Islamexperte kritisiert “Dramatisierung” durch Verfassungsschutz

Die Verfassungsschützer warnen in ihrem Jahresbericht vor Anschlägen internationaler Terroristen in Deutschland. Die Gefahr wird in dem Papier jedoch übertrieben – moniert ein Islamwissenschaftler. Die Behörden bewerteten oft vorschnell.

Berlin – Die deutschen Sicherheitsbehörden stellen nach Ansicht eines Experten die Bedrohung durch Islamisten zu drastisch dar. “Ich sehe die Gefahr, aber die Lage ist aus meiner Sicht dramatisiert”, sagte der Kulturwissenschaftler und Islam-Experte Werner Schiffauer. “Auch wenn man vereitelte Anschläge mit einbezieht, kann keine Rede davon sein, dass davon die größte Gefahr ausgeht.”

Der aktuelle Verfassungsschutzbericht der Bundesregierung nennt den internationalen Terrorismus als eine der größten Bedrohungen für die innere Sicherheit in Deutschland.

Das Phänomen des Salafismus werde zu undifferenziert betrachtet, sagte Schiffauer. “Der Verfassungsschutz kennt nur die Unterscheidung zwischen gewaltbereiten und politischen Salafisten”, sagte der Wissenschaftler der Europa-Universität Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder). “Völlig vernachlässigt wird ein großer Teil, der zwar religiös sehr streng lebt, aber sich von jeglicher Politik fernhält und Gewalt ablehnt.”

Auch im Bezug auf die sogenannten Syrien-Rückkehrer müsse klarer unterschieden werden. Zwar gebe es radikale Islamisten aus Deutschland, die im syrischen Bürgerkrieg im Namen der Terrororganisation Isis ihre Gewaltfantasien auslebten. “Viele, die dort hinreisen, sind aber nicht an Gewalt beteiligt, sondern versorgen vom Libanon oder der Türkei aus die Not leidende Bevölkerung.”

Schiffauer stellt die Zahlen im Verfassungsschutzbericht infrage. Darin wird das “islamistische Personenpotenzial” in Deutschland aktuell mit gut 43.000 angegeben. “31.000 entfallen dabei auf die islamische Gemeinschaft Milli Görüs, der auch vom Verfassungsschutz bescheinigt wird, nie gewalttätig gewesen zu sein”, sagte Schiffauer.

20. Juni 2014, 10:01 Uhr

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Former MI6 counter-terrorism chief warns against rush to overhaul UK laws

Exclusive: Don’t alter laws in response to ‘unproven threat’ from homegrown militants in Syria and Iraq, says Richard Barrett

Britain should resist a rush to overhaul its fundamental legal principles in the face of an “unproven threat” from homegrown militants fighting in Syria and Iraq, the former global counter-terrorism director of MI6 has said.

In an interview with the Guardian, Richard Barrett criticised government plans for new laws to tackle British extremists and warned against Boris Johnson’s suggestion that Britons who travel to Iraq or Syria should be presumed guilty of involvement in terrorism unless they can prove their innocence.

“This fundamental tenet of British justice should not be changed even in a minor way for this unproven threat – and it is an unproven threat at the moment,” Barrett said.

In a newspaper column described as “draconian” by the former attorney general, Johnson called for British jihadists to lose their citizenship, proposed the return of control orders and urged David Cameron to intervene against Islamic State (Isis) militarily.

The London mayor wrote that Isis, whom he described as “wackos”, now controls an area the size of Britain and that the government had to be far more effective at preventing Britons from travelling to Syria or Iraq to join them. “The law needs a swift and minor change so that there is a ‘rebuttable presumption’ that all those visiting war areas without notifying the authorities have done so for a terrorist purpose,” he wrote.

But Barrett, formerly a counter-terrorism chief at both MI5 and MI6, said the government needed to better understand the domestic threat posed by Isis before introducing new laws. “I don’t think we should change the laws without a very much more thorough assessment and understanding of the threat,” he said.

“Sure, there’s a problem with people who go to Syria and they may have broken the law if they joined organisations like Islamic State and al-Nusra Front, but there should be some sort of effort to prove that, rather than assume they’ve done so.”

The home secretary, Theresa May, said last week that banning orders for extremist groups would be considered again – even if they “fall short of the legal threshold for terrorist proscription” – alongside powers to stop radical preachers. However, Barrett said tighter rules could curb the free speech of groups whose sermons do not “obviously and directly incite to violence”. He said: “The banning of groups that fall short of violent extremism but appear to promote it should follow a clearer analysis of what makes people leave the UK to join a group like the self-described Islamic State. Maybe it will, but if so, I have not seen the analysis and wonder on what it will be based.”

Dominic Grieve, the Conservative former attorney general, also suggested it was unwise to propose major changes to the law on the basis of a single horrific incident such as the killing of the American journalist James Foley.

Grieve dismissed Johnson’s proposal as “draconian” because it would throw out the ordinary principles of common law and potentially lead to the prosecution of people who legitimately travelled to war-torn Middle East states.

He told BBC Radio 4’s World at One: “Boris Johnson is suggesting that effectively there should be rebuttable presumption, so that the moment it was established by a prosecutor that you had gone to a country like Syria the burden would be on you to show that you were acting innocently.”

The former minister also dismissed the call from Johnson and Conservative backbencher David Davis for British jihadists to be stripped of their citizenship even if they were born in the UK and hold no alternative citizenship. Under current rules the Home Office can only do this to naturalised Britons, or those with dual citizenship. The proposal was “entirely contrary to a United Nations convention of which we are signatories”, Grieve said. “If we are about to rip up a UN convention, we need to think through the consequences.”

The deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, added his concerns to calls for new laws, describing the tougher control orders introduced by the Labour government as “fundamentally flawed” and stressing that Britain already has a number of measures to tackle potential terrorists. “I sometimes wish it was as simple as Boris Johnson implies: all we need to do is pass a law and everything will be well,” he said during a visit to India.

Johnson has a track record of using his Daily Telegraph platform to float alternatives to government policy and No 10 sources were phlegmatic about his intervention, pointing out that the prime minister and Home Office had already set out what the government is doing to counter the Isis threat internationally and domestically in lengthy newspaper articles this summer.

But the fact that figures such as Johnson and Davis are so keen to float alternative measures, even ones that are legally questionable, indicates that Cameron and May are failing to persuade colleagues that they are doing everything necessary.

The net appeared to be closing on the British man dubbed “Jihadi John” at the weekend when the British ambassador to the US, Sir Peter Westmacott, said voice recognition technology had been used to pin down the identity of the man.

But the MI5-led investigation has not so far deterred other British militants from boasting about their actions in Syria. Nasser Muthana, 20, a former medical student from Cardiff, on Monday bragged on Twitter about forcing members of the Yazidi community to convert to Islam and undergo a form of spiritual healing – days after claiming there were “hundreds of Yazidi slave women” in Syria.

Muthana tweeted: “Converting Yezidis even the jins of them lol, alhamdulillah ruqyah today Yezidi jin accepted islam and knows conditions of la ilaha ilallah”.

