U.S. MILITARY BATTLES SYRIAN REBELS ONCE SUPPORTED BY CIA, NOW BACKED BY TURKEY

Soldiers from the U.S.-led coalition tasked with battling the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) engaged in a firefight in northern Syria Tuesday with Syrian rebels whose movement was once supported by the CIA.

Ryan Dillon, a spokesperson for the Kuwait-based Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve, said the insurgents opened fire first near the city of Manbij, prompting coalition forces to shoot back before taking cover elsewhere. The belligerent Syrian fighters were not identified, but they were believed to have been part of a Turkey-backed Free Syrian Army group opposed to ISIS, the Syrian military and the mostly Kurdish forces supported by the Pentagon, all of which are vying for control in northern Syria.

“Our forces did receive fire and return fire and then moved to a secure location,” Dillon told Reuters, adding that the coalition has admonished Turkey and told it to tell its allies that such an incident “is not acceptable.”

Dillon went on to say that coalition forces trying to defuse tensions between Syrian Arab rebels and the mostly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces “received fire multiple times over the course of the last two weeks,” even though the U.S. and Turkey are NATO allies. Turkey has criticized U.S. support for Kurdish militias such as the People’s Protection Units (YPG), because it considers them connected to an insurgent Kurdish nationalist movement at home.

While it’s uncertain if there is any link between the two events, the Turkey-backed Free Syrian Army’s Ninth Brigade special forces released images of its fighters conducting training drills in northern Syria around the time reports emerged of the clash. The Free Syrian Army, a loosely knit band of armed opposition groups, was once one of the most powerful revolutionary groups in Syria, but it has suffered years of defections and defeats to jihadist groups also trying to overthrow the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since 2011.

The Free Syrian Army was also the primary recipient of CIA funding to overthrow Assad, but this support diminished as ISIS and Al-Qaeda became increasingly influential among rebels. Turkey attempted to unify the remains of the Free Syrian Army in northern Syria in May, and reports emerged in July that the Trump administration had cut all CIA funding to rebel groups that refused to stop fighting Assad and at times clashed with the Pentagon-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, which is now the U.S.’s primary partner in Syria.

The Kurd-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces have taken more than half of ISIS’s de facto capital of Raqqa since storming the city in June. Syria’s armed forces, backed by Russia and Iran, have also managed to return to Assad large swaths of the country lost to rebels and jihadists. Both sides have their eyes set on the eastern city of Deir ez-Zor, which has been under ISIS siege since at least 2014.

Despite tensions and even violence between the U.S.-led coalition and pro-government forces in past months, the Trump administration has expressed its willingness to work with Russia in order to find a political solution to the six-year war that’s already killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions more. The two powers have established a cooperation center in neighboring Jordan and have committed to a ceasefire between the Syrian military and a separate Free Syrian Army faction in the southwestern city of Daraa.

Manbij was also the site of early, informal cooperation between the U.S. and Russia when both sent personnel to support their respective partners on the ground from a Free Syrian Army advance in March. Both the U.S. and the Russian military have conducted patrols in the city, which is administrated by a council backed by the Syrian Democratic Forces.

A U.N.-led effort to end the Syrian conflict in Geneva has repeatedly stalled as opposition groups grow frustrated with Assad’s refusal to step down, especially as the military regains control over much of the country. Russia, Iran and Turkey are involved in separate ongoing talks between the Syrian government and the opposition in the Kazakh capital of Astana. This dialogue has produced four “de-escalation zones” not formally recognized by the U.S.

BY TOM O’CONNOR ON 8/29/17 AT 3:40 PM

Find this story at 29 August 2017

© 2017 NEWSWEEK LLC

U.S. coalition exchanged fire with rebels in Syria

BEIRUT (Reuters) – U.S.-led coalition forces returned fire after being repeatedly shot at near Manbij in northern Syria, where they are patrolling near areas held by Turkish-backed rebels, coalition spokesman Colonel Ryan Dillon said on Tuesday.

“Our forces did receive fire and return fire and then moved to a secure location,” he said by phone.

The incident reflects the complexity of the battlefield in northern Syria, where the Russia-backed Syrian army, Kurdish forces aided by the U.S.-led coalition and Syrian rebels supported by Washington’s ally Turkey are all operating.

The coalition has told Turkey to tell the rebels it backs there that firing on U.S.-led coalition forces “is not acceptable”, Dillon said.

U.S. ground forces are in northern Syria as part of the U.S.-led coalition supporting the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a local alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias battling Islamic State.

Last year, Turkey backed Syrian rebel groups in an offensive next to SDF-held areas aimed at both pushing Islamic State from the border and quelling the expansion of Kurdish influence.

The Turkish-backed rebels and the SDF have often exchanged small arms and artillery fire in other parts of northern Syria where U.S.-led coalition forces are not patrolling.

“Our overt patrols that have been conducting patrols in that area to keep tensions down received fire multiple times over the course of the last two weeks,” Dillon said.

“We let our counterparts in Turkey know this and we continue to conduct these patrols but are always prepared and ready to defend ourselves in that area.”

U.S. forces have been filmed since last year patrolling near Turkey-backed rebel areas while clearly displaying the U.S. flag.

Russian military police have also carried out patrols in northern areas held by the Syrian army and by the Kurdish YPG militia, the main component of the SDF.

Coalition and U.S. jets have carried out operations to prevent potential attacks on local forces they support.

A year ago, they scrambled to protect U.S. special operations forces in northern Syria from attack by government jets during rare clashes between the Syrian army and the YPG.

In May, the U.S. military carried out an air strike against militia supported by the Syrian government that posed a threat to U.S. and U.S.-backed fighters in southern Syria.

Reporting by Angus McDowall; Editing by Andrew Roche
AUGUST 29, 2017 / 6:05 PM / 24 DAYS AGO

Find this story at 29 August 2017

Copyright https://www.reuters.com/

Syria pivot? Why anti-Assad rebels, dropped by CIA, could land with jihadists.

A SHIFT IN THOUGHT Suspension of a CIA program that armed and trained the rebels leaves them with few options. Some may join the US-backed anti-ISIS campaign, but others may join jihadists to pursue their campaign against Assad. Some already have.

President Trump’s reported suspension of a covert CIA program to fund, arm, and train Syrian rebels is seen as signaling the end of US efforts to pressure Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on the battlefield.

But the cutting of US ties – and likely those of US allies who also provided the rebels material support – also calls into question the fate of thousands of armed fighters who have grown reliant on US support and direction.

The move, which some commentators have characterized as appeasing Russia, Mr. Assad’s most powerful backer, has left thousands of mainstream rebels struggling to navigate a battlefield suddenly tipped against them, without a patron, without guidance – and for some – without a cause.

Among the options for the rebels, looking to evolve to survive: join the US-led battle against the so-called Islamic State, or, for the fervently anti-Assad fighters, even join the ranks of jihadist and Islamist groups, which have retained their shadowy funding and supply lines.

Abu Mohammed al Darrawi, the nom de guerre of a Free Syrian Army (FSA) intelligence official who has spent the past four years shuttling between southern Syria and Jordan to negotiate for arms and support, says many “emotional” fighters and commanders will begin considering outreach by Al Qaeda and other well-funded Islamist militias.

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“We lost our brothers, our sisters, our children; we went through hell just to end this regime and see an end to Assad,” Darrawi said.

“If Al Qaeda, if Ahrar al Sham, if the devil himself is fighting Assad and will help us in this fight, we will side with them.”

Timber Sycamore

When the CIA launched the covert training and arming program, known as Timber Sycamore, in early 2013, it was designed to pressure Assad on the battlefield while regulating the flow of arms and cash that had already been pouring in from Gulf countries and from Turkey.

The CIA, along with the US allies, vetted and trained thousands of rebels from the FSA and affiliated militias at bases within Turkey to the north and Jordan to the south.

Every operation, every battlefield movement, was micromanaged from Military Operations Centers (MOCs), in Jordan and Turkey that featured US, French, British, Saudi, and Emirati intelligence and military officials.

The US and its allies provided the rebels with light arms, including heavy machine guns, mortars, sniper rifles, and vehicles. But, due to Washington’s concerns, they did not provide them with the anti-aircraft weapons they needed to counter regime airstrikes and turn the tide on the battlefield.

The Trump administration’s suspension of Timber Sycamore followed months of scaling down the program and was seen by many as an inevitable divorce. Mr. Trump referred this week on Twitter to his “ending massive, dangerous, and wasteful payments” to the rebels.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE, staunch supporters of the rebels, will be unable or unwilling to go against their ally Washington and continue arming or financing the fighters, say Arab security sources close to the MOC in Amman.

Jordan will no longer offer a land corridor to provide weapons to the south, Turkey is pressuring moderate rebels in the north to fight a proxy war with Kurdish groups, while Qatar, a major backer of Islamist rebels, will also be unwilling to throw its support behind the FSA.

The mood in the northern Jordanian town of Irbid, 12 miles from the Syrian border, where commanders of the FSA’s Southern Front have lived and operated, is one of weariness as they consider their options.

“We have 54 factions in the south alone without support, without arms, and without salaries,” says Abdul Hadi Sari, a former Syrian air force general who has been an adviser to FSA’s Southern Front and a military analyst based in Jordan.

“When the US says stop, they all stop.”

Fighting against, with jihadists

According to rebel commanders close to the MOC in Amman, rebels have been negotiating with Saudi Arabia and the UAE to continue salaries to fighters in order to prevent them from breaking ranks and joining jihadist groups. There have been 50 reported defections already this month.

The end of the CIA program meanwhile may also boost efforts to build a fighting force to oust ISIS from Syria, analysts and rebels say, the only way mainstream rebels can secure US support or that of its allies.

According to Syrian rebel commanders close to operations, the US has been redirecting vetted rebels to bases established near Tanf in the triangle between south-eastern Syria, western Iraq, and northern Jordan to train and take up the fight against ISIS in Raqqa and Deir ez-Zour.

“The CIA program was aimed at Assad, while the Department of Defense’s program was aimed at ISIS,” Faysal Itani, a Syria expert and senior fellow at the Rafiq Hairiri Center for the Middle East at the Atlantic Council, says via email.

“Ending the former will, if anything, pressure fighters to join the latter in order to get paid and receive US protection.”

As the CIA program was winding down over the past three months, 200 vetted Syrian rebels traveled to Tanf to join the US-formed Jaysh Maghawir al-Thawra (Revolutionary Commandos Army) for training, according to Syrian rebel commanders. Hundreds more are said to be considering the offer, but travel from southwest and northwest Syria to the southeast is a dangerous proposition given that swathes of territory are held by pro-regime Shiite militias or ISIS.

“Entering at-Tanf for many would be a suicide mission,” says Mr. Sari, the former air force general. “But if you are starving and worn down by four years of war, many may take that risk.”

Police force?

One proposal allegedly backed by both Russia and the US, which came as part of Russia-US-Jordan tripartite talks in Amman that reached a cease-fire in south Syria, is the transformation of the Free Syrian Army and moderate rebels from a militia to a “police force.”

Under the proposal, which according to those close to the ongoing tripartite talks has gained the support of Jordan, the rebels would change their mission from overthrowing Assad to keeping the peace in recently-announced truce zones in southern Syria and east of Damascus.

As part of the switch, as envisioned by the West, rebels would receive police training within southern Syria and salaries to both police and prevent extremist groups from filling the vacuum. Should it prove successful, the model would be replicated in central and northern Syria, with the presence of a non-regime police force facilitating the return of Syrian refugees from Jordan and Turkey, according to those close to the talks.

Syrian rebel commanders are divided on the initiative; some say they would rather fight to the “last bullet” than abandon their cause.

“Many would rather die as martyrs than live as policemen,” says Abu Kamal, the nom de guerre of a FSA rebel commander in the Damascus countryside, whose fighters came to a standstill due to funding cuts last month, ahead of the Trump decision.

But, while the mission would be a far cry from overthrowing a regime that has committed atrocities, rebels say many fighters, worn down from broken promises and an increasingly sectarian fight, may be ready to accept the offer.

“When we went out and protested for freedom, we did not know that we would be facing jihadists, the world’s Shiite militias, Russia, a civil war, and a sectarian war,” Sari says.

“Right now, if you offer us security and peace on our homeland, many will take it.”

Alaa Al-Faqir/Reuters
Taylor Luck
JULY 26, 2017 IRBID, JORDAN—

Find this story at 26 July 2017

© The Christian Science Monitor

Dozens of US Civilians Are in Syria Fighting ISIS With Local Forces

RAQQA, Syria — The heavily armed fighters peered out of a broken second-story window at their outpost in a crumbling house on the western edge of this shell-shocked city, where the Islamic State is fighting a furious battle to hold on to the capital of its self-declared caliphate.

They ducked to avoid snipers camped in nearby high-rise apartments. Armed drones hovered nearby. Just before 2 p.m. came the crack of sniper fire.

“That’s our guy,” Kevin Howard, 28, said as he rose and prepared to return fire.

Howard is not one of the hundreds of U.S. troops deployed in Syria. The U.S. Marine Corps veteran from San Francisco came here as a volunteer, part of a small group of freelance recruits who have traveled to Syria from the U.S., Europe and other regions to help local forces fight the Islamic State.

Americans have a history of volunteering to fight overseas. The Abraham Lincoln Brigade fought fascists in the Spanish Civil War; U.S. pilots flew for Britain and China before World War II; and U.S. citizens have served in the Israel Defense Forces.

The war in Syria and Iraq has been more problematic. Americans who try to travel there to fight alongside the Islamic State face immediate arrest, and many have been detained at U.S. airports as they prepared to respond to the militant group’s global call to arms. Those who volunteer to fight the jihadis with U.S.-allied Kurdish and Syrian militias, though the State Department advises against it, face no such legal consequences.

Several hundred such volunteers have arrived since the Syrian civil war began six years ago, according to local estimates, and several dozen remain.

Some, such as Howard, are military veterans who served in the Middle East and believed they had left a job unfinished. Others are young people drawn to the plight of the Kurdish rebels, or by the powerful lure of combat in a faraway land.

In recent days, as the battle for Raqqa has turned into a violent death spiral for the Islamic State, three of the volunteers have died.

Nicholas Warden, 29, of Buffalo, N.Y.; Robert Grodt, 28, originally of Simi Valley; and Luke Rutter, 22, of Birkenhead, England, were killed as Kurdish forces, aided by coalition air support, advanced on Raqqa.

“Everyone is really torn up over losing those three guys, especially all at once. And they were only a few months out of the [Kurdish training] academy,” said Lucas Chapman, who returned to Washington this year after fighting alongside the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, the largest force fighting in eastern Syria.

Warden had served with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan and with the French Foreign Legion, Chapman said, and came to fight the Islamic State in February because of the terrorist attacks in San Bernardino and Orlando, Fla.

Grodt, who graduated from Monte Vista School Independent Learning Academy in Simi Valley and studied philosophy at Moorpark College, was an idealist, friends and family said.

A few years ago, he had hitchhiked cross-country to New York to join Occupy Wall Street protests and proposed to a young woman he met there in Zuccotti Park, the Occupy movement’s base. The couple settled in New York and had a 4-year-old daughter.

In April, he traveled to Syria to join the YPG, after researching the group’s cause and meeting other volunteers who had returned to the U.S. He didn’t consider joining the U.S. military because he wasn’t sure it was getting the job done, according to his mother, Tammy Grodt of Simi Valley.

“My reasons for joining the YPG was to help the Kurdish people in their struggle for autonomy in Syria and elsewhere and also to do my best to help fight Daesh and help create a more secure world,” Robert Grodt said, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State in one of a series of videos he made from Syria, this one as he sat in uniform in a field, clutching his rifle.

He was killed by a mine explosion July 6, his body taken to a “martyrs’ center” at a YPG cemetery in Qamishli, his mother was told.

Tammy Grodt, a nurse and mother of six, learned of her son’s death July 8. “The State Department is working to bring him home to us,” she said.

She said her son had seen other volunteers return home unscathed and “truly counted on coming back.” He last called home from Syria on May 11, chattering excitedly about his battle buddies and promising to return in August.

“Many may question why he chose a task that seemed so far from being one that could be successfully accomplished,” she said. “He had a lot of passion and dedication and believed with his effort and enthusiasm, working with others just as dedicated, he could accomplish anything he set his mind to.”

Others have had similar aims.

Arriving in Raqqa recently from northeastern Syria, Swedish volunteer Olivia Mefras said she had left to join the Kurdish Women’s Protection Units without telling her parents.

“They’re not that happy about it,” said Mefras, 22. The high school graduate said she had rudimentary firearms training and was eager to head to the front line.

“We all want to do something meaningful. We know it doesn’t make a difference to the people here — they would fight anyway. But it makes a difference to us in our lives,” she said.

Daman Frat, a YPG commander stationed east of Raqqa, said several foreign volunteers were fighting alongside his units in remote areas outside the city, most of whom had served previously in U.S. or European military units and wanted to be in the thick of the fight.

“They know what Daesh means, and that if they control the area, they will go to Europe more” to mount new attacks, he said.

Syrian Democratic Forces fighters, including Western volunteers, are paid about $100 to $250 a month, depending on which forces they serve with and for how long.

U.S. coalition support for the SDF does not include those salaries, said Maj. Josh T. Jacques, a U.S. Central Command spokesman, who described the fighters as “the coalition’s local ground force partner in the fight against ISIS in northern Syria.”

“Coalition forces continue to support the SDF as part of their advise-and-assist mission, providing equipment, training, intelligence and logistics support, precision fires and battlefield advice,” he said.

Kino Gabriel, a spokesman for the Syriac Military Council, or MFS, whose Assyrian militia joined the alliance against the Islamic State, said volunteers receive basic military training and are given standard-issue Kalashnikov rifles, with limited access to other weapons, including the Russian sniper rifle Howard used. Their mine-clearing equipment: homemade bombs and string.

“So many foreign volunteers have been martyred fighting for our cause, and for that they shall always be remembered among us,” Gabriel said.

In his west Raqqa outpost, surrounded by snipers and the occasional armed drone, Howard said Western volunteers in Syria seem to fit into one of three groups: There are the anarchists and socialists, “the starry-eyed dreamers.” Then there are the “people that are running away from their past.” Finally, he said, there are the “people that are legitimately crazy.”

Across the room, Taylor Hudson, a volunteer from Pasadena, noted that Howard hadn’t said to which group he belonged.

Howard laughed.

“I just want to help people,” he said, pausing. “I’m probably crazy,” he said. “To do this — to leave home, put your life on the line — you have to be kind of crazy.”

Howard was raised in a San Francisco orphanage and went straight into the Marines at age 17. Stationed in Southern California at Twentynine Palms, he served for about five years, including tours in Afghanistan and Iraq at the height of American deployments there.

Howard and his friends returned home with post-traumatic stress, in his case due in part to traumatic brain injury, he said. He had been looking forward to civilian life, he said: “Go to college, white picket fence.” But he grew restless.

“I missed this,” he said, gesturing at the abandoned house that had become his home.

When the Islamic State captured the Iraqi city of Mosul three years ago, Howard said, he was stricken by reports about atrocities the militants had committed against Yazidi religious minority communities in the area of northern Iraq where he had served as a Marine.

He joined the French Foreign Legion but didn’t get sent to Syria, even after the terrorist attacks in Paris in January and November 2015 — instead he was scrubbing toilets.

So he quit and came on his own this year and quickly found his niche with a 30-member unit of the MFS. Some fellow veterans have had trouble adjusting, he said.

“This is total anarchy, guerrilla war,” Howard said. “A lot of military guys can’t handle it because there isn’t structure. It just sort of flows.”

Hudson, 33, an ironworker, also joined the French Foreign Legion for a few months before coming to Syria last year. He had studied medicine at Eastern Washington University and though he never earned his degree, he has served as a medic since he arrived in Syria, where local fighters call him Doc.

He arrived planning to volunteer with Kurdish forces, then discovered the plight of the Assyrian minority, the group’s history of persecution in the region and lack of resources compared with Kurdish forces. Now he is working with the same militia as Howard.

The war in Syria, he said, is about more than defeating the Islamic State. For Hudson, it’s about establishing a democracy that will protect minorities such as the Assyrians.

Howard had planned to leave once Raqqa was freed. So did Hudson. Now they are reconsidering.

“This is the most important fight in the world right now,” Howard said.

___

(Staff writer W.J. Hennigan in Washington and special correspondent Kamiran Sadoun in Raqqa contributed to this report.)

___

This article is written by Molly Hennessy-Fiske from The Los Angeles Times and was legally licensed via the Tribune Content Agency through the NewsCred publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@newscred.com.

The Los Angeles Times | 17 Jul 2017 | by Molly Hennessy-Fiske

Find this story at 17 July 2017

© 2017 Military Advantage

Leading Hezbollah commander and key Israel target killed in Syria (2016)

Hezbollah has confirmed its military commander, Mustafa Badreddine, was killed in Syria this week in what it described as a “major explosion” at Damascus airport.

Media reports in Lebanon and Israel quickly suggested the blast had been caused by an Israeli airstrike, a suggestion to which Hezbollah gave weight, announcing it was investigating whether a “missile or artillery strike” had been responsible.

Badreddine was the most senior member of the organisation to have been killed since the death of his predecessor and brother-in-law, Imad Mughniyeh, who was assassinated by a joint Mossad/CIA operation in the Syrian capital in February 2008.

There was no immediate reaction from the Israeli government, which has authorised at least eight air strikes against targets inside Syria since the start of the civil war five years ago. Most had targeted anti-aircraft systems that Israeli officials claimed were being moved to Lebanon, where they could pose a threat against its air force.

Mustafa Amine Badreddine, in an undated handout picture released at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon website.
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Mustafa Amine Badreddine, in an undated handout picture released at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon website.
Announcing Badreddine’s death, Hezbollah said: “He said months ago that he would not return from Syria except as a martyr or carrying the flag of victory. He is the great jihadi leader Mustafa Badreddine, and he has returned today a martyr.”

The statement added: “The information gleaned from the initial investigation is that a major explosion targeted one of our centres near Damascus International airport, which led to the martyrdom of Sayyid Zul Fikar [his nom de guerre] and the injuries of others.

“The investigation will work to determine the nature of the explosion and its causes, whether it was due to an air or missile or artillery strike, and we will announce the results of the investigation soon.”

