Tag Archives: al-Qaeda

What is Turkey Doing in Syria?

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 10 March 2019

Turkish soldiers in Efrin, Syria, March 2018. (AFP)

Eight years ago, peaceful protests began against Syrian President Bashar Assad. Since then, outside powers — the Iran-Russia axis, the United States and Turkey — have become dominant in Syria.

The Iranians and Russians keeping Assad’s regime alive are clearly going nowhere. The Americans’ indecision on the point is apparently final. So, what of Turkey, which is the custodian of the remnants of the armed opposition? Continue reading →

Islamic State Urges Defiance as the Caliphate Collapses, Attacks Other Islamists

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 9 March 2019

Al-Naba 172 front page

The Islamic State (IS) released the 172nd edition of Al-Naba, its newsletter, on 7 March 2019. Continue reading →

Islamic State Newsletter Celebrates Guerrilla Campaign, Attacks Saudi Arabia as ‘Stalinist’

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 16 February 2019

Front page Al-Naba 169

The Islamic State (IS) released the 169th edition of its newsletter, Al-Naba, on 14 February 2019. Al-Naba 169 leads with the attack on the governor of Borno in Nigeria by IS’s branch in that country. In terms of volume, much of the focus remains on the guerrilla campaign in Iraq and Syria, though there is an item on the last stand of the caliphate in Baghuz, the final village in eastern Syria. IS highlights its clashes with al-Qaeda in Yemen. There is a profile of a Russian-speaking atheist-turned-jihadist who was killed in Egypt. And perhaps most notable is an essay on Saudi Arabia, where IS has a terrorist infrastructure that is instructed to be patient. It is a question that likely is unanswerable until it is too late how strong IS is in Saudi Arabia. Continue reading →

Can Russia Reconcile Turkey and Syria?

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This article was published at Ahval under the headline, “Back to the Future for Turkey and Syria?”

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 1 February 2019

American base on the outskirts of Minbij, 26 December 2018. (Photo by Delil souleiman / AFP)

U.S. President Donald Trump’s surprise announcement that U.S. troops would be withdrawn from Syria came with many visible costs. The benefits the anti-Islamic State (ISIS) campaign has delivered to Syrian President Bashar Assad, Iran, and Russia were made permanent. There is also more space for ISIS and greater instability in northeast Syria as Turkey confronts Syrian Kurdish forces. And there is the political cost to the United States of leaving its Kurdish anti-ISIS partner to face Turkey and the pro-Assad coalition alone. Continue reading →

IHH, Al-Qaeda, and Turkey

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 26 January 2019

Mavi Marmara arrives at Sarayburnu port as people wave Turkish and Palestinian flags, 26 December 2010 [source]

An article posted on the website of IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation on 14 July 2006 told of a massive funeral ceremony in Istanbul for Shamil Basayev, an al-Qaeda-linked Chechen jihadist. The original article has been removed, though a cached version is currently available. To avoid this being lost, the article is reproduced below. Before that is a brief outline of the context. Continue reading →

The Consequences of American Withdrawal from Syria

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A version of this article was published at CapX

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 21 December 2018

President Trump in a Twitter video saying fallen soldiers agree with his plan to withdraw from Syria, 19 December 2018 [image source]

“We have won against ISIS”, declared President Donald Trump in a Twitter video on Wednesday night. “We’ve taken back the land. And now it’s time for our troops to come back home.” After a day of reporting that the United States has decided on a rapid, total withdrawal from Syria, here was the confirmation. It is a policy course fraught with danger and very likely to lead to outcomes unfavourable to Western interests, whether defined in humanitarian or strategic terms.
Continue reading →

The Russian Relationship with Israel: A History

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 12 December 2018

© AP Photo / Jim Hollander, Pool

Essay: “Zionism is Making Us Stupid”: The Russian Relationship with Israel from the Soviets to Putin Continue reading →

What Are the Options in Idlib?

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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 →

Al-Qaeda Attacks the Saudi Government’s Relationship With America

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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 →

What Captured ISIS Jihadists Tell Us About the Group

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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 →