Earlier on Sunday, the British jihadist took to Twitter to tell a US TV network it should be “working to save stevie boy” – the second hostage held in the Isis video of James Foley’s murder – instead of trying to identify Foley’s killer.

Muthana, who appeared in a widely circulated recruitment video for Isis, travelled to Syria with his brother, Aseel, 17. Previously, he has boasted about acquiring bomb-making skills and posted pictures apparently showing the charred remains of Syrian army soldiers.

In recent days, the Cardiff-born militant has bragged about the number of Yazidi captives, tweeting: “We have hundreds of Yazidi slave women now in Syria, how about that for news!” Responding to a tide of online criticism about his slave comments, Muthana wrote: “When I spoke about slave everyone jumped on me muslims and non muslims alike … so I stayed quiet and will stay quiet but everyone will soon find out when I get my own concubines lool, slave markets are on full blast.”

The Muthana brothers, who grew up in Cardiff after their father moved there from Yemen as a teenager, are among an estimated 500 young men from Britain who have flown to Syria to join the rebels.

One of Muthana’s associates, using the name Abu Dhar Alhumajir, wrote in another message: “The price of one slave girl is about $1,500-2,000. I think female captives/slaves would entice a lot of people.”

On Sunday, Alhumajir – thought to be a Briton of Somali origin – tried to recruit two other Twitter users to fight alongside Isis in Syria. He told one Twitter user that women were joining militants every day, “the problem is you not trying hard enough full stop”. He added: “U should feel ashamed that sister are making hijra while u complain about how hard it is”.

Josh Halliday and Andrew Sparrow
The Guardian, Monday 25 August 2014 21.42 BST

Find this story at 25 August 2014

© 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies.

Isis not comparable to al-Qaida pre-9/11, US intelligence officials say

Leading counterterrorism expert said despite group’s dramatic rise, it does not pose a direct threat of major attack on a US city

US intelligence officials have concluded that Islamic State (Isis) militants do not currently pose a direct threat of a major attack on an American city and, despite the group’s dramatic rise to prominence in the Middle East, is not comparable to “al-Qaida pre-9/11”.

Details of the current US intelligence community’s assessment of Isis were made public on Wednesday in rare public remarks by Matthew Olsen, the departing director of the National Counterterrorism Center.

Speaking a day after a video emerged showing Isis fighters murdering Steven Sotloff, the second American journalist beheaded by the group in a month, Olsen conceded the militant group had made dramatic territorial gains in Syria and Iraq, and displayed an unprecedented skill at using the internet for propaganda.

He said it viewed itself as “the new leader in the global jihadist movement” although US intelligence officials maintain al-Qaida currently poses a more serious adversary.

But Olsen played down the risk of a spectacular al-Qaida-style attack in a major US or even European city, adding: “There is no credible information that [Isis] is planning to attack the United States”. He added there was “no indication at this point of a cell of foreign fighters operating in the United States – full stop”.

The leading counterterrorism expert said said it was “spot on” to conclude that Isis is significantly more limited than al-Qaida was, for example, in the run-up to 9/11, when it had underground cells across Europe and the US. “We certainly aren’t there,” Olsen said. “[Isis] is not al-Qaida pre-9/11”.

His assessment – effectively the view of the US government’s foremost terrorist monitoring agency – contrasts with the flurry of reports indicating alarm and even panic in western governments over the prospect of foreign fighters returning from Syria and Iraq.

The response has been particularly heated in the UK, the source of as many as 500 fighters who have traveled to the region to fight with Isis. The masked militant who appeared on video beheading both Sotloff and another American journalist, James Foley, is British, and the UK government has vowed a fierce response against returning jihadists.

Olsen said that returning fighters were what the US was “most concerned about”, but said they were most likely to commit lone attacks and played down the chances of a more sophisticated terrorist atrocity.

In comments at the Brookings think tank, he charted the rapid rise of Isis, which has exploited the three-year civil war in Syria, making stunning territorial gains, carving out a sanctuary from which to coordinate its expansion across northern Iraq. He said the group now commands 10,000 fighters and has laid claim to an area of Syria and Iraq roughly the size of the UK.

In doing so, the militant organisation has gained weapons, equipment and helped build on a financial war chest which, the US estimates, grows by $1m each day from illicit oil sales, smuggling and ransom payments.

But Olsen cautioned: “As dire as all of this sounds, from my vantage point it is important that we keep this threat in perspective and we take a moment to consider it in the context of the overall terrorist landscape.” He added that the core al-Qaida remained the dominant group in the global jihadist movement, even if though it has recently been outpaced by Isis’s sophisticated propaganda machine.

Olsen said that more than 1,000 Europeans and more than 100 Americans are believed to have traveled to the Syria to fight in the civil war, and a substantial portion are believed to have aligned themselves with Isis.

He acknowledged the risk they could return to their countries of origin, or travel to other locations in the Middle East, to attack other western targets. He said that “left unchecked, [foreign fighters loyal to Isis] will seek to carry out attacks closer to home”.

But he said the potential risk was of “individuals – one, two” attacking the US, rather than a coordinated, larger-scale atrocity. The acutest threat, Olsen insisted, was against US assets and personnel in the region, particularly in Baghdad. An attack on the US mainland was more likely to be “a smaller scale attack; brutal, lethal, but nothing like a 9/11 kind of attack”.

Paul Lewis in Washington
Wednesday 3 September 2014 21.06 BST

Find this story at 3 September 2014

© 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies.

How ISIS Evades the CIA America’s high-tech spies aren’t equipped to penetrate low-tech terrorist organizations.

The inability of the United States government to anticipate the ISIS offensive that has succeeded in taking control of a large part of Iraq is already being referred to as an “intelligence failure.” To be sure, Washington has unparalleled technical capabilities to track money movements and to obtain information from the airwaves. It is adept at employing surveillance drones and other highly classified intrusive electronic methods, but there is an inherent problem with that kind of information collection: knowing how the process works in even the most general way can make it relatively easy to counter by an opponent who can go low tech.

Terrorists now know that using cell phones is dangerous, that transferring money using commercial accounts can be detected, that moving around when a drone is overhead can be fatal, and that communicating by computer is likely to be intercepted and exposed even when encrypted. So they rely on couriers to communicate and move money while also avoiding the use of the vulnerable technologies whenever they can, sometimes using public phones and computers only when they are many miles away from their operational locations, and changing addresses, SIM cards, and telephone numbers frequently to confuse the monitoring.

Technical intelligence has another limitation: while it is excellent on picking up bits and pieces and using sophisticated computers to work through the bulk collection of chatter, it is largely unable to learn the intentions of terrorist groups and leaders. To do that you need spies, ideally someone who is placed in the inner circle of an organization and who is therefore privy to decision making.