Nicknamed Zul Fikar, after the sword of Imam Ali, the Prophet Muhammad’s cousin and one of the most revered figures in Shia Islam, Badreddine was born in 1961 in the southern Beirut suburb of Ghobeiry, and rose to greater prominence after Mughniyeh’s assassination.

He was sentenced to death in Kuwait in the 1980s over a plot to blow up the American and French embassies there during the Iran-Iraq war, but later escaped after Saddam Hussein’s army invaded the oil-rich emirate and threw open its prisons.

Hezbollah said he had been involved in nearly all the group’s operations since its inception in the early 1980s. Most had targeted Israel, which occupied southern Lebanon from 1982 to 2000. However, Badreddine had also been accused of leading a cell that was allegedly responsible for the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri on the Beirut waterfront in February 2005.

He was indicted in 2011 by the special tribunal for Lebanon, an international court established in the Hague, in connection with the massive 2005 bombing, which led Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad to withdraw his forces from Lebanon in the face of a civic uprising.

Badreddine and four other alleged members of Hezbollah remain on trial in absentia at the Hague. Prosecutors have offered one of the few publicly available glimpses of the shadowy Hezbollah operative, describing him as the “apex” of the cell that allegedly killed Hariri, and a figure akin to an “untraceable ghost” who assumed multiple identities.

‘Nobody wants to stay in Lebanon. It’s a miserable life’
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He was known to have studied at a Lebanese university and to have maintained an apartment in the Lebanese seaside area of Jounieh. He was also active in the south Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh, where he was last seen early last year at a wake for Jihad Mughniyeh, the son of Imad Mughniyeh, who was also killed by an Israeli airstrike.

While holding senior positions throughout his career, Badreddine was most known for his role in leading Hezbollah’s large contingent in Syria, which it sent to defend the interest of the Assad regime as his grip on power weakened in 2012. Hezbollah has since lost an estimated 900 members in fighting across Syria, where along with Iran, it has taken the lead in directing numerous battles.

Israel has refused to comment on airstrikes it has previously launched inside Syria. However, unnamed officials have said the strikes had targeted anti-aircraft systems that were allegedly being transferred to Hezbollah. It had also targeted a Hezbollah leader, Samir Kuntar, who had been jailed inside Israel for more than 30 years until his release in 2008.

Despite Israeli protests, Russia has recently proceeded with a long-delayed sale to Iran of the advanced S-300 weapons system, which can shoot down most modern fighter jets. Israeli officials have said they would prioritise tracking the whereabouts of the systems, the position of which in southern Lebanon would pose a potent threat to their air force.

The US treasury department sanctioned Badreddine in 2012 for his activities in support of the government of Assad in Syria, along with the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and its head of external operations, Talal Hamiyah.

Hezbollah said it would hold funeral services on Friday in honour of Badreddine. In south Beirut, posters of Badreddine, whose image had rarely been published, were being hung from overpasses and lamp-posts.

Tens of thousands of mourners are expected to pay their respects at a shrine site for Hezbollah dead, which includes the graves of Imad and Jihad Mughniyah. Nasrallah is also expected to make a public statement – his second within a week.

Martin Chulov and Kareem Shaheen in Beirut
Friday 13 May 2016 04.00 BST First published on Friday 13 May 2016 03.32 BST

Find this story at 13 May 2016

© 2017 Guardian News and Media Limited

Mustafa Badreddine: the Hezbollah leader who left no footprints (2016)

Elias Saab. Sami Issa. Safi Badr. Zul Fikar. All were aliases of Hezbollah’s secretive military commander, Mustafa Amine Badreddine, described in court records as an “untraceable ghost”.

Few details are known about Badreddine, who was killed this week in a mysterious explosion at a Hezbollah base near Damascus airport. This despite him being one of the most prominent figures in the party and the brother-in-law of the notorious Imad Mughniyeh, who he succeeded as military commander after the latter was killed in a 2008 joint CIA-Mossad operation in the Syrian capital.

Born in the southern Beirut suburb of Ghobeiry on 6 April 1961, Badreddine had a pronounced limp, believed to have been sustained while he fought alongside pro-Palestinian and pan-Arabist militias during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

His nom de guerre was Sayyed Zul Fikar: Sayyed indicating a claimed descent from the prophet Muhammad; Zul Fikar being the name of the legendary forked sword of Imam Ali, the prophet’s cousin and one of the most revered figures in Shia Islam.

Badreddine was arrested and sentenced to death in Kuwait in 1983 over his suspected involvement in a string of coordinated bombings in the tiny Gulf emirate that also targeted the US and French embassies. They were believed to be retribution for Kuwait and the west’s support for Iraq in its war with Iran.

The sentence, which had to be formally approved by the emir, was never carried out, perhaps as a consequence of a series of attacks and plane hijackings demanding the release of the Kuwait attackers, and which allegedly involved Mughniyeh. It was also never carried out because when the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990, he threw open the doors of the country’s prisons, allowing Badreddine to escape.

This is where the trail disappears. It only emerges again in 2011, when UN prosecutors investigating a 2005 Beirut bombing that killed Lebanon’s prime minister, Rafik Hariri, indicted Badreddine. They alleged he was the coordinator of a sophisticated network that tracked and ultimately assassinated the popular billionaire.

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Court records from the special tribunal for Lebanon have offered a rare glimpse into the life of Badreddine, who was charged with conspiring to commit a terrorist act, carrying out a terrorist act by means of an explosive device, and intentional homicide.

Badreddine studied political science at the Lebanese American University from 2002-04. He drove a Mercedes Benz, owned the Samino jewellery shop in Beirut, and an apartment in Jounieh, a coastal town north of the capital known for its active nightlife, where he supposedly entertained friends.

His phone’s contact list, prosecutors alleged, included the numbers of college friends and business associates, Hezbollah officials and bodyguards, family members as well as supposed girlfriends.

Badreddine became military commander in 2008 after his brother-in-law was killed by a bomb placed in the headrest of his car. Mughniyeh had been the architect of Hezbollah’s guerrilla defence in Lebanon during the 2006 war with Israel and was implicated in the 1990s bombing of a synagogue in Argentina.

There are almost no images available of Badreddine. Two that were made available by the tribunal were dated, one showing him as a teenager and the other apparently from his days in Kuwait, showing a handsome young man with curly hair and a moustache, dressed in a tie-less suit. On Friday’s Hezbollah’s media department circulated an photo of the commander smiling in military fatigues and sporting a short grey beard and spectacles.

Badreddine left few personal records. Investigators for the UN trial say they found no driving licences or passports, no property formally owned by him, no record of him ever having left Lebanon, no bank accounts, and no photos from around the time of Hariri’s assassination. In the opening sessions of his trial in absentia in The Hague, prosecutors said he “passes as an unrecognisable and untraceable ghost throughout Lebanon, leaving no footprint as he passes”.

Hezbollah vehemently denies the allegations and does not recognise the tribunal.

In recent years, Badreddine was mostly known for his role in leading Hezbollah’s contingent in Syria, where the paramilitary group has been instrumental in ensuring the continued survival of the Assad government, alongside its patron, Iran, where an estimated 900 of the party’s fighters have died, including Jihad Mughniyeh, Imad’s son.

Badreddine was sanctioned by the US Treasury Department over his role in Syria in 2012.

An Israeli investigative journalist who is writing a history of the Mossad said the strike that killed Jihad Mughniyeh near the Golan Heights last year was actually aimed at Badreddine.

Kareem Shaheen in Beirut
Friday 13 May 2016 10.02 BST Last modified on Friday 27 May 2016 07.25 BST

Find this story at 13 May 2016

© 2017 Guardian News and Media Limited

Beirut, Also the Site of Deadly Attacks, Feels Forgotten (2015)

The relatives of one of the victims of the twin suicide attacks in Beirut mourned during a funeral procession in the city’s Burj al-Barajneh neighborhood. Credit Wael Hamzeh/European Pressphoto Agency
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Ali Awad, 14, was chopping vegetables when the first bomb struck. Adel Tormous, who would die tackling the second bomber, was sitting at a nearby coffee stand. Khodr Alaa Deen, a registered nurse, was on his way to work his night shift at the teaching hospital of the American University at Beirut, in Lebanon.

All three lost their lives in a double suicide attack in Beirut on Thursday, along with 40 others, and much like the scores who died a day later in Paris, they were killed at random, in a bustling urban area, while going about their normal evening business.

Around the crime scenes in south Beirut and central Paris alike, a sense of shock and sadness lingered into the weekend, with cafes and markets quieter than usual. The consecutive rampages, both claimed by the Islamic State, inspired feelings of shared, even global vulnerability — especially in Lebanon, where many expressed shock that such chaos had reached France, a country they regarded as far safer than their own.

But for some in Beirut, that solidarity was mixed with anguish over the fact that just one of the stricken cities — Paris — received a global outpouring of sympathy akin to the one lavished on the United States after the 9/11 attacks.

Monuments around the world lit up in the colors of the French flag; presidential speeches touted the need to defend “shared values;” Facebook offered users a one-click option to overlay their profile pictures with the French tricolor, a service not offered for the Lebanese flag. On Friday the social media giant even activated Safety Check, a feature usually reserved for natural disasters that lets people alert loved ones that they are unhurt; they had not activated it the day before for Beirut.

Photo

The site of Thursday’s twin suicide bombings in the Burj al-Barajneh neighborhood of Beirut, Lebanon. Credit Bilal Hussein/Associated Press
“When my people died, no country bothered to light up its landmarks in the colors of their flag,” Elie Fares, a Lebanese doctor, wrote on his blog. “When my people died, they did not send the world into mourning. Their death was but an irrelevant fleck along the international news cycle, something that happens in those parts of the world.”

The implication, numerous Lebanese commentators complained, was that Arab lives mattered less. Either that, or that their country — relatively calm despite the war next door — was perceived as a place where carnage is the norm, an undifferentiated corner of a basket-case region.

In fact, while Beirut was once synonymous with violence, when it went through a grinding civil war a generation ago, this was the deadliest suicide bombing to hit the city since that conflict ended in 1990. Lebanon has weathered waves of political assassinations, street skirmishes and wars; Israeli airstrikes leveled whole apartment blocks in 2006. But it had been a year of relative calm.

(A reminder of the muddled perceptions came last week, when Jeb Bush, the Republican presidential candidate, declared that “if you’re a Christian, increasingly in Lebanon, or Iraq or Syria, you’re gonna be beheaded.” That was news to Lebanon’s Christians, who hold significant political power.)

The disparity in reactions highlighted a sense in the region of being left alone to bear the brunt of Syria’s deadly four-year war, which has sent more than four million refugees fleeing, mostly to neighboring countries like Lebanon. For the Lebanese, the government has been little help, plagued as it is with gridlock and corruption that have engendered electricity and water shortages and, most recently, a collapse of garbage collection. Many in the region — both supporters and opponents of the Syrian government — say they have long warned the international powers that, if left unaddressed, the conflict would eventually spill into the West.

How ISIS Expanded Its Threat
The Islamic State emerged from a group of militants in Iraq to take over large portions of Iraq and Syria, and now threatens other countries in Europe and elsewhere.

To be sure, the attacks meant different things in Paris and Beirut. Paris saw it as a bolt from the blue, the worst attack in the city in decades, while to Beirut the bombing was the fulfillment of a never entirely absent fear that another outbreak of violence may come.

Lebanon seemed to have recovered over the past year and a half from a series of bombings claimed by Sunni militant groups as revenge for the intervention by Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based Shiite militia, in the Syrian civil war to provide critical support for the Syrian government.

Some blamed news coverage for the perception that Beirut is still an active war zone. They cited headlines — including, briefly, a Times one that was soon changed to be more precise — that refer to the predominantly Shiite neighborhood where the bombing took place as a “stronghold” of the militia and political party Hezbollah.

That is hard to dispute in the political sense — Hezbollah controls security in the neighborhood and is highly popular there, along with the allied Amal party. But the phrase also risks portraying a busy civilian, residential and commercial district as a justifiable military target.

Meanwhile, Syrians fretted that the brunt of reaction to both attacks would fall on them. There are a million Syrians in Lebanon, a country of four million; some have become desperate enough to contemplate joining the accelerating flow of those taking smugglers’ boats to Europe.

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SEE SAMPLE PRIVACY POLICY
But now, the attacks could rally political pressure in Europe to stop admitting them. When evidence emerged that at least one of the Paris attackers may have posed as an asylum seeker to reach Europe, some opponents of the migration quickly used that to argue for closing the doors.

That drew sharp reactions from Syrians, who said refugees were fleeing to Europe precisely to escape indiscriminate violence.

“This is the sort of terrorism that Syrian refugees have been fleeing by the millions,” declared Faisal Alazem, a spokesman for the Syrian Canadian Council.

The compassion gap is even more evident when it comes to the situation in Syria itself, where death tolls comparable to the 129 so far in the Paris attacks are far from rare and, during the worst periods, were virtually daily occurrences.

“Imagine if what happened in Paris last night would happen there on a daily basis for five years,” said Nour Kabbach, who fled the heavy bombardment of her home city of Aleppo, Syria, several years ago and now works in humanitarian aid in Beirut.

GRAPHIC
Where ISIS Has Directed and Inspired Attacks Around the World
More than a dozen countries have had attacks since the Islamic State, or ISIS, began to pursue a global strategy in the summer of 2014.

OPEN GRAPHIC
“Now imagine all that happening without global sympathy for innocent lost lives, with no special media updates by the minute, and without the support of every world leader condemning the violence,” she wrote on Facebook. Finally, she said, ask yourself what it would be like to have to explain to your child why an attack in “another pretty city like yours” got worldwide attention and your own did not.

Back in southern Beirut over the weekend, as the government announced the arrest of seven Syrians and two Lebanese in connection with the attack, the street where the bombings took place was strewn with lettuce and parsley from pushcarts overturned in the blast. Men washed blood from sidewalks. A shop’s inventory of shoes — from small children’s slippers to women’s clogs — was scattered across the pavement. Several funeral processions were massing, ready to march to cemeteries.

Residents mourned Ali Awad, 14, passing around his picture in a scouting uniform. He had run out to see what had happened after the first blast, and was caught in the second, relatives said.

Nearby, Abdullah Jawad stood staring glumly into a shop. His friend, the owner, had died there, just after Mr. Jawad had painted the place.

“The government can’t protect us,” he said. “They can’t even pick up the trash from the streets.”

As for Facebook, it declared that the high level of social media activity around the Paris attacks had inspired the company to activate Safety Check for the first time for an emergency other than a natural disaster, and that a policy of when to do so was still developing.

“There has to be a first time for trying something new, even in complex and sensitive times, and for us that was Paris,” wrote Alex Schultz, the company’s vice president for growth, adding that Safety Check is less useful in continuing wars and epidemics because, without a clear end point, “it’s impossible to know when someone is truly ‘safe.’”

Hwaida Saad contributed reporting.
By ANNE BARNARDNOV. 15, 2015

Find this story at 15 November 2015

© 2017 The New York Times Company

Islamist group ISIS claims deadly Lebanon blast, promises more violence (2014)

A Sunni Islamist group claims responsibility for a suicide bombing in Beirut
The group, ISIS, says it’s the “first small payment” in a bigger push against Hezbollah
Thursday’s car bomb detonated in a Beirut suburb known as a Hezbollah stronghold
Lebanon has seen a surge in violence as tensions are exacerbated by Syria’s civil war
A Sunni Islamist militant group claimed responsibility Saturday for a car bomb attack in Lebanon’s capital two days earlier which killed four people and injured dozens.
The group, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, known as ISIS, said Thursday’s suicide blast in southern Beirut was the “first small payment” in a bigger push against the Lebanon-based Shiite militia Hezbollah.
The al Qaeda-affiliated group has been pushing for a fundamentalist Islamic state carved out of northern Syria, while Hezbollah fighters have been supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s brutal push to crush a rebellion there.
The ISIS statement said it targeted “the Shiite Satan party” — meaning Hezbollah — in order “to crush its strongholds in the heart of its home in what is called the security zone in the southern suburbs of Beirut on Thursday in a first small payment from the heavy account that is awaiting those wicked criminals.”
The residential Harek Hreik district, where the car bomb exploded Thursday, is known as a Hezbollah stronghold.
Car bombings in the same area of Beirut in July and August killed dozens and injured hundreds.
And in November, a suicide bomb attack outside the Iranian Embassy, close to the neighborhood where Thursday’s attack occurred, killed two dozen people and injured about 150.
Long-standing tensions in Lebanon have been exacerbated by the civil war raging on its doorstep in Syria, where sectarian divisions reflect those in Lebanon.
Regional turmoil
The Lebanese army said Saturday that the alleged chief of another Sunni jihadist group, the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, had died in custody after his health deteriorated.
Majed Al-Majed, a Saudi national, was detained in the past few days by the Lebanese army. His group has claimed responsibility for bombings in Lebanon and elsewhere.
Beirut-based Middle East analyst Rami Khouri told CNN that the recent surge in violence in Lebanon was part of larger, regional turmoil.
“We are seeing the greatest proxy war of modern times playing itself out in Lebanon and Syria and Iraq, that have now become really one battlefield in which two great ideological camps are fighting to the death like gladiators,” he said.
Political divisions and ideological tensions in Lebanon go back several decades, Khouri said, but they have been reinforced by the emergence of radical Islamist terrorist groups, linked to al Qaeda, following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, was designated as a terrorist group by the United States in 1995.

By Mohammed Tawfeeq and Laura Smith-Spark, CNN
Updated 1547 GMT (2347 HKT) January 4, 2014
Find this story at 4 January 2014

© 2017 Cable News Network

How French intelligence agencies failed before the Paris attacks

Authorities knew of at least three of the Paris attackers but did not act – and ignored a warning about a potential attack

Do the arithmetic and it is hard not to feel sympathy for the French intelligence agencies. Every day they face a dilemma created by the gap between available staff and the huge number of suspects.

French intelligence and police have only an estimated 500-600 staff whose task is to physically follow people. But the agencies have about 11,000 people on their books classified as potential threats to national security.

To mount an operation to monitor one person 24-hours-a-day requires about 30 to 40 people. So they have to make hard choices about which people to prioritise.

They often get it right, foiling many plots. But when they get it wrong, as they have twice this year, first in the Charlie Hebdo attack and in last Friday’s massacre, they have come under huge pressure.

French MPs vote to extend state of emergency after Paris attacks
Read more
There will inevitably be an inquiry into the failings. But the French government has already proposed new legislation introducing tougher security measures.

Senior members of the US intelligence community, still smarting from the loss of the bulk data collection of phone records in the Freedom Act this summer, are taking advantage of events in Paris to renew arguments over surveillance.

In New York on Wednesday, the director of the FBI, James Comey, complained that too much of the internet had gone dark. Intelligence and law enforcement agencies both needed faster and better access to communications data, he said.

The stripped down argument is that if you have access to everything, it is easier to keep everyone secure. When there are attacks such as those in Paris, the agencies say they quickly need to search back through data to see who suspects had been talking to, helping to identify the networks and prevent potential other attacks.

French intelligence under scrutiny in wake of Paris attacks
Read more
The problem with this, as with almost every terrorist incident since 9/11, is that the French intelligence agencies already knew at least three of the attackers.

Abelhamid Abaaoud was known as an accomplice of two jihadis killed in Belgium in January. The police had a file on Omar Ismaïl Mostefai even before he travelled to Syria in 2013, while Sami Amimour had been detained in 2012 on suspected terrorist links.

In other words, the failure of the French intelligence agencies is not that they did not have enough data – but that they did not act on what they had.

The three could have been the subject of traditional targeted surveillance. While physical surveillance is difficult in terms of staffing, keeping tabs on their communications is less labour-intensive.

Tracking such suspects does not require the collection of the communications data – phone records, emails, Facebook postings, chat lines – of every French citizen, only the suspects.

One of the key arguments put forward by Comey and earlier in the week by the director of the CIA, John Brennan, is that terrorists have become better at covert communications. But the discarded mobile phone that led police to the St-Denis hideout contained unencrypted text.

CIA chief criticises recent surveillance rollbacks in wake of Paris attacks
Read more
One of the biggest failings was not the French intelligence agencies’ lack of sufficient surveillance powers but the long-running lack of cooperation between European intelligence agencies – and reluctance to share information – due to fears about leaks. When they do cooperate, the process is slow – even over things as simple as translation.

The Iraq government sent warnings to French intelligence about a potential attack that were ignored. Such warnings are regularly received by the agencies struggling to work out which ones reflect a genuine threat.

A more serious omission is the French failure to respond to the Turkish government when it flagged up concern about Mostefai. Added to that is the lack of cooperation between France and Belgium, where some of the attackers were based.

Such failures are where the French and US intelligence agencies should be looking, rather than exploiting the tragedy to make the case for bulk data surveillance.

Ewen MacAskill Defence and intelligence correspondent
Thursday 19 November 2015 18.51 GMT Last modified on Friday 20 November 2015 01.05 GMT

Find this story at 19 November 2015

© 2015 Guardian News and Media Limited

Authorities missed many ‘red flags’ before Paris shootings

In January, Turkish authorities detained one of the suicide bombers at Turkey’s border and deported him to Belgium. Brahim Abdeslam, Turkish authorities told Belgian police at the time, had been “radicalized” and was suspected of wanting to join Islamic State in Syria, a Turkish security source told Reuters.

Yet during questioning in Belgium, Abdeslam denied any involvement with militants and was set free. So was his brother Salah – a decision that Belgian authorities say was based on scant evidence that either man had terrorist intentions.

On Nov. 13, Abdeslam blew himself up at Le Comptoir Voltaire bar in Paris, killing himself and wounding one other. Salah is also a suspect in the attacks, claimed by the Islamic State, and is now on the run.

In France, an “S” (State Security) file for people suspected of being a threat to national security had been issued on Ismail Omar Mostefai, who would detonate his explosive vest inside Paris’ Bataclan concert hall. Mostefai, a Frenchman of Algerian descent, was placed on the list in 2010, French police sources say.

Turkish police also considered him a terror suspect with links to Islamic State. Ankara wrote to Paris about him in December 2014 and in June this year, a senior Turkish government official said. The warning went unheeded. Paris answered last week, after the attacks.

A fourth attacker missed at least four weekly check-ins with French police in 2013, before authorities issued an arrest warrant for him. By that time he had left the country.

On any one of these occasions, police, intelligence and security services had an opportunity to detain at least some of the men who launched the attacks.

That they did not, helps explain how a group of Islamist militants was able to organize even as they moved freely among countries within the open borders of Europe’s passport-free Schengen area and beyond.

