Tag Archives: al-Qaeda

The West’s Inconsistent Approach To Foreign Fighters in Syria

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Originally published at The Henry Jackson Society

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 10 April 2017

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the Turkey-based Kurdish Marxist-nationalist insurgent group, which is listed as a terrorist organization by Britain, the United States, NATO, and Turkey, created a new foreign fighter unit in Syria on 31 March. In Syria, the PKK uses the name People’s Protection Units (YPG), and the new organization, mostly composed of Europeans, is called the International Revolutionary People’s Guerrilla Forces (IRPGF). In addition to underlining some interesting points about the PKK and Western strategy in the fight against the Islamic State (IS), the IRPGF also underlines the different approach the West has taken to foreign fighters flowing to various groups during the Syrian war. Continue reading →

Islamic State Newsletter Claims Algerian Suicide Bombing

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 9 April 2017

Picture published in Al-Naba 71 of Izzadeen Balqamri, the Islamic State suicide bomber in Constantine, Algeria, on 26 February 2017.

In the seventy-first edition of Al-Naba, the Islamic State’s English-language newsletter, published on 9 March 2017, the organisation claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing outside the police station in Constantine, Algeria, on 26 February. Al-Naba published a picture of the attacker and named him as Izzadeen Balqamri. Continue reading →

An American Jihadist At the Top of the Islamic State

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Originally published at The Henry Jackson Society

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 9 April 2017

The eighth edition of the Islamic State’s magazine, Rumiyah (Rome), was released on 5 April 2017, and contained an obituary for one of the architects of the magazine itself. Named by his kunyas, Abu Sulayman al-Shami, Abu Sulayman al-Halabi, Abu Maysara al-Shami, and Ahmad Abdul-Badi Abu Samrah, the jihadist referred to is Ahmad Abousamra, a U.S.-Syrian dual citizen. Abousamra is quite possibly the most senior American ever to have been in IS’s ranks, and the Rumiyah article gives a very interesting glimpse more generally of IS’s hierarchy. Continue reading →

Rumiyah Profiles Ahmad Abousamra, A Senior American in the Islamic State

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 8 April 2017

The eighth edition of the Islamic State’s magazine, Rumiyah (Rome), was released on 5 April 2017, and contained an obituary for one of the architects of the magazine itself. Named by his kunyas, Abu Sulayman al-Shami, Abu Sulayman al-Halabi, and Ahmad Abdul-Badi Abu Samrah, the jihadist referred to is Ahmad Abousamra, a U.S.-Syrian dual citizen. Abousamra is quite possibly the most senior American ever to have been in IS’s ranks, and the Rumiyah article gives a very interesting glimpse more generally of IS’s hierarchy, particularly the importance of its media and the late emir of that department, Abu Muhammad al-Furqan. The Rumiyah article is reproduced below with some editions in transliteration, occasional explanatory notes, and interesting or important aspects highlighted. Continue reading →

America Sanctions Anjem Choudary and other British Islamic State Jihadists

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 30 March 2017

Anjem Choudary (image source)

The State Department designated five individuals on 30 March 2017 as Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs), imposing sanctions on them for having “committed, or [for] pos[ing] a significant risk of committing, acts of terrorism that threaten the security of U.S. nationals or the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States.” Four of those sanctioned are members of the Islamic State (IS), including two key British operatives in the group’s global network, and the other is a member of al-Qaeda. On the same day, the Treasury Department sanctioned two IS operatives involved in funding and guiding external IS operations in the Far East and Southeast Asia. Continue reading →

Australian Jihadi Spokesman Distances Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham From Al-Qaeda, Criticises America

