ISIS: Remaining and Expanding

[Magda Hassan]

....

According to Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, the re division of Iraq into three separate states is part of a broader process of redrawing the Map of the Middle East.

The above map was prepared by Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters. It was published in the Armed Forces Journal in June 2006, Peters is a retired colonel of the U.S. National War Academy. (Map Copyright Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters 2006). Although the map does not officially reflect Pentagon doctrine, it has been used in a training program at NATO's Defense College for senior military officers". (See Plans for Redrawing the Middle East: The Project for a "New Middle East" By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Global Research, November 2006)

Certainly the end of the Sykes-Picot agreement world.

[Magda Hassan]

ISIS "success" facilitated by betrayal, Iraqi government inadequacies

Iraqi policemen are seen on patrol inside a military base in Baghdad, on June 11, 2014, after the declaration of a state of emergency by the government. (Photo: AFP-Ahmad al-Rubaye)

By: Elie Chalhoub
Published Thursday, June 12, 2014

Baghdad is in a state of panic. The streets are empty. Gunmen are 20 kilometers (12.42 miles) away from the capital. Popular forces armed by the state are deployed around the city to protect its residents from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). All eyes are on Diyala, the gateway to the south by the Iranian borders. There is no army and no security forces except in the green zone, and their loyalty is now questionable after information was confirmed that senior officers turned against the government and handed their military areas to the newcomers.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki addressed his military officers on TV in light of security reports stating that the attackers are Baathists affiliated with Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri - who was vice president under Saddam - as well as officers from the former Iraqi army and Fedayeen Saddam. According to the reports, more than 40 officers who had served in Saddam Hussein's army conspired with the attackers. There are tales of betrayal involving senior military leaders including General Abboud Qanbar, Lieutenant General Ali Ghaidan and General Mahdi al-Ghazzawi, all members of the former army.
The only solution left is to organize a "popular army" and the enlistment campaign has already started, with the aim of forming a paramilitary organization similar to the National Defense Forces in Syria. It is a return to the notion of self-security which prevailed after the US invasion. It is also a recognition that there is no army, leading to questions like where did US $41 million - that was supposedly spent to strengthen the military over the last three years - go?
Where did US $41 million - that was supposedly spent to strengthen the military over the last three years - go? All of this to justify a story that sounds more like a fantasy; that within hours, 1,500 fighters from ISIS succeeded in occupying Mosul, where a military garrison consisting of 52,000 soldiers is stationed, before invading Salah al-Din and controlling many neighborhoods in Kirkuk. Everyone agrees that even Samarra has fallen militarily but it was not taken over by takfiris, not because they could not but because they chose not to. Iraqi military units are fleeing their positions whenever ISIS fighters advance and orders are issued to security forces to withdraw from neighbouring cities. In a situation like this, there is no room for politics, as military action has the last word. The position of the Kurds in this context is noteworthy. Appeals were made from more than one side for Peshmerga forces to take part in thwarting the invading forces. But they refused, arguing that they only defend Kurdish and ethnically mixed areas. It is said that US pressure was exerted on Erbil in this regard which led to an understanding between Maliki and Nijirfan al-Barazani stipulating that Peshmerga forces will take part in the battle to recapture Mosul in return for agreeing to secure exports of oil from Kurdistan.
The situation in the occupied areas does not seem as bad as it is portrayed in some media outlets. All the forces involved in the political process left the areas controlled by ISIS, including the governor of Nineveh Athil al-Nujaifi, the more influential brother of Osama al-Nujaifi. He moved to Erbil leaving behind business projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars in Mosul. It is true of course that tens of thousands of Iraqis left their homes for fear of what is happening and what is to come. No one, however, can deny that years of political, social and economic marginalization, in addition to undermining Sunni leaders, will guarantee ISIS - or any other faction that rises up against the political leadership in Baghdad - popular support among individuals and tribes, even if it is temporary.
It was interesting that the Shia authority Bashir al-Nujaifi blamed the "incompetence and dereliction of duty towards their country by those fighting" for "what we have come to in Iraq." He called for "speeding up the process of forming a foresighted salvation government imbued with loyalty and love of country." This allusion was the first of its kind, regarding the political discord going on in Iraq since Mosul fell and the sound of bullets dominated the political arena in the country.

