Tag Archives: Qatar

The Haqqani Network, Al-Qaeda, and Pakistan’s Jihad in Afghanistan

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 7 September 2021

Anti-Taliban fighters watch U.S. airstrikes at Tora Bora, 16 December 2001 || REUTERS/Erik de Castro

The State Department spokesman Ned Price said, on 27 August, “The Taliban and the Haqqani Network are separate entities”. The next day, the Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby slightly modulated this, having first tried to dismiss the question, by conceding there was “a certain amount of … commingling … there’s a marbling … of Taliban and Haqqani”, before saying he was “pushing back … [on] the relevance of that discussion”.

What these officials were trying to do was two-fold: (1) to refute press reports that U.S. officials in Kabul had shared “a list of names of American citizens, green card holders, and Afghan allies” with the Taliban, amounting to having “put all those Afghans on a kill list”, as one “defense official” put it; and (2) to deny that the U.S. coordination with the Taliban to evacuate people the jihadists wanted to kill—a surreal enough situation—had involved the additional political and legal problems of coordinating with a formally registered Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), as the Haqqani Network is. Continue reading →

Islamic State Reacts to Taliban Takeover of Afghanistan, Detects American Conspiracy

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 22 August 2021

Page three, Al-Naba 300

The Islamic State (IS) released the 300th edition of its weekly newsletter, Al-Naba, on 19 August, wherein the main editorial on page three dealt with the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban on 15 August. The editorial was entitled, “Finally, They Elevated Mullah Bradley”. IS has used the term “Mullah Bradley” or “Mullah Bradley project” to refer to the Taliban, the accusation basically being that the Taliban are American agents. (The Taliban obviously are agents of a foreign power, but not the Americans.) The rest of the editorial fleshes out this idea that the U.S. and the Taliban have conspired in the Talibanization of Afghanistan, and the fact that all other Islamists support this—the Sururis, Muslim Brotherhood, etc.—only shows that IS is the sole standard bearer of Islam. Continue reading →

Islamic State Comments on the Gaza War and Escalates in Afghanistan

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 22 May 2021

Al-Naba 287, page three

The last two issues of Al-Naba, the weekly newsletter of the Islamic State (IS), had a number of interesting items, most obviously finally breaking its silence on the latest flare-up between Israel and HAMAS. Continue reading →

Islamism in Syria

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on October 23, 2020

A chapter about Islamism in Syria I wrote for the American Foreign Policy Council’s (AFPC) ‘World Almanac of Islamism’ was published today. Do check it out, and the broader site, which is a great, accessible resource. The format of the website necessitated that the chapter as I submitted it was edited, condensed, and split up to fill out the various categories. In case it is of any interest, the original version of the chapter is reproduced below.

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The Current Condition of Al-Qaeda

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on October 4, 2020

A chapter about Al-Qaeda I wrote for the American Foreign Policy Council’s (AFPC) ‘World Almanac of Islamism’ was published today. Do check it out, and the broader site, which is a great, accessible resource. The format of the website necessitated that the chapter as I submitted it was edited, condensed, and split up to fill out the various categories. In case it is of any interest, the original version of the chapter is reproduced below.

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Al-Qaeda Has Never Been More Dominated by States

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on September 11, 2020

In writing a chapter earlier this year about the current status of Al-Qaeda, part of the process was reviewing the organisation’s history since its formation in the late 1980s. What really struck me was how extensively Al-Qaeda is now manipulated, under the influence of, and in places even controlled by state powers. To mark the nineteenth anniversary of 9/11, I thought I could give a brief sketch of this development.

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Losing in Yemen, Winning in Afghanistan, Islamic State Weighs in on Arab-Israeli Peace

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 22 August 2020

Al-Naba 248

The Islamic State (IS) produced the 248th edition of Al-Naba, its newsletter, on 20 August. The front page was devoted to recent events in Yemen, which had not gone well for IS—although one could easily miss that fact when reading a story that a focuses almost entirely on enemy casualties and the failures of others. IS is, of course, not pleased about the Israeli normalisation of relations with the United Arab Emirates, but Al-Naba makes clear that it is more perturbed that Muslims should believe Turkey or Qatar are any better than the U.A.E., despite their different approach to Islamists. Al-Naba 248 documents IS’s continuing advances in Afghanistan—and, indeed, Iraq, Syria, Africa (the Sahel), and Egypt. There is also a report of insurgent activity in the Philippines. Continue reading →

Islamic State Spokesman Addresses Coronavirus, Expansion in Africa, and Qatar

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 28 May 2020

After trailing the release yesterday, an audio statement from the Islamic State (IS) spokesman, Abu Hamza al-Qurayshi, was published by Al-Furqan Foundation today. It is entitled, “And the Disbelievers Will Know Who Gets the Good End”, i.e. heaven. The title is taken from a sura of the Qur’an [Ra’d (13):42]. The speech gloated about the damage the coronavirus has done to the West, presenting it as God’s revenge for the Coalition dislodging IS from the cities it had occupied in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and elsewhere. There is the usual focus on anti-IS Sunnis in Iraq and Syria, who are warned that the U.S. is pulling back, thus those who bet on the U.S. for protection need to reassess or they will be killed. The two most significant parts of the speech are: (1) its focus on IS’s expansion in Africa, a visible fact for some time now, and the competition with Al-Qaeda in that area; and (2) the closing few minutes where Abu Hamza agitates against Qatar, a state that IS has never bothered with before in its messaging.
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Trump’s Middle East Failure Was Made By Obama

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 19 November 2019

President Barack Obama meeting President-elect Donald Trump, 10 November 2016 [image source]

October 2019 may well remain in the popular memory as the inflection point marking the collapse of America’s — and by extension, the West’s — position in at least the northern Middle East. Having been thwarted twice before in efforts to leave Syria, in March and December 2018, President Donald Trump made one more try. For many, ‘Trump betrayed the Kurds’ will be the summary of the events that followed as Turkey made a swift move into the vacuum. The reality is a lot more complicated, and in truth the amount of blame that Trump can take for the events of the last month is rather limited. This catastrophe was baked into the policy of Barack Obama, and Trump’s main fault is to have followed the policy track laid down by his predecessor. Continue reading →

The Memoir of a British Spy in Al-Qaeda

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 8 July 2019

This article was originally published at the European Eye on Radicalization

The main issue that Nine Lives has to overcome is the one that has attended Aimen Dean (a pseudonym) since he went public in March 2015 with an interview he gave to the BBC, claiming he had been a British spy within Al-Qaeda between 1998 and 2006. That issue is overcoming the doubts about his story. Nine Lives goes a long way to solving this by bringing in Paul Cruickshank, the editor-in-chief of CTC Sentinel, one of the premier academic resources in the terrorism field, and Tim Lister, a terrorism-focused journalist with CNN, as co-authors. As well as helping structure the book from Dean’s memories, the two co-authors note they had been able to “corroborate key details” that convinced them: “In the years immediately leading up to and following 9/11, Aimen Dean was by far the most important spy the West had inside al-Qaeda”.

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