Taken one by one, each misstep has its own explanation, security services say. They attribute the lapses in communication, inability to keep track of suspected militants and failure to act on intelligence, to a lack of resources in some countries and a surge in the number of would-be jihadis.

But a close examination by Reuters of a series of missed red flags and miscommunications culminating in France’s biggest atrocity since World War Two puts on stark display the mounting difficulties faced by anti-terrorism units across Europe and their future ability to keep the continent safe.

“We’re in a situation where the services are overrun. They expect something to happen, but don’t know where,” said Nathalie Goulet, who heads up the French Senate’s investigation committee into jihadi networks.

Many point to Belgium as a weak link in European security.

“They simply don’t have the same means as Britain’s MI5 or the DGSI (French intelligence agency),” said Louis Caprioli, a former head of the DST, France’s former anti-terrorism unit.

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel defended his country’s security services and praised them for doing “a difficult and tough job.” French President Francois Hollande also praised his country’s security services, who hunted down and shot dead the man they identified as the ringleader, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, five days after the attacks.

Europol, the European Union’s police agency, says it has been feeding information to the Belgian and French authorities but acknowledges that some member states are better at sharing information than others.

FOCUS ON FIGHTERS RETURNING FROM SYRIA

The focus of investigators over the past few years has been men and women who have grown up in Europe, have European passports and who travel to Syria to train and fight.

As the number of those fighters has increased, authorities have struggled to keep up. The French Interior Ministry estimated about 500 French nationals had traveled to Syria and almost 300 had returned. French authorities reckon up to 1,400 people need 24-hour surveillance. Yet France has only about the same number of officers to carry out the task, a tenth of those needed.

Some 350 people from Belgium have gone to Syria to fight – the highest per capita number in Europe. A Belgian government source said Belgium has a list of 400 people who are in Syria, have returned or are believed to be about to go there. There are another 400-500 people who authorities believe have radicalized. The number of people in the Belgian security services carrying out surveillance is believed to be considerably fewer than this.

The numbers partially explain why many of the attackers in Paris were well-known faces still at large.

The attacks killed 130 people at various locations, including the Bataclan concert hall where 89 concert-goers were gunned down or blown up. Others were killed outside the Stade de France sports stadium and in bars and restaurants around central Paris.

Seven assailants died during the attacks. Abaaoud was killed in a police raid north of Paris on Wednesday along with one other suicide attacker and a woman believed to be his cousin.

Dozens of people have also been detained, some with weapons and explosives, in raids since then.

Abaaoud himself had been well-known to authorities for several years. After a raid in January in the Belgian town of Verviers, police suspected the 28-year-old of plotting to kidnap a police officer and kill him.

In February, Abaaoud said in an interview with an Islamic State magazine that he had returned to Syria after the raid in Verviers. By this time, he knew he was being sought.

If it is true that he returned to Syria from Verviers, Abaaoud made his way back into Europe at some point after January. French authorities did not know this until they were tipped off by Morocco after the attacks.

“If Abaaoud was able to go from Syria to Europe, that means there are failings in the entire European system,” French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said.

WARNINGS

Mostefai, the Bataclan suicide bomber, also traveled back and forth. Although he had eight convictions as a petty criminal, he had never been in prison, a place French authorities can watch for signs of radicalization.

Police say they suspected him of being in Syria between late 2013 and early 2014, before returning to France unnoticed.

In December of last year, Turkey contacted France about Mostefai. They raised an alarm again in June 2015 by letter.

There was no response from French authorities, according to a senior Turkish government official and a security source.

“It seemed there was a connection between this person and Daesh (Islamic State) and we reported it,” the Turkish security source said. “We followed all international procedures. But they (the French) didn’t display the same level of sensitivity.”

French officials declined to comment on this, but say that coordination with Turkey over potential French jihadis has improved markedly in the past year.

Determining how dangerous a person is, and whether they might carry out an attack, is a key challenge for security services, experts say.

“The other difficulty is that if you have nothing concrete for several years, you can’t keep either a sophisticated technical alert system or human resources on a person who makes himself forgotten for three or four years,” said Arnaud Danjean, a former intelligence officer and now a member of the European Parliament.

Bilal Hadfi, who blew himself up outside the Stade de France, was another of the suicide attackers under surveillance.

After visiting Syria in February, the 20-year-old French national, who was living in Belgium, returned to Europe by an unknown route and evaded police even though the Belgian Justice Ministry said microphones had been placed at the house where he was thought to be staying.

Then there’s the case of Sami Amimour. French authorities had launched an official investigation into Amimour’s possible terrorism-related activity in October 2012. Prosecutors suspected him of planning to join militants in Yemen.

Amimour was a bus driver who had been radicalized in a mosque near his hometown of Drancy, north of Paris. Because of the investigation, police had ordered Amimour to check in with them every week. As reported by Reuters on Nov 20, he missed four weekly checks in 2013. But it was only after nearly a month that the authorities put out an international arrest warrant.

By then Amimour was already in Syria. His tracks were picked up a year later, in December 2014, when his father gave an interview to French daily Le Monde describing how he had traveled to Syria but failed to convince his son to return.

THE MEN FROM THE BAR

Police are still looking for Salah Abdeslam, who is known to have survived the attacks.

Until six weeks before the attacks, Salah and his brother Brahim – one of the suicide bombers – were running a bar called Les Beguines on a quiet street in Molenbeek, a low-rent area of Brussels which has been linked with several attacks.

After the attacks, Salah Abdeslam went to ground. Authorities say he was stopped on his way back to Belgium after the Paris attacks, but police waved him on. It is not clear what role he played on the night of the attacks and why he managed to survive.

Two men who were arrested later, Mohamed Amri, 27, and 21-year-old Hamza Attou, said they brought Abdeslam back to Brussels after receiving a call from him saying his car had broken down. Police checks meant they were pulled over three times, including a last check around 9 a.m. near Cambrai just short of the Belgian border.

Missteps did not just happen in France and Belgium.

The Syrian passport found near one of the suicide bombers at the Stade de France had been used by a man registering himself as a refugee on the Greek island of Leros on Oct. 3. That man traveled through Macedonia and claimed asylum in Serbia, counter-intelligence and security sources said.

The French prosecutor has confirmed that fingerprints taken on arrival in Greece showed that man traveled with a second man, who also blew himself up near the Stade de France.

The pair may have reached Paris relatively easily because, at the height of the migration crisis in Europe this year, asylum seekers were rushed across some national borders without checks.

It is unclear whether the passport issued under the name of Ahmad al-Mohammad, a 25-year-old from the Syrian city of Idlib, was genuine or was stolen from a refugee. Whatever the truth, it has helped fuel right-wing criticism in Europe of the number of migrants allowed in this year.

By the time the two men were making their way up through the Balkans to western Europe, France had received more evidence an attack was imminent.

French former anti-terrorism judge Marc Trevidic says a French Islamist he questioned on his return from Syria in August said Islamic State had asked him to carry out an attack on a concert venue.

“The guy admitted that he was asked to hit a rock concert. We didn’t know if it would be Bataclan or another, he didn’t know the exact location that would be designated. But yes, that’s what they asked him to do,” Trevidic told Reuters.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari has also said that his country’s intelligence services shared information indicating that France, as well as the United States and Iran, was being targeted for attack. He has not given details.

Germany’s top prosecutor is also investigating allegations that an Algerian man detained at a refugee center in the western town of Arnsberg told Syrian refugees an attack was imminent in the French capital.

Europe is scrambling to respond to the attacks.

France declared a nationwide state of emergency which will now last three months. Police now have the power to conduct searches without obtaining judicial warrants and can hold anyone suspected of posing a threat to security under house arrest for 12 hours a day. Internet sites deemed to incite or advocate “acts of terrorism” can be blocked and public demonstrations banned.

Belgium has also announced a security crackdown, saying it will spend an extra 400 million euros ($430 million) on security and take measures such as stopping the sale of mobile phone cards to anonymous buyers. Police will be allowed to conduct night searches of homes and it is now easier to ban, convict or expel hate preachers.

Whether such measures will be enough is uncertain. Brussels is on high alert this weekend because of what authorities there called the “serious and imminent” threat of attack. In a video last week, Islamic State warned it would strike again.

“When a large operation is prepared, they are told to keep a low profile in the months before. As‎ they are no longer on police radars, it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack,” said Roland Jacquard, president of the Paris-based International Terrorism Observatory.

(Robert-Jan Bartunek reported from Brussels and Orhan Coskun reported from Turkey; additional reporting by Nick Tattersall in Turkey, Alastair Macdonald in Brussels, Silvia Aloisi in Athens; writing by Timothy Heritage; editing by Alessandra Galloni, Simon Robinson, Janet McBride)

World | Sun Nov 22, 2015 5:37am EST Related: WORLD, FRANCE
PARIS | BY JOHN IRISH, ROBERT-JAN BARTUNEK AND ORHAN COSKUN

Find this story at 22 November 2015

Copyright http://www.reuters.com/

Massacre du 13 novembre: les “failles dans le renseignement” commencent à apparaître

Paris (AFP) – Comme après chaque attentat islamiste réussi, le massacre du 13 novembre va relancer la polémique sur “la faille” dans les systèmes antiterroristes français et européens. Et cette fois, comme les précédentes, il semble que les dysfonctionnements se soient accumulés.

En l’état actuel de l’enquête, le plus grave semble être le cas de Samy Amimour: ce Français de 28 ans, soupçonné de vouloir partir pour le Yémen, est mis en examen en octobre 2012 pour “association de malfaiteurs terroristes”, placé sous contrôle judiciaire. Ce qui ne l’empêche pas de rejoindre, un an plus tard, la “terre de jihad” syrienne.

Cela provoque l’émission d’un mandat d’arrêt international. Malgré cela, il parvient à rentrer en France incognito pour participer, vendredi soir à Paris, au pire attentat jamais commis en France.

“On a un souci de contrôle aux frontières Schengen, et un gros”, assure à l’AFP Alain Chouet, ancien chef du service de renseignement de sécurité à la DGSE. “Son arrivée aurait dû provoquer la levée d’un drapeau rouge. Mais ces gars maîtrisent bien les techniques d’entrée et de sortie de Schengen, pour l’avoir beaucoup pratiqué”.

“S’il a pris soin de ne pas rentrer par une frontière française, personne ne l’a vu. S’il rentre par la Belgique, par exemple par un vol low-cost à Charleroi… Allez-y à Charleroi, vous verrez les contrôles”, ajoute-t-il.

Autre problème, un autre tireur du Bataclan, Omar Ismaïl Mostefaï, avait d’une part attiré dès 2010 l’attention des services français, qui avaient émis à son encontre une fiche S (“sûreté de l’État”), et d’autre part avait été, selon Ankara, signalé deux fois à Paris pour son appartenance à la mouvance jihadiste.

La police turque “a informé la police française en décembre 2014 et janvier 2015” à son propos (il était entré sur le territoire turc en 2013, pour ensuite certainement rallier la Syrie), et “nous n’avons jamais eu de retour de la France”, a affirmé lundi à l’AFP un responsable turc.

Par ailleurs d’autres membres du commando, installés en Belgique, étaient connus de la police belge. “Vous comprendrez bien que si les Belges ne nous préviennent pas, ici on ne peut rien faire”, confiait lundi à l’AFP une source policière.

– ‘Ça m’empêche de dormir’ –

Ces faisceaux d’indices, ces signalements, ce mandat d’arrêt international auraient dû constituer les points d’un schéma qui, en les reliant, auraient pû conduire les enquêteurs, en France ou en Belgique, à passer à l’action contre cette cellule avant qu’elle n’ensanglante Paris.

“Il y a trois hypothèses”, explique à l’AFP un ancien spécialiste du contre-terrorisme à la DGSE, sous couvert d’anonymat. “Soit personne n’a rien vu, et c’est un gros souci; soit on a vu des trucs et on ne les a pas compris, ce qui est aussi un problème; soit on a vu des trucs et malgré tout l’équipe a pu passer à l’action.”

“On a peut-être raté la phase de préparation terminale, celle où les types disparaissent dans la nature. Dans les trois cas, c’est très embêtant. Ça veut dire qu’on a soit un problème de renseignement, soit d’analyse du renseignement soit de chaîne de commandement dans les services. C’est accru par le fait que ça se passe en partie en Belgique”, ajoute-t-il.

“Pour le renseignement anti-jihadiste, la Belgique est sous bouclier français. Et il faut bien le dire, alors qu’ils ont la plus grosse proportion de départs en Syrie des pays occidentaux, les Belges ne sont pas au niveau (…). Dans cette équipe beaucoup de mecs sont connus à Bruxelles, quelqu’un s’est manifestement planté.”

Submergés par le nombre de jihadistes rentrant de Syrie et d’Irak, auxquels ils doivent ajouter les anciens des filières afghanes ou irakiennes, qui parfois reprennent du service, les services spécialisés sont contraints d’établir des listes de noms, par ordre décroissant de dangerosité présumée.

“Ça m’empêche de dormir la nuit”, confiait récemment un des responsables de l’antiterrorisme en France. “Avoir les bons noms à la bonne place. Nous sommes très loin d’une science exacte.”

“Par définition s’il y a eu un attentat, c’est qu’il y a eu un problème, conclut Alain Chouet. “Mais bon, on ne reproche pas les feux de forêts aux pompiers… Si vous mettez un pompier tous les cinq mètres dans les forêts de France, vous n’aurez plus de feux de forêts…”

Publié le 16-11-2015 à 20h05
Mis à jour à 21h36

Find this story at 16 November 2015

© Le Nouvel Observateur

France Reportedly Received Warnings About at Least One of the Paris Attackers

French officials received multiple warnings about Paris attacker Omar Ismail Mostefai before Friday’s terror attack but Turkey didn’t get a response from French authorities until after the attack, a Turkish official said on Monday.

“On Oct. 10, 2014, Turkey received an information request regarding four terror suspects from the French authorities,” a Turkish official told the New York Times. “During the official investigation, the Turkish authorities identified a fifth individual, Omar Ismail Mostefai, and notified their French counterparts twice—in December 2014 and June 2015.”

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Mashable also quoted a senior Turkish official as saying that Mostefai, the first gunman identified in the attack, was known to security officials and that France never followed up on shared information until after the attack took place.

“This is not a time to play the blame game, but we are compelled to share the information to shed light on Omar Ismail Mostefai’s travel history,” the senior official told Mashable. “The case of Omar Ismail Mostefai clearly establishes that intelligence sharing and effective communication are crucial to counter-terrorism efforts. The Turkish government expects closer cooperation from its allies in the future.”

The Associated Press reported a more general warning had been given to coalition countries by senior Iraqi intelligence officials the day before the attack. The warnings were vague, though four Iraqi intelligence officials told the AP that they warned France specifically of an attack and two said they warned France beforehand about details French authorities hadn’t yet made public, including that the planning for the attack occurred in ISIS’s de facto capital of Raqqa, Syria. The officials also said a sleeper cell in France helped the attackers execute the plan after they arrived and the operation included 24 people—19 attackers and five working on planning and logistics.

The AP also reported that a senior French security official responded to the claims by the Iraqi officials by saying French intelligence receives such warnings “all the time” and “every day.”

Belgian’s Justice Minister Koen Geens also reportedly told CNN’s Ivan Watson that authorities knew some of the Paris attackers were foreign fighters in Syria but were unaware they had returned.

“Belgium has a foreign fighters problem,” Geens said.

Writing in Slate on Monday, Brian Michael Jenkins explained why even advanced knowledge about suspected ISIS sympathizers and fighters might not be enough to prevent such attacks:

[O]ne should not underestimate the difficulties of intelligence collection in Europe today. France’s intelligence services are being overwhelmed by the many individuals who have gone to join jihadi fronts in Syria (some of whom have returned), those suspected of preparing to go, and still others suspected of being involved in plotting or supporting terrorist plots. The total number easily runs into the thousands. Keeping every one of them under close surveillance is not possible. Choices have to be made. Some plots will be thwarted. Others will inevitably evade detection.

By Jeremy Stahl
NOV. 16 2015 12:14 PM

Find this story at 16 November 2015

© 2015 The Slate Group LLC

How the Paris Attackers Honed Their Assault Through Trial and Error

PARIS — The gunfire had still not subsided, and those who could were running for their lives. But one man was crossing Paris to get close to the scenes of death.

Just after 10 p.m. on Nov. 13, the man, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, parked his rented getaway car in the eastern suburb of Montreuil, leaving behind the Kalashnikov he is believed to have used to shoot diners in central Paris a half-hour before. Apparently unconcerned as security cameras recorded his movements, he boarded the No. 9 subway line and returned to the part of the city that was still under siege. Before the night was over, investigators say, he had walked past the shattered cafes and bloodied concert hall that had been among his targets.

After a year of plotting terror in Europe but only producing four fizzled attempts, Mr. Abaaoud made sure this time was different. This time, he was on the scene, not directing from afar. This time, he monitored his team of assassins — old friends and new zealots — and surveyed the suffering. This time, investigators say, he had prepared for a second wave of assaults days later, and planned to die himself as a suicide bomber in the heart of the Paris region’s business district.

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How the Organizer of the Paris Attacks Slipped Through Authorities’ Hands
Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who organized the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris, crisscrossed Europe and the Middle East, even though he was on a Belgian watch list.

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A foot soldier turned lieutenant in the Islamic State’s hierarchy, Mr. Abaaoud, a 28-year-old Belgian, had been under increasing pressure to deliver something big, Western intelligence officials say. “All these operations in 2015 had been failures, embarrassing failures,” said Louis Caprioli, a former deputy head of France’s domestic counterterrorism unit. “He needed to make sure this operation succeeds.”

Two weeks after the attacks, as France buries its dead and a lengthening list of Mr. Abaaoud’s suspected confederates are rounded up, more evidence has emerged about how the group of at least nine militants pulled off the assaults, and the intelligence and security lapses that allowed them to do so.

There had been repeated hints of their intentions and efforts to hone their skills, according to dozens of interviews, court documents and government disclosures. Despite growing alarm in French counterterrorism circles about the threat they posed, the overburdened security apparatus proved ill equipped against an enemy practicing what one official calls “dartboard terrorism,” hurling multiple lethal darts at a distant target until one hits the mark.

In January, the police raided a safehouse in the Belgian town of Verviers, thwarting a plot that proved to be a chilling precursor to the synchronized murder that played out across the French capital 10 months later. The raid uncovered an arsenal that included the ingredients to make the same volatile explosives used in Paris, according to an American intelligence document.

The militants have become “more professional,” learning from their mistakes, said one intelligence official. Earlier this year, a plotter linked to Mr. Abaaoud planned to mow down the congregation at a French church but instead shot himself in the leg. But the gunmen in Paris — a majority of them battle-hardened in Syria — were well trained. After phone taps uncovered the Verviers plan, Mr. Abaaoud began using encryption technology and may have concealed his communications in that way with his Paris team, intelligence officials said.

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State of Terror
Articles in this series examine the rise of the Islamic State and life inside the territory it has conquered.

Exploiting Europe’s passport-free zone and patchy intelligence sharing, Mr. Abaaoud and his team moved not just across the Continent, but also to Syria and back. They did so despite being questioned at airports, flagged by security services or pulled over during routine traffic stops.

“Abaaoud was in the database of every single European country, but he returned to Europe like he was going on a vacation to Club Med,” said the mother of an 18-year-old Belgian jihadist who died earlier this year after joining the same Islamic State brigade to which several of the Paris plotters belonged.

The attack in Paris was the deadliest terrorist assault on the Continent in a decade, killing 130 people. It reverberated across the region, forcing Brussels to lock down for four days, spurring Germany to cancel a soccer match and prompting Britain to increase its military budget after years of cutbacks.

Trying to reassure a grieving nation, President François Hollande of France has pledged to defeat the Islamic State’s “cult of death.” Yet intelligence officials warned of the West’s vulnerabilities. Paris, they fear, heralds a new era of terror, one that could play out on the streets of European capitals for years to come.

“They try, they fail, they learn, they try again,” said one French official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “They have patience and they have an army of willing martyrs that feed on an ideology that is immune to bullets.”

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The Expanding Web of Connections Among the Paris Attackers
Warning Signs

Earlier this year, an official at Europol, the Continent’s law enforcement agency, paid an urgent visit to Athens to ask for help tracking down a Belgian named Abdelhamid Abaaoud, according to news media reports.

For months, investigators had been intercepting suspicious calls originating near Pangrati, a neighborhood of Athens, said a retired European official who was briefed on the details.

Mr. Abaaoud, then 27, appeared to be planning an attack in his native land — a possibility considered improbable at first. He seemed like other young Europeans who had joined the Islamic State: a fanatic who made grandiose threats online, but did not have the know-how or the network to pull off mass murder on European soil.

But after the calls were tracked to Verviers, a SWAT team raided a residence there on Jan. 15, turning up evidence of surprising sophistication. The police found automatic weapons, a large quantity of cash, a body camera, multiple cellphones, hand-held radios and fraudulent identification documents, according to a United States Department of Homeland Security intelligence assessment.

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Paris Victims, Remembered
They also found the precursor chemicals for the explosive triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, according to the document, which was the same chemical compound used in the suicide belts in Paris. The compound is highly volatile, according to Claude Moniquet, who spent two decades at the French spy agency D.G.S.E. “If you don’t get it just right, you’ll either blow off your hand, or it won’t go off at all,” Mr. Moniquet said. “It suggests the presence of a bombmaker.”

The discovery set off a manhunt in Greece, but Mr. Abaaoud’s SIM card stopped transmitting immediately after the raid. The police found his DNA in an Athens apartment, according to news media reports. But officials lost his trail.

A few weeks later, Mr. Abaaoud resurfaced in the Islamic State’s online magazine, bragging about having plotted terrorism under the noses of the European authorities. “My name and picture were all over the news yet I was able to stay in their homeland, plan operations against them, and leave safely,” he said.

Until then, said David Thomson, the author of a book on French jihadists, Mr. Abaaoud had been seen inside the Islamic State as nothing special. “They spoke of him as they would of anyone else — and not as an important guy,” Mr. Thomson said.

If anything, he was known mostly for his appearance in a grotesque Islamic State video, whooping and laughing while dragging corpses behind a 4-by-4 truck.

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How ISIS Expanded Its Threat
Yet Europe’s most notorious jihadist was once a hapless delinquent.