The reality on the ground poses more questions than it provides answers. What are the repercussions of the Shia authority's appeal to unite in the face of the terrorists? How far will the enlistment campaign, opened to whoever wants to fight the takfiris and protect holy sites, go? To what extent has Saudi Arabia supported ISIS? In light of the kidnapping of the Turkish consul-general in Mosul, what is Turkey's role in what is happening, as it was quick to summon an emergency meeting of NATO to discuss developments? What are the implications of ISIS' victories in Iraq on the Syrian front given the financial and military spoils it gained from Iraq? And finally, will the dark days of the ill-fated sectarian war that ignited the whole region return to Iraq?
This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition.

http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/20146

[Magda Hassan]

Iraq arrest that exposed wealth and power of Isis jihadists

The story of Isis, the band of militants that came from nowhere with nothing to having $2bn and two cities

• Martin Chulov in Baghdad
  
  
• The Guardian, Monday 16 June 2014 06.06 AEST
  

Members of the Kurdish armed fighting force look out over Jalula in northern Iraq, where they have been fighting Isis. Photograph: Rick Findler

Two days before Mosul fell to the Islamic insurgent group Isis (the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant), Iraqi commanders stood eyeballing its most trusted messenger. The man, known within the extremist group as Abu Hajjar, had finally cracked after a fortnight of interrogation and given up the head of Isis's military council.
"He said to us, 'you don't realise what you have done'," an intelligence official recalled. "Then he said: 'Mosul will be an inferno this week'.'
Several hours later, the man he had served as a courier and been attempting to protect, Abdulrahman al-Bilawi, lay dead in his hideout near Mosul. From the home of the dead man and the captive, Iraqi forces hoovered up more than 160 computer flash sticks which contained the most detailed information yet known about the terror group.
The treasure trove included names and noms de guerre of all foreign fighters, senior leaders and their code words, initials of sources inside ministries and full accounts of the group's finances.
"We were all amazed and so were the Americans," a senior intelligence official told the Guardian. "None of us had known most of this information."
Officials, including CIA officers, were still decrypting and analysing the flash sticks when Abu Hajjar's prophecy was realised. Isis swept through much of northern and central Iraq over three stunning days, seizing control of Mosul and Tikrit and threatening Kirkuk as three divisions of the Iraqi army shed their uniforms and fled.
The capitulation of the military and the rapid advances of the insurgents have dramatically changed the balance of power in Iraq, crippled prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, allowed Kurdish forces to seize control of the disputed city of Kirkuk and galvanised a Shia fightback along sectarian lines, posing a serious threat to the region's fragile geopolitics. On Sunday Isis published photographs that appeared to show it capturing and killing dozens of Iraqi soldiers.
"By the end of the week, we soon realised that we had to do some accounting for them," said the official flippantly. "Before Mosul, their total cash and assets were $875m [£515m]. Afterwards, with the money they robbed from banks and the value of the military supplies they looted, they could add another $1.5bn to that."
Laid bare were a series of staggering numbers that would be the pride of any major enterprise, let alone an organisation that was a startup three years ago.
The group's leaders had been meticulously chosen. Many of those who reported to the top tier all battle-hardened veterans of the insurgency against US forces nearly a decade ago did not know the names of their colleagues. The strategic acumen of Isis was impressive so too its attention to detail. "They had itemised everything," the source said. "Down to the smallest detail."
Over the past year, foreign intelligence officials had learned that Isis secured massive cashflows from the oilfields of eastern Syria, which it had commandeered in late 2012, and some of which it had sold back to the Syrian regime. It was also known to have reaped windfalls from smuggling all manner of raw materials pillaged from the crumbling state, as well as priceless antiquities from archaeological digs.
But here before them in extraordinary detail were accounts that would have breezed past forensic accountants, giving a full reckoning of a war effort. It soon became clear that in less than three years, Isis had grown from a ragtag band of extremists to perhaps the most cash-rich and capable terror group in the world.
"They had taken $36m from al-Nabuk alone [an area in the Qalamoun mountains west of Damascus]. The antiquities there are up to 8,000 years old," the intelligence official said. "Before this, the western officials had been asking us where they had gotten some of their money from, $50,000 here, or $20,000 there. It was peanuts. Now they know and we know. They had done this all themselves. There was no state actor at all behind them, which we had long known. They don't need one."
The scale of Isis's resources seems to have prepared it for the improbable. But even by its ruthless standards, occupying two major cities in Iraq in three days, holding on to parts of Falluja and Ramadi, and menacing Kirkuk and Samara, was quite an accomplishment.
Social media postings throughout last week revealed the group's shock at its successes. Some posting showed extremists weeping with joy as dozens of Iraqi army humvess were driven through a sand berm on the border into Syria.
Foreign jihadists, many from Europe, were among those who stormed into Mosul and have spread through central Iraq ever since. Most of their names were already known to the intelligence agencies which had tried to track their movements after they arrived in Turkey, then disappeared, initially across the Syrian border. But noms de guerre given to the new arrivals had left their trails cold. Now officials had details of next of kin, and often phone numbers and emails.
Whether the intelligence haul can do much to reel in Isis after the fact seems a moot point, with the group having already wrought so much carnage in such a short time. "We will eventually find them," said the Iraqi official. "We knew they had infiltrated the ministries and the most frustrating thing about that flash [stick] was it only had initials. We are focusing on the initials that had the annotation 'valuable' next to them."
Other names were clearly of lesser use, he said. They were marked with "lazy", "undecided" or "needs monitoring".
More than ever before is now known about how Isis has gathered steam. The past week has also been an advanced education in its capabilities and ambitions. "Now we have to catch up with them," the official said.

