By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 30 July 2022
Islamic State in Palmyra, December 2016
United Nations Report Finds Al-Qaeda and Islamic State Reduced, But Reviving
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Tag Archives: Saddam Husayn
The Challenge for Western Intelligence in Talibanized Afghanistan
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 18 June 2022
A U.S. helicopter above the American Embassy in Kabul, 15 August 2021 | AP
Islamic State Appoints a New Leader and Spokesman
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 15 March 2022
The 2007 Islamic State Book “Informing Mankind” of its Justifications for the Caliphate
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 22 November 2021
The Islamic State movement published an 87-page book, “Informing Mankind of the Birth of the Islamic State” or “Informing the People of the Birth of the Islamic State” (I’lam al-Anam bi-Milad Dawlat al-Islam), on 7 January 2007. The document was released by Al-Furqan Media Foundation, the central Islamic State propaganda institution, and first appeared on the World News Network website. A rough translation of the book appears below.
The First “Interview” with the Islamic State’s War Minister (2008)
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 3 April 2021
The Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) released a forty-five-minute media product, “The First Audio Interview with Shaykh Abu Hamza al-Muhajir”, on 24 October 2008. A translated transcript of the interview is reproduced below, with some interesting and important sections highlighted in bold.
The Islamic State’s Acknowledgement of the Deaths of Abu Umar al-Baghdadi and Abu Hamza al-Muhajir
The First Cabinet of the Islamic State
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 5 March 2021
On 19 April 2007, seven months after the Islamic State (IS) movement declared its “State”, the official spokesman, Muharib al-Jaburi, announced the first “cabinet” for this “state”, appointing leaders for various “ministries”. Unusually for IS in this era, the speech was delivered as a video address—albeit (as can be seen) with Muharib’s face blurred out—rather than as an audio address. The reason for this was clearly to push back against the criticism of the IS movement that its leader could not be the “caliph” of all the Muslims, which at this stage IS was not overtly claiming, while being faceless and nameless, known only by his kunya.
Qassem Sulaymani: Life and Ambition
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 2 March 2021
A year ago, U.S. President Donald Trump gave the order to kill Qassem Soleimani, the de facto deputy leader of Iran. Arash Azizi’s The Shadow Commander: Soleimani, the U.S., and Iran’s Global Ambitions is an effort to explain who Soleimani was, how he rose to controlling the lives of millions of people well outside the borders of Iran, and how in the end he was brought down. Continue reading
The Current Condition of Al-Qaeda
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.
The CIA and Iraq: Intelligence Failures, Media Successes
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 28 December 2019
In a long article last week, I looked at why the U.S. ran a formal occupation of Iraq for fourteen months after the fall of Saddam Husayn in April 2003, given that there had been an explicit pre-invasion decision not to have an occupation government. The short answer is that the occupation was installed through deception by the State Department, supported by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). State and CIA had argued for a protracted occupation in the Situation Room debates in 2002, but President George W. Bush had sided with the Pentagon, which advocated a rapid transfer of power to Iraqis. Having lost in the formal inter-agency process, the State Department succeeded by subversion in getting its way on the ground in Iraq. The disaster this caused in the mismanagement of post-Saddam Iraq was, as the article explained in detail, only the most serious impact of the toxic schism between State/CIA and the Pentagon, a factor whose import is difficult to overstate when examining how the Bush administration functioned. (This feud also at times drew in the Vice President’s Office, which tended to support the Pentagon.)
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