In 2010, he planned to break into a garage in the Belgian countryside with a childhood friend. But he slipped off the roof, and the pair were later found soaking wet and nearing hypothermia on a river edge, recalled his former lawyer, Alexandre Château.

The bungled burglary was unremarkable, but the partnership was not: His accomplice was one of two brothers who would later be at Mr. Abaaoud’s side during the Paris attacks.

Mr. Abaaoud’s father said his son began showing signs of extremism after a stint in prison.

On March 23, 2013, the authorities intercepted a call Mr. Abaaoud made on a Turkish cellphone to a friend in Belgium. He said he was leaving for “The Camp,” according to court records. His brother told Belgian security officials that Mr. Abaaoud had said he was going to Syria “to do jihad,” according to a court transcript.

By DEBORAH ACOSTA 3:17
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When the police went to search his home in the Molenbeek district of Brussels months later, the items found inside his abandoned residence included pepper spray, gloves and two crowbars, along with the keys to a stolen Audi and three license plates.

Inscriptions praising the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL, were on his door. On the wall, the court filing noted, was “a crude drawing of the ISIS flag, drawn with a marker.”

Sometime between late 2013 and early 2014, he joined a brigade called the Mujahedeen Shura Council based in Aleppo, Syria, which would soon pledge allegiance to the Islamic State.

One of his first jobs was searching the bodies of freshly killed troops. “He was in charge of emptying the pockets of cadavers after battle,” Mr. Thomson said.

Even when Mr. Abaaoud — by then called Abou Omar — joined the Katibat al-Battar, or Battar Brigade, an elite squad made up of French-speaking fighters that rose to prominence in 2014 within the Islamic State, his name surfaced only in passing, said Mr. Thomson, who spent months exchanging private messages with the French members of the unit as research for his book.

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In January, the police raided a terrorist safe house in Verviers, Belgium, and uncovered an arsenal of weapons. Credit Olivier Hoslet/European Pressphoto Agency
That changed abruptly after the Verviers plot. Though the operation had failed, Mr. Abaaoud’s ability to travel in and out of Europe impressed his fellow fighters in Syria, turning him from an ordinary soldier into an inspiration. “They would say, ‘Look at Abou Omar,’ ” Mr. Thomson recalled. “By which they meant: ‘If Abou Omar succeeded, then anyone can.’ ”

Battlefield Bonds

Investigators say they believe that it was in Syria that Mr. Abaaoud and most of the Paris attackers found one other.

As early as 2013, a well-established pipeline was funneling young men from Belgium to the Islamic State. Some took out loans with few questions asked from institutions like ING Belgium, where one future jihadist received 15,000 euros, or about $15,800, according to a recent court filing. Others bought cheap “burner” phones that are often discarded in an effort to avoid detection. One man stole flashlights and GoPro cameras, a favored tool for recording atrocities, according to court documents.

They knew to leave via trains or buses to other European countries before boarding flights to Turkey, evading relatively greater scrutiny at airports in their home countries.

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A photograph of Abdelhamid Abaaoud that was published in the Islamic State’s online magazine Dabiq. Credit via Associated Pres
Mr. Abaaoud, for example, accompanied his 13-year-old brother, Younes, to Syria, apparently by first making their way by land to Germany.

On Jan. 20, 2014, they checked in for a flight to Istanbul from Cologne. At passport control, an alert flashed: Mr. Abaaoud was on a Belgian watch list. When he claimed to be visiting family in Turkey, he was allowed to proceed.

Even when suspects are properly classified, they can fall through the cracks because of the lack of a centralized European database. There are currently 1,595 jihadists in the Europol terror database, said Jean-Charles Brisard, who has testified as an expert witness in terrorism trials. The actual number, if European countries shared their information more efficiently, should be well over 6,000, he said.

Many of the future Paris attackers ended up in the Battar brigade in Syria. Only Mr. Abaaoud and the two brothers from Molenbeek, Salah and Ibrahim Abdeslam, appear to have known one other before they were radicalized.

Several came from intact, middle-class families, including Mr. Abaaoud, a shop owner’s son who had been sent to an exclusive Catholic school. Second- and third-generation immigrants of Moroccan and Algerian descent, the attackers included a bus driver, a bar owner and a mechanic for the Brussels Métro. The oldest was 29, the youngest just 20 — he wept, his mother recalls, the day he left for Syria.

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The plotters Clockwise from top left; Samy Amimour, one of the suicide bombers who attacked the Bataclan concert hall; an unidentified man, one of the suicide bombers at the Stade de France stadium; Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected architect of the Paris attacks; Ibrahim Abdeslam, a Bataclan attacker; Ismaël Omar Mostefaï, a Bataclan attacker; an unidentified man suspected of being involved in the attacks; Bilal Hadfi, one of the suicide bombers at the stadium; and Salah Abdeslam, who remains at large. Credit Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Some had criminal records, and their families were reassured at first when they began to show signs of piety.

Mohammed Abdeslam said he had believed his two brothers were cleaning up their act. “When your brother tells you that he will stop drinking, it’s not radicalization,” he told a Belgian broadcaster.

Bilal Hadfi, the youngest of the group, had been smoking and doing drugs until one month before his departure to Syria in January, his mother told the Belgian news media, and started fasting on Mondays and Thursdays.

“He was by no means the cliché you’d expect,” recalled one of his mentors at the Instituut Anneessens-Funck in Brussels, where Mr. Hadfi, 20, was studying to become an electrician. “He didn’t have a beard.” He had “excellent grades” and was “extremely intelligent,” said the professor, who asked to remain anonymous in talking about a student. Then Mr. Hadfi stopped coming to class.

Mr. Hadfi is believed to have arrived in Syria last, on Jan. 15, eventually joining a team that included two hardened French jihadists: Ismaël Omar Mostefaï, a 29-year-old from the Courcouronnes suburb of Paris, and Samy Amimour, a 28-year-old bus driver from Drancy, northeast of the French capital.

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A mosque outside Chartres, France, that was attended by Ismaël Omar Mostefaï, whose contact with hard-line Islamists prompted officials to a database of those considered a potential security risk. Credit Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times
Mr. Mostefaï was arrested eight times for petty crimes, and in 2010 his contact with hard-line Islamists at the local mosque prompted officials to add his name to the “S list,” a French database of those considered a potential security risk.

Mr. Amimour’s route to jihad began with an aborted trip to Yemen in 2012. After he stopped reporting to the police station in September 2013 as required, it took a month for an arrest warrant to be issued. By then, he had crossed into Syria — the same day as Mr. Mostefaï, officials say they believe.

As Frenchmen, the two would most likely have come across an older French jihadist who had already made a name for himself in the Islamic State: Fabien Clain, who had been to prison for recruiting fighters from France and Belgium to Iraq a decade ago. Mr. Clain, investigators said, was the speaker in an Islamic State audio recording claiming responsibility for the Paris massacre.

Intelligence officials call him a “bridge” between the French and Belgian jihadists who may have facilitated links between Mr. Abaaoud and his fellow plotters. Described as one of the most senior operatives in the Islamic State hierarchy, he works under Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, the group’s chief of external operations. Mr. Abaaoud was lowlier, “a platoon leader, not the head of the armed forces,” said François Heisbourg, a former defense official and counterterrorism expert.

By August, Mr. Abaaoud’s blueprint and team for attacking Europe may have been nearly ready.

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Marc Trévidic, who served as France’s chief antiterrorism judge until three months ago, said he had heard Mr. Abaaoud’s name numerous times over the past year. Credit Remy De La Mauviniere/Associated Press
That month, Montasser AlDe’emeh, the author of two books on jihad and a former neighbor of Mr. Abaaoud’s in Molenbeek, heard his phone vibrate with a WhatsApp message. It was an audio recording from a Belgian jihadist in the same unit as Mr. Abaaoud.

“This is a message for the Belgian government from the mujahedeen of ISIS,” the audio begins. “It’s not a threat or a stupid thing, or just talk. This is a declaration of war. We have the plans.”

Raising the Alarm

The man who served as France’s chief antiterrorism judge until three months ago had heard Mr. Abaaoud’s name numerous times over the past year. Dozens of young French Muslims returning from Syria were brought to his office for questioning.

“Abaaoud came up all the time,” the judge, Marc Trévidic, recalled in an interview last week. “Especially after the January raids in Verviers.”

Photo

Fans left the Stade de France after the soccer game between France and Germany amid confusion caused by the attacks in the area. Credit Christophe Ena/Associated Press
It was always the same story: Mr. Abaaoud had told his young disciples to “do whatever they can” to inflict death and damage at home. They described him as obsessed. “He was mentioned as someone who wanted, at all cost, to recruit volunteers to carry out attacks in Belgium and France,” said Mr. Trévidic, now vice president of the high court in Lille, northern France.

But there was never a specific target, nor a date for an attack. The mission was always vague.

That changed on Aug. 15. In one of the last interviews the judge conducted, he found himself opposite a young Frenchman who had been handed money, encryption software and the most concrete target to date: “a rock concert hall” in Paris.

The young man, Reda Hame, had been arrested coming back from Syria, accompanied by a Muslim from Belgium. His companion had told the police that Mr. Hame was planning an attack in France.

Mr. Abaaoud had asked Mr. Hame to hit a soft target where he could achieve “maximum casualties.” He had given Mr. Hame an email address to reach him on and a USB stick with an encryption key he was to download on his computer. Mr. Abaaoud had promised further instructions by email on where to obtain weapons for the attack and which specific concert hall to strike.

Photo

Emergency workers removed the bodies of victims at a cafe in Paris. Credit Philippe Wojazer/Reuters
It was two weeks before Paris’s annual Rock en Seine musical festival. Was the target one of dozens of concerts playing over the three-day event in a Paris suburb? Was it one of the city’s many other music venues, like the Bataclan, which had been mentioned as a possible target at least twice before?

Mr. Trévidic placed an urgent call with the domestic intelligence services, the D.G.S.I., and asked them to trace Mr. Abaaoud’s email address.

“From late summer we knew something big was being planned,” said one French intelligence official. “We knew Abaaoud was involved in it but we didn’t know what, or where, or when. Everyone was on high alert.”

The sense of alarm only spread when, six days after Mr. Hame’s interview, a 26-year-old Moroccan, Ayoub El Khazzani, also linked to Mr. Abaaoud, stepped out of the bathroom of a high-speed train barreling toward Paris with a Kalashnikov before being subdued by three Americans.

With hindsight, some suggest the lone-wolf style attacks — single gunmen sent on missions to kill — that were thwarted in recent months were never the main focus. Whatever his intention, Mr. Trévidic said, Mr. Abaaoud “kept security services busy and distracted with these mini-plots while preparing the real attack.”

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GRAPHIC
Three Hours of Terror in Paris, Moment by Moment
Many of the attacks were just minutes apart.

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The United States had also picked up intelligence in recent months that showed the Islamic State was plotting an attack in France, senior American officials said. But they had nothing specific about targets or timing.

By late September, Mr. Hollande’s government launched airstrikes on Islamic State targets in Syria.

On Oct. 8 and 9, French fighter jets targeted training camps near Raqqa, the stronghold of the self-proclaimed caliphate in Syria. Mr. Hollande has publicly denied that the strikes were targeting an individual. But according to two Western intelligence officials, the hope was also to take out operatives including Mr. Abaaoud.

“When you don’t know where to hit the enemy here, you have to try to hit him over there,” Bernard Squarcini, the former head of France’s domestic intelligence agency, said in an interview.

A Calculated Attack

While the security services had their eyes on Syria, most if not all of Mr. Abaaoud’s team was already back in Europe, quietly putting in place the modern logistics of mass murder.

At least two are believed to have entered through the refugee flow on the Greek island of Leros, where the authorities fingerprinted them in October.

In the period leading up to the attack, the support network expanded — though just how far is not yet clear — to include radicalized family members and loyal friends, landlords and online arms dealers. Mr. Abaaoud’s cousin helped hide him after the attacks before dying alongside him in a police raid. Five friends of Salah Abdeslam, who dumped his suicide vest in a trash can and remains at large as the only surviving member of the attackers, have been arrested in Belgium for allegedly helping him escape. In Germany, one man who may have sold the group assault rifles over the Internet was placed in custody last week.

The plan involved three teams, whose members set off in at least three rental cars from Belgium and booked rooms in at least two locations in and around Paris, including two hotel rooms in the suburb of Alfortville and a house with bunk beds in Bobigny. Like tourists, they used online services including Booking.com and Homelidays.com, with the Abdeslam brothers handling the logistics.

In September, Salah Abdeslam made a foray to the edges of Paris to buy half a dozen electronic components used to make fireworks explode. He spent 390 euros in Les Magiciens du Feu, or “Fire Magicians” shop, said the shop’s in-house lawyer, Frédéric Zajac. “Unlike other clients, he did not ask any questions about how it all worked,” he said.

Mr. Abaaoud had learned from past mistakes: Unlike the plot in January, when his accomplices were still searching for an ice machine to store the TATP explosive, he made sure they had refrigerators. At the Appart’City hotel where four of the attackers stayed, rooms come with a kitchenette.

And rather than sending a single gunman or picking a single target, Mr. Abaaoud sent teams to a variety of locations — hedging the risk of failure and forcing the police to spread themselves thin. “They found out that if you use this ‘swarm theory’ you will exhaust the resources of law enforcement,” explained Ron Sandee, the former chief Al Qaeda analyst for Dutch military intelligence.

The roster for each team suggests more forethought: The two jihadists with more than four years of battlefield experience in Syria between them, Mr. Amimour and Mr. Mostefaï, were assigned the most important target, the Bataclan, with a third, still-unidentified man. Witnesses say they saw the Bataclan gunmen flanking each other, with one fighter reloading his magazine while another kept firing.

By contrast, the attackers at the Stade de France, the national soccer stadium, included the youngest and least experienced jihadist — the 20-year-old Mr. Hadfi. He was dropped off strapped with an explosive belt that needed only detonating. (Neither of the other two suicide bombers at the stadium has been identified.) “They said to themselves, ‘The kids will get as far as they can,’ ” and after that only need to “hit a button,” said Mr. Moniquet, a veteran of France’s intelligence agency who now directs the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center.

Mr. Abaaoud himself was believed to have gone to a busy stretch of restaurants on the Rue de Charonne, equipped with the Kalashnikov that was later recovered bearing his DNA. Phone records released by the French prosecutor indicate that he left the house at Bobigny in a rented Seat car at 8:38 p.m. accompanied by another still-unidentified attacker and Ibrahim Abdeslam, his accomplice in the bungled garage theft five years ago.

It remains unclear if Mr. Abaaoud joined his troops to fire on the bars and cafes, though it seems likely: Witnesses saw gunmen leaning out of the black Seat rental car, and in front of each shattered establishment, investigators recovered “hundreds” of 7.62-millimeter cartridges, according to the French prosecutor.

Between 8:40 p.m. and 9:21 p.m. the phone “most probably” used by Mr. Abaaoud was in “sustained contact” with the one used by Mr. Hadfi, according to the Paris prosecutor. That was when Mr. Hadfi tried to enter the soccer stadium near Gate D, only to be turned away.

Moments later, at 9:20, he detonated the explosive.

The last attempted call between the two phones came a minute later — the platoon leader checking up on the recruit.

Correction: December 3, 2015
Because of a transcription error, an article on Tuesday about the intelligence and security lapses that allowed the Paris attackers to practice their assault misstated the size of the cartridges recovered by investigators in front of the bars and cafes targeted. They are 7.62 millimeters, not 0.762.

Reporting was contributed by Nabih Bulos, Aurelien Breeden and Lilia Blaise from Paris; Eric Schmitt from Washington; Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura and Andrew Higgins from Brussels; and Alison Smale from Berlin.

Get news and analysis from Europe and around the world delivered to your inbox every day with the Today’s Headlines: European Morning newsletter. Sign up here.

A version of this article appears in print on December 1, 2015, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: A Plot Honed by Trial and Error . Order Reprints| Today’s Paper|Subscribe

By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI, KATRIN BENNHOLD and LAURE FOURQUETNOV. 30, 2015 122
Find this story at 30 November 2015

© 2015 The New York Times Company

Paris attacks ‘ringleader’ Abdelhamid Abaaoud evaded Athens police

Greek police tried to capture the suspected ringleader of the Paris terror attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, in January but the operation failed.
A Belgian anti-terrorism source told the BBC the Athens operation planned to target Abaaoud before anti-terror raids in Belgium, but that did not happen.
Abaaoud had been directing the Belgian cell by phone from Athens.
Abaaoud died in a battle with French police five days after the 13 November Paris attacks that killed 130 people.
The Greek operation was supposed to have taken place before the one carried out by security forces in Verviers, eastern Belgium, on 15 January. That raid saw an exchange of fire that left two suspected jihadists dead.

DNA samples

Greek authorities were on Abaaoud’s trail, believing him to be running the Belgian cell by mobile phone from Athens.
Anti-terror sources told the BBC that a senior Belgian police officer was in Athens co-ordinating the hunt for Abaaoud with his Greek counterparts before the raid on the Verviers cell.
It remains unclear why or how Abaaoud slipped through the Greek net. There may have been an attempt to track him down to a city centre square by tracing the signal of his mobile phone. But that did not work.
The Greek authorities are not confirming any details – all that is known is that he got away.
Greek police only carried out raids in Athens two days after Verviers, on 17 January.
Earlier that day Belgian media had reported that authorities there were seeking Abaaoud, a Brussels resident of Moroccan origin, who was believed to be in hiding in Greece.
Police in Verviers. 15 Jan 2015Image copyrightEPA
Image caption
The Verviers raid left two suspected jihadists dead
Greek police raided two flats in Athens.
One Algerian man was eventually extradited to Belgium but Abaaoud was not to be found.
It is now known that traces of DNA recovered in both flats match samples recovered from Abaaoud’s body in Paris.
A neighbour at one of the flats, Vasilis Katsanos, said he had seen Abdelhamid Abaaoud in the street outside on at least two occasions.
Abdelhamid Abaaoud had been implicated in four out of six foiled attacks since this spring in France and sentenced to 20 years in prison in absentia, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve has said.
Abaaoud is not the only link between Greece and the Paris attacks.
Salah Abdeslam – who is still on the run – travelled to Greece by ferry from Italy on 1 August, leaving three days later.
And two of the suicide bombers who attacked the Stade de France crossed by boat from Turkey to the island of Leros in October, posing as refugees.
Much of the detail that has emerged in Athens raises questions about how to create a better exchange of information and closer cooperation between anti-terrorism authorities in different European countries.
But the link with Abaaoud is also a what-might-have-been.
If he had been captured in Athens in January, the attacks in Paris might never have taken place.

By Chris Morris
BBC News, Athens
8 December 2015

Find this story at 8 December 2015

© 2015 BBC

Correction: Serbia-Paris-Guns story

The head of a Serbian arms factory Milojko Brzakovic speaks during an interview with The Associated Press, in Belgrade, Serbia, Thursday, Dec. 10, 2015. Brzakovic of the Zastava arms factory told the Associated Press Thursday that the M92 semi-automatic pistol was traced after its serial number matched the one delivered to an American arms dealer in May 2013.

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — In a Dec. 10 story, The Associated Press incorrectly reported that a gun exported by a Serbian manufacturer to a Florida-based company was involved in the Nov. 13 Paris attacks. In fact, the gun in question was not involved in the attacks and has been in Mexican government custody since March of this year, according to U.S. authorities.

The AP report was based on information from the Serbian gun manufacturer Zastava, which cited to AP an advisory from the Serbian Interior Ministry. The advisory quoted Interpol authorities as saying a gun manufactured by Zastava with a particular serial number was used in Paris. The AP story should have made clear that the connection between a Zastava gun with that serial number and the Paris attacks was based only on this advisory.

Zastava said it exported a gun with that serial number to Delray Beach, Florida-based Century Arms in 2013. According to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the gun was received by Century and eventually sent to a federal firearms licensee in the United States and purchased by an individual in February 2014. In March of this year it was recovered at a crime scene in Mexico and is still in the custody of Mexican officials, ATF said.

Serbian authorities declined to provide any additional details this week on the advisory cited by Zastava or what it was based on. Interpol said it could not provide additional material because it only acts as a clearinghouse for information among police agencies. Interpol said it would defer to the information from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives on the case.

By JOVANA GEC and DUSAN STOJANOVIC
Dec. 18, 2015 2:15 PM EST

find this story at 18 December 2015

© 2015 Associated Press

Opération Sentinelle: la ligne Maginot de la sécurité intérieure

Les terroristes ont contourné les militaires, qui souhaitaient faire évoluer leur dispositif pour le rendre moins statique. Mais le gouvernement ne voulait pas alors donner l’impression de baisser la garde dans la protection des écoles, juives notamment.