Since 9/11 U.S. intelligence has had a poor record in recruiting agents to run inside terrorist organizations—or even less toxic groups that are similarly structured—in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Information collected relating to the internal workings of al-Qaeda, the Taliban, dissident Sunni groups in Iraq, and now ISIS has been, to say the least, disappointing. To be fair this is often because security concerns limit the ability of American case officers to operate in areas that are considered too dangerous, which is generally speaking where the terrorist targets are actually located. Also, hostile groups frequently run their operations through franchise arrangements where much of the decision making is both local and funded without large cash transfers from a central organization, making the activity hard to detect.

In the case of ISIS, even the number of its adherents is something of a guesstimate, though a figure of 5,000 fighters might not be too far off the mark. Those supporters are likely a mixed bag, some motivated to various degrees by the ISIS core agenda to destroy the Syrian and Iraqi governments in order to introduce Sharia law and recreate the Caliphate, while others might well be along for the ride. Some clearly are psychological outsiders who are driven by the prospect of being on a winning team. They are in any event normally scattered over a large geographical area and divided into cells that have little in the way of lateral connection. They would, however, be responsive to operational demands made by the leadership, headed by Iraqi Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Moving in small groups while lacking a huge baggage train or infrastructure, it was relatively easy to concentrate to push into Iraq and link up with dissident Sunni tribesmen without necessarily coming to the attention of spies in the sky, American drones flying out of Turkey.

It should be assumed that the U.S. intelligence community has no spies inside ISIS at any level where it might be possible to collect significant or actionable information. In the past, successful penetration of a terrorist organization has come about when a dissident member of the group surfaces and volunteers his services in return for money or other considerations. This is how law enforcement and intelligence agencies broke the Euro terrorists who were active in the 1970s and 1980s, but its success depended on the radical groups being composed largely of middle-class students who were ideologically driven but by nature not necessarily loyal to a political cause or its leaders. The defector model does not appear to have been repeated successfully recently with the demographically quite different radical groups active in Syria, at least not at a level where actionable intelligence might be produced.

Lacking a volunteer, the alternative would be to run what is referred to as a seeding operation. Given U.S. intelligence’s probable limited physical access to any actual terrorist groups operating in Syria or Iraq any direct attempt to penetrate the organization through placing a source inside would be difficult in the extreme. Such efforts would most likely be dependent on the assistance of friendly intelligence services in Turkey or Jordan.

Both Turkey and Jordan have reported that terrorists have entered their countries by concealing themselves in the large numbers of refugees that the conflict in Syria has produced, and both are concerned as they understand full well that groups like ISIS will be targeting them next. Some of the infiltrating adherents to radical groups have certainly been identified and detained by the respective intelligence services of those two countries, and undoubtedly efforts have been made to “turn” some of those in custody to send them back into Syria (and more recently Iraq) to report on what is taking place. Depending on what arrangements might have been made to coordinate the operations, the “take” might well be shared with the United States and other friendly governments.

But seeding is very much hit or miss, as someone who has been out of the loop of his organization might have difficulty working his way back in. He will almost certainly be regarded with some suspicion by his peers and would be searched and watched after his return, meaning that he could not take back with him any sophisticated communications devices no matter how cleverly they are concealed. This would make communicating any information obtained back to one’s case officers in Jordan or Turkey difficult or even impossible.

All of the above is meant to suggest that intelligence agencies that were created to oppose and penetrate other nation-state adversaries are not necessarily well equipped to go after terrorists, particularly when those groups are ethnically cohesive or recruited through family and tribal vetting, and able to operate in a low-tech fashion to negate the advantages that advanced technologies provide. Claiming intelligence failure has a certain appeal given the $80 billion dollars that is spent annually to keep the government informed, but it must also be observed that it is also a convenient club for Republicans to use to beat on the president, which might indeed be the prime motivation.

The real problem for Washington is that penetrating second-generation terrorist groups such as those operating today is extremely difficult, and is not merely a matter of throwing more money and resources into the hopper, which has become the U.S. government response of choice when confronted by a problem. Success against terrorists will require working against them at their own level, down in the trenches where they recruit and train their cadres. It will necessitate a whole new way of thinking about the target and how to go after it, and will inevitably result in the deaths of many more American case officers as they will be exposed without elaborate security networks if they are doing their jobs the right way. It is quite likely that this is a price that the U.S. government will ultimately be unwilling to pay, and that unreasonable expectations from Congress will only result in more claims that there have been yet more intelligence failures.

By PHILIP GIRALDI • July 23, 2014
Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Council for the National Interest.

Find this story at 23 July 2014

Copyright http://www.theamericanconservative.com

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi: How US involvement in Iraq shaped the rise of ISIS leader

BAGHDAD: When American forces raided a home near Fallujah during the turbulent 2004 offensive against the Iraqi Sunni insurgency, they got the hard-core militants they had been looking for. They also picked up an apparent hanger-on, an Iraqi man in his early 30s whom they knew nothing about.

The Americans duly registered his name as they processed him and the others at the Camp Bucca detention center: Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badry.

That once-peripheral figure has become known to the world now as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-appointed caliph of the Islamic State, and the architect of its violent campaign to redraw the map of the Middle East.

“He was a street thug when we picked him up in 2004,” said a Pentagon official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters. “It’s hard to imagine we could have had a crystal ball then that would tell us he’d become head of ISIS,” he said, using a former abbreviation of the Islamic State group.

At every turn, Baghdadi’s rise has been shaped by the United States’ involvement in Iraq – most of the political changes that fueled his fight, or led to his promotion, were born directly from some American action. And now he has forced a new chapter of that intervention, after Islamic State military successes and brutal massacres of minorities in its advance prompted President Barack Obama to order airstrikes in Iraq.

Baghdadi has seemed to revel in the fight, promising that the group would soon be in “direct confrontation” with the United States.

Still, when he first latched on to al-Qaida, in the early years of the US occupation, it was not as a fighter, but rather as a religious figure. He has since declared himself caliph of the Islamic world, and pressed a violent campaign to root out religious minorities, like Shiites and Yazidis, that has brought condemnation even from al-Qaida leaders.

Despite his reach for global stature, Baghdadi, in his early 40s, in many ways has remained more mysterious than any of the major jihadi figures who preceded him.

American and Iraqi officials have teams of intelligence analysts and operatives dedicated to stalking him, but have had little success in piecing together the arc of his life. And his recent appearance at a mosque in Mosul to deliver a sermon, a video of which was distributed online, was the first time many of his followers had ever seen him.

Baghdadi is said to have a doctorate in Islamic studies from a university in Baghdad, and was a mosque preacher in his hometown, Samarra. He also has an attractive pedigree, claiming to trace his ancestry to the Quraysh Tribe of the Prophet Muhammad.

Beyond that, almost every biographical point about Baghdadi is occluded by some confusion or another.

The Pentagon says that Baghdadi, after being arrested in Fallujah in early 2004, was released that December with a large group of other prisoners deemed low level. But Hisham al-Hashimi, an Iraqi scholar who has researched Baghdadi’s life, sometimes on behalf of Iraqi intelligence, said that Baghdadi had spent five years in an American detention facility where, like many Islamic State fighters now on the battlefield, he became more radicalized.