[Lauren Johnson]

Magda,

I have developed a nearly inexhaustible suspicion of stories such as these. You may be able to convince me otherwise. My initial gut reaction is that this story is a legend released through the Guardian.

[Magda Hassan]

I totally agree Lauren. I found the article so very interesting on many levels.

[Magda Hassan]

The above article manages to do many things.
* Gives a rationale for ISIS funding letting Saudi and US funding off the hook.
* Mentions the antiquities market but not the drugs and human trafficking markets.
* Shows that the 'CIA' has been on the job tracking and analysing ISIS. Good boys!
* Still tows the line of the 'surprise' attack by ISIS. Sneaky evil villains!
* Does not address how the TIA and global coverage by NSA (and other agencies) of practically all people and supposedly terrorist groups (that's what all that is for isn't it?) some how missed this. Dang. Need more money and power to do their job properly.
* Shows how large and important parts of the official Iraqi military, trained and armed by the US, had been working with ISIS for some time organising this 'surprise' moment. And some how no one else knew this?

ISIS=Moriarty

[Lauren Johnson]

The above article manages to do many things.
* Gives a rationale for ISIS funding letting Saudi and US funding off the hook.
* Mentions the antiquities market but not the drugs and human trafficking markets.
* Shows that the 'CIA' has been on the job tracking and analysing ISIS. Good boys!
* Still tows the line of the 'surprise' attack by ISIS. Sneaky evil villains!
* Does not address how the TIA and global coverage by NSA (and other agencies) of practically all people and supposedly terrorist groups (that's what all that is for isn't it?) some how missed this. Dang. Need more money and power to do their job properly.
* Shows how large and important parts of the official Iraqi military, trained and armed by the US, had been working with ISIS for some time organising this 'surprise' moment. And some how no one else knew this?

ISIS=Moriarty

But, ... BUT ... Wait for it. The NSA spotted those three tanks that the Ruskies tried to sneak into Ukraine!! Ya gotta give that to 'em!!

[Magda Hassan]

The above article manages to do many things.
* Gives a rationale for ISIS funding letting Saudi and US funding off the hook.
* Mentions the antiquities market but not the drugs and human trafficking markets.
* Shows that the 'CIA' has been on the job tracking and analysing ISIS. Good boys!
* Still tows the line of the 'surprise' attack by ISIS. Sneaky evil villains!
* Does not address how the TIA and global coverage by NSA (and other agencies) of practically all people and supposedly terrorist groups (that's what all that is for isn't it?) some how missed this. Dang. Need more money and power to do their job properly.
* Shows how large and important parts of the official Iraqi military, trained and armed by the US, had been working with ISIS for some time organising this 'surprise' moment. And some how no one else knew this?

ISIS=Moriarty

But, ... BUT ... Wait for it. The NSA spotted those three tanks that the Ruskies tried to sneak into Ukraine!! Ya gotta give that to 'em!!

But we havent seen the sattelite pics so it didn't happen. Even Colin Powell tried to pass off some ice cream vans in the desert as WMD components. They haven't even tried to pull a stunt like that yet.

[Albert Doyle]

It does seem to be a re-establishment of the old order with the west as a sponsor instead of arab leaders. Al Maliki should realize that the shelf life of any leader who sides with the US is not very long just like Saddam himself. It's just a matter of time before they find it useful to turn on you with divide and conquer tactics.

[Magda Hassan]

How ISIS Games Twitter

The militant group that conquered northern Iraq is deploying a sophisticated social-media strategy.
J.M. Berger Jun 16 2014, 2:00 PM ET


The advance of an army used to be marked by war drums. Now it's marked by volleys of tweets.
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the Sunni militant group that seized Iraq's second-largest city last week and is now pledging to take Baghdad, has honed this new techniquemost recently posting photos on Twitter of an alleged mass killing of Iraqi soldiers. But what's often overlooked in press coverage is that ISIS doesn't just have strong, organic support online. It also employs social-media strategies that inflate and control its message. Extremists of all stripes are increasingly using social media to recruit, radicalize and raise funds, and ISIS is one of the most adept practitioners of this approach.
One of ISIS's more successful ventures is an Arabic-language Twitter app called The Dawn of Glad Tidings, or just Dawn. The app, an official ISIS product promoted by its top users, is advertised as a way to keep up on the latest news about the jihadi group.
Hundreds of users have signed up for the app on the web or on their Android phones through the Google Play store. When you download the app, ISIS asks for a fair amount of personal data:
J.M. BergerOnce you sign up, the app will post tweets to your accountthe content of which is decided by someone in ISIS's social-media operation. The tweets include links, hashtags, and images, and the same content is also tweeted by the accounts of everyone else who has signed up for the app, spaced out to avoid triggering Twitter's spam-detection algorithms. Your Twitter account functions normally the rest of the time, allowing you to go about your business.
Tweets Sent by ISIS's Social-Media App Over a 2-Hour Period
J.M. BergerThe app first went into wide use in April 2014, but its posting activity has ramped up during the group's latest offensive, reaching an all-time high of almost 40,000 tweets in one day as ISIS marched into the northern Iraqi city of Mosul last week. On Sunday, as the media reported on the group's advance toward Baghdad, hundreds of Dawn app users began sending thousands of tweets featuring an image of an armed jihadist gazing at the ISIS flag flying over the city, with the text, "We are coming, Baghdad" (see below).
The volume of these tweets was enough to make any search for "Baghdad" on Twitter generate the image among its first results, which is certainly one means of intimidating the city's residents.
J.M. BergerThe app is just one way ISIS games Twitter to magnify its message. Another is the use of organized hashtag campaigns, in which the group enlists hundreds and sometimes thousands of activists to repetitively tweet hashtags at certain times of day so that they trend on the social network. This approach also skews the results of a popular Arabic Twitter account called @ActiveHashtags that tweets each day's top trending tags. When ISIS gets its hashtag into the @ActiveHashtags stream, it results in an average of 72 retweets per tweet, which only makes the hashtag trend more. As it gains traction, more users are exposed to ISIS's messaging. The group's supporters also run accounts similar to @ActiveHashtags that exclusively feature jihadi content and can produce hundreds of retweets per tweet.
ISIS uses hashtags to focus-group messaging and branding concepts.As a result of these strategies, and others, ISIS is able to project strength and promote engagement online. For instance, the ISIS hashtag consistently outperforms that of the group's main competitor in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra, even though the two groups have a similar number of supporters online. In data I analyzed in February, ISIS often registered more than 10,000 mentions of its hashtag per day, while the number of al-Nusra mentions generally ranged between 2,500 and 5,000.
ISIS also uses hashtags to focus-group messaging and branding concepts, much like a Western corporation might. Earlier this year, ISIS hinted, without being specific, that it was planning to change the name of its organization. Activists then carefully promoted a hashtag crafted to look like a grassroots initiative, demanding that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declare not an Islamic state in Syria and Iraq, but the rebirth of an Islamic caliphate. The question of when and how to declare a new caliphate is highly controversial in jihadi circles, and the hashtag produced a great deal of angry and divisive discussion, which ISIS very likely tracked and measured. It never announced a name change.
Media attention has focused, not unreasonably, on ISIS's use of social media to spread pictures of graphic violence, attract new fighters, and incite lone wolves. But it's important to recognize that these activities are supported by sophisticated online machinery. ISIS does have legitimate support onlinebut less than it might seem. And it owes a lot of that support to a calculated campaign that would put American social-media-marketing gurus to shame.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international...gy/372856/