A la suite des attentats du début de l’année, l’opération Sentinelle a été déclenchée le 12 janvier. Mobilisant d’abord 10000 hommes, elle devait s’inscrire dans la durée avec 7000 hommes chargés de la protection d’environ 800 sites sensibles, dont près de la moitié en région parisienne. Suite aux attaques de vendredi, l’Elysée a annoncé l’arrivée de 3000 hommes en renfort.
Comme la Ligne Maginot en 1940, le dispositif militaire de sécurité intérieure a été contourné par l’ennemi. Les terroristes n’ont pas attaqué les sites protégés par l’opération Sentinelle, en particulier ceux de la communauté juive, mais ils ont porté le feu ailleurs. Là où il n’y avait pas de militaires. A cet égard, le Bataclan est un nouveau Sedan.
Les attaques du vendredi 13 soulignent l’impossibilité d’assurer la protection des Français, désormais tous menacés, grâce au déploiement de l’armée dans les rues. L’Elysée peut bien annoncer l’arrivée de 3000 hommes en renfort, qui s’ajouteront aux 7000 déjà engagés, le problème reste entier : quel rôle l’armée peut-elle jouer dans la sécurité intérieure ?
Depuis des mois, ce sujet fait l’objet de discussions entre les responsables gouvernementaux et militaires. Les attentats de Paris vont les relancer, voire les amplifier, parce que la question de l’efficacité du dispositif se pose désormais de manière criante.
Dès les lendemains des attentats contre Charlie et l’Hyper Cacher, les militaires avaient été déployés, dans le cadre de l’opération Sentinelle, pour protéger certains sites sensibles. 7000 militaires (l’équivalent de deux brigades sur les 12 que compte l’armée de terre) l’étaient depuis lors de manière permanente. Au passage, le ministère de la Défense a bénéficié d’une rallonge budgétaire de 4,8 milliards, qui a permis de préserver 18 500 postes. Une mesure très bien accueillie dans la troupe, le chef d’état-major de l’armée de terre, le général Bosser, assurant même les députés de sa « pleine satisfaction ».
Mission de protection ponctuelle. Mais il y a un hic : les soldats professionnels ne sont pas des vigiles ou des supplétifs des forces de police. Si, dans une situation d’urgence, ils peuvent être engagés dans des missions de protection ponctuelle, ils n’ont pas vocation à l’être de manière permanente et massive. Malgré les primes et la médaille qui vient d’être créée, Sentinelle n’est guère populaire dans les casernes. Monter la garde dans les rues de Paris, ce n’est pas ce que les jeunes venaient chercher en s’engageant.
Depuis l’été, les états-majors cherchaient donc à faire évoluer leur dispositif, en le rendant plus mobile, plus réactif, moins « scotché », selon le mot d’un officier. Or, scotchés, les militaires le sont pour l’essentiel devant les sites de la communauté juive. D’où la gêne de tous les responsables sur cette question. Personne ne veut fournir des chiffres précis : environ 800 sites sont concernés par l’opération Sentinelle et parmi eux « une grande majorité de lieux de culte et d’écoles », reconnaît-on au ministère de la Défense. En dehors de la communauté juive, un officier assure que « des dizaines d’églises sont concernées et que les mosquées sont plutôt protégées par des patrouilles » que par une garde permanente. La liste des sites sensibles est fixée par le ministère de l’Intérieur, sur la base du travail des préfets, l’armée agissant ensuite dans le cadre d’une « réquisition ».
Selon les services de renseignement intérieur, la communauté juive, notamment ses écoles, fait toujours l’objet d’une menace très sérieuse. Après l’affaire Ilan Halimi, les attaques de Mohammed Merah contre l’école Ozar Hatorah (4 morts, dont 3 enfants) et d’Amedy Coulibaly contre l’Hyper Cacher (4 morts) ont profondément traumatisé les Français d’origine juive. Ils attendent que la République les protège et les rassure. Mais depuis vendredi, tous les Français sont désormais dans leur cas.
Jusqu’à présent, personne au sommet de l’Etat n’a voulu prendre le risque de retirer un militaire de la protection d’une école juive. L’armée est bel et bien « scotchée », une situation inconfortable du point de vue tactique. Mais, explique un responsable gouvernemental, « si l’Elysée a décidé de préserver des effectifs et d’augmenter le budget de la Défense, c’est pour faire Sentinelle et pas des missions de sécurité intérieure que l’armée s’inventerait », comme la protection des frontières avec les migrants ou le « contrôle de zones » dans les quartiers sensibles.
Rapport au Premier ministre. Une réflexion gouvernementale sur l’engagement de l’armée en France, pilotée par le Secrétariat général de la défense et de la sécurité nationale (SGDSN), est en cours. Elle devait aboutir en janvier à la remise d’un rapport au Premier ministre, fixant le nouveau cadre d’emploi de l’armée sur le territoire national. La nouvelle donne terroriste risque de compliquer encore les choses.
Dix mois après le déclenchement de l’opération Sentinelle, on ne connaît toujours pas les grands principes qui doivent guider l’action militaire sur le sol national, c’est-à-dire face à des Français dans le cadre d’un Etat de droit. « Pour un militaire, un citoyen ne peut pas devenir un adversaire », explique-t-on à l’état-major des armées. « Nous pouvons être engagés pour faire face à la menace terroriste, mais pas dans des missions d’ordre public ». Des généraux ont, un temps, réclamé que les militaires reçoivent certains pouvoirs de police… ce qui revenait à les transformer en gendarmes. L’état d’urgence décrété et la « guerre » dont parle le chef de l’Etat vont-ils faire évoluer les choses dans ce sens ? On se retrouverait alors dans une situation proche de celle des débuts de la guerre d’Algérie, quand les socialistes étaient déjà au pouvoir.
Pour le général Pierre de Villiers, chef d’état-major des armées, « plutôt que de suppléer les forces de sécurité, les armées doivent apporter des savoir-faire complémentaires ». Reste à savoir lesquels ? Personne n’a encore fourni de réponses définitives et convaincantes. « La capacité de travailler jour et nuit, une grande mobilité, un savoir-faire en matière de renseignement – tant humain que via des drones », expliquait récemment le patron de l’armée de terre. Tout ou presque, sauf des gardes statiques permanentes…
L’armée de terre n’est pourtant pas prête à renoncer à cette mission Sentinelle. Par conviction, comme l’exprime le général de Villiers : « La mission des armées, en temps de crise comme en temps de paix, est de protéger tous les Français où qu’ils se trouvent. » Mais aussi par intérêt bien compris. Car Sentinelle lui a permis de sauver ce qui fait le cœur de son identité : ses effectifs.

Jean-Dominique Merchet 15 novembre 2015 à 16h28
Find this story at 15 November 2015

© l’Opinion 2015

Metadata Surveillance Didn’t Stop the Paris Attacks

And yet intelligence officials and politicians are now saying it could have. They’re wrong.

Since terrorists struck Paris last Friday night, the debate over whether encryption prevents intelligence services from stopping attacks has reignited. The New York Times and Yahoo reported on vague claims that the terrorists’ use of encryption stymied investigators who might have thwarted their plans. CIA Director John Brennan made equally vague comments Monday morning, warning that thanks to the privacy protections of the post-Snowden era, it is now “much more challenging” for intelligence agencies to find terrorists. Jeb Bush piled on, saying that the United States needs to restore its program collecting metadata on U.S. phone calls, even though that program won’t be shut down until the end of this month.

Following a terrorism incident as shocking as the Paris attacks, it is no surprise that politicians and the intelligence establishment would want to widen American spying capabilities. But their arguments are conflating the forest—bulk metadata collection—and the trees: access to individual communications about the attack. To understand why that’s the case, start with this tweet from former NSA and DHS official Stewart Baker: “NSA’s 215 program”—and by association the far larger metadata dragnet of which the domestically focused phone-metadata program is just a small part—“was designed to detect a Mumbai/Paris-style attack.”

Only it didn’t.

The metadata surveillance system appears to have failed before it even got to the encryption stage.
The United States and United Kingdom’s metadata collection that focuses on the Middle East and Europe is far more extensive than the phone dragnet being shut down later this month, and its use has far more permissive rules. This dragnet is mostly limited by technology, not law. And France—which rewrote its surveillance laws after the Charlie Hebdo attack earlier this year—has its own surveillance system. Both are in place, yet neither detected the Nov. 13 plot. This means they failed to alert authorities to the people they should more closely target via both electronic and physical surveillance. In significant part, this system appears to have failed before it even got to the stage at which investigators would need to worry about terrorists’ use of encryption.

To understand why that’s true, it helps to understand how the metadata dragnet relates to surveillance of content as well as human spying.

In most public comments going back to the initial leaks from Edward Snowden (and in Baker’s tweet from the weekend), authorities have made a shaky claim: that the surveillance dragnet is “designed to detect” an attack like Paris. Based on that claimed purpose, their dragnets are failing.

But that claim was always an oversimplification. It oversold the importance of the dragnet, by itself, such that citizens might more willingly tolerate the collection of highly revealing personal details. Because it doesn’t include the actual content of our conversations, call metadata doesn’t seem especially intimate; if it’s the only thing authorities say they need to prevent a big terrorist attack, citizens might easily conclude that they’re fine with the government collecting it. But the claim also served to hide how quickly metadata analysis can lead to the reading of content.

The intelligence community has given us a more nuanced understanding of the purpose of the metadata dragnet, however, in a National Academy of Sciences paper on “Bulk Collection of Signals Intelligence” released earlier this year. President Obama asked for the paper in early 2014 to assess whether the intelligence apparatus could accomplish what it currently does with metadata dragnets (both those conducted in the U.S. and overseas) via more targeted data collection.

The NAS report measured the dragnet in terms of three functions:

Contact chaining, which maps out networks of people based on whom they communicate or even spend time with.

Identifying and keeping current all known identifiers (phone numbers, email addresses, device identifiers, IP addresses, Internet IDs) a person of interest uses. This is done, in part, by using algorithms to match up the communication patterns of different accounts.

“Triaging” the identifiers collected to categorize the urgency of the threat to national security from the party associated with each one.
If the dragnet accomplishes its purpose, it will provide a fairly comprehensive picture of who is communicating or hanging out with whom, connect all the known communications identities of any given person (which is critical to developing a comprehensive picture of someone’s network and the communications tools he uses), and then use those pictures to identify who poses threats that should be followed more closely.

If the metadata dragnet works, that can happen even with encrypted communication.

It’s only through that process that authorities get around to actually reading content. Authorities will use the metadata dragnet, for example, to choose what content to keep from bulk content collection. It’s likely they’ll collect, but maybe not immediately read, communications that are one or two degrees of separation from identifiers of interest just in case it becomes interesting later. Importantly, the NSA will even keep encrypted communications that, because of their metadata, are of interest.

The metadata dragnet also helps the intelligence community decide whom to target in its bulky Section 702 PRISM collection, which last year affected more than 92,000 targets and everyone they communicated with. Here, rather than doing the bulk collection itself, the NSA capitalizes on the fact that much of the world uses American tech companies like Google and Facebook to conduct (and often, store) its online communications. So when the triaging process identifies new foreign identifiers that seem important, NSA can ask the tech companies to preserve and share on an ongoing basis everything that’s associated with that identifier, including more metadata. In most cases, NSA will get the content of communications those identifiers have, which they’ll read and store and pull up again in the future if a related identifier is involved.

There are a few exceptions where officials cannot get the contents of communications via PRISM because they’re encrypted at the user level, rather than server level. The most important of these exceptions are WhatsApp and iMessage (and the latter only if users have opted not to use Apple’s cloud to store their communications), as well as any communications users have encrypted on their own. The NSA can’t get this content from Facebook, Apple, or other providers, but it can get metadata, so for users of interest, surveilers should at least know who is communicating with whom as well as some other useful details about them, though not what they’re saying.

For WhatsApp and iMessage users of interest, as well as those using their own encryption, the intelligence agencies will seek ways to bypass the encryption, often by hacking a user’s device or identifying his IP address and then accessing other devices or Internet accounts using that IP.

Importantly, however, it takes the triaging process or a particular event (like Friday’s attack) to identify users of such importance that the NSA will make the effort to conduct more targeted spying.

Finally, there’s old-fashioned physical surveillance and human intelligence, asking people to spy on others. As reflected by the CIA’s recent decision to add a digital innovation unit, even old-fashioned spying is increasingly guided and assisted by communications technology, both in identifying targets but also finding ways and information to compromise those targets. Numerous declassified reports make it clear the FBI uses the American phone dragnet to identify people who might make useful informants. (It also sometimes uses communications content to find intelligence they can use to coerce that cooperation.) Presumably, other intelligence services do the same.

For targets in a known location that are using very good communications security (by using encryption and ensuring their multiple identities cannot be correlated, not even with geolocation), physical surveillance of known targets (as several of the Paris perpetrators were by authorities) is always an option. The problem with that is it is very time- and labor-intensive—and because France and Belgium have so many potentially dangerous extremists, selecting whom would get that level of attention requires a very good combing process.

It all comes back to this triage, which is in significant part about how well the intelligence community uses that forest of metadata to pick whom it should target.

“Knowing who someone communicates with is metadata, not content, and most encrypted protocols (e.g. WhatsApp, Telegram, etc.) don’t change this,” Nicholas Weaver, a researcher at the International Computer Science Institute at UC–Berkeley explains. “In attempting to identify actual threat actors, ‘this person is communicating with ISIS’ is probably all you need to justify more intensive targeted actions, such as system compromise, that bypass any effects of encryption.”

There are a number of reasons why the dragnet might not work as planned. Some important metadata may be missing, perhaps even from the PlayStation 4 consoles some terrorists have used to communicate, which Belgium’s Interior Minister said has posed particular problems in the days before the attack. (Though there’s no evidence PS4s played a role in this attack.) Some metadata, especially that scraped from content, may be increasingly unavailable if the content itself is encrypted. When individuals keep their online identities rigorously separate, that too makes the dragnet less useful, as it makes it hard to identify a terrorist network. Finally, it may be that the triage process doesn’t always measure the importance of communications effectively.

In any case, news reports on the investigation into Friday’s attacks have suggested that some of the terrorists involved in the attack—even a figure identified as the possible planner—have had some of their communications analyzed already. If so, enough metadata was available to partially map out this network. If investigators know about these communications now, they could have known about them on Thursday, before the attack. And if they did, investigators might have been able to bypass whatever encryption the terrorists did use.

The terrorists who conducted Friday’s attack may well have been using encryption. But if so, it appears that the metadata dragnet failed well before agencies got to any encrypted communications.

By Marcy Wheeler
NOV. 16 2015 10:44 PM

Find this story at 16 November 2015

© 2015 The Slate Group LLC

Inquiry Weighs Whether ISIS Analysis Was Distorted

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon’s inspector general is investigating allegations that military officials have skewed intelligence assessments about the United States-led campaign in Iraq against the Islamic State to provide a more optimistic account of progress, according to several officials familiar with the inquiry.

The investigation began after at least one civilian Defense Intelligence Agency analyst told the authorities that he had evidence that officials at United States Central Command — the military headquarters overseeing the American bombing campaign and other efforts against the Islamic State — were improperly reworking the conclusions of intelligence assessments prepared for policy makers, including President Obama, the government officials said.

Fuller details of the claims were not available, including when the assessments were said to have been altered and who at Central Command, or Centcom, the analyst said was responsible. The officials, speaking only on the condition of anonymity about classified matters, said that the recently opened investigation focused on whether military officials had changed the conclusions of draft intelligence assessments during a review process and then passed them on.

Photo

Iraqi Army recruits in Taji in April with U.S. Army trainers. About 3,400 American troops are advising Iraqi forces. Credit John Moore/Getty Images
The prospect of skewed intelligence raises new questions about the direction of the government’s war with the Islamic State, and could help explain why pronouncements about the progress of the campaign have varied widely.

Legitimate differences of opinion are common and encouraged among national security officials, so the inspector general’s investigation is an unusual move and suggests that the allegations go beyond typical intelligence disputes. Government rules state that intelligence assessments “must not be distorted” by agency agendas or policy views. Analysts are required to cite the sources that back up their conclusions and to acknowledge differing viewpoints.

Under federal law, intelligence officials can bring claims of wrongdoing to the intelligence community’s inspector general, a position created in 2011. If officials find the claims credible, they are required to advise the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. That occurred in the past several weeks, the officials said, and the Pentagon’s inspector general decided to open an investigation into the matter.

Spokeswomen for both inspectors general declined to comment for this article. The Defense Intelligence Agency and the White House also declined to comment.

Col. Patrick Ryder, a Centcom spokesman, said he could not comment on a continuing inspector general investigation but said “the I.G. has a responsibility to investigate all allegations made, and we welcome and support their independent oversight.”

Numerous agencies produce intelligence assessments related to the Iraq war, including the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency and others. Colonel Ryder said it was customary for them to make suggestions on one another’s drafts. But he said each agency had the final say on whether to incorporate those suggestions. “Further, the multisource nature of our assessment process purposely guards against any single report or opinion unduly influencing leaders and decision makers,” he said.

It is not clear how that review process changes when Defense Intelligence Agency analysts are assigned to work at Centcom — which has headquarters both in Tampa, Fla., and Qatar — as was the case of at least one of the analysts who have spoken to the inspector general. In the years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Pentagon has relocated more Defense Intelligence Agency analysts from the agency’s Washington headquarters to military commands around the globe, so they can work more closely with the generals and admirals in charge of the military campaigns.

Mr. Obama last summer authorized a bombing campaign against the Islamic State, and approximately 3,400 American troops are currently in Iraq advising and training Iraqi forces. The White House has been reluctant, though, to recommit large numbers of ground troops to Iraq after announcing an “end” to the Iraq war in 2009.

The bombing campaign over the past year has had some success in allowing Iraqi forces to reclaim parts of the country formerly under the group’s control, but important cities like Mosul and Ramadi remain under Islamic State’s control. There has been very little progress in wresting the group’s hold over large parts of Syria, where the United States has done limited bombing.

Some senior American officials in recent weeks have provided largely positive public assessments about the progress of the military campaign against the Islamic State, a Sunni terrorist organization that began as an offshoot of Al Qaeda but has since severed ties and claimed governance of a huge stretch of land across Iraq and Syria. The group is also called ISIS or ISIL.

Continue reading the main story
Obama’s Evolution on ISIS
Some of President Obama’s statements about the American strategy to confront ISIS and its effectiveness.

In late July, retired Gen. John Allen — who is Mr. Obama’s top envoy working with other nations to fight the Islamic State — told the Aspen Security Forum that the terror group’s momentum had been “checked strategically, operationally, and by and large, tactically.”

“ISIS is losing,” he said, even as he acknowledged that the campaign faced numerous challenges — from blunting the Islamic State’s message to improving the quality of Iraqi forces.

During a news briefing last week, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter was more measured. He called the war “difficult” and said “it’s going to take some time.” But, he added, “I’m confident that we will succeed in defeating ISIL and that we have the right strategy.”

But recent intelligence assessments, including some by Defense Intelligence Agency, paint a sober picture about how little the Islamic State has been weakened over the past year, according to officials with access to the classified assessments. They said the documents conclude that the yearlong campaign has done little to diminish the ranks of the Islamic State’s committed fighters, and that the group over the last year has expanded its reach into North Africa and Central Asia.

Critics of the Obama administration’s strategy have argued that a bombing campaign alone — without a significant infusion of American ground troops — is unlikely to ever significantly weaken the terror group. But it is not clear whether Defense Intelligence Agency analysts concluded that more American troops would make an appreciable difference.

In testimony on Capitol Hill this year, Lt. Gen. Vincent R. Stewart, the agency’s director, said sending ground troops back into Iraq risked transforming the conflict into one between the West and ISIS, which would be “the best propaganda victory that we could give.”

“It’s both expected and helpful if there are dissenting viewpoints about conflicts in foreign countries,” said Micah Zenko, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of a forthcoming book, “Red Team,” that includes an examination of alternative analysis within American intelligence agencies. What is problematic, he said, “is when a dissenting opinion is not given to policy makers.”

The Defense Intelligence Agency was created in 1961, in part to avoid what Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense at the time, called “service bias.” During the 1950s, the United States grossly overestimated the size of the Soviet missile arsenal, a miscalculation that was fueled in part by the Air Force, which wanted more money for its own missile systems.

During the Vietnam War, the Defense Intelligence Agency repeatedly warned that even a sustained military campaign was unlikely to defeat the North Vietnamese forces. But according to an internal history of the agency, its conclusions were repeatedly overruled by commanders who were certain that the United States was winning, and that victory was just a matter of applying more force.

“There’s a built-in tension for the people who work at D.I.A., between dispassionate analysis and what command wants,” said Paul R. Pillar, a retired senior Central Intelligence Agency analyst who years ago accused the Bush administration of distorting intelligence assessments about Iraq’s weapons programs before the beginning of the Iraq war in 2003.

“You’re part of a large structure that does have a vested interest in portraying the overall mission as going well,” he said.

By MARK MAZZETTI and MATT APUZZOAUG. 25, 2015
A version of this article appears in print on August 26, 2015, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Inquiry Weighs If ISIS Analysis Was Distorted . Order Reprints| Today’s Paper|Subscribe

Find this story at 25 August 2015

© 2015 The New York Times Company

Pentagon: U.S.-trained fighters have not joined forces with al-Qaeda

The Pentagon on Wednesday denied reports that the latest batch of U.S.­trained rebels in Syria had defected
and joined al­Qaeda, as officials sought to dispel suggestions of further setbacks for the troubled effort to build
an effective local force against the Islamic State.
Earlier this week, shortly after a group of 71 U.S.­trained rebels returned to Syria after completing an American
training course in Turkey, one of the commanders said to be with the group issued a statement dissociating the
fighters from the Pentagon program and saying that it would operate as an “independent faction.”
The statement triggered rumors that the group had defected to the al­Qaeda­linked Jabhat al­Nusra, fueled by
photographs posted on social media by Jabhat al­Nusra purportedly showing U.S. weapons that had been
handed over by the Pentagon graduates.
The new reports came as U.S. officials search for ways to retool the Pentagon’s $500 million training program,
which was supposed to prepare a reliable, moderate force to combat the Islamic State, but which has come to
symbolize the shortcomings of the Obama administration’s handling of Syria’s protected civil conflict.
At the Pentagon, Capt. Jeff Davis, a military spokesman, said that U.S. officials were in touch with members of
the U.S.­trained group, referred to as the New Syrian Force (NSF), and said reports that the fighters had joined
Jabhat al­Nusra were false.
“We have no information at all to suggest that that’s true,” Davis told reporters. He said photos posted by Jabhat
al­Nusra­affiliated Twitter accounts, which purported to show American weaponry provided by those fighters,
had been “repurposed.”
U.S. Central Command, which oversees the training program, took the unusual step of issuing a statement to
rebut the reports. “All coalition­issued weapons and equipment are under the positive control of NSF fighters,”
the statement said.
The whereabouts and affiliation of the fighters was thrown into doubt following the statement by Anas Obaid,
who was one of the leaders of the new group of Pentagon graduates. He said the group would continue to fight
the Islamic State, but not in coordination with the United States. He also said the group had disowned its parent
organization, Division 30, the larger rebel unit from which the Pentagon trainees have been drawn, and would
call themselves Atareb Rebels, after the town where they are based.
Division 30 issued a statement saying that the unit had been unable to contact Obaid and warned he would be
put on trial for “high treason” if the reports of his defection were true.
Charles Lister of the Doha­based Brookings Institution said it was possible the U.S.­trained fighters had been
intimidated by Jabhat al­Nusra or other groups into denying their U.S. affiliation. “In that area of northern
Aleppo, it’s Islamists who have dominance, so to come in as a U.S.­backed force, you are at a disadvantage to
start with,” he said.
Later, Division 30, on its Twitter feed, denied that any of its weapons had been handed over: “The handover of
weapons has not occurred — not a single piece of weaponry.”
Still, U.S. officials acknowledge that they have limited ability to track the movements of the U.S.­trained
fighters, who are not under American command and control, and their arms.
The program, which has produced fewer than 200 fighters so far, has been plagued by setbacks. After the first
round of training, some fighters were kidnapped by Jabhat al­Nusra; others were attacked, and the unit
dissolved.
Last week, Gen. Lloyd Austin III, the Centcom commander, said fewer than five U.S.­backed fighters were then
in Syria.
“If this second group has failed as dismally as the first, this could well be the nail in the coffin of the program,”
Lister said.

