By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 6 December 2017
Responding to President Donald Trump’s announcement earlier today that he will move the American Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, al-Qaeda have put out a statement that threatens retaliatory strikes against U.S. interests. Notably, al-Qaeda singles out Saudi Arabia as a government that has to be attacked for enabling Western operations against the jihadists. The statement is reproduced below. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 5 December 2017
Abdurraheem Atun
Abd al-Rahim Atun (Abu Abdallah al-Shami), the leading cleric of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), released a statement on 29 November 2017, dated 13 October 2017, laying out the history of HTS, its evolution from Jabhat al-Nusra to Jabhat Fatah al-Sham to HTS, and its relationship with al-Qaeda. Atun’s statement was a response to a speech a day earlier by al-Qaeda’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, which said that HTS remained bound to him and al-Qaeda through a bay’a (oath of allegiance) and HTS’s attempts to get out of this were un-lawful manipulations of the kind used by the Islamic State. Atun’s statement was translated by Al-Maqalaat and an edited version is posted below. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 4 December 2017
Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Syrian jihadi group previously under al-Qaeda’s command structure, which has recently arrested some al-Qaeda loyalists in Syria, has been engaged in assaults on the Syrian rebellion for many years in an effort to assert its own hegemony. On 2 December, HTS declared a ceasefire with all other insurgent units and the formation of a Settlement Committee or Reconciliation Committee. Though HTS claims this Committee is independent, it is quite clearly within HTS’s shari’a department. The Committee issued its first statement on the same day it was announced, a translation of which was made by Al-Maqalaat, and is republished below. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 4 December 2017
The leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, gave a thirty-five-minute speech on 28 November 2017, entitled: “Let Us Fight Them As A Solid Structure” (or “Let Us Fight Them As One Body” or “Let Us Fight Them With Solid Foundations”), dealing with the vexed question of al-Qaeda’s relationship with the Syrian jihadi group, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, a situation that escalated again in recent days. The mention of an impending Turkish intervention into Idlib—which began on 7 October—suggests that al-Zawahiri recorded this speech in the last days of September or the first few days of October. An English transcript of the speech was released by As-Sahab Media, and is reproduced below with some edits for syntax and transliteration. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 30 November 2017
I released a report today, published by the Henry Jackson Society, Qatar and the Gulf Crisis. The intent was to examine the charges made against the Qatari government by its Gulf neighbours with regard to the funding of terrorism, the hosting of extremists, the dissemination of hate speech and incitement, among other things. Having separated fact from fiction with regards to he accusations against Qatar, the report proposes how Britain might proceed in such a way as to press Doha on issues of concern, while avoiding being drawn into the middle of the Gulf dispute, and trying to foster reconciliation between allies, especially at a time when a united front is necessary to oppose the far larger challenge of the Iranian theocracy. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 28 November 2017
Iyad al-Tubaysi (Abu Julaybib), Sami al-Uraydi (Abu Mahmud al-Shami)
Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a powerful jihadi group in northern Syria, formally broke from al-Qaeda’s command over the last year. In the morning of 27 November, HTS arrested the leaders of a splinter group from HTS that remained loyal to al-Qaeda. The arrests were first reported by pro-al-Qaeda media, and HTS has since released a statement explaining that, having found this al-Qaeda group unwilling to even engage in reconciliation talks, it placed “the heads of turmoil” before a “just shari’a court” to answer for spreading demoralizing lies about HTS. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 28 November 2017
Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the jihadist group in Syria that has broken away from al-Qaeda’s formal command, appears to have arrested the leaders of its splinter group that retained allegiance to al-Qaeda on 27 November. The arrests were first reported by pro-Qaeda media and later by HTS itself. HTS released a statement on the matter yesterday evening, “For the judicial authorities will be the decisive word,” which was translated by Al-Maqalaat and is reproduced below with some syntactical edits. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 23 November 2017
The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in the U.S. Department of Treasury, on 20 November, sanctioned “a network of individuals and entities involved in a large-scale scheme to help Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force (IRGC-QF) counterfeit currency to support its destabilizing activities” in Yemen. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 21 November 2017
Usama bin Ladin, Qassem Sulaymani
Among the documents recovered from Usama bin Ladin’s compound in Abbottabad was the “Letter to Karim”, dated 18 October 2007. The letter was released in 2015 by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). “Karim” likely refers to Abdul Munim al-Badawi (Abu Hamza al-Muhajir), the leader of al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia (AQM), the predecessor organization to the Islamic State, after the group’s founder, Ahmad al-Khalayleh (Abu Musab al-Zarqawi), was killed in June 2006. The letter is reproduced below with some interesting details highlighted in bold. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 17 November 2017
Talal Silo
It was announced on 15 November that Talal Ali Silo, the official spokesman of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), had fled to the EUPHRATES SHIELD zone in northern Aleppo, run by rebels operating under the Free Syrian Army (FSA) brand that are dependent on Turkey. The SDF is the partner force in Syria for the U.S.-led Coalition against the Islamic State (IS). Though the SDF presents itself as a multi-ethnic coalition of Kurds and Arabs, it was initiated as a front for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). By attaching non-Kurdish units to a PKK core and using the SDF banner, it circumvented various legal and political obstacles for Coalition states. But all real power has remained in the hands of the PKK, which has systematically purged all genuinely independent power centres within the SDF. Silo, a Turkoman, helped further the narrative of the SDF’s ethnic inclusivity, and his defection underlines the reality of the organization’s political exclusivity. Continue reading
