By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 9 December 2018
Large black flag with the words “Oh, Husayn” flies near the Lebanon-Israel border (5 December, AFP)
Israel announced an operation to “destroy the threat of the terror tunnels” into northern Israel from Hezbollah, the Levantine branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in southern Lebanon. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 8 December 2018
Al-Naba 159
The 159th edition of Al-Naba, the Islamic State’s (IS) newsletter, released on 6 December 2018, had a very interesting story on pages nine and ten about three “repentant officers” (dubat al-tayibeen) from Egypt who joined IS in the Sinai. The two trendlines this story highlighted were: (1) the movement of trained military cadres from the Arab states into IS’s security apparatus, as has been seen with the elements of Saddam Husayn’s fallen regime; and (2) the radicalisation of those Islamists previously prepared to work through the democratic process by the 2013 putsch in Egypt, and the violent crackdown afterwards, which shut down all peaceful paths to change. Al-Qaeda has made this point a staple of its propaganda for some time. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 6 December 2018
This article was originally published at Ahval, headlined, “The Best Bad Outcome for Idlib”
The sun setting over Deraa, in southern Syria, 28 May 2018 (image source)
The Turkey-Russia Sochi Agreement in September won Idlib a reprieve from what had seemed to be an imminent and catastrophic offensive by Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces and his Russian and Iranian patrons against the last insurgent-held province.
The ceasefire was meant to provide space for Turkey to dismantle the radical insurgents. Instead, those radicals consolidated their dominance in Idlib and the ceasefire has been visibly fraying. How to proceed is a matter of domestic security for the West. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 4 December 2018
Al-Qaeda released a document on 23 October, “The Love Story Between Salman al-Saud and the Pirate Trump: A Reading of the Symptoms of Begging and the Significance of Wrong and Extortion”,[1] by Shaykh Awab Bin Hasan al-Hasni. Al-Qaeda’s Al-Sahab Foundation released an English translation of Al-Hasani’s essay on 26 November, which is reprinted below with some interesting sections highlighted in bold. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 2 December 2018
An Islamic State poster near al-Sukhna in the eastern Homs desert, Syria, August 2017 (source)
Over the past week, two members of the Islamic State (IS) have been arrested—a rarity in itself during the Coalition campaign against the group—and both in different ways give a glimpse of archetypes that have made up the organisation, from its inception to its expansion into Syria. Continue reading
Published at The Arab Weekly
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 27 November 2018
U.S. forces and members of the “Syrian Democratic Forces” (SDF) patrol Al-Darbasiya in northeastern Syria, 4 November 2018. (AFP)
Despite the change of rhetoric between US Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, the United States has continued to lose influence, political and military, in the Middle East to the Iran-Russia axis. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 26 November 2018
Al-Naba 157
The Islamic State (IS) released the 157th edition of its newsletter, Al-Naba, on 22 November. The content was fairly standard, underlining IS’s ideology, particularly its belief that the current hardships are merely bumps on the road to a victory that has been pre-ordained by God. The bulk of the newsletter is devoted to the fierce insurgent campaign IS is waging in northern Iraq and parts of eastern Syria. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 20 November 2018
Islamic State video from Wilayat al-Baraka, north of al-Jafra, October 2017
The United States State Department today sanctioned Haji Abd al-Nasir as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT), which covers “foreign persons who have committed, or pose a significant risk of committing, acts of terrorism”. Abd al-Nasir is a senior official in the Islamic State (IS). Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 20 November 2018
Visual representation of the Alchwiki Network (source: U.S. Treasury)
The United States Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned ten targets today, targeting an “international network through which the Iranian regime, working with Russian companies, provides millions of barrels of oil to” Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, and “[t]he Assad regime, in turn, facilitates the movement of hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars (USD) to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF),” the expeditionary wing of Tehran’s spy-terrorist apparatus, “for onward transfer to HAMAS and Hizballah.” Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 16 November 2018
Attack in Melbourne, Australia, 9 November 2018 (image source)
In the latest edition of its newsletter, the Islamic State (IS) explained how it had some of the terrorist attacks committed in its name around the world, where it had not had prior contact with the killers. Continue reading
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