By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on October 20, 2014
Maysar al-Jiburi (Abu Mariya al-Qahtani) [source]
Al-Qaeda in Syria Condemns Al-Qaeda in Yemen’s Softness on the Islamic State
Leave a reply
Tag Archives: Iraq
About Those Chemical WMDs Saddam Never Had …
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on October 17, 2014
A Kurd allegedly hit with chemical weapons by the Islamic State in Kobani
Since the main point of this post is “I Told You So,” I should get it over early. Some of us have maintained that—whatever the political view one takes of the invasion of Iraq—the factual question, “Where are the weapons of mass destruction?”, remains a live one. Now The New York Times agrees.
Continue reading
The Balkan Front of the Jihad in the Fertile Crescent
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on October 14, 2014
Bilal Bosnić, the Islamic State’s lead recruiter in Bosnia
A week after the American-led airstrikes inside Syria began, it was reported that two women from the Balkans, Dora Bilic and Fatima Mahmutović, had been hit in ar-Raqqa, and that Ms. Mahmutović had been killed. Ms. Bilic, born in Croatia, converted to Islam two years ago and moved to Gornja Maoca, north-east Bosnia, which is in effect a Wahhabi commune, where she met her husband with whom she travelled to Syria for jihad. Ms. Mahmutović is from a village in Bosnia not far from the infamous Srebrenica, and she moved herself and her young son to Syria late last year. As is so often the case, it seems that the Croatian intelligence services were aware of Ms. Bilic but had done little about it. Even less surprising was the follow-up report that Ms. Bilic had been radicalised in London. Continue reading
Will The Alawis Break With Assad?
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on October 12, 2014
A grisly brood: The Assad family
Last Thursday, in Akrama, an Alawi section of Homs City, there was the most extraordinary scene: Alawite anti-Assad protests. A twin bombing at a local school—reported as a suicide bombing by the regime, though there is no evidence for this—had massacred fifty Alawi civilians, most of them pupils. Annexing the slogans of the revolution, the Alawis took to the streets to demand the removal of Homs Governor Talal al-Barazi. “The people want to topple the governor,” people shouted, a conscious echo of the “Arab Spring” chant, a-shab yurid izkat an-nizam (the people want to topple the regime). Continue reading
Obama’s Abandonment of Kobani Isn’t Just A Disaster For The Kurds
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on October 9, 2014
Syrian Kurdish refugees at the Turkish frontier
After three-and-a-half years of resistance, the United States finally intervened in Syria on September 23 with airstrikes against the Islamic State (I.S.). The I.S. had begun an attack on the Kurdish-controlled enclave in northern Aleppo along the Turkish border on September 15/16. By October 5, the Kurdish forces had been driven back into the Kurdish-majority town of Kobani (a.k.a. Ayn al-Arab), and I.S. had them surrounded. The desperate scenes of Syrian Kurds fleeing over the Turkish border in the face of the takfiris’ recalls the Iraqi Kurds making a run for the hills after the March 1991 uprising against Saddam Hussein was crushed. Then as now the Kurds believed they had stronger American backing than turned out to be the case. Continue reading
WikiBaghdady Claims to Leak the Islamic State’s Secrets
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on October 8, 2014
Before the account, first published in April 2014, by an ostensible Islamic State (IS) defector, “Abu Ahmad”, there was the Twitter account @WikiBaghdady, which released a lot of information in the same vein about the alleged impiousness of the jihadist organization. @WikiBaghdady’s testimony, as collected by Yousef Bin Tashfin, is republished below, with some editions for transliteration and syntax, to ensure its preservation. Continue reading
Testimony of Abu Ahmad: An Islamic State Defector
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on October 2, 2014
A purported defector from the Islamic State, known only as “Abu Ahmad,” released testimony online on 5 April 2014 via the Syrian opposition news site al-Durar al-Shamiya under the heading, “The Concealed Truths About al-Baghdadi’s State”. Abu Ahmad describes himself as “one of the mujahideen in Khorasan [Afghanistan-Pakistan] and Iraq, and now in al-Sham [Syria],” and it is quite clear that Abu Ahmad has defected to al-Qaeda. On 25 September 2014, an English version of this testimony was posted on the Fund for Fallen Allies website. It has been reposted below—with some editions to transliteration and syntax—to avoid it being lost. Continue reading
America Must Go After Assad As Well As The Islamic State
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on September 30, 2014
Aftermath of strikes on Jabhat an-Nusra’s HQ in al-Muhandisin district of Aleppo City, Sept. 27, 2014
I admit to some initial ambivalence over the extension of the American-led air war against the Islamic State (I.S.) into Syria. After forty-two months of President Obama’s inaction in Syria, there was an irrepressible sense of “at last”. This quickly unravelled. Continue reading
Has Hillary Clinton Become A Hawk?
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on September 21, 2014
The next American President?
Last month, Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic published an interview with Hillary Clinton. At 8,000 words it can be off-putting to plough through, but I have now finally got around to it, and it is rather interesting. The interview focusses on the three areas where President Obama’s foreign policy has so conspicuously failed—Syria, Iran, and Israel—and also includes sections on Egypt and Libya, where the administration’s failure has been somewhat less in the news. Continue reading
Book Review: The Struggle For Mastery In The Fertile Crescent (2014) by Fouad Ajami
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on September 16, 2014
In June, those of us who try to keep up with events in the Greater Middle East suffered a devastating blow when the Lebanese-American scholar Fouad Ajami passed away. Having broken with the orthodoxy of his generation of Arabs and his scholarly field, both represented in the person of Edward Said, Ajami provided insight into the Arab/Muslim world that restored the agency of that world. Continue reading
Kyle Orton's Blog 