By Missy Ryan and Liz Sly September 23
Sly reported from Beirut. Thomas Gibbons­Neff contributed to this report.
Missy Ryan writes about the Pentagon, military issues, and national security for The Washington Post.

Find this story at 23 September 2015

Copyright https://www.washingtonpost.com/

Exclusive: Congress probing U.S. spy agencies’ possible lapses on Russia

Senior U.S. lawmakers have begun probing possible intelligence lapses over Moscow’s intervention in Syria, concerned that American spy agencies were slow to grasp the scope and intention of Russia’s dramatic military offensive there, U.S. congressional sources and other officials told Reuters.

A week after Russia plunged directly into Syria’s civil war by launching a campaign of air strikes, the intelligence committees of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives want to examine the extent to which the spy community overlooked or misjudged critical warning signs, the sources said.

Findings of major blind spots would mark the latest of several U.S. intelligence misses in recent years, including Moscow’s surprise takeover of Ukraine’s Crimea region last year and China’s rapid expansion of island-building activities in the South China Sea.

Though spy agencies have sought to ramp up intelligence gathering on Russia since the crisis over Ukraine, they continue to struggle with inadequate resources because of the emphasis on counter-terrorism in the Middle East and the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, according to current and former U.S. officials.

A senior administration official, who also asked not to be identified, insisted that there were “no surprises” and that policymakers were “comfortable” with the intelligence they received in the lead-up to the Russian offensive.

Spy agencies had carefully tracked Russian President Vladimir Putin’s build-up of military assets and personnel in Syria in recent weeks, prompting White House criticism and demands for Moscow to explain itself.

But intelligence officers – and the U.S. administration they serve – were caught mostly off-guard by the speed and aggressiveness of Putin’s use of air power as well as a Russian target list that included U.S.-backed rebels, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“They saw some of this going on but didn’t appreciate the magnitude,” one of the sources told Reuters.

Russia’s sudden move to ramp up its military involvement in the Syria crisis has thrown Obama’s Middle East strategy into doubt and laid bare an erosion of U.S. influence in the region.

A shortage of reliable information and analysis could further hamper President Barack Obama’s efforts to craft a response on Syria to regain the initiative from Washington’s former Cold War foe.

BEHIND THE CURVE?

It is unclear how his administration could have reacted differently with better intelligence, though advance word of Putin’s attack plans might have allowed U.S. officials to warn the moderate Syrian opposition that they could end up in Russia’s line of fire.

Obama, who is reluctant to see America drawn deeper into another Middle East conflict, has shown no desire to directly confront Russia over its Syria offensive – something Moscow may have taken as a green light to escalate its operations.

Syrian troops and militia backed by Russian warplanes mounted what appeared to be their first major coordinated assault on Syrian insurgents on Wednesday and Moscow said its warships fired a barrage of missiles at them from the Caspian Sea, a sign of its new military reach.

Russia’s military build-up now includes a growing naval presence, long-range rockets and a battalion of troops backed by Moscow’s most modern tanks, the U.S. ambassador to NATO said.

The U.S. administration believes it now has a better understanding at least of Putin’s main motive – to do whatever it takes to prop up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. But Washington remains uncertain exactly how much further Putin is willing to go in terms of deployment of advanced military assets, the U.S. officials said.

The lack of clarity stems in part from the limited ability of U.S. intelligence agencies to discern what Putin and a tightly knit circle of advisers are thinking and planning.

In a tense meeting with Putin at the United Nations early last week, Obama was not given any advance notice of Russia’s attack plans, aides said. Russian air strikes began two days later, including the targeting of CIA-trained “moderate” anti-Assad rebels, though Moscow insisted it only hit Islamic State insurgents.

“They did not expect the speed with which Putin ramped things up,” said Michael McFaul, Obama’s former ambassador to Moscow. “He likes the element of surprise.”

U.S. intelligence agencies did closely follow and report to policymakers Russian moves to sharply expand infrastructure at its key air base in Latakia as well as the deployment of heavy equipment, including combat aircraft, to Syria, officials said.

“We’re not mind readers,” the senior administration official said. “We didn’t know when Russia would fly the first sortie, but our analysis of the capabilities that were there was that they were there for a reason.”

However, several other officials said U.S. agencies were behind the curve in assessing how far the Russians intended to go and how quickly they intended to launch operations.

In fact, right up until a White House briefing given shortly after the bombing began, Obama press secretary Josh Earnest declined to draw “firm conclusions” on Russia’s strategy.

CONFUSION OVER RUSSIAN INTENT

One source suggested that U.S. experts initially thought the Russian build-up might have been more for a military “snap exercise” or a temporary show of force than preparations for sustained, large-scale attacks on Assad’s enemies.

Another official said that after initial review, congressional oversight investigators believe that “information on this was not moving quickly enough through channels” to policymakers.

And another source said there had been a “lag of a week” before agencies began voicing full-throated alarm about imminent Russian military operations.

The senior administration official said, however, that “I don’t think anybody here perceived a gap” in intelligence.

In their reviews of how U.S. intelligence handled the Syria build-up, officials said congressional intelligence committees would examine reports issued by the agencies and question officers involved in the process, according to congressional and national security sources. At the moment, no public hearings are planned, the officials said.

Though the senior administration official denied the intelligence community was paying any less attention to Syria, John Herbst, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, said that not enough intelligence assets had been devoted to analyzing Putin’s “aggressive policies”.

McFaul, who took the view that the Obama administration had been largely on top of the situation as Putin prepared his offensive, said that a faster or more precise intelligence assessment would probably have done little to change the outcome.

“What difference would it make if we had known 48 hours ahead of time?” asked McFaul, who now teaches at Stanford University in California. “There still wouldn’t have been any better options for deterring Putin in Syria.”

(Additional reporting by Lesley Wroughton and Roberta Rampton, Writing by Matt Spetalnick; editing by Stuart Grudgings)

Politics | Thu Oct 8, 2015 8:03am EDT Related:
BY MARK HOSENBALL, PHIL STEWART AND MATT SPETALNICK

Find this story at 8 October 2015

Copyright Thomson Reuters

Despite bombing, Islamic State is no weaker than a year ago

This image made from gun-camera video taken on July 4, 2015 and released by United States Central… Read more

WASHINGTON (AP) — After billions of dollars spent and more than 10,000 extremist fighters killed, the Islamic State group is fundamentally no weaker than it was when the U.S.-led bombing campaign began a year ago, American intelligence agencies have concluded.

U.S. military commanders on the ground aren’t disputing the assessment, but they point to an upcoming effort to clear the important Sunni city of Ramadi, which fell to the militants in May, as a crucial milestone.

The battle for Ramadi, expected over the next few months, “promises to test the mettle” of Iraq’s security forces, Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Killea, who is helping run the U.S.-led coalition effort in Iraq, told reporters at the Pentagon in a video briefing from the region.

The U.S.-led military campaign has put the Islamic State group on defense, Killea said, adding, “There is progress.” Witnesses on the ground say the airstrikes and Kurdish ground actions are squeezing the militants in northern Syria, particularly in their self-proclaimed capital in Raqqa.

But U.S. intelligence agencies see the overall situation as a strategic stalemate: The Islamic State remains a well-funded extremist army able to replenish its ranks with foreign jihadis as quickly as the U.S. can eliminate them. Meanwhile, the group has expanded to other countries, including Libya, Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and Afghanistan.

The assessments by the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and others appear to contradict the optimistic line taken by the Obama administration’s special envoy, retired Gen. John Allen, who told a forum in Aspen, Colorado, last week that “ISIS is losing” in Iraq and Syria. The intelligence was described by officials who would not be named because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.

“We’ve seen no meaningful degradation in their numbers,” a defense official said, citing intelligence estimates that put the group’s total strength at between 20,000 and 30,000, the same estimate as last August, when the airstrikes began.

The Islamic State’s staying power raises questions about the administration’s approach to the threat that the group poses to the U.S. and its allies. Although officials do not believe it is planning complex attacks on the West from its territory, the group’s call to Western Muslims to kill at home has become a serious problem, FBI Director James Comey and other officials say.

Yet under the Obama administration’s campaign of bombing and training, which prohibits American troops from accompanying fighters into combat or directing airstrikes from the ground, it could take a decade or more to drive the Islamic State from its safe havens, analysts say. The administration is adamant that it will commit no U.S. ground troops to the fight despite calls from some in Congress to do so.

The U.S.-led coalition and its Syrian and Kurdish allies have made some inroads. The Islamic State has lost 9.4 percent of its territory in the first six months of 2015, according to an analysis by the conflict monitoring group IHS.

A Delta Force raid in Syria that killed Islamic State financier Abu Sayyaf in May also has resulted in a well of intelligence about the group’s structure and finances, U.S. officials say. His wife, held in Iraq, has been cooperating with interrogators.

Syrian Kurdish fighters and their allies have wrested most of the northern Syria border from the Islamic State group, and the plan announced this week for a U.S.-Turkish “safe zone” is expected to cement those gains.

In Raqqa, U.S. coalition bombs pound the group’s positions and target its leaders with increasing regularity. The militants’ movements have been hampered by strikes against bridges, and some fighters are sending their families away to safer ground.

But American intelligence officials and other experts say the Islamic State is in no danger of being defeated any time soon.

“The pressure on Raqqa is significant … but looking at the overall picture, ISIS is mostly in the same place,” said Harleen Gambhir, a counterterrorism analyst at Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank.

Although U.S. officials have said it is crucial that the government in Baghdad win back disaffected Sunnis, there is little sign of that happening. American-led efforts to train Syrian rebels to fight the Islamic State have produced a grand total of 60 vetted fighters.

The militants have adjusted their tactics to thwart a U.S. bombing campaign that tries assiduously to avoid civilian casualties, officials say. Fighters no longer move around in easily targeted armored columns; they embed themselves among women and children, and they communicate through couriers to thwart eavesdropping and geolocation, the defense official said.

Oil continues to be a major revenue source. By one estimate, the Islamic State is clearing $500 million per year from oil sales, said Daniel Glaser, assistant secretary for terrorist financing at the Treasury Department. That’s on top of as much as $1 billion in cash the group seized from banks in its territory.

Although the U.S. has been bombing oil infrastructure, the militants have been adept at rebuilding oil refining, drilling and trading capacity, the defense official said.

The stalemate makes the battle for Ramadi all the more important.

Iraqi security forces, including 500 Sunni fighters, have begun preparing to retake the Sunni city, Killea said, and there have been 100 coalition airstrikes designed to support the effort. But he cautioned it will take time.

“Momentum,” he said, “is a better indicator of success than speed.”

Karam and Mroue reported from Beirut.
By KEN DILANIAN, ZEINA KARAM and BASSEM MROUE
Jul. 31, 2015 1:36 PM EDT

Find this story at 31 July 2015

AP News | © 2015 Associated Press

Why Britain hasn’t Followed the US into Syria

It seems like a generation ago now, but it was only in late August 2013 that Britain’s House of Commons narrowly rejected launching airstrikes on Bashar al-Assad’s Syria in response to his military’s use of chemical weapons. While the U.S. and France noted their resolve to continue to push for military action in the wake of the vote, it is undeniable that this event had a significant impact in halting the rush to war. With accusations of a war-weary Parliament and fear for what the UK’s refusal to intervene would do to the Anglo-American “Special Relationship,” the vote has been the most high-profile and public foreign policy blow of David Cameron’s premiership.

There is no straightforward reason behind why MPs rejected the measure. Certainly, a degree of war-weariness was palpable in the context of Iraq and the imminent (and rather ignominious) withdrawal from Afghanistan. Parallels to Iraq were all too clear when the Government was attempting to press for action before a group of UN weapons inspectors reported their findings on the chemical attack; the idea that the British Military would become involved in another Middle East quagmire with no clear exit strategy was a bit too much for many MPs to stomach. In addition, the Syrian rebel groups Western powers supported were a large question mark; it was uncertain as to what they were about and, if supplied with weapons, would they go on to lose them to extremist groups, such as the al-Nusra Front? There was simply too much uncertainty surrounding an intervention – its legality, its exit strategy and its “allies” in Syria.

The Commons defeat two years ago has haunted Cameron’s foreign policy, with there being a distinct unwillingness for his Government’s to stick its neck out unless Parliamentary support is guaranteed. But the situation in Syria has changed dramatically over the past two years, as the self-styled Islamic State has overrun much of Syria and neighbouring Iraq, and inspired and aided in terrorist attacks around the Middle East and wider world.

While in 2013 the justification to intervene was primarily the responsibility to protect Syrian citizens from a dictator – and topple the regime in the process – in 2015 the justification also involves restoring stability to the Middle East and ensuring the wider world’s security from terrorist attacks. Despite this, Cameron’s Government has been constrained by the Commons defeat to only strike ISIS in Iraq (unless RAF pilots are embedded in allied air forces striking Syria). But, in a veritable Gulf of Tonkin moment – the killing of dozens British holidaymakers in Tunisia by a man with connections to ISIS – Cameron has been handed an opportunity to expand the RAF’s mandate to strike ISIS in Syria. It only took a few days before feelers to that effect were put out by the Defence Secretary, Michael Fallon. With the opposition Labour Party in the middle of a leadership election, a repeat Commons vote is likely to be on hold until at least mid-September when a new leader is officially elected. Despite this uncertainty, it is expected that Labour will support the Government (unless the Party lurches to the left and elects Jeremy Corbyn – a prominent member of the Stop the War Coalition – as leader).

Despite the lack of a comprehensive solution to Syria’s problems, bombing when in doubt and having nothing else to do is not a viable solution. It may be enough to win the war, but it definitely will not be enough to win the lasting peace.

From what has been said, it would appear fairly reasonable to pass such a motion and bomb Syria – ISIS pose a more substantial threat to the region and national security than Assad did and Britain’s allies are already doing so. The only reason the RAF is not over Syria already is the legacy of the 2013 vote, before ISIS was even on the scene. But this is working under the assumption that bombing an entity into submission will bring about peace. To take a step back, bombing ISIS in Syria would appear to make no strategic sense; it will not resolve the conflict satisfactorily or the overt justification for the proposed intervention.

The Strategic Deficit

The doubts surrounding bombing Syria in 2013 are actually more acute today (on the whole). The issues surrounding the legality of bombing Syria have now largely been resolved. Coalition aircraft only strike ISIS forces and while Assad may preach Syria’s sovereignty, he is in desperate need of any sort of aid when fighting ISIS, the al-Nusra Front, moderate rebel groups and the Kurds. Despite this, the moderate Syrian opposition is in a much weaker position today than it was in 2013, primarily due to the advance of ISIS. The increasingly assertive Saudis are even said to be more willing to back the al-Nusra Front and other extremists instead of the moderate rebels to ensure the pro-Iranian and Shiite Assad does not regain control of Syria. While Turkey’s commitment to aid the rebels may yield some results, this is yet to be seen. If they were to succeed in taking control of Syria, there are a plethora of groups over as many fault lines to contend for power. The only question is whether the international coalition leaves these various factions to fight for power immediately, as in Libya, or wait nearly a decade, as in Iraq.

In reality, a clear international consensus needs to be reached at the UN and be fully implemented for stability to return to Syria, Iraq and the wider Middle East. While it may sound defeatist, this will not be reached due to various competing geopolitical interests and the desire to avoid intervention becoming a norm. Despite the lack of a comprehensive solution to Syria’s problems, bombing when in doubt and having nothing else to do is not a viable solution. It may be enough to win the war, but it definitely will not be enough to win the lasting peace. At least there is an Iraqi government in place to establish control when ISIS is defeated in Iraq (so long as it resolves its sectarian issues). In contrast, the people of Syria would be starting from scratch with a highly uncertain amount of international assistance. If the self-interest of nations in the conflict so far is anything to go by, international support would be minimal.

The reason why ISIS is a legitimate threat to British national security is twofold. First, the territory it controls can be used as a safe haven for planning terrorist attacks; second, its existence and prominence inspires and cultivates home-grown terrorists. In addition to the doubts surrounding the bombing of ISIS in Syria, neither of these issues would be resolved in the process.

One of the reasons behind the British Government calling for airstrikes on Syria is because it is suspected that the Tunisia beach attack was planned and coordinated from ISIS-controlled areas of Syria. Even if this is the case, one look at the simplicity of the attack highlights how it could be planned and executed anywhere – there were no specialist explosives or weaponry, there was no intricate set of demands and there was little originality. A man went onto a tourist beach, opened fire with a Kalashnikov rifle and left. It was a striking example of hit-and-run urban terrorism which has become all too familiar in recent years with the 2008 Mumbai attacks and the Charlie Hebdo shootings earlier this year. Whereas security forces are used to facing a long (stationary) standoff with terrorists, the game has changed. Simply killing as many indiscriminate targets as possible is the end goal of these shootings, not securing demands through a complex hostage-taking.

More than just unleashing terrorists on the world, with ISIS having such a high profile in the media and many foreign Muslims coming to Iraq and Syria to fight for them (including hundreds of Brits), the group has the potential to inspire Muslims in distant lands to commit terrorist attacks. But, again, simply bombing ISIS in Syria does not resolve the issue. The root of the matter is that there are disaffected young Muslims in Western states who have not been effectively integrated into society. It is known that ISIS do not look to recruit foreign Muslims with strong religious backgrounds as they cannot be moulded easily; instead, recruiters go after young, disenfranchised and vaguely religious Muslims who see ISIS as an escape from a world they do not understand. Attacking ISIS for this reason would be attacking a symptom of successive British governments’ failure to integrate young Muslims into British society.

Why Intervene?

In Syria, the UK has no horse in the race. The opposition is too weak and, like the international community, divided. Intervention will not lead to a lasting peace in Syria and the region, protect Syrian civilians or resolve the threat ISIS pose to national security. The only reason for the UK to intervene in Syria is to sure up the “Special Relationship” and prove that Britain will not shy away from a fight, reversing the damage done from the 2013 vote.

For many, while they may not say so in public, this will be enough, and why not? Fewer than 5% of coalition airstrikes in Iraq are made by the RAF’s ageing Tornado fleet, so expanding the mission to Syria would only be a token gesture of solidarity with little impact. It could also open up British bases in Cyprus to be used by other coalition partners (but Turkey recently allowing the U.S. to use some of its bases has largely resolved the issue of U.S. planes having to fly from outrageous distances to strike ISIS in Syria). It would mean Britain could do its part in this aspect of the war against ISIS, even if it does not win the peace and Syria’s chaos simply morphs into a new shape.

Bearing all of this in mind, here is something to consider. About fifty years ago, Prime Minister Harold Wilson refused to let British troops get entangled in the jungles of Vietnam, much to President Johnson’s anger and dismay. While the “Special Relationship” took a hit, British interests ultimately were not in a far off war with no clear exit strategy. In hindsight, Wilson wisely ensured that Britain avoided the South-East Asian quagmire and Britain’s relationship with the U.S. certainly rebounded. Later this year, British law-makers are likely to decide whether or not to intervene in Syria. Although it is tempting to blindly follow an ally into war, let us hope that they think carefully of where Britain’s interests truly lie in this conflict.

August 17, 2015 at 6:00 am
BY PETER STOREY

Find this story at 17 August 2015

Copyright

Exclusive: The spy who fooled the Assad regime

AMMAN // In a highly successful double-cross, a senior army officer from the Assad regime secretly gave Western-backed rebels vital intelligence that led to critical losses for government forces in southern Syria.

The defeat at Tal Al Harra, an electronic warfare station 50 kilometres south of Damascus, sent president Bashar Al Assad’s mukhabarat, or secret police, on a hunt for the source of the leaks and resulted in the killing of dozens of military personnel wrongly accused of treason.

The fog of conspiracy unleashed by the secret defection of General Mahmoud Abu Araj also helped spread discord between regime forces and their Iranian allies – and may have inadvertently played a role in the undoing of one of the Middle East’s most infamous intelligence chiefs, Syria’s Rustom Ghazalah.

Rebels overran the strategic military installation at Tal Al Harra on October 5, pushing troops loyal to Mr Al Assad out of their mountain vantage point, from where they had tracked rebel movements and shelled the surrounding countryside.

Tal Al Harra was where regime forces, and their allies from Iran and Hizbollah, intercepted Israeli communications and kept watch on Syria’s border with Israel, just 12km to the west.

A swift rebel victory there was improbable: regime forces held the only high ground for miles, the army’s 7th Division was on hand and well dug-in, and they enjoyed uncontested air superiority.

A visual guide to the battle for Tal Al Harra

All of that should have been enough to hold off a lightly armed opposition that had to fight its way up steep, exposed slopes with no air cover.

But, unknown to regime forces, one of their own had joined the effort to overthrow the Assad dynasty, which had begun as peaceful protests in nearby Deraa in March 2011.

Rather than fleeing to join the rebels, Abu Araj took the huge risk of working from within to undermine regime defences, according to rebel accounts of the defection that give a rare glimpse inside the murky spy war raging on the southern front.

The general, who commanded the 7th Division’s 121st Mechanised Brigade, contacted the rebels months before the assault on Tal Al Harra, somehow evading Mr Assad’s notoriously effective secret police – the brutal enforcers who have enabled the Assads to rule Syria for almost five decades.

As rebels planned the attack, Abu Araj smuggled out detailed plans of defensive positions, force strength, military orders, code words and information about Iranian military reinforcements from his headquarters in the town of Kanakar, 25km from Tal Al Harra.

“Gen Mahmoud supplied us with so much information, he was instrumental in our victory at Tal Al Harra,” said a rebel commander involved in intelligence operations on the southern front. He spoke on condition of anonymity.

Defectors have played a major role in Syria’s civil war, with tens of thousands of soldiers deserting Mr Al Assad’s military. Iran, Hizbollah and Iraqi Shiite militias stepped in to bolster the crumbling army, fuelling a dangerously sectarian proxy conflict in which more than 220,000 people have been killed.

Abu Araj went so far as to deploy his troops in ways that made it easier for the rebels to defeat them, said the commander, who is himself a defector and part of the opposition alliance backed by the West and Gulf states, still sometimes colloquially known as the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

“He was smart, he used to send the regime’s forces where they can be easily targeted by the FSA, and he gave orders for soldiers to retreat at just the right time for us,” the rebel commander said.