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 20 March 2017

Mostafa Mahamed on Sky News, August 2016

Mostafa Mahamed (Abu Sulayman al-Muhajir) is a U.S.-designated terrorist, an al-Qaeda operative who has formally resigned from al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria, Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (JFS), which was previously Jabhat al-Nusra and has now reorganized itself as Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Earlier this month, on 11 March, Michael Ratney, the U.S. special envoy to Syria, released an open letter (in Arabic) labelling all constituents of HTS as terrorists seeking to exploit the Syrian opposition, and incited divisions within the Islamist sections of the insurgency by including Ahrar al-Sham—heretofore a close HTS ally, though recently involved in clashes with the group—as part of the Syrian revolution. HTS issued a formal response on 12 March and, on 20 March, Mahamed issued his own response, which is reproduced below. The main themes were anti-Americanism and dissuading the Syrian armed opposition that the U.S. was an ally; arguing that HTS was different than JFS and unconnected to al-Qaeda; and the strong impression of a threat should the U.S. move against HTS—while explicitly denying that such a threat was being made.
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Why The Islamic State Endures

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on March 15, 2017

Brian Fishman’s The Master Plan provides a comprehensive history of the Islamic State’s (IS) strategic evolution, covering the personalities and events that shaped one of the most feared terrorist-insurgent groups that has ever existed. Eminently readable, in places even amusing—no small feat in a book about IS—Fishman flips with ease between the overview and the granular to demonstrate his points, using new sources that will allow as much supplementary research as a reader could wish for, and ties it together in a narrative that will be of use to both specialists and generalists. Continue reading →

Al-Qaeda in Syria Denounces America, Claims to Be the Revolution

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on March 13, 2017

Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham fighter engaging the Assad regime

Michael Ratney, who has been the United States Special Envoy for Syria since July 2015, wrote a public letter , released on 11 March 2017, which labelled all constituent parts of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) as members of al-Qaeda and therefore as terrorists.[1] On 12 March, HTS’s “Administration of Political Affairs”—its newly-minted political office, perhaps evidence of an evolution in HTS’s thinking about an endgame in Syria—issued a statement in reply, which is reproduced below.
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Outcome Uncertain as American Involvement in Syria Deepens

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on March 10, 2017

American ground forces are getting more deeply entangled in Syria as the offensive to push the Islamic State (IS) out of its de facto capital city, Raqqa, approaches. It remains unclear exactly which actors in Syria these troops will be assisting, though there are more and more indications that their mission will redound to the benefit of the regime of Bashar al-Assad and his allies, Iran and Russia. Continue reading →

Jihadi Cleric Calls for Al-Qaeda’s Leader in Syria To Be Put on Trial

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on March 3, 2017

Abdul Munim Halima (Abu Basir al-Tartusi), a Syrian previously based in London, is an important jihadi-salafist scholar, who has diverged from some aspects of jihadism since the 7 July 2005 massacre on the London subway system by al-Qaeda. As the Syrian rebellion has progressed, Halima has departed even further from key jihadi ideologues that continue to take al-Qaeda’s line and support its branch in the country, Jabhat al-Nusra, which formed as a splinter from the Islamic State and has now rebranded itself as Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham. Halima has long expressed the view that al-Nusra and its leader, Ahmad al-Shara (Abu Muhammad al-Jolani), were insufficiently focused on Syrian needs. Halima tended to favour Ahrar al-Sham, an insurgent group with deep links to al-Qaeda, but which has presented its jihadism within a more nationalistic framework. Halima retains sway over Islamist opinion, especially in Syria, so his fatwa today calling for al-Shara to be put on trial for crimes against the Syrian revolution is noteworthy. Halima was especially exercised that the recent attempts by al-Shara to separate his organization from al-Qaeda came so long—and so unconvincingly—after so many had begged him for so long to carry out this policy. Instead, says Halima, al-Shara bullied and dominated the Syrian insurgency in the north under the flag of al-Qaeda, providing the regime of Bashar al-Assad with an alibi for his barbaric conduct in suppressing the insurrection. This is one of several “crimes” Halima says al-Shara should face a court for. The fatwa is reproduced below with some editions to transliteration and syntax.
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