Tag Archives: caliphate

There Have Been Real Achievements In Afghanistan, But Leaving Puts Them At Risk

1 Reply

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on November 22, 2014

1

Since President Obama’s 2009 announcement of a ‘surge’ in Afghanistan that simultaneously announced the date of withdrawal, the western focus in Afghanistan has shifted to the exits.

The steady drizzle of bad news since then has reinforced this sense that it’s over, we’ve had enough and we’re leaving.

American and British troops quit Helmand in late October, basically ceding it to Taliban control. On Tuesday John Sopko, the head of the American auditor mechanism (SIGAR) said that efforts to promote economic growth in Afghanistan have ‘accomplished nothing.’ Continue reading →

Are Syria’s Rebels Being Sacrificed To Al-Qaeda For Obama’s Détente With Iran?

29 Replies

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on November 6, 2014

SRF leader Jamal Marouf

SRF leader Jamal Marouf

What a disaster. With American and coalition jets in the air overhead, ostensibly to do battle with Salafi-jihadists, al-Qaeda has been allowed to push rebel brigades the United States purports to support out of almost all of Idlib Province. Continue reading →

The ‘Khorasan Group’ And Al-Qaeda Central

30 Replies

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on September 23, 2014

Muhsin al-Fadhli

Muhsin al-Fadhli

This morning, after forty-two months of trying to stay out, the United States launched airstrikes into Syria. The strikes overwhelmingly targeted the Islamic State in ar-Raqqa City and its surrounding areas, reportedly killing seventy I.S. jihadists, but there was a second barrage of strikes in Idlib, which are said to have killed fifty jihadists, and were directed against a shadowy outfit that emerged in the press a little over a week ago called the Khorasan Group. Continue reading →

Do Not Let The Murder of James Foley Distract From The Assad Regime

20 Replies

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on August 20, 2014

James Foley

James Foley

Last night the Islamic State released a revolting video in which they beheaded the American journalist James Foley, who has been missing since Thanksgiving Day (November 22) 2012. Continue reading →

Al-Qaeda In Syria Declares War On The Rebellion

15 Replies

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on July 13, 2014

The only official picture of Jabhat an-Nusra’s Emir, Abu Muhammad al-Golani, given out by the Iraqi government.

Syria’s rebellion was already fighting for its life, squeezed between the regime and the Islamic State (I.S.) in Aleppo, and on Friday night a new front appeared to open. Jabhat an-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s official branch in Syria, announced that it was forming an Islamic Emirate. According to a translation by Hassan Hassan, Nusra’s commander, Abu Muhammad al-Golani, said that they would now start implementing the shari’a “in the full sense of the word,” and “without compromise, leniency, ambiguity, or politeness.” Golani specifically says that Nusra will begin implementing the hudud, the harsh punishments like amputation for theft, which Nusra has very deliberately not done so far, saying war conditions suspended such punishments according to the Holy Law. At a more material level, it avoided garnering them bad press for savagery against the civilian population. Golani dismissed with contempt the secular rebels as “grovelling” to the West, and declared I.S.’s Caliphate “void” and its members ghulat (extremists).

Continue reading →

Syria’s Rebellion on the Ropes

19 Replies

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on July 9, 2014

3

The devastated city of Aleppo

As we approach the forty month mark for the Syrian uprising the situation is grimmer than it has ever been. Not just the casualties: more than 200,000 people dead. Not just the physical devastation and mass-displacement of more than a third of the country. But now in military terms the rebellion is on the defensive in a way it has not been since it erupted at the end of 2011, after more than six months of peaceful protests.

Continue reading →

The Leader of the Islamic State Explains the Caliphate’s Vision

2 Replies

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on July 2, 2014

ramadan-2014

In an audio message released on 1 July 2014, two days after the Islamic State announced the restoration of the caliphate, the Islamic State’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, laid out the Islamic State’s vision. The Islamic State put out an English version of the speech, which is reproduced below with some minor editions and some interesting sections highlighted in bold. Continue reading →

ISIS Announces the Restoration of the Caliphate

31 Replies

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on June 29, 2014

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) announced that it had restored the caliphate on 29 June 2014. ISIS’s name was changed to simply the Islamic State (I.S.), and its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, abandoned his kunya and proclaimed himself Caliph Ibrahim, his real name being Ibrahim al-Badri. The statement announcing that the areas I.S. rules in Syria and Iraq are now a caliphate, entitled “This Is The Promise of Allah [God],” was given by the group’s official spokesman, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, and was distributed by al-Hayat Media in Arabic, English, Russian, French, and German. The English version is reproduced below with some editions for transliteration and some interesting or important sections highlighted in bold. The speech lays out how the state should and will be governed—in other words, what I.S. envisions for its utopia. Continue reading →

Book Review: Virtual Caliphate (2011) by Yaakov Lappin

13 Replies

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on June 13, 2014

I have yet to read a book more prescient than Yaakov Lappin’s about events in Iraq in the last few days. Having sketched out the way Salafi-jihadists have created the ministries of a future Caliphate in cyber-format—the simple fact that “Al-Qaeda would not be in existence were it not for the pervasive presence of online jihadis”—Lappin finished by suggesting three options: (1) we manage to take down this virtual Empire; (2) we manage to weaken it in cyberspace; or (3) the jihadists “upload” this virtual State into the real world. Continue reading →

In Advancing Turkey Toward Democracy The Army Is Not The Answer

6 Replies

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on May 10, 2014

Mustafa Kemal. He added the name Atatürk as part of his reforms of the Turkish language to the Latin script from the Perso-Arabic form.

It’s easy to see why Westerners admire Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. He abolished the Caliphate, led a quixotic campaign for female emancipation (a grizzled soldier at the head of a feminist campaign!), and, in my view correctly, identified the theocratic rule of the Caliphate as the primary cause of the Ottoman Empire’s decline. Continue reading →