Tag Archives: jihadism

Is Britain Cracking Down on PKK Terrorist Activity?

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Originally published at The Henry Jackson Society

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 16 December 2017

Pro-PKK demonstrators in Frankfurt, Germany, 18 March 2017, REUTERS / Ralph Orlowski

The BBC reported yesterday that on 7 December the Metropolitan Police Service arrested four people—two 17-year-old boys, a 38-year-old woman, and a 50-year-old woman—were arrested in the Haringey area of north London as part of a probe into terrorist fundraising, through money laundering and fraud. The terrorist group at issue is the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and those arrested are believed to have contributed to the PKK’s finances through sale and distribution of one of the PKK’s most important propaganda instruments, the Yeni Ozgur Politika (New Free Politics) newspaper. Time will tell if this is a one-off or the beginning of a serious and long-overdue attempt to curtail the PKK’s propaganda-recruitment activity and fundraising in the West. Continue reading →

Another Product of “Londonistan”: Abdullah Ibrahim al-Faisal

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 8 December 2017

Abdullah al-Faisal

The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Abdullah Ibrahim al-Faisal (born: Trevor William Forrest), a Jamaican cleric who supports the Islamic State (IS) on 5 December. This was long overdue. Al-Faisal’s record of disseminating jihadist ideology, and influencing and/or interacting with terrorists, goes back several decades. And since 2014, al-Faisal has been one of IS’s influential English-language propagandist-recruiters. Continue reading →

Al-Qaeda Responds to Trump’s Jerusalem Embassy Move

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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 →

Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham Gives Its Version of Its Own History and Ties to Al-Qaeda

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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 →

Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham Announces a Ceasefire With Syrian Rebels, Forms a “Settlement Committee”

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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 →

Ayman al-Zawahiri Finally Addresses the Problems with Al-Qaeda’s Syrian Branch

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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 →

Islamic State Profiles a Libyan Jihadist Killed in Eastern Syria

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 4 December 2017

Al-Naba 108, page 7

The latest edition of the Islamic State’s newsletter, Al-Naba 108, released on 1 December 2017, has a profile on page 7 of a fighter named Abu Sulayman al-Libi, a Libyan jihadist who came to Syria soon after the caliphate declaration in June 2014 and became the senior religious official in Homs. Abu Sulayman was killed in the fighting between IS and the pro-Asad coalition in the deserts of eastern Homs Province, near the T3 oil pumping station. This probably means Abu Sulayman was killed in the last days of September or the first few days of October during the IS counter-attack to the regime coalition’s push into Deir Ezzor. A rough translation of the Naba obituary is published below. Continue reading →

The Islamic State Urges Caution About Beliefs in the Apocalypse

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 2 December 2017

Al-Naba 107, page 8, 27 November 2017

The 107th edition of Al-Naba, the Islamic State’s newsletter, was released on 27 November 2017. On page 8 there was an article that cautioned against applying apocalyptic prophecies to the present day. A very rough translation is produced below. Continue reading →

The Islamic State’s Minister of War Criticises Regional Religious Leaders For Not Supporting The Jihad in Iraq

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 24 November 2017

Abdul Munim al-Badawi (Abu Hamza al-Muhajir), the “war minister” of the Islamic State of Iraq, the predecessor to ISIS, made a brief five-minute speech on 30 April 2007, entitled “Nada ila Ulema al-Umma” (نِدَاءٌ إِلَى عُلَمَاءِ الأُمَّةِ). “Ulema” refers to Islamic scholars, sometimes translated as “clerics”, a slightly misleading comparison with Christianity, and “umma” refers to the worldwide community of Muslims, so the title of the speech translates as, “An Appeal to the Community’s Scholars”. Al-Badawi’s basic point—made at a time when the Islamic State movement was beginning to suffer under the pressure of the Surge and Sahwa—was to condemn the regional ulema for not supporting, and not having supported, the jihadists in Iraq against the Americans and the Shi’is. Implicitly, Al-Badawi is criticising the ulema for holding back Muslims in regional States who might otherwise have joined the Iraqi jihad as foreign fighters and suicide bombers, potentially making a difference to the Islamic State’s military fortunes. A rough translation of the speech is reproduced below.

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The Controversial End of the Islamic State in Raqqa

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 14 November 2017

IS jihadists arriving south of Deir Ezzor city, September 2017

A deal was made between the “Syrian Democratic Forces,” the U.S.-led Coalition’s “partner force” in Syria that is wholly dominated by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and the Islamic State (IS), which ostensibly evacuated the remnants of the IS jihadists—said to be between 300 and 500 militants, plus 400 “hostages” (i.e. women and children)—from Raqqa by 15 October. The U.S.-led Coalition said at the time, “do not condone” the deal, but the Coalition acknowledged that its PKK partner had to make these tactical calls, and there was a lot of local pressure from local tribal leaders to reach this deal given the devastation visited on the city. It now transpires, however, that this deal was the worst of all worlds: the Coalition ruined the city in its efforts to overcome IS’s tactical adaptations to the air campaign, and then allowed a scandalous number of IS jihadists to escape. Continue reading →