Hashimi said that Baghdadi grew up in a poor family in a farming village near Samarra, and that his family was Sufi – a strain of Islam known for its tolerance. He said Baghdadi came to Baghdad in the early 1990s, and over time became more radical.

Early in the insurgency, he gravitated toward a new jihadi group led by the flamboyant Jordanian militant operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Though Zarqawi’s group, al-Qaida in Iraq, began as a mostly Iraqi insurgent organization, it claimed allegiance to the global Qaida leadership, and over the years brought in more and more foreign leadership figures.

It is unclear how much prominence Baghdadi enjoyed under Zarqawi. Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer now at the Brookings Institution, recently wrote that Baghdadi had spent several years in Afghanistan, working alongside Zarqawi. But some officials say the American intelligence community does not believe Baghdadi has ever set foot outside the conflict zones of Iraq and Syria, and that he was never particularly close to Zarqawi.

The American operation that killed Zarqawi in 2006 was a huge blow to the organization’s leadership. But it was years later that Baghdadi got his chance to take the reins.

As the Americans were winding down their war in Iraq, they focused on trying to wipe out al-Qaida in Iraq’s remaining leadership. In April 2010, a joint operation by Iraqi and American forces made the biggest strike against the group in years, killing its top two figures near Tikrit.

A month later, the group issued a statement announcing new leadership, and Baghdadi was at the top of the list. The Western intelligence community scrambled for information.

“Any idea who these guys are?” wrote an analyst at Stratfor, a private intelligence company that then worked for the US government in Iraq, in an email that has since been released by WikiLeaks. “These are likely nom de guerres, but are they associated with anyone we know?”

In June 2010, Stratfor published a report on the group that considered its prospects in the wake of the killings of the top leadership. The report stated, “the militant organization’s future for success looks bleak.”

Still, the report said, referring to the Islamic State of Iraq, then an alternative name for al-Qaida in Iraq, “I.S.I.’s intent to establish an Islamic caliphate in Iraq has not diminished.”

The Sunni tribes of eastern Syria and Iraq’s Anbar and Ninevah provinces have long had ties that run deeper than national boundaries, and the Islamic State group was built on those relationships. Accordingly, as the group’s fortunes waned in Iraq, it found a new opportunity in the fight against President Bashar Assad’s government in Syria.

As more moderate Syrian rebel groups were beaten down by the Syrian security forces and their allies, the Islamic State group increasingly took control of the fight, in part on the strength of weapons and funding from its operations in Iraq and from jihadist supporters in the Arab world.

That fact has led US lawmakers and political figures, including former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, to accuse Obama of aiding the group’s rise in two ways: first by completely withdrawing American troops from Iraq in 2011, then by hesitating to arm more moderate Syrian opposition groups early in that conflict.

“I cannot help but wonder what would have happened if we had committed to empowering the moderate Syrian opposition last year,” Rep. Eliot L. Engel, the senior Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said during a recent hearing on the crisis in Iraq. “Would ISIS have grown as it did?”

But well before then, American actions were critical to Baghdadi’s rise in more direct ways. He is Iraqi to the core, and his extremist ideology was sharpened and refined in the crucible of the US occupation.

The American invasion presented Baghdadi and his allies with a ready-made enemy and recruiting draw. And the American ouster of Saddam Hussein, whose brutal dictatorship had kept a lid on extremist Islamist movements, gave Baghdadi the freedom for his radical views to flourish.

In contrast to Zarqawi, who increasingly looked outside of Iraq for leadership help, Baghdadi has surrounded himself by a tight clique of former Baath Party military and intelligence officers from Saddam’s regime who know how to fight.

Analysts and Iraqi intelligence officers believe that after Baghdadi took over the organization he appointed a Saddam-era officer, a man known as Hajji Bakr, as his military commander, overseeing operations and a military council that included three other officers of the former regime’s security forces.

Hajji Bakr was believed to have been killed last year in Syria. Analysts believe that he and at least two of the three other men on the military council were held at various times by the Americans at Camp Bucca.

Baghdadi has been criticized by some in the wider jihadi community for his reliance on former Baathists. But for many others, Baghdadi’s successes have trumped these critiques.

“He has credibility because he runs half of Iraq and half of Syria,” said Brian Fishman, a counterterrorism researcher at the New American Foundation.

Syria may have been a temporary refuge and proving ground, but Iraq has always been his stronghold and his most important source of financing. Now, it has become the main venue for Baghdadi’s state-building exercise, as well.

Although the group’s capture of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, appeared to catch the US intelligence community and the Iraqi government by surprise, Baghdadi’s mafia-like operations in the city had long been crucial to his strategy of establishing the Islamic caliphate.

His group earned an estimated $12 million a month, according to US officials, from extortion schemes in Mosul, which it used to finance operations in Syria. Before June, the Islamic State group controlled neighborhoods of the city by night, collecting money and slipping in to the countryside by day.

The United Nations Security Council is considering new measures aimed at crippling the group’s finances, according to Reuters, by threatening sanctions on supporters. Such action is likely to have little effect because, by now, the group is almost entirely self-financing, through its seizing oil fields, extortion and tax collection in the territories it controls. As it gains territory in Iraq, it has found new ways to generate revenue. For instance, recently in Hawija, a village near Kirkuk, the group demanded that all former soldiers or police officers pay an $850 “repentance fine.”

Though he has captured territory through brutal means, Baghdadi has also taken practical steps at state-building, and even shown a lighter side. In Mosul, the Islamic State has held a “fun day” for kids, distributed gifts and food during Eid al-Fitr, held Quran recitation competitions, started bus services and opened schools.

Baghdadi appears to be drawing on a famous jihadi text that has long inspired al-Qaida: “The Management of Savagery,” written by a Saudi named Abu Bakr Naji.

Fishman called the text, “Che Guevara warmed over for jihadis.” William McCants, an analyst at the Brookings Institution who in 2005, as a fellow at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, translated the book in to English, once described it as “the seven highly effective habits of jihadi leaders.”

American officials say Baghdadi runs a more efficient organization than Zarqawi did, and has unchallenged control over the organization, with authority delegated to his lieutenants. “He doesn’t have to sign off on every detail,” said one senior US counterterrorism official. “He gives them more discretion and flexibility.”

A senior Pentagon official said of Baghdadi, with grudging admiration: “He’s done a good job of rallying and organizing a beaten-down organization. But he may now be overreaching.”

But even before the civil war in Syria presented him with a growth opportunity, Baghdadi had been taking steps in Iraq – something akin to a corporate restructuring – that laid the foundation for the group’s resurgence, just as the Americans were leaving. He picked off rivals through assassinations, orchestrated prison breaks to replenish his ranks of fighters and diversified his sources of funding through extortion, to wean the group off outside funding from al-Qaida’s central authorities.

“He was preparing to split from al-Qaida,” Hashimi said.

Now Baghdadi commands not just a terrorist organization, but, according to Brett McGurk, the top State Department official on Iraq policy, “a full blown army.”

Speaking at a recent congressional hearing, McGurk said, “It is worse than al-Qaida.”

