Tag Archives: ISIS

Islamic State Admits to Colluding with the Syrian Regime

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 20 April 2018

Since the uprising in Syria began in 2011, Bashar al-Asad’s regime has followed a tried and trusted script to destroy the opposition by eliminating all engageable elements, creating a binary choice for the population and the world—the despotism or a terrorist takeover.

Asad bolstered extremists within the insurgency: letting Islamists out of prison while imprisoning secular activists, pushing a peaceful protest movement into violence, heightening sectarian tensions, and financial schemes of various kinds. Asad then then left IS alone for a year to build its caliphate, while obliterating rebel-held areas that could provide an attractive alternative to the dictatorship. Continue reading →

What Is Trump Thinking About Syria?

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 18 April 2018

Egyptian ruler Abdelfattah al-Sisi, Saudi King Salman, and President Donald Trump in Riyadh on 22 May 2017 (image source)

Two days ago, The Wall Street Journal reported that President Donald Trump has been exploring plans to replace American troops in the areas of Syria held by the Coalition partner force, the “Syrian Democratic Forces” (SDF), with troops from the Arab states. The problems with this proposal, even in the rudimentary form it is presented, are manifold. It also feeds into the broader problem of Trump’s inconsistent messaging about Syria—or, more precisely, his failed efforts to balance domestic messaging, which calls for what was once referred to as “nation building … at home”, and his foreign messaging that needs to emphasise U.S. constancy to see through the mission to defeat the Islamic State (IS) by, among other things, stabilising and reconstructing Syria. Continue reading →

Trump’s Syria Strike Upheld an Important International Norm, But Did No More

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A version of this article was published at The Sunday Express

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 15 April 2018

Britain joined the United States and France in a round of punitive military strikes in Syria on Friday night. The Coalition was retaliating for a poison gas attack by Bashar al-Assad’s regime in the Duma area of Damascus on 7 April. The three targets the Allies went after were related to his chemical weapons program. This was a just operation that upheld the norms of the international system, but there are disturbing signs that it will not be linked to a course correction in Syria. Continue reading →

Islamic State Newsletter Claims the Trèbes Supermarket Siege

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 5 April 2018

Arnaud Beltrame, Radouane Lakdim (image sources: one, two)

In Trebes, a small town of 5,000 people in southern France near Carcassonne, at 11 a.m. on 23 March 2018, a 25-year-old Moroccan-born man, Radouane Lakdim, walked into a “Super U” supermarket and opened fire, killing two people immediately, an attendant and a customer.

An hour earlier, Lakdim had hijacked a car on the outskirts of Carcassonne, killing the passenger by shooting him to death and seriously wounding the driver.

Lakdim then drove five miles to Trebes, appeared to stop outside a military barracks, before stopping outside a riot police centre and shooting at a group of four officers from 200 yards away, seriously injuring one. Continue reading →

How the Islamic State Uses History to Justify Cruelty

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 2 April 2018

Al-Naba 125, page 10

The 125th edition of Al-Naba, the Islamic State’s (IS) weekly newsletter, has an article on page 10, “From History: A River of Blood”, which relays a story that gives a good example of how IS uses Islamic historiography to justify its brutality. Continue reading →

Insurgents Respond to America Declaring Syrian Taliban Unit A Terrorist Group

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 25 March 2018

Katibat al-Imam al-Bukhari (image source)

The United States Department of State designated Katibat al-Imam al-Bukhari (KIB), the Taliban-loyal insurgent unit in Syria, as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) on 22 March. Over the last few days, KIB and other insurgent groups have issued statements in response. Continue reading →

The Islamic State’s First Leader Explains How to Deal With Enemies

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 22 March 2018

The first leader of the Islamic State (IS) after it was declared in 2006, Hamid al-Zawi (Abu Umar al-Baghdadi), gave a series of twenty-three speeches until he was killed in April 2010. Al-Zawi’s speeches laid out the strategic and ideological vision of the movement. The fifth speech, “And If You Cease, It Will Be Better for You” or “Should You Desist [in attacking the Islamic State], Then That Is Better for You”, was given as an audio statement on 8 July 2007. An English transcript of the speech was released by IS’s Al-Furqan Media and is reproduced below with some important and interesting sections highlighted in bold. Continue reading →

Turkey’s Afrin Operation and an American Opening in Syria

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) and Oved Lobel on 20 March 2018

Turkey and Syrian rebel allies captured Afrin city in north-western Syria from the Kurdish People’s Protection Forces (YPG) this weekend. The YPG has gained notice as the partner force of the US-led international coalition against the Islamic State. But, as Pentagon spokesman Robert Manning acknowledged on March 6, the YPG has been diverting its troops from the fight against IS in eastern Syria to the war with Turkey on the other side of the country. Manning presented this as a temporary setback, but the shifting dynamics might prove to be the undoing of the Coalition’s mission in Syria. Continue reading →

The Announcement of the Islamic State—in 2006

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 18 March 2018

Jihadists on parade in Ramadi, 18 October 2006, to celebrate the declaration of the Islamic state (image source: Al-Jazeera)

After the formation of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), the leader, Hamid al-Zawi (Abu Umar al-Baghdadi), made his first speech on 23 December 2006. An English translation of the speech was released by ISI and is reproduced below. Continue reading →

Islamic State Official Spokesman Proclaims “the State” in 2006

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 17 March 2018

A video statement was put out on 15 October 2006 by the official spokesman of what was then called the Mujahideen Shura Council (al-Majlis Shura al-Mujahideen or MSM), the entity in which Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) had nominally subsumed itself in January 2006, announcing the creation of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). The MSM spokesman, Muharib al-Jubouri, seen above, who had not been in the job long—the first AQI/MSM spokesman, Abu Maysara al-Iraqi, had been killed a few months earlier—was now the ISI spokesman,[1] and his speech made clear that a coalition of tribesmen and insurgents announced by MSM three days earlier, the Alliance of the Scented Ones (Hilf al-Mutayibeen), was also incorporated in this “State”. The transcript of Muharib’s speech, entitled (unimaginatively enough), “Announcement on the Establishment of the Islamic State of Iraq”, is translated below.

Continue reading →