Regime intelligence agents, suspecting an insider was working against them, began to close in.

To evade capture, and to cast suspicion elsewhere, Abu Araj and the rebels he was working with staged a fake ambush when he was travelling near Sanamayn, 18km east of Tal Al Harra.

A rebel faction went so far as to boast on Facebook that it had killed the general in combat, posting a copy of his ID card as proof.

In fact, Abu Araj had crossed safely into Jordan on October 15.

Exactly what happened on the regime side after that remains unclear, but rebel commanders say there was an unprecedented rise in executions in the months after Abu Araj’s escape, with loyalist officers accused of treason and killed.

“We believe as many as 56 of its own officers were accused of treason in the months after Tal Al Harra, and executed, not all at once, but over time,” said the rebel commander, citing testimony of captured regime soldiers and intercepted communications.

Rebels involved in southern front operations say regime forces may have suspected at some stage that Abu Araj had defected, but later believed they were mistaken and that he had been captured by rebels, interrogated and killed.

Adding to the confusion, a month after he arrived in Jordan, Abu Araj, only just falsely reported dead, actually did die. The 52-year-old had apparently been suffering from a terminal heart defect – it is not clear when his health began to deteriorate but he returned to Syria just before he died of natural causes.

The loss of Tal Al Harra was a significant blow to Mr Al Assad’s forces, which had been steadily losing ground in the south and continued to do so in November and December last year.

Alarm over those defeats appear to have triggered Iran’s decision that General Qassem Suleimani, head of the Quds force, would take direct control of operations on the southern front.

That happened in January with an influx of thousands of Shiite militiamen from Lebanon, Iraq and Iran, and the start of a new counter offensive, aimed in part at retaking Tal Al Harra. Heavy fighting is ongoing in the southern area.

There have been indications that this Iranian takeover was not popular with all regime officers, especially those who consider themselves proud nationalists and were angered at being given a subservient role in their own country.

According to a Syrian source in Lebanon who is well connected to political security circles in Damascus, Rustom Ghazalah, the Assad regime’s political security chief, was among those who objected to being told to take orders from an Iranian.

“We’ve heard things that made it seem the situation was tense inside political security over this, that Ghazalah was angry and saying that he would only take orders from Assad, no one else,” the source said.

Mr Ghazalah was appointed head of political security in 2012.

He had previously dominated Lebanon as Syria’s top mukhabarat officer there from 2002 to 2005, after which he was investigated by the UN-backed tribunal into the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri. Tribunal prosecutors have not made a formal link between Mr Ghazalah and the February 14, 2005, car bomb that killed Hariri and 21 other people.

Originally from Deraa province, Mr Ghazalah, 62, had been involved in managing the recent fight against rebels in the south, a fight that, after the fall of Tal Al Harra, the regime seemed to be losing.

In December, as rebels continued to advance, Mr Ghazalah’s palace, in his hometown of Qurfa 20km north of Deraa, was reportedly blown up. Footage uploaded to YouTube showed his mansion engulfed in flames after a huge explosion. Before the blast, the footage showed men rigging up gas canisters and cans of fuel in the property. They claimed to be from The National Resistance Movement, a secretive pro-regime organisation.

At the time, it was widely believed that Mr Ghazalah had ordered it razed to prevent it from falling into rebel hands. But Qurfa didn’t fall.

Then, in February – a month after Iran assumed command on the southern front and began to counter-attack rebels – a Syrian opposition journalist claimed Mr Ghazalah had been sacked as head of political security.

Following that, rumours circulated that he had actually been wounded, perhaps in a rebel attack. This was confirmed to pan-Arabic newspaper Alsharq Alawsat BY Assem Qanso, a member of Lebanon’s Baath party, which backs Mr Al Assad.

Mr Qanso said he had visited Mr Ghazalah in hospital, where he was being treated for shrapnel wounds sustained in fighting rebels in Deraa. He denied Mr Ghazalah had been removed as head of political security.

Al Jazeera also reported on the speculation over Mr Ghazalah, citing various theories – that he had been earmarked for assassination by an Iranian hit squad after planning to carry out a coup against Mr Al Assad, or that he knew too many regime secrets and was therefore dangerous.

In a further twist, on March 8, the pro-opposition Sham News Network carried a story that Mr Ghazalah had been detained by the regime’s military intelligence, stripped of his weapon, tortured and then dumped at a Damascus hospital.

MTV Lebanon countered the same day with a report that the office manager of the Syrian military intelligence chief, Major General Rafik Shehadeh, was suspended following a dispute with Mr Ghazalah. Other unconfirmed reports suggested Maj Gen Shehadeh assaulted Mr Ghazalah during an angry confrontation, beating him severely enough to hospitalise him for more than a week.

“We have heard all kinds of conspiracy theories about Rustom Ghazalah, that he was wounded by rebels or that he was tortured because he had disagreements with the Iranians,” said the source in Lebanon with connections to Syrian political security.

“Other people are saying his house was burnt down because the Iranians wanted to search it and he refused to let them. In Syria, it is difficult to know the truth, maybe none of it is true or maybe all of it, we will probably never know.”

Phil Sands and Suha Maayeh
March 17, 2015 Updated: March 20, 2015 06:35 PM

Find this story at 17 March 2015

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A New Image for an Old al-Qaeda

Over three decades, al-Qaeda has undergone a number of changes. Faced by an alliance of powerful governments and ISIS, another is now required. What it will be, we do not know with any certainty, but a couple of possible strategies have emerged in recent months.

In a 55 minute video released at the beginning of September 2014, the leader of al-Qaeda announced that the movement was expanding into India. Emir Ayman al-Zawahiri assured Muslims in Myanmar, Bangladesh, the Indian states of Assam and Gujarat, and Kashmir, that “your brothers” in the militant organization “did not forget you and…they are doing what they can to rescue you.” The declaration came two months after ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in his black cloak of Caliph Ibrahim, declared his hegemony over Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the one hundred and seventy-five million Muslims of India. Al-Zawahiri did not mention ISIS, but repeated his allegiance to Mullah Omar, the Emir al-Mu’minin and erstwhile leader of the Afghan Taliban. He appears not to have known that Mullah Omar had died nearly a year and a half earlier.

After al-Zawahiri released the September 2014 video, he disappeared for the next eleven months. The rumor mill produced stories that he had died, been removed in a coup, or was planning some spectacular event. The failure of the Emir to praise the Yemeni branch of al-Qaeda, AQAP, for the successful attack in January upon the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo was unusual. In addition, failing to eulogize the death of Nasir al-Wuhayshi in June, the leader of AQAP and his chosen successor, left many members worried, especially as the movement was increasingly under attack by ISIS in Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, and Syria. The return in August of the Emir in a ten minute audio message did not explain his absence. He simply pledged his allegiance to the new leader of the Taliban, Mullah Akhtar Mansoor, and eulogized the late Mullah Omar. The surprise which might explain the disappearance was that al-Qaeda has followed the Taliban back to Afghanistan’s Helmand Province from where it had fled fourteen years ago.

However, in the same month, one other surprise was the introduction of Hamza bin Osama bin Laden in a ten minute video that was recorded in May. The twenty-four year old son of Osama bin Laden praised martyrs to the cause, urged more attacks upon the West, and pledged his allegiance to Mullah Omar. As his grooming for great things continues, his introduction comes at a time when al-Qaeda is undergoing a transformation.

Al-Zawahiri and “Political Guerrilla War”

A recording by al-Zawahiri released this September and believed to have been made towards the start of 2015 reflects the shift in al-Qaeda’s strategy. “Despite the big mistakes [of ISIS], if I were in Iraq or Syria I would co-operate with them in killing the crusaders and secularists and Shi’ites even though I don’t recognise the legitimacy of their state, because the matter is bigger than that.” Abdullah bin Mohammed, an al-Qaeda ideologue, has similarly proposed that the strategy of recent years has been a failure and that change is necessary. In what he terms “Political Guerrilla War,” he advocates the merging of the al-Qaeda movement within a coalition of jihadi organizations. For these men, the path forward for al-Qaeda relies upon limited cooperation with those once shunned.

One branch of al-Qaeda where bin Mohammed’s methods appear to have been put into operation is in Syria. Abu Mariah al-Qahtani, the second-in-command of al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch, the al-Nusra Front, has voiced his support for a strategy of Political Guerrilla War. Al-Qahtani has noted his opposition to confronting powerful states that can overwhelm the movement or creating caliphates which are easy targets for superior military forces. In recent months, the al-Nusra Front has joined with a number of other jihadist groups to form the Army of Conquest. Through this application of bin Mohammed’s strategy, the united force concluded a lengthy siege and captured Abu al-Duhur Airbase – the last remaining government military base in Idlib Province. This group has even received approval and economic and material support from the Turkish, Saudi, and Qatari sponsors.

However, there have been reservations regarding the inclusion of the al-Nusra Front in any alliance, with this strategic shift causing a schism within the organization between those wishing to focus on Syria and those wanting to pursue the traditional objective of targeting the far off enemy (the West). Responding to doubters, al-Zawahiri outlined the al-Nusra Front’s strategy earlier this year. The al-Qaeda leader instructed the leadership to adapt to the local cultural and political environment by coordinating more closely with other radical groups, while promoting a Sharia legal system and strengthening its position.

AQAP’s Consolidation of Power

AQAP has been the most active al-Qaeda branch in international operations. Among the long list of foreign attacks this branch has been implicit in, there has been the Charlie Hebdo attack, as well as attempts to send bombs to the United States. There is no evidence that the shift in policy to localize operations has been extended to AQAP in Yemen. If anything, the opposite is the case, with the first public statement of AQAP’s new leader, Qassim al-Raymi, being used to call for more attacks upon the United States.

The real change for AQAP’s seizure of territory has come as a result of the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen’s Civil War which began in March. So far, the Saudis have ignored AQAP and the al-Qaeda branch has avoided contact with the Saudis, with AQAP using this time wisely to consolidate its own position in the region. To this effect, the branch has taken control of the south-eastern province of Hadramawt – the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden – and is strictly enforcing Sharia law throughout the province.

A further interesting development is that Iran released five of AQAP’s leaders in a prisoner exchange with the organization at about the same time as the Saudi-led intervention began. The loss of so many of AQAP’s key personnel to drone strikes in recent years makes the return of these five a much-needed infusion of vital management, ensuring that AQAP is a more dangerous force. Of these five, Saif al-Adel is viewed to be the most dangerous. The former colonel in the Egyptian Army has a five million dollar bounty on his head and is believed to have been involved in the 1998 bombings of U.S. Embassies in East Africa. In addition, Abu Mohamed al-Misri was substantially involved in al-Qaeda’s operational planning pre-9/11, while Abul Qassam was a contemporary of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, one of the key figures in al-Qaeda in Iraq before his death in 2006.

So long as the Saudi-led coalition is occupied through fighting Houthi rebels, AQAP has a substantial opportunity to consolidate its position in Yemen. Thus, when the time is right and the coalition inevitably abandons the battlefield, AQAP will be in a fantastic position to use its consolidated base to both strike out at the far enemy and challenge for supremacy in Yemen.

Reconciling the Two Strategies

The two potential paths of al-Qaeda are not necessarily mutually exclusive. AQAP’s unpragmatic approach may be difficult to pair with the realpolitik of al-Zawahiri and bin Mohammed’s Political Guerrilla Warfare, but the opposite need not be the case. Indeed, al-Zawahiri has also advocated lone wolf-style attacks on Western targets in addition to militants outside of the West concentrating on local conflicts and working with other extremist groups.

However, why Hamza bin Laden has been placed center-stage at this time remains an open question. A simple answer is that the young man provides al-Qaeda with a very strong psychological link to the figure who founded the organization and whom many revered as the Lion of Jihad. But is the son the Lion’s cub or will he also follow the path of Political Guerrilla Warfare? Time will tell.

OPINIONOctober 13, 2015 at 11:59 pm
BY FELIX IMONTI

Find this story at 13 October 2015

© Copyright 2015. All rights reserved.

Officials: Islamic State arose from US support for al-Qaeda in Iraq

A former Pentagon intelligence chief, Iraqi government sources, and a retired career US diplomat reveal US complicity in the rise of ISIS

A new memoir by a former senior State Department analyst provides stunning details on how decades of support for Islamist militants linked to Osama bin Laden brought about the emergence of the ‘Islamic State’ (ISIS).

The book establishes a crucial context for recent admissions by Michael T. Flynn, the retired head of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), confirming that White House officials made a “willful decision” to support al-Qaeda affiliated jihadists in Syria — despite being warned by the DIA that doing so would likely create an ‘ISIS’-like entity in the region.

J. Michael Springmann, a retired career US diplomat whose last government post was in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, reveals in his new book that US covert operations in alliance with Middle East states funding anti-Western terrorist groups are nothing new. Such operations, he shows, have been carried out for various short-sighted reasons since the Cold War and after.

In the 1980s, as US support for mujahideen fighters accelerated in Afghanistan to kick out the Soviet Union, Springmann found himself unwittingly at the heart of highly classified operations that allowed Islamist militants linked to Osama bin Laden to establish a foothold within the United States.

After the end of the Cold War, Springmann alleged, similar operations continued in different contexts for different purposes — in the former Yugoslavia, in Libya and elsewhere. The rise of ISIS, he contends, was a predictable outcome of this counterproductive policy.

Pentagon intel chief speaks out

Everyday brings new horror stories about atrocities committed by ISIS fighters. Today, for instance, the New York Times offered a deeply disturbing report on how ISIS has formally adopted a theology and policy of systematic rape of non-Muslim women and children. The practice has become embedded throughout the territories under ISIS control through a process of organized slavery, sanctioned by the movement’s own religious scholars.

But in a recent interview on Al-Jazeera’s flagship talk-show ‘Head to Head,’ former DIA chief Lieutenant General (Lt. Gen.) Michael Flynn told host Mehdi Hasan that the rise of ISIS was a direct consequence of US support for Syrian insurgents whose core fighters were from al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, former Director of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), in a lengthy interview with Al-Jazeera’s Mehdi Hasan
Back in May, INSURGE intelligence undertook an exclusive investigation into a controversial declassified DIA document appearing to show that as early as August 2012, the DIA knew that the US-backed Syrian insurgency was dominated by Islamist militant groups including “the Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda in Iraq.”

Asked about the DIA document by Hasan, who noted that “the US was helping coordinate arms transfers to those same groups,” Flynn confirmed that the intelligence described by the document was entirely accurate.

Telling Hasan that he had read the document himself, Flynn said that it was among a range of intelligence being circulated throughout the US intelligence community that had led him to attempt to dissuade the White House from supporting these groups, albeit without success.

Flynn added that this sort of intelligence was available even before the decision to pull out troops from Iraq:

“My job was to ensure that the accuracy of our intelligence that was being presented was as good as it could be, and I will tell you, it goes before 2012. When we were in Iraq, and we still had decisions to be made before there was a decision to pull out of Iraq in 2011, it was very clear what we were going to face.”
In other words, long before the inception of the armed insurrection in Syria — as early as 2008 (the year in which the final decision was made on full troop withdrawal by the Bush administration) — US intelligence was fully aware of the threat posed by al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) among other Islamist militant groups.

Supporting the enemy

Despite this, Flynn’s account shows that the US commitment to supporting the Syrian insurgency against Bashir al-Assad led the US to deliberately support the very al-Qaeda affiliated forces it had previously fought in Iraq.

Far from simply turning a blind eye, Flynn said that the White House’s decision to support al-Qaeda linked rebels against the Assad regime was not a mistake, but intentional:

Hasan: “You are basically saying that even in government at the time, you knew those groups were around, you saw this analysis, and you were arguing against it, but who wasn’t listening?”
Flynn: “I think the administration.”
Hasan: “So the administration turned a blind eye to your analysis?”
Flynn: “I don’t know if they turned a blind eye. I think it was a decision, a willful decision.”
Hasan: “A willful decision to support an insurgency that had Salafists, Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood?”
Flynn: “A willful decision to do what they’re doing… You have to really ask the President what is it that he actually is doing with the policy that is in place, because it is very, very confusing.”
Prior to his stint as DIA chief, Lt. Gen. Flynn was Director of Intelligence for the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and Commander of the Joint Functional Component Command.

Flynn is the highest ranking former US intelligence official to confirm that the DIA intelligence report dated August 2012, released earlier this year, proves a White House covert strategy to support Islamist terrorists in Iraq and Syria even before 2011.

In June, INSURGE reported exclusively that six former senior US and British intelligence officials agreed with this reading of the declassified DIA report.

Flynn’s account is corroborated by other former senior officials. In an interview on French national television , former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas said that the US’ chief ally, Britain, had planned covert action in Syria as early as 2009 — after US intelligence had clear information according to Flynn on al-Qaeda’s threat to Syria:

“I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business. I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria. This was in Britain not in America. Britain was preparing gunmen to invade Syria.”

Former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas on French national television confirming information received from UK Foreign Office officials in 2009 regarding operations in Syria
Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the precursor to the movement now known as ‘Islamic State,’ was on the decline due to US and Iraqi counter-terrorism operations from 2008 to 2011 in coordination with local Sunni tribes. In that period, al-Qaeda in Iraq became increasingly isolated, losing the ability to enforce its harsh brand of Islamic Shari’ah law in areas it controlled, and giving up more and more territory.

By late 2011, over 2,000 AQI fighters had been killed, just under 9,000 detained, and the group’s leadership had been largely wiped out.

Right-wing pundits have often claimed due to this background that the decision to withdraw troops from Iraq was the key enabling factor in the resurgence of AQI, and its eventual metamorphosis into ISIS.

But Flynn’s revelations prove the opposite — that far from the rise of ISIS being solely due to a vacuum of power in Iraq due to the withdrawal of US troops, it was the post-2011 covert intervention of the US and its allies, the Gulf states and Turkey, which siphoned arms and funds to AQI as part of their anti-Assad strategy.

Even in Iraq, the surge laid the groundwork for what was to come. Among the hundred thousand odd Sunni tribesmen receiving military and logistical assistance from the US were al-Qaeda sympathisers and anti-Western insurgents who had previously fought alongside al-Qaeda.

In 2008, a US Army-commissioned RAND report confirmed that the US was attempting to “to create divisions in the jihadist camp. Today in Iraq such a strategy is being used at the tactical level.” This included forming “temporary alliances” with al-Qaeda affiliated “nationalist insurgent groups” that have fought the US for four years, now receiving “weapons and cash” from the US.

The idea was, essentially, to bribe former al-Qaeda insurgents to breakaway from AQI and join forces with the Americans. Although these Sunni nationalists “have cooperated with al-Qaeda against US forces,” they are now being supported to exploit “the common threat that al-Qaeda now poses to both parties.”

In the same year, former CIA military intelligence officer and counter-terrorism specialist Philip Geraldi, stated that US intelligence analysts “are warning that the United States is now arming and otherwise subsidizing all three major groups in Iraq.” The analysts “believe that the house of cards is likely to fall down as soon as one group feels either strong or frisky enough to assert itself.” Giraldi predicted:

“The winner in the convoluted process has been everyone who wants to see a civil war.”
By Flynn’s account, US intelligence was also aware in 2008 that the empowerment of former al-Qaeda insurgents would eventually backfire and strengthen AQI in the long-run, especially given that the Shi’a dominated US-backed central government continued to discriminate against Sunni populations.

Syriana

Having provided extensive support for former al-Qaeda affiliated Sunni insurgents in Iraq from 2006 to 2008 — in order to counter AQI — US forces did succeed in temporarily routing AQI from its strongholds in the country.

Simultaneously, however, if Roland Dumas’ account is correct, the US and Britain began covert operations in Syria in 2009. From 2011 onwards, US support for the Syrian insurgency in alliance with the Gulf states and Turkey was providing significant arms and cash to AQI fighters.

The porous nature of relations between al-Qaeda factions in Iraq and Syria, and therefore the routine movement of arms and fighters across the border, was well-known to the US intelligence community in 2008.

In October 2008, Major General John Kelly — the US military official responsible for Anbar province where the bulk of US support for Sunni insurgents to counter AQI was going — complained bitterly that AQI fighters had regrouped across the border in Syria, where they had established a “sanctuary.”

The border, he said, was routinely used as an entry point for AQI fighters to enter Iraq and conduct attacks on Iraqi security forces.

Ironically, at this time, AQI fighters in Syria were tolerated by the Assad regime. A July 2008 report by the Combating Terrorism Center at the US Military Academy at West Point documented AQI’s extensive networks inside Syria across the border with Iraq.

“The Syrian government has willingly ignored, and possibly abetted, foreign fighters headed to Iraq. Concerned about possible military action against the Syrian regime, it opted to support insurgents and terrorists wreaking havoc in Iraq.”
Yet from 2009 onwards according to Dumas, and certainly from 2011 by Flynn’s account, the US and its allies began supporting the very same AQI fighters in Syria to destabilize the Assad regime.

The policy coincided with the covert US strategy revealed by Seymour Hersh in 2007: using Saudi Arabia to funnel support for al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood affiliated Islamists as a mechanism for isolating Iran and Syria.

Reversing the surge

During this period in which the US, the Gulf states, and Turkey supported Syrian insurgents linked to AQI and the Muslim Brotherhood, AQI experienced an unprecedented resurgence.

US troops finally withdrew fully from Iraq in December 2011, which means by the end of 2012, judging by the DIA’s August 2012 report and Flynn’s description of the state of US intelligence in this period, the US intelligence community knew that US and allied support for AQI in Syria was directly escalating AQI’s violence across the border in Iraq.

Despite this, in Flynn’s words, the White House made a “willful decision” to continue the policy despite the possibility it entailed “of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in Eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor)” according to the DIA’s 2012 intelligence report.

The Pentagon document had cautioned that if a “Salafist principality” did appear in eastern Syria under AQI’s dominance, this would have have “dire consequences” for Iraq, providing “the ideal atmosphere for AQI to return to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi,” and a “renewed momentum” for a unified jihad “among Sunni Iraq and Syria.”

Most strikingly, the report warned that AQI, which had then changed its name to the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI):

“ISI could also declare an Islamic State through its union with other terrorist organisations in Iraq and Syria, which will create grave danger in regards to unifying Iraq and the protection of its territory.”
As the US-led covert strategy accelerated sponsorship of AQI in Syria, AQI’s operations in Iraq also accelerated, often in tandem with Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate, Jabhut al-Nusra.

