bravery in Syria

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The Pentagon and Joint Chiefs Chairman is in full opposition with the White House that Islamic State is contained.

WashingtonTimes: The nation’s top military officer on Tuesday said the U.S. has “not contained” the Islamic State, contradicting President Obama’s reassuring remarks last month just before the terrorist attacks in Paris.

“We have not contained ISIS,” Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told lawmakers at a House Armed Services Committee hearing, referring to the terror group by its acronym, The Hill reported.

Gen. Dunford said the Islamic State has been “tactically” contained in areas in Iraq and Syria since 2010, but said “strategically they have spread since 2010.”

He said the terror group poses a threat beyond Iraq and Syria, to countries such as Egypt, Nigeria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon and Jordan, The Hill reported.

Gen. Dunford gave his testimony alongside Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, who announced Tuesday that the U.S. will expand its special operations force in Iraq and Syria to help fight militants.

In part from HuffPo: “We crossed the border at 3 a.m.,” Saleh said in an interview with The Huffington Post last week. He remembers the time for a reason: It was the moment he attained relative safety for himself and his family. Crossing into Turkey meant they had successfully outrun the Syrian army’s airstrikes. Saleh never imagined it would one day be his job to run back toward the bombing.

But three years after he escaped from Syria, that’s exactly what this former electronics merchant is doing. Saleh left his family in Turkey and returned to Syria to become a member of the White Helmets, a group of local volunteers who carry out search-and-rescue operations amid the country’s increasing violence and mounting destruction.

The White Helmets, also known as the Syrian Civil Defence, are apolitical, refusing to align themselves with any one group or military faction. Founding members of the White Helmets were trained by the Red Cross, and the Syria Campaign, a nonprofit registered in the U.K., helps coordinate fundraising efforts for the group.

“We work with everybody to help everybody,” Saleh said. Not concerned with the allegiances of the bombers or of those bombed, their focus is saving lives — and they routinely put their own lives on the line to do it.

“When we hear the sound of an airplane, we respond quickly. We ask civilians where the bombing took place. We ask the neighbors if they know if there is still anybody under the destruction,” Saleh explained. “Sometimes we’re able to rescue lives, when we have the proper equipment. And sometimes we can’t.”

In the three years since the start of the Syrian civil war, an estimated 191,000 lives have been lost, according to a United Nations report released in August — although the report noted that the real number is likely higher.

US Admits Iran Will Punk the World on the JPOA

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The US never really expected Iran to come totally clean about a key element of its nuclear program

 BusinessInsider: The Iran nuclear deal will clear a crucial milestone on December 15, when the International Atomic Energy Agency submits a report on the extent of Iran’s previous nuclear-weaponization activities.

The completion of that investigation into the possible military dimensions (PMDs) of Iran’s nuclear program is one of the major prerequisites for the full implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the landmark nuclear deal that Iran and a US-led group of six countries signed in July.

iran nuclearREUTERS

In theory, the JCPOA won’t be implemented unless Iran complies with a separate “roadmap” agreement with the IAEA. That agreement, which was signed the same day as the JCPOA, lays out the parameters of the agency’s weaponization investigation. The JCPOA isn’t supposed to go into effect unless the sides “fully implement” that roadmap agreement.

But “full implementation” doesn’t really have a fixed meaning within the JCPOA, an agreement that is voluntary and non-binding. And according to an Associated Press analysis out Monday, the IAEA’s investigation is likely going to have inconclusive results.

As the AP notes, the head of the IAEA has “been careful to diminish expectations, describing his upcoming report last week as ‘not black and white.'” And according to the AP, Iranian officials have spoken about the IAEA probe using similar language, “suggesting they already know that the agency’s conclusions won’t be damning.”

Iran has already threatened that it simply won’t comply with the JCPOA if it’s dissatisfied with the IAEA’s report. That might be more than just an empty ultimatum, since according to the AP the announcement is consistent with what Iranian diplomats are saying behind closed doors as well.

“Two Western diplomats familiar with the issue say those same threats have been made in negotiations with IAEA officials,” the AP reported.

The weaponization report is considered crucial to the successful implementation of the nuclear deal, as it will be used to formulate an inspection baseline for Iran’s nuclear program. There is extensive evidence that Iran had a nuclear weapons program until as late as 2003.  The IAEA needs to be able to identify key personnel, facilities, supply chains, and past activities to establish exactly how far along Iran’s weaponization activities really are and to recognize whether those activities have been restarted.

But as the AP’s analysis suggests, the roadmap is also contentious — and perhaps even inconvenient, given its potential to interrupt the smooth implementation of a deal that Iran and the US-led group spent nearly two years negotiating. There are already signs that the US wants to get past the investigation as smoothly as possible — even if the IAEA’s “roadmap” doesn’t result in Iran’s full disclosure of its past weaponization work.

Business Insider has obtained a State Department document submitted to congressional offices during the Congress’s review of the JCPOA in July.

The 18-page document, a “verification assessment report” that is essentially the department’s outline of the nuclear deal’s various stipulations, is unclassified. But congressional staffers were only allowed to read it inside of a SCIF, or a special area for viewing and storing classified or compartmentalized information.

The section entitled “Addressing ‘Possible Military Dimensions'” discusses the US’ interpretation of the IAEA “roadmap” and its requirements.

“Iran’s implementation of its commitments under the Roadmap will bring to an end the years-long delay in the IAEA’s ability to address PMD [Possible Military Dimensions] issues,” the document reads.

Two paragraphs later, it explains that even with this high level of confidence that the IAEA investigation will resolve the PMD issue, the US’ standards fall somewhat short of full Iranian disclosure on weaponization-related matters.

“An Iranian admission of its past nuclear weapons program is unlikely and is not necessary for purposes of verifying JCPOA commitments going forward,” the report reads. “US confidence on this front is based in large part on what we believe we already know about Iran’s past activities”

“The United States has shared with the IAEA relevant information, and crafted specific JCPOA measures that will enable inspectors to establish confidence that previously reported Iranian PMD activities are not ongoing,” it continued. “If credible information becomes available regarding any renewed Iranian efforts, it would be shared with the IAEA as appropriate, whether involving previous people, locations, entities, or otherwise. We believe other IAEA member states will do the same.”

This report was circulated in Congress not long after the deal was signed. From a relatively early stage, the State Department believed that the IAEA was capable of monitoring Iran’s nuclear program without Iran fully disclosing its past activities.

This wasn’t because of any particular US trust in the Iranians. Rather, it was due to State’s confidence that US intelligence already knew enough about the extent of Iran’s weaponization program to make such an admission of past weaponization work unnecessary.

Even so, State apparently never expected full Iranian transparency on weaponization. And the Obama administration believed that Iran had no responsibility to admit to a past weaponization program under the JCPOA.

Washington always intended to give Iran a pass on full disclosure — and the result may be a watered-down IAEA investigation that’s treated more as a formality than as an integral element of an arms control agreement designed to last for decades.

The United States has it’s own Task Force, that is IF the White House allows full technology to monitor Iran.

Task Force to assess technologies in support of future arms control and nonproliferation treaties and agreements. The Task Force, however, quickly realized that addressing this charge alone would be of limited value without considering a broader context for nuclear proliferation into the foreseeable future. That realization resulted from a number of factors which included:

 Accounts of rogue state actions and their potential cascading effects;

 The impact of advancing technologies relevant to nuclear weapons development;

 The growing evidence of networks of cooperation among countries that would otherwise have

little reason to do so;

 The implications of U.S. policy statements to reduce the importance of nuclear weapons in international affairs, accompanied by further reductions in numbers, which are leading some longtime allies and partners to entertain development of their own arsenals;

 The wide range of motivations, capabilities, and approaches that each potential proliferator introduces.