New York Times Aug 11, 2014, 04.44PM IST
By Tim Arango and Eric Schmitt

Find this story at 11 August 2014

© 2014 Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd.

Profile: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi made his first appearance on video when he gave a sermon in Mosul in July

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), has been careful to reveal little about himself and his whereabouts.

Before appearing in a video delivering a sermon in Mosul in July, there were only two authenticated photos of him.

Even his own fighters reportedly do not speak about seeing him face to face.

The ISIS chief also appears to wear a mask to address his commanders, earning the nickname “the invisible sheikh”.

A handout picture released by the Iraqi Ministry of Interior in January 2014 shows a photograph purportedly of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
The Iraqi interior ministry released this image of Baghdadi in January 2014
But Baghdadi – a nom de guerre, rather than his real name – has good reason to maintain a veil of mystery, says the BBC’s Security Correspondent, Frank Gardner.

One of his predecessors, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi who headed the most violent jihadist group in Iraq until his death, was a high-profile showman whose secret location was eventually tracked down. He was killed in a US bombing raid in 2006.

Image from a militant website showing a convoy of vehicles and fighters from the al-Qaida-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters in Iraq’s Anbar Province
ISIS militants have previously seized parts of Iraq’s Anbar province and more recently Mosul and Tikrit
The leader of al-Qaeda’s current incarnation in Iraq may be a shadowy figure, but his organisation ISIS is pulling in thousands of new recruits and has become one of the most cohesive militias in the Middle East, our correspondent adds.

Highly organised
Baghdadi is believed to have been born in Samarra, north of Baghdad, in 1971.

Reports suggest he was a cleric in a mosque in the city around the time of the US-led invasion in 2003.

Some believe he was already a militant jihadist during the rule of Saddam Hussein. Others suggest he was radicalised during the four years he was held at Camp Bucca, a US facility in southern Iraq where many al-Qaeda commanders were detained.

Image of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi taken from the US government National Counterterrorism Center
The US government released an image of the ISIS leader and offered a reward of $10m
He emerged as the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, one of the groups that later became ISIS, in 2010, and rose to prominence during the attempted merger with al-Nusra Front in Syria.

He has not sworn allegiance to the leader of the al-Qaeda network, Zawahiri, who has urged ISIS to focus on Iraq and leave Syria to al-Nusra.

Baghdadi and his fighters have openly defied the al-Qaeda chief, leading some commentators to believe he now holds higher prestige among many Islamist militants.

“The true heir to Osama bin Laden may be ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,” David Ignatius wrote in The Washington Post.

Zawahiri still has a lot of power by virtue of his franchises in Pakistan and the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa.

But Baghdadi has a reputation as a highly organised and ruthless battlefield tactician, which analysts say makes his organisation more attractive to young jihadists than that of Zawahiri, an Islamic theologian.

In October 2011, the US officially designated Baghdadi as “terrorist” and offered a $10m (£5.8m; 7.3m euros) reward for information leading to his capture or death.

It notes Baghdadi’s aliases, including Abu Duaa and Dr Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Samarrai.

As well as the uncertainty surrounding his true identity, his whereabouts are also unclear with reports he was in Raqqa in Syria.

So there remain more questions than answers about the leader of one of the world’s most dangerous jihadist groups.

5 July 2014 Last updated at 18:01 GMT

Find this story at 5 July 2014

BBC © 2014

ISIS Leader: ‘See You in New York’

When Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi walked away from a U.S. detention camp in 2009, the future leader of ISIS issued some chilling final words to reservists from Long Island.
The Islamist extremist some are now calling the most dangerous man in the world had a few parting words to his captors as he was released from the biggest U.S. detention camp in Iraq in 2009.

“He said, ‘I’ll see you guys in New York,’” recalls Army Col. Kenneth King, then the commanding officer of Camp Bucca.

King didn’t take these words from Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as a threat. Al-Baghdadi knew that many of his captors were from New York, reservists with the 306 Military Police Battalion, a unit based on Long Island that includes numerous numerous members of the NYPD and the FDNY. The camp itself was named after FDNY Fire Marshal Ronald Bucca, who was killed at the World Trade Center in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

King figured that al-Baghdadi was just saying that he had known all along that it was all essentially a joke, that he had only to wait and he would be freed to go back to what he had been doing.

“Like, ‘This is no big thing, I’ll see you on the block,’” King says.

King had not imagined that in less that five years he would be seeing news reports that al-Baghdadi was the leader of ISIS, the ultra-extremist army that was sweeping through Iraq toward Baghdad.

“I’m not surprised that it was someone who spent time in Bucca but I’m a little surprised it was him,” King says. “He was a bad dude, but he wasn’t the worst of the worst.”

King allows that along with being surprised he was frustrated on a very personal level.

“We spent how many missions and how many soldiers were put at risk when we caught this guy and we just released him,” King says.

During the four years that al-Baghdadi was in custody, there had been no way for the Americans to predict what a danger he would become. Al-Baghdadi hadn’t even been assigned to Compound 14, which was reserved for the most virulently extremist Sunnis.

“A lot of times, the really bad guys tended to operate behind the scenes because they wanted to be invisible,” the other officer says.
“The worst of the worst were kept in one area,” King says. “I don’t recall him being in that group.”

Al-Baghdadi was also apparently not one of the extremists who presided over Sharia courts that sought to enforce fundamentalist Islamic law among their fellow prisoners. One extremist made himself known after the guards put TV sets outside the 16-foot chain-link fence that surrounded each compound. An American officer saw a big crowd form in front of one, but came back a short time later to see not a soul.

“Some guy came up and shooed them all away because TV was Western,” recalls the officer, who asked not to be named. “So we identified who that guy was, put a report in his file, kept him under observation for other behaviors.”

The officer says the guards kept constant watch for clues among the prisoners for coalescing groups and ascending leaders.

“You can tell when somebody is eliciting leadership skills, flag him, watch him further, how much leadership they’re excerpting and with whom,” the other officer says. “You have to constantly stay after it because it constantly changes, sometimes day by day.”

The guards would seek to disrupt the courts along with and any nascent organizations and hierarchies by moving inmates to different compounds, though keeping the Sunnis and the Shiites separate.

“The Bloods with the Bloods and the Crips with the Crips, that kind of thing,” King says.

The guards would then move the prisoners again and again. That would also keep the prisoners from spotting any possible weaknesses in security.

“The detainees have nothing but time,” King says. “They’re looking at patterns, they’re looking at routines, they’re looking for opportunities.”

As al-Baghdadi and the 26,000 other prisoners were learning the need for patience in studying the enemy, the guards would be constantly searching for homemade weapons fashioned from what the prisoners dug up, the camp having been built on a former junkyard.

“People think of a detainee operation, they think it’s a sleepy Hogan’s Heroes-type camp,” the other officer says. “And it’s nothing of the sort.”

Meanwhile, al-Baghdadi’s four years at Camp Bucca would have been a perpetual lesson in the importance of avoiding notice.

“A lot of times, the really bad guys tended to operate behind the scenes because they wanted to be invisible,” the other officer says.

King seemed confident that he and his guards with their New York street sense would have known if al-Baghdadi had in fact been prominent among the super-bad guys when he was at Camp Bucca.

King had every reason to think he had seen the last of al-Baghdadi in the late summer of 2009, when this seemingly unremarkable prisoner departed with a group of others on one of the C-17 cargo-plane flights that ferried them to a smaller facility near Baghdad. Camp Bucca closed not along afterward.

Al-Baghdadi clearly remembered some of the lessons of his time there. He has made no videos, unlike Osama bin Laden and many of the other extremist leaders. The news reports might not have had a photo of him at all were it not for the one taken by the Americans when he was first captured in 2005.

That is the face that King was so surprised to see this week as the man who had become the absolute worst of the worst, so bad that even al Qaeda had disowned him. The whole world was stunned as al-Baghdadi now told his enemies “I’ll see you in Baghdad.”

WORLD NEWS 06.14.14

Michael Daly

Find this story at 14 June 2014

© 2014 The Daily Beast Company LLC

Revealed: How Obama SET FREE the merciless terrorist warlord now leading the ISIS horde blazing a trail of destruction through Iraq

The U.S. once had Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shams (ISIS) leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi in custody at a detention facility in Iraq, it was revealed Friday
Al Baghdadi was among the prisoners released in 2009 from the U.S.’s now-closed Camp Bucca near Umm Qasr in Iraq
It is unclear why the U.S. let the merciless al Qaeda leader slip away
Al Baghadadi and his troops took the Iraqi cities of Fallujah and Ramadi earlier this year and conquered Tikrit and Mosul within the last several days
They are now bearing down on Baghdad, burning down everything that stands in their way and carrying out executions on Iraqi civilians, soldiers and police officers
ISIS posted an image today of an officer’s decapitated head tweeted with sickening message: ‘This is our ball. It’s made of skin #WorldCup’

The United States once had Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shams (ISIS) leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi in custody at a detention facility in Iraq, but president Barack Obama let him go, it was revealed on Friday.
Al Baghdadi was among the prisoners released in 2009 from the U.S.’s now-closed Camp Bucca near Umm Qasr in Iraq.
But now five years later he is leading the army of ruthless extremists bearing down on Baghdad who want to turn the country into an Islamist state by blazing a bloody trail through towns and cities, executing Iraqi soldiers, beheading police officers and gunning down innocent civilians.

These are the only two known photos of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. He is seen here on the left as a prisoner half a decade ago and on the right more recently as the shadowy head of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, ISIL, also known as ISIS

These are the only two known photos of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. He is seen here on the left as a prisoner half a decade ago and on the right more recently as the shadowy head of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, ISIL, also known as ISIS

This uundated handout picture of jihadi leader of The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, also known as Abu Du’a, was provided by the Department of State. The U.S. government has a $10 million bounty out for the al Qaeda leader

This uundated handout picture of jihadi leader of The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, also known as Abu Du’a, was provided by the Department of State. The U.S. government has a $10 million bounty out for the al Qaeda leader
It is unclear why the U.S. let the merciless al Qaeda leader slip away, however, one theory proposed by The Telegraph is that al Baghadadi was granted amnesty along with thousands of other detainees because the U.S. was preparing to pull out of Iraq.
The United States began withdrawing troops from Iraq in 2010,and Camp Bucca closed in 2011 along with the United States’ other military facilities as President Obama declared that the War in Iraq had come to an end.
Another possible explanation is that al Baghadadi did not become a jihadist until after his release from Camp Bucca.

More…
Iran offers to work WITH the US to stop the ISIS horde from overrunning Baghdad
Ancient hatreds tearing apart the Middle East: How 1,400-year-old feud between Shia and Sunni Muslims flared into life with the fall of dictators like Gaddafi and Saddam… and threatens to swallow Iraq
Planeloads of American diplomats and contractors EVACUATE from northern Iraq as Obama says he ‘won’t rule out anything’ in stopping jihadist violence spreading throughout the country
The story of how Baghadadi ended up in U.S. custody in the first place and later came to be the leader of a violent terrorist group is the stuff of legend.
It is said by some that al Baghadadi was in the wrong place at the wrong time when he was picked up by the U.S. military, a farmer who got caught up in a massive sweep. It was at Camp Bucca that he was radicalized and became a follower of Osama Bin Laden.
Another version of the story is that al Baghadadi, who also goes by the alias of Abu Duaa, was an Islamic fundamentalist before the U.S. invaded Iraq and he became a leader in al Qaeda’s network before he was arrested and detained by American forces in 2005.
‘Abu Duaa was connected to the intimidation, torture and murder of local civilians in Qaim,’ according to a 2005 U.S. intelligence report.
‘He would kidnap individuals or entire families, accuse them, pronounce sentence and then publicly execute them.’
Crazed: Jihadists are carrying out summary executions on civilians, soldiers and police officers including this police major after taking control of large swathes of Iraq
+11
Crazed: Jihadists are carrying out summary executions on civilians, soldiers and police officers including this police major after taking control of large swathes of Iraq
Shock and awe: An ISIS propaganda video shows militants blindfolding a Sunni police major in his home before cutting off his head
+11
Shock and awe: An ISIS propaganda video shows militants blindfolding a Sunni police major in his home before cutting off his head
Barbaric: This picture of the police officer’s decapitated head resting on his legs was tweeted with the message: ‘This is our ball. It is made of skin#WorldCup’
+11
Barbaric: This picture of the police officer’s decapitated head resting on his legs was tweeted with the message: ‘This is our ball. It is made of skin#WorldCup’
The U.S. now has a $10 million warrant out out of the brute, who is accused of bombing a mosque in Baghadad in 2011 and killing former Sunni lawmaker Khalid al-Fahdawl.
Al Baghadadi’s use of aliases has made him a difficult man to pin down. The terrorist organizer rarely shows his face – even to his followers. There are only two known pictures of him in existence, and one is from before he was released from prison.
‘We either arrested or killed a man of that name about half a dozen times, he is like a wraith who keeps reappearing, and I am not sure where fact and fiction meet,’ Lieutenant-General Sir Graeme Lamb, a former British special forces commander, told The Telegraph.
‘There are those who want to promote the idea that this man is invincible, when it may actually be several people using the same nom de guerre.’
Al Baghadadi and his troops had already taken key cities of Fallujah and Ramadi in Iraq earlier this year and have conquered the Iraqi cities of Tikrit and Mosul within the last several days.
They are now on the war path to Iraq’s capitol city Baghadad.
The terrorist group’s sudden rise in Iraq has taken the United States mostly by surprise.
President Obama famously said in October of 2011 that the American soldiers leaving Iraq would come home ‘with their heads held high, proud of their success.
‘That is how America’s military efforts in Iraq will end.’
Obama rules out sending troops back to Iraq

President Obama reiterated on Friday that, ‘We will not be sending us troops back into combat in Iraq’
+11
President Obama reiterated on Friday that, ‘We will not be sending us troops back into combat in Iraq’
Faced with the real possibility that Iraq’s capitol could fall into the hands of terrorists, President Obama is now rethinking America’s military engagement in Iraq.
The president said on Thursday that he would consider launching air strikes on al Baghadadi and his followers.
‘What we’ve seen over the last couple of days indicates Iraq’s going to need more help’ from the United States and other nations, Obama said yesterday from the Oval Office.
‘I don’t rule out anything,’ he said, ‘because we do have a stake in making sure that these jihadists are not getting a permanent foothold in Iraq – or Syria, for that matter.’
In his daily briefing with reporters, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney clarified that president Obama was specifically referring to airstrikes.
‘We’re not considering boots on the ground,’ he said.
Thousands of Iraqi soldiers, men and boys captured by ISIS

On the warpath to Baghdad: A graphic showing the town and cities captured by ISIS over the last few days
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On the warpath to Baghdad: A graphic showing the town and cities captured by ISIS over the last few days
Up in arms: Members of Iraqi security forces chant slogans in Baghdad Sunni Islamist militants pressed towards the capital
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Up in arms: Members of Iraqi security forces chant slogans in Baghdad Sunni Islamist militants pressed towards the capital
Sabre-rattling: An Islamic militant issues a call to arms, saying: ‘Declare Allah the Greatest! Allah is the Greatest!’ in a video released by ISIS
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Sabre-rattling: An Islamic militant issues a call to arms, saying: ‘Declare Allah the Greatest! Allah is the Greatest!’ in a video released by ISIS
President Obama reiterated on Friday that, ‘We will not be sending us troops back into combat in Iraq.’
Obama said the U.S. would not get involved at all militarily until Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki and other members of the government demonstrate that they can put aside their secretarian differences and work toward unifying the country.
‘Ultimately it’s up to Iraqis to solve their problems,’ Obama said.
ISIS militants in Mosul stamp on Iraqi military uniforms

Volunteers who have joined the Iraqi Army to fight against the predominantly Sunni militants, who have taken over Mosul and other Northern provinces, gesture from an army truck
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Volunteers who have joined the Iraqi Army to fight against the predominantly Sunni militants, who have taken over Mosul and other Northern provinces, gesture from an army truck
Kurdish Peshmerga forces seize the control of Kirkuk where Iraqi army forces and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant clashed
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Kurdish Peshmerga forces seize the control of Kirkuk where Iraqi army forces and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant clashed
The news that the U.S. may have played a role in the rise of the new Osama bin Laden comes just a week after President Obama released five Taliban commanders in exchange for a U.S. solider being held hostage by the terrorist network.
Lawmakers immediately questioned the logic of the president’s decision, saying that the move could end up backfiring on the U.S. if the five fighters return to the battlefield in Afghanistan once their mandatory one-year stay in Qatar comes to a close.
They are especially concerned given the president’s announcement just days before their release that he plans to withdraw the majority of America’s troops in Afghanistan by the end of this year.
Already one, of the Taliban 5 have vowed to return to Afghanistan to fight American soldiers there once he is able.
‘I wouldn’t be doing it if I thought that it was contrary to American national security,’ the president said at the time.

By FRANCESCA CHAMBERS
PUBLISHED: 15:55 GMT, 13 June 2014 | UPDATED: 19:20 GMT, 13 June 2014

Find this story at 13 June 2014

© Associated Newspapers Ltd

The Secret Life of ISIS Leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

The biggest threat to Middle East security is as much a mystery as a menace — a 42-year-old Iraqi who went from a U.S. detention camp to the top of the jihadist universe with a whisper of a backstory and a $10 million bounty on his head.

He’s known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, head of the ruthless Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham, and he oversees thousands of fighters in his quest to create a Sunni Islamic caliphate straddling the border of Iraq and Syria.

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His biometrics may have been cataloged by the soldiers who kept him locked up at Camp Bucca in Iraq — where he was recalled as “savvy” but not particularly dangerous — but few details about his life and insurgent career have been nailed down.

US to send 275 troops to IraqTODAY

“They know physically who this guy is, but his backstory is just myth,” said Patrick Skinner of the Soufan Group, a security consulting firm.

Jihadist propaganda has painted him as an imam from a religious family descended from noble tribes, and a scholar and a poet with a Ph.D. from Baghdad’s Islamic University, possibly in Arabic.

Skinner said it’s known he was born in Samarra and it’s believed that he was active in Fallujah in the early 2000s, probably as a commander in charge of 50 to 100 men.

He ended up at Camp Bucca in 2005, where the commander in charge of the U.S. detention facility could not have imagined he would one day be capturing city after city in Iraq.

“He didn’t rack up to be one of the worst of the worst,” said Col. Ken King, who oversaw Camp Bucca in 2008 and 2009.

Baghdadi may have tried to manipulate other detainees or instigate reactions from the guards, but he knew the rules well enough not to get in serious trouble.

“The best term I can give him is savvy,” said King, who first spoke to the Daily Beast.

The colonel recalled that when Baghdadi was turned over to the Iraqi authorities in 2009, he remarked, “I’ll see you guys in New York,” an apparent reference to the hometown of many of the guards.

“But it wasn’t menacing. It was like, ‘I’ll be out of custody in no time,'” King said.

“He’s managed this secret persona extremely well and it’s enhanced his group’s prestige.”

If that’s what he meant, he was right. It wasn’t long before Baghdadi was rising through the ranks of the Islamic State of Iraq, the successor to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s al Qaeda in Iraq.

And when the organization’s two leaders were killed in 2010, Baghdadi stepped into the void.

He kept a low profile compared to other militants, with their grandiose taped statements — one key to his survival, analysts said.

“When you start making videos and popping off, it increases the chance you’re going to get caught or killed,” Skinner said. “He’s been around five years, and that’s like cat years. It’s a long time.”

Another benefit to his mystique: recruitment of younger fighters.

“He’s managed this secret persona extremely well, and it’s enhanced his group’s prestige,” said Patrick Johnston of the RAND Corporation. “Young people are really attracted to that.”

Image: Purportedly a photo of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi IRAQI MINISTRY OF INTERIOR / AFP – GETTY IMAGES
A picture released by the Iraqi Interior Ministry shows a photograph purportedly of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
Baghdadi — which is not his birth name — uses a host of aliases and is said to wear a bandana around his face to conceal his identity from everyone except a very tight inner circle that is almost certainly comprised only of Iraqis.

There are only two known photos of him, one put out by the Iraqi Interior Ministry and one by the U.S. Rewards for Justice Program, which has offered $10 million for his capture — a bounty second only to the reward for Ayman al-Zawahiri, chief of al Qaeda’s global network.

Skinner calls Baghdadi “hyper-paranoid,” but Johnston notes that despite the shroud of secrecy, he is apparently closely involved in day-to-day operations.

When the fighting in Syria intensified in the summer of 2011, Baghdadi saw an opportunity and opened a branch there and changed the name of his group to ISIS. He took over oil fields, giving him access to “riches beyond his wildest dreams,” Skinner said.

‘People Are Afraid’: Baghdad on Guard as ISIS AdvancesNIGHTLY NEWS

ISIS reportedly controls tens of millions to $2 billion in total assets — built through criminal activities like smuggling and extortion, according to the State Department — but Baghdadi’s ambitions have more to do with borders than bank accounts.

In a June 2013 audio recording, he vowed to erase Iraq’s “Western-imposed border with Syria” and called on his followers to “tear apart” the governments in both countries.

Now, as ISIS consolidates its hold on the areas it has seized in Iraq and has moved within 60 miles of Baghdad, the world is waiting for Baghdadi’s next move.

Whatever happens, Skinner said he’s likely to remain an enigma.

“No one knows anything about him,” he said. “He can be a Robin Hood. He could be Dr. Evil. It’s very hard to fight a myth.”

BY TRACY CONNOR
First published June 16th 2014, 7:04 pm

Find this story at 16 June 2014

Copyright NBC Newsroom

US gives Syria intelligence on jihadists: sources

BEIRUT: The United States has begun reconnaissance flights over Syria and is sharing intelligence about jihadist deployments with Damascus through Iraqi and Russian channels, sources told AFP Tuesday.

“The cooperation has already begun and the United States is giving Damascus information via Baghdad and Moscow,” one source close to the issue said on condition of anonymity.

The comments came a day after Foreign Minister Walid Moallem said Syria was willing to work with the international community against the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) group, and U.S. officials said they were poised to carry out surveillance flights over Syria.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said foreign drones had been seen over the eastern province of Deir al-Zor Monday.

“Non-Syrian spy planes carried out surveillance of ISIS positions in Deir al-Zor province Monday,” the Britain-based activist group’s director, Rami Abdel-Rahman, said.

Syrian warplanes bombed ISIS positions in several areas of Deir al-Zor Tuesday, an oil-rich province in the east of Syria, most of which is held by the jihadists.

A regional source told AFP that “a Western country has given the Syrian government lists of ISIS targets on Syrian territory since just before air raids on Raqqa, which started in mid-August.”

ISIS, which emerged from Al-Qaeda’s Iraq branch but has since broken with the worldwide network, controls large parts of Deir al-Zor and seized full control of Raqqa province, further up the Euphrates Valley, Sunday, with the capture of the army’s last position, the Tabqa air base.

It has declared an Islamic “caliphate” in areas under its control in Syria and neighboring Iraq, where U.S. war planes have been targeting its positions since August 8.

U.S. officials said Monday that Washington was ready to send spy planes into Syria to track the group’s fighters but that the moves would not be coordinated with the government in Damascus.

Moallem warned Monday that any unilateral military action on its soil would be considered “aggression.”

Aug. 26, 2014 | 06:14 PM (Last updated: August 26, 2014 | 06:15 PM)

Find this story at 26 August 2014

Copyright Agence France Presse

US spy flights over Syria: Prelude to airstrikes on ISIS?

Army Gen. Martin Dempsey says US looking for “more insights” into the activities of Islamic State in Syria.

U.S. Starts Syria Surveillance Flights
Aug. 26 (Bloomberg) — Scarlet Fu reports on today’s top news stories on “Bloomberg Surveillance.” (Source: Bloomberg)

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN — The U.S. has begun surveillance flights over Syria after President Barack Obama gave the OK, U.S. officials said, a move that could pave the way for airstrikes against Islamic State militant targets there.

While the White House says Obama has not approved military action inside Syria, additional intelligence on the militants would likely be necessary before he could take that step. Pentagon officials have been drafting potential options for the president, including airstrikes.

One official said the administration has a need for reliable intelligence from Syria and called the surveillance flights an important avenue for obtaining data.

Recommended: Do you understand the Syria conflict? Take the quiz
Two U.S. officials said Monday that Obama had approved the flights, while another U.S. official said early Tuesday that they had begun. The officials were not authorized to discuss the matter by name, and spoke only on condition of anonymity.

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Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Tuesday that the U.S. wants more clarity on the militants in Syria, but declined to comment on the surveillance flights.

“Clearly the picture we have of ISIS on the Iraqi side is a more refined picture,” said Dempsey, using one of the acronyms for the Islamic State group. “The existence and activities of ISIS on the Syrian side, we have … some insights into that but we certainly want to have more insights into that as we craft a way forward.”

The U.S. began launching strikes against the Islamic State inside Iraq earlier this month, with Obama citing the threat to American personnel in the country and a humanitarian crisis in the north as his rationale. Top Pentagon officials have said the only way the threat from the militants can be fully eliminated is to go after the group inside neighboring Syria as well.

Obama has long resisted taking military action in Syria, a step that would plunge the U.S. into a country ravaged by an intractable civil war. However, the president’s calculus appears to have shifted since the Islamic State announced last week that it had murdered American journalist James Foley, who was held hostage in Syria. The group is also threatening to kill other U.S. citizens being held by the extremists in Syria.

Dempsey, who was in Kabul for the U.S. military’s change of command ceremony, has said he would recommend the military move against the Islamic State militants if there is a threat to the homeland. He didn’t rule out strikes for any other critical reasons, but listed the homeland threat as one key trigger.

Dempsey also said the U.S. has been meeting with allies in the region to help develop a better understanding of the Islamic State group’s threat. He said he believes those talks are now beginning to “set the conditions for some kind of coalition to form.”

He said they are “trying to better understand the threat that ISIS poses, not just in Iraq and Syria but regionally.” Dempsey has said he believes key allies in the region — including Jordan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia — will join the U.S. in quashing the Islamic State group.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Monday that Obama has demonstrated his willingness to order military action when necessary to protect American citizens.

“That is true without regard to international boundaries,” he said.

The White House would not comment on Obama’s decision to authorize surveillance flights over Syria.

“We’re not going to comment on intelligence or operational issues, but as we’ve been saying, we’ll use all the tools at our disposal,” said Caitlin Hayden, spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council.

The U.S. had already stepped up its air surveillance of the Islamic State inside Iraq earlier this year as Obama began considering the prospect of airstrikes there. And the administration has run some surveillance missions over Syria, including ahead of an attempted mission to rescue Foley and other U.S. hostages earlier this summer.

The U.S. special forces who were sent into Syria to carry out the rescue mission did not find the hostages at the location where the military thought they were being held. Officials who confirmed the failed rescue last week said the U.S. was continuing to seek out intelligence on the other hostages’ whereabouts.

Administration officials have said a concern for Obama in seeking to take out the Islamic State inside Syria is the prospect that such a move could unintentionally help embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad. A top Syrian official said Monday any U.S. airstrikes without consent from Syria would be considered an aggression.

The Islamic State is among the groups seeking Assad’s ouster, along with rebel forces aided by the U.S.

The White House on Monday tried to tamp down the notion that action against the Islamic State could bolster Assad, with Earnest saying, “We’re not interested in trying to help the Assad regime.” However, he acknowledged that “there are a lot of cross pressures here.”

By Lolita C. Baldor and Julie Pace, Associated Press AUGUST 26, 2014

Find this story at 26 August 2014

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press.