According to Prof. Anthony Celso of the Department of Security Studies at Angelo State University in Texas, “suicide bombings, car bombs, and IED attacks” by AQI in Iraq “doubled a year after the departure of American troops.” Simultaneously, AQI began providing support for al-Nusra by inputting fighters, funds and weapons from Iraq into Syria.

As the Pentagon’s intelligence arm had warned, by April 2013, AQI formally declared itself the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

In the same month, the European Union voted to ease the embargo on Syria to allow al-Qaeda and ISIS dominated Syrian rebels to sell oil to global markets, including European companies. From this date to the following year when ISIS invaded Mosul, several EU countries were buying ISIS oil exported from the Syrian fields under its control.

The US anti-Assad strategy in Syria, in other words, bolstered the very al-Qaeda factions the US had fought in Iraq, by using the Gulf states and Turkey to finance the same groups in Syria. As a direct consequence, the secular and moderate elements of the Free Syrian Army were increasingly supplanted by virulent Islamist extremists backed by US allies.

A Free Syrian Army fighter rests inside a cave at a rebel camp in Idlib, Syria on 17th September 2013. As of April 2015, moderate FSA rebels in Idlib have been supplanted by a US-backed rebel coalition led by Jabhut al-Nusra, al-Qaeda in Syria
Advanced warning

In February 2014, Lt. Gen. Flynn delivered the annual DIA threat assessment to the Senate Armed Services Committee. His testimony revealed that rather than coming out of the blue, as the Obama administration claimed, US intelligence had anticipated the ISIS attack on Iraq.

In his statement before the committee, which corroborates much of what he told Al-Jazeera, Flynn had warned that “al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) also known as Iraq and Levant (ISIL)… probably will attempt to take territory in Iraq and Syria to exhibit its strength in 2014, as demonstrated recently in Ramadi and Fallujah.” He added that “some Sunni tribes and insurgent groups appear willing to work tactically with AQI as they share common anti-government goals.”

Criticizing the central government in Baghdad for its “refusal to address long-standing Sunni grievances,” he pointed out that “heavy-handed approach to counter-terror operations” had led some Sunni tribes in Anbar “to be more permissive of AQI’s presence.” AQI/ISIL has “exploited” this permissive security environment “to increase its operations and presence in many locations” in Iraq, as well as “into Syria and Lebanon,” which is inflaming “tensions throughout the region.”

It should be noted that precisely at this time, the West, the Gulf states and Turkey, according to the DIA’s internal intelligence reports, were supporting AQI and other Islamist factions in Syria to “isolate” the Assad regime. By Flynn’s account, despite his warnings to the White House that an ISIS attack on Iraq was imminent, and could lead to the destabilization of the region, senior Obama officials deliberately continued the covert support to these factions.

US intelligence was also fully cognizant of Iraq’s inability to repel a prospective ISIS attack on Iraq, raising further questions about why the White House did nothing.

The Iraqi army has “been unable to stem rising violence” and would be unable “to suppress AQI or other internal threats” particularly in Sunni areas like Ramadi, Falluja, or mixed areas like Anbar and Ninewa provinces, Flynn told the Senate. As Iraq’s forces “lack cohesion, are undermanned, and are poorly trained, equipped and supplied,” they are “vulnerable to terrorist attack, infiltration and corruption.”

Senior Iraqi government sources told me on condition of anonymity that both Iraqi and American intelligence had anticipated an ISIS attack on Iraq, and specifically on Mosul, as early as August 2013.

Intelligence was not precise on the exact timing of the assault, one source said, but it was known that various regional powers were complicit in the planned ISIS offensive, particularly Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey:

“It was well known at the time that ISIS were beginning serious plans to attack Iraq. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey played a key role in supporting ISIS at this time, but the UAE played a bigger role in financial support than the others, which is not widely recognized.”
When asked whether the Americans had attempted to coordinate with Iraq on preparations for the expected ISIS assault, particularly due to the recognized inability of the Iraqi army to withstand such an attack, the senior Iraqi official said that nothing had happened:

“The Americans allowed ISIS to rise to power because they wanted to get Assad out from Syria. But they didn’t anticipate that the results would be so far beyond their control.”
This was not, then, a US intelligence failure as such. Rather, the US failure to to curtail the rise of ISIS and its likely destabilization of both Iraq and Syria, was not due to a lack of accurate intelligence — which was abundant and precise — but due to an ill-conceived political decision to impose ‘regime change’ on Syria at any cost.

Vicious cycle

This is hardly the first time political decisions in Washington have blocked US intelligence agencies from pursuing investigations of terrorist activity, and scuppered their crackdowns on high-level state benefactors of terrorist groups.

According to Michael Springmann in his new book, Visas for al-Qaeda: CIA Handouts that Rocked the World, the same structural problems explain the impunity with which terrorist groups have compromised Western defense and security measures for the last few decades.

Much of his book is clearly an effort to make sense of his personal experience by researching secondary sources and interviewing other former US government and intelligence officials. While there are many problems with some of this material, the real value of Springmann’s book is in the level of detail he brings to his first-hand accounts of espionage at the US State Department, and its damning implications for understanding the ‘war on terror’ today.

Springmann served in the US government as a diplomat with the Commerce Department and the State Department’s Foreign Service, holding postings in Germany, India, and Saudi Arabia. He began his diplomatic career as a commercial officer at the US embassy in Stuttgart, Germany (1977–1980), before becoming a commercial attaché in New Delhi, India (1980–1982). He was later promoted to head of the Visa Bureau at the US embassy in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (1987–1989), and then returned to Stuttgart to become a political/economic officer (1989–1991).

Before he was fired for asking too many questions about illegal practices at the US embassy in Jeddah, Springmann’s last assignment was as a senior economic officer at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (1991), where he had security clearances to access restricted diplomatic cables, along with highly classified intelligence from the National Security Agency (NSA) and CIA.

Springmann says that during his tenure at the US embassy in Jeddah, he was repeatedly asked by his superiors to grant illegal visas to Islamist militants transiting through Jeddah from various Muslim countries. He eventually learned that the visa bureau was heavily penetrated by CIA officers, who used their diplomatic status as cover for all manner of classified operations — including giving visas to the same terrorists who would later execute the 9/11 attacks.

CIA officials operating at the US embassy in Jeddah, according to Springmann, included CIA base chief Eric Qualkenbush, US Consul General Jay Frere, and political officer Henry Ensher.

Thirteen out of the 15 Saudis among the 9/11 hijackers received US visas. Ten of them received visas from the US embassy in Jeddah. All of them were in fact unqualified, and should have been denied entry to the US.

Springmann was fired from the State Department after filing dozens of Freedom of Information requests, formal complaints, and requests for inquiries at multiple levels in the US government and Congress about what he had uncovered. Not only were all his attempts to gain disclosure and accountability systematically stonewalled, in the end his whistleblowing cost him his career.

Springmann’s experiences at Jeddah, though, were not unique. He points out that Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who was convicted as the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, received his first US visa from a CIA case officer undercover as a consular officer at the US embassy in Khartoum in Sudan.

The ‘Blind Sheikh’ as he was known received six CIA-approved US visas in this way between 1986 and 1990, also from the US embassy in Egypt. But as Springmann writes:

“The ‘blind’ Sheikh had been on a State Department terrorist watch list when he was issued the visa, entering the United States by way of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the Sudan in 1990.”
In the US, Abdel Rahman took-over the al-Kifah Refugee Center, a major mujahideen recruitment hub for the Afghan war controlled by Abdullah Azzam, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. He not only played a key role in recruiting mujahideen for Afghanistan, but went on to recruit Islamist fighters for Bosnia after 1992.

Even after the 1993 WTC attack, as Springmann told BBC Newsnight in 2001, “The attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 did not shake the State Department’s faith in the Saudis, nor did the attack on American barracks at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia three years later, in which 19 Americans died.”

The Bosnia connection is highly significant. Springmann reports that alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Muhammad “had fought in Afghanistan (after studying in the United States) and then went on to the Bosnian war in 1992…

“In addition, two more of the September 11, 2001, hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, both Saudis, had gained combat experience in Bosnia. Still more connections came from Mohammed Haydar Zammar, who supposedly helped Mohammed Atta with planning the World Trade Center attacks. He had served with Bosnian army mujahideen units. Ramzi Binalshibh, friends with Atta and Zammar, had also fought in Bosnia.”
US and European intelligence investigations have uncovered disturbing evidence of how the Bosnian mujahideen pipeline, under the tutelage of Saudi Arabia, played a major role in incubating al-Qaeda’s presence in Europe.

According to court papers filed in New York on behalf of the 9/11 families in February, covert Saudi government support for Bosnian arms and training was “especially important to al-Qaeda acquiring the strike capabilities used to launch attacks in the US.”

After 9/11, despite such evidence being widely circulated within the US and European intelligence communities, both the Bush and Obama administrations continued working with the Saudis to mobilize al-Qaeda affiliated extremists in the service of what the DIA described as rolling back “the strategic depth of the Shia expansion” across Iraq, Iran and Syria.

The existence of this policy has been confirmed by former 30-year MI6 Middle East specialist Alastair Crooke. Its outcome — in the form of the empowerment of the most virulent Islamist extremist forces in the region — was predictable, and indeed predicted.

In August 2012 — the same date as the DIA’s controversial intelligence report anticipating the rise of ISIS — I quoted the uncannily prescient remarks of Michael Scheuer, former chief of the CIA’s bin Laden unit, who forecast that US support for Islamist rebels in Syria would likely to lead to “the slaughter of some portion of Syria’s Alawite and Shia communities”; “the triumph of Islamist forces, although they may deign to temporarily disguise themselves in more innocent garb”; “the release of thousands of veteran and hardened Sunni Islamist insurgents”; and even “the looting of the Syrian military’s fully stocked arsenals of conventional arms and chemical weapons.”

I then warned that the “further militarization” of the Syrian conflict would thwart the “respective geostrategic ambitions” of regional powers “by intensifying sectarian conflict, accelerating anti-Western terrorist operations, and potentially destabilizing the whole Levant in a way that could trigger a regional war.”

Parts of these warnings have now transpired in ways that are even more horrifying than anyone ever imagined. The continued self-defeating approach of the US-led coalition may well mean that the worst is yet to come.

by Nafeez Ahmed
Aug 13

Find this story at 13 August 2015

Copyright https://medium.com/

Despite bombing, Islamic State is no weaker than a year ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — After billions of dollars spent and more than 10,000 extremist fighters killed, the Islamic State group is fundamentally no weaker than it was when the U.S.-led bombing campaign began a year ago, American intelligence agencies have concluded.

U.S. military commanders on the ground aren’t disputing the assessment, but they point to an upcoming effort to clear the important Sunni city of Ramadi, which fell to the militants in May, as a crucial milestone.

The battle for Ramadi, expected over the next few months, “promises to test the mettle” of Iraq’s security forces, Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Killea, who is helping run the U.S.-led coalition effort in Iraq, told reporters at the Pentagon in a video briefing from the region.

The U.S.-led military campaign has put the Islamic State group on defense, Killea said, adding, “There is progress.” Witnesses on the ground say the airstrikes and Kurdish ground actions are squeezing the militants in northern Syria, particularly in their self-proclaimed capital in Raqqa.

But U.S. intelligence agencies see the overall situation as a strategic stalemate: The Islamic State remains a well-funded extremist army able to replenish its ranks with foreign jihadis as quickly as the U.S. can eliminate them. Meanwhile, the group has expanded to other countries, including Libya, Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and Afghanistan.

The assessments by the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and others appear to contradict the optimistic line taken by the Obama administration’s special envoy, retired Gen. John Allen, who told a forum in Aspen, Colorado, last week that “ISIS is losing” in Iraq and Syria. The intelligence was described by officials who would not be named because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.

“We’ve seen no meaningful degradation in their numbers,” a defense official said, citing intelligence estimates that put the group’s total strength at between 20,000 and 30,000, the same estimate as last August, when the airstrikes began.

The Islamic State’s staying power raises questions about the administration’s approach to the threat that the group poses to the U.S. and its allies. Although officials do not believe it is planning complex attacks on the West from its territory, the group’s call to Western Muslims to kill at home has become a serious problem, FBI Director James Comey and other officials say.

Yet under the Obama administration’s campaign of bombing and training, which prohibits American troops from accompanying fighters into combat or directing airstrikes from the ground, it could take a decade or more to drive the Islamic State from its safe havens, analysts say. The administration is adamant that it will commit no U.S. ground troops to the fight despite calls from some in Congress to do so.

The U.S.-led coalition and its Syrian and Kurdish allies have made some inroads. The Islamic State has lost 9.4 percent of its territory in the first six months of 2015, according to an analysis by the conflict monitoring group IHS.

A Delta Force raid in Syria that killed Islamic State financier Abu Sayyaf in May also has resulted in a well of intelligence about the group’s structure and finances, U.S. officials say. His wife, held in Iraq, has been cooperating with interrogators.

Syrian Kurdish fighters and their allies have wrested most of the northern Syria border from the Islamic State group, and the plan announced this week for a U.S.-Turkish “safe zone” is expected to cement those gains.

In Raqqa, U.S. coalition bombs pound the group’s positions and target its leaders with increasing regularity. The militants’ movements have been hampered by strikes against bridges, and some fighters are sending their families away to safer ground.

But American intelligence officials and other experts say the Islamic State is in no danger of being defeated any time soon.

“The pressure on Raqqa is significant … but looking at the overall picture, ISIS is mostly in the same place,” said Harleen Gambhir, a counterterrorism analyst at Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank.

Although U.S. officials have said it is crucial that the government in Baghdad win back disaffected Sunnis, there is little sign of that happening. American-led efforts to train Syrian rebels to fight the Islamic State have produced a grand total of 60 vetted fighters.

The militants have adjusted their tactics to thwart a U.S. bombing campaign that tries assiduously to avoid civilian casualties, officials say. Fighters no longer move around in easily targeted armored columns; they embed themselves among women and children, and they communicate through couriers to thwart eavesdropping and geolocation, the defense official said.

Oil continues to be a major revenue source. By one estimate, the Islamic State is clearing $500 million per year from oil sales, said Daniel Glaser, assistant secretary for terrorist financing at the Treasury Department. That’s on top of as much as $1 billion in cash the group seized from banks in its territory.

Although the U.S. has been bombing oil infrastructure, the militants have been adept at rebuilding oil refining, drilling and trading capacity, the defense official said.

The stalemate makes the battle for Ramadi all the more important.

Iraqi security forces, including 500 Sunni fighters, have begun preparing to retake the Sunni city, Killea said, and there have been 100 coalition airstrikes designed to support the effort. But he cautioned it will take time.

“Momentum,” he said, “is a better indicator of success than speed.”

Karam and Mroue reported from Beirut.
By KEN DILANIAN, ZEINA KARAM and BASSEM MROUE
Jul. 31, 2015 1:36 PM EDT

Find this story at 31 July 2015

© 2015 Associated Press

C.I.A. Cash Ended Up in Coffers of Al Qaeda

WASHINGTON — In the spring of 2010, Afghan officials struck a deal to free an Afghan diplomat held hostage by Al Qaeda. But the price was steep — $5 million — and senior security officials were scrambling to come up with the money.

They first turned to a secret fund that the Central Intelligence Agency bankrolled with monthly cash deliveries to the presidential palace in Kabul, according to several Afghan officials involved in the episode. The Afghan government, they said, had already squirreled away about $1 million from that fund.

Within weeks, that money and $4 million more provided from other countries was handed over to Al Qaeda, replenishing its coffers after a relentless C.I.A. campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan had decimated the militant network’s upper ranks.

“God blessed us with a good amount of money this month,” Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, the group’s general manager, wrote in a letter to Osama bin Laden in June 2010, noting that the cash would be used for weapons and other operational needs.

Photo

Abdul Khaliq Farahi, who was kidnapped by Al Qaeda in 2008. Credit Michael Kamber for The New York Times
Bin Laden urged caution, fearing the Americans knew about the payment and had laced the cash with radiation or poison, or were tracking it. “There is a possibility — not a very strong one — that the Americans are aware of the money delivery,” he wrote back, “and that they accepted the arrangement of the payment on the basis that the money will be moving under air surveillance.”

The C.I.A.’s contribution to Qaeda’s bottom line, though, was no well-laid trap. It was just another in a long list of examples of how the United States, largely because of poor oversight and loose financial controls, has sometimes inadvertently financed the very militants it is fighting.

While refusing to pay ransoms for Americans kidnapped by Al Qaeda, the Taliban or, more recently, the Islamic State, the United States has spent hundreds of billions of dollars over the last decade at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, some of which has been siphoned off to enemy fighters.

The letters about the 2010 ransom were included in correspondence between Bin Laden and Mr. Rahman that was submitted as evidence by federal prosecutors at the Brooklyn trial of Abid Naseer, a Pakistani Qaeda operative who was convicted this month of supporting terrorism and conspiring to bomb a British shopping center.

The letters were unearthed from the cache of computers and documents seized by Navy SEALs during the 2011 raid in which Bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and had been classified until introduced as evidence at the trial.

Details of the C.I.A.’s previously unreported contribution to the ransom demanded by Al Qaeda were drawn from the letters and from interviews with Afghan and Western officials speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. The C.I.A. declined to comment.

The diplomat freed in exchange for the cash, Abdul Khaliq Farahi, was serving as the Afghan consul general in Peshawar, Pakistan, when he was kidnapped in September 2008 as he drove to work. He had been weeks away from taking up his new job as Afghanistan’s ambassador to Pakistan.

Afghan and Pakistani insurgents had grabbed Mr. Farahi, but within days they turned him over to Qaeda members. He was held for more than two years.

The Afghan government had no direct contact with Al Qaeda, stymieing negotiations until the Haqqani network, an Afghan insurgent faction with close ties to Al Qaeda, stepped in to mediate.

Qaeda leaders wanted some captive militants released, and from the letters it appeared that they calibrated their offer, asking only for men held by Afghan authorities, not those imprisoned by the Americans, who would refuse the demand as a matter of policy. But the Afghans refused to release any prisoners, “so we decided to proceed with a financial exchange,” Mr. Rahman wrote in the June 2010 letter. “The amount we agreed on in the deal was $5 million.”

Photo

A 2009 surveillance video image of Abid Naseer, right, who was convicted this month in a bombing plot. Credit U.S. Attorney’s Office, via Associated Press
The first $2 million was delivered shortly before that letter was written. In it, Mr. Rahman asked Bin Laden if he needed money, and said “we have also designated a fair amount to strengthen the organization militarily by stockpiling good weapons.” (The Qaeda leaders named in the letters were identified by aliases. Bin Laden, for instance, signed his letters Zamray; Mr. Rahman, who was killed in a drone strike in Pakistan in August 2011, went by the alias Mahmud.)

The cash would also be used to aid the families of Qaeda fighters held prisoner in Afghanistan, and some was given to Ayman al-Zawahri, who would succeed Bin Laden as the Qaeda leader and was identified in the letters under the alias Abu-Muhammad, Mr. Rahman said.

Other militant groups had already heard about the ransom payment and had their hands out, Mr. Rahman reported. “As you know, you cannot control the news,” he wrote. “They are asking us to give them money, may God help us.”

But Bin Laden was clearly worried that the payout was an American ruse intended to reveal the locations of senior Qaeda leaders. “It seems a bit strange somewhat because in a country like Afghanistan, usually they would not pay this kind of money to free one of their men,” he wrote.

“Is any of his relatives a big official?” he continued, referring to Mr. Farahi, the diplomat. It was a prescient question: Mr. Farahi was the son-in-law of a man who had served as a mentor to then-President Hamid Karzai.

Advocating caution, Bin Laden advised Mr. Rahman to change the money into a different currency at one bank, and then go to another and exchange the money again into whatever currency was preferred. “The reason for doing that is to be on the safe side in case harmful substances or radiation is put on paper money,” Bin Laden wrote.

Neither of the two men appeared to have known where the money actually came from. Aside from the C.I.A. money, Afghan officials said that Pakistan contributed nearly half the ransom in an effort to end what it viewed as a disruptive sideshow in its relations with Afghanistan. The remainder came from Iran and Persian Gulf states, which had also contributed to the Afghan president’s secret fund.

In a letter dated Nov. 23, 2010, Mr. Rahman reported to Bin Laden that the remaining $3 million had been received and that Mr. Farahi had been released.

The C.I.A., meanwhile, continued dropping off bags of cash — ranging each time from a few hundred thousand dollars to more than $1 million — at the presidential palace every month until last year, when Mr. Karzai stepped down.

The money was used to buy the loyalty of warlords, legislators and other prominent — and potentially troublesome — Afghans, helping the palace finance a vast patronage network that secured Mr. Karzai’s power base. It was also used to cover expenses that needed to be kept off the books, such as clandestine diplomatic trips, and for more mundane costs, including rent payments for the guesthouses where some senior officials lived.

The cash flow has slowed since a new president, Ashraf Ghani, assumed office in September, Afghan officials said, refusing to elaborate. But they added that cash was still coming in, and that it was not clear how robust any current American constraints on it are.

“It’s cash,” said a former Afghan security official. “Once it’s at the palace, they can’t do a thing about how it gets spent.”

By MATTHEW ROSENBERGMARCH 14, 2015

Find this story 14 March 2015

© 2015 The New York Times Company HomeSearch

ISIS fighter was trained by State Department

Washington (CNN) An ISIS fighter who calls for jihad in a new online video was trained in counterterrorism tactics on American soil, in a program run by the United States, officials tell CNN.

The video features a former police commander from Tajikistan named Col. Gulmurod Khalimov. He appears in black ISIS garb with a sniper rifle and a bandolier of ammunition. He says in the video that he participated in programs on U.S. soil three times, at least one of which was in Louisiana.

The State Department has confirmed this claim.

“From 2003-2014 Colonel Khalimov participated in five counterterrorism training courses in the United States and in Tajikistan, through the Department of State’s Diplomatic Security/Anti-Terrorism Assistance program,” said spokeswoman Pooja Jhunjhunwala.

The program is intended to train candidates from participating countries in the latest counterterrorism tactics, so they can fight the very kind of militants that Khalimov has now joined.

A State Department official said Khalimov was trained in crisis response, tactical management of special events, tactical leadership training and related issues.

In the video, Khalimov says that what he saw during his training sessions turned him against his sponsors.

“Listen, you American pigs: I’ve been to America three times. I saw how you train soldiers to kill Muslims,” he says in Russian. