Category Archives: Islamic Militancy

Coalition Prepares the Ground for Mosul Offensive

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on October 9, 2016

U.S.-led Coalition airstrikes against the Islamic State (AFP)

Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS) is an activist group working from within the capital of the Islamic State (or so-called capital of the so-called Islamic State, if you prefer) to bring news to the outside world of the horrors therein. For this they have paid a heavy price. On 22 September, RBSS published a list on Twitter of eighteen Islamic State (IS) operatives who had been killed by the U.S.-led Coalition between 20 August and 21 September 2016. This list, presented below with some notes and context, shows the preparations being made for the rapidly-approaching offensive on IS’s Iraqi capital. Continue reading →

The Demise of Ahmad Mabruk: Al-Qaeda in Syria and American Policy

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on October 4, 2016

Ahmad Mabruk in Jabhat al-Nusra's "Heirs of Glory" video, March 2016. (Source: The Long War Journal)

Ahmad Mabruk in Jabhat al-Nusra’s “Heirs of Glory” video, March 2016. (Source: The Long War Journal)

Ahmad Salama Mabruk (Abu Faraj al-Masri) was an al-Qaeda veteran, close to the organization’s leadership. The United States killed Mabruk in Syria on 3 October 2016 in a drone strike near Jisr al-Shughour in northern Syria. This is the second time in a month the U.S. has killed off a senior al-Qaeda jihadist, and sheds some light on the strength of the U.S. policy in Syria. Continue reading →

The Islamic State and Chemical Weapons

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on September 30, 2016

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This year, the American-led anti-Islamic State (IS) Coalition has targeted members of the organization’s program to develop chemical weapons of mass destruction (CWMD). One reason for this is likely that the Coalition has been building toward—and now appears to be on the eve of—the operation to attempt to expel IS from its Iraqi capital, Mosul, and it is considered probable that IS will use CWMD on its way down. Whether that can now be prevented, and how far IS ever got with its attempt to develop CWMD, might only be known once it is too late. Continue reading →

Islamic State’s Propaganda Chief Killed in Syria

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on September 18, 2016

Raqqa

Raqqa

The Coalition announced on Friday that it had killed Wael al-Fayad, more fully Wael Adil Hasan Salman al-Fayad, also known as Wael al-Rawi, Dr. Wael, and Abu Muhammad al-Furqan, a reference no doubt to al-Furqan Media, IS’s oldest and most important propaganda organ, which al-Fayad controlled. The head of IS’s Media Council, thus a key member of the group’s propaganda output, al-Fayad was a member of its Shura Council. The obscurity of his name is likely a testament to his seniority and importance within IS. [UPDATE: This turned out to be correct, though Abu Muhammad’s real name was Wael al-Ta’i, as IS revealed in May 2021, and he had also used the names “Ahmad al-Ta’i”, the media emir appointed in “the State’s” second cabinet back in 2009, and “Abu Ubayda Abd al-Hakim”, the mysterious senior IS operative who made a series of media “appearances” in 2011 and signed several captured letters addressed from IS-centre to the wilayats after 2014]
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Fifteen Years After 9/11

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on September 11, 2016

Originally published at The International Business Times

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Fifteen years on from the 11 September 2001 terror attacks on the US, al-Qaeda is better-positioned than ever before. Its leadership held, and it has rebuilt a presence in Afghanistan. More importantly, al-Qaeda has built powerful regional branches in India, North Africa, Somalia, Yemen and Syria.

Rebranding itself away from the savagery of Iraq, al-Qaeda has sought to embed itself in local populations by gaining popular legitimacy to shield itself from retribution if, or when, it launches terrorist strikes in the West. This is proceeding apace, above all because of a failure to assist the mainstream opposition in Syria, sections of which were forced into interdependency with al-Qaeda to resist the strategy of massacre and expulsion conducted by the Assad regime. Continue reading →

Is This the Beginning of the End for the Islamic State?

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on September 8, 2016

Screenshot of an Islamic State video displaying captured materials from the New Syrian Army, 27 July 2016

Screenshot of an Islamic State video displaying captured materials from the New Syrian Army, 27 July 2016

City AM asked for contributions on the above question, and I took the “no” side. As can be seen from the below, however, this was very much a matter of interpretation since both sides gave roughly the same answer: the Islamic State’s statelet is coming to an end, but the group will survive, morphing back into a prior stage.  Continue reading →

The Fall of the Islamic State’s Terrorism Director

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on August 31, 2016

Taha Falaha (Abu Muhammad al-Adnani) in al-Naba

Taha Falaha (Abu Muhammad al-Adnani) in al-Naba

The Islamic State confirmed yesterday, via their “news” agency Amaq, that Taha Subhi Falaha had been killed in Aleppo. Falaha had gained global notoriety under his kunya, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, after his September 2014 speech calling on Muslims in the West to “kill any disbeliever” in range, and to at least “spit in his face” if one was unable to find a knife or a car or a rock to do murder with.

Falaha was often referred to as the spokesman of IS, and so he was—the voice of the organization since 2011. He was also from the first generation of the organization, recruited before the invasion of Iraq, one of the few within the organization of that stature. But, as I explained recently in a paper for the Henry Jackson Society that compiled what is known of IS’s leadership, Falaha was much more than a figurehead.

Falaha was the governor of IS-held areas in Syria and the man who oversaw the external terrorist attacks. By now he was the caliph’s effective deputy. Heretofore, IS’s impressive bureaucracy has managed to replace individuals with minimal perturbation. IS will experience few perturbations quite like this.
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The Islamic State’s Relationship With Al-Qaeda

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on August 30, 2016

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Since al-Qaeda broke ties with the Islamic State (IS), then the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), in 2014 there has been an ongoing war of narratives about what happened. Below is an attempt to work through this murky situation. Continue reading →

Looking At the Islamic State’s Past, Seeing its Future

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on August 27, 2016

Michael Ware
Michael Ware

Only the Dead documents the experience of Michael Ware, an Australian journalist who arrived in Iraq in early 2003 and spent eleven months-per-year there for seven years. Ware made contact soon after the fall of Saddam Hussein with those resisting the new order, at a time when the Americans were struggling to map such forces.

Ware established communication with the more nationalist-Islamist forces. Once in that milieu, the globalist jihadists, who were working in the shadows, a small, foreign-dominated force towards which even many insurgents were guarded, found him. The leader of the jihadists, Ahmad al-Khalayleh, became something of an obsession for Ware as he stepped onto the world stage with his gruesome tactics as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Zarqawi, the “Shaykh of the Slaughters,” would found an organization that became a movement and then burst Iraq’s frontiers, known to us now as the Islamic State (IS).

In tracking Zarqawi and his men, Ware presents some incredible footage and gives some snapshots from the fascinating days, whose effects we are all still feeling, when the Iraqi insurgency was taking root.

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The Dangers of Emptying Guantanamo

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on August 17, 2016

It was announced on 15 August that fifteen more inmates from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility have transferred, twelve Yemenis and three Afghans, to the United Arab Emirates, the largest individual release of the Obama administration. The U.A.E. also took in five “lower-level” Yemeni detainees in November. The Emirates had previously taken in just one—Abdullah al-Hamiri, in 2008—but President Obama leveraged this deal with the Gulf states at the May 2015 meeting when the Khaleejis were deeply concerned about the then-impending Iran nuclear deal, and in exchange for security reassurances, Obama extracted further concessions.

One reason why so many jihadists have been released to the U.A.E., other than having a similar language and culture, is because the U.A.E. has a competent security apparatus to monitor these people. Those released last November were kept in “a custodial rehabilitation program“—a version of house-arrest, basically. The conditions this time around are less clear.

What is clear is just how dangerous the operatives who are being let out of the Guantanamo detention facility are. Every single one of them has been assessed as posing a “high” risk to America, her interests, and her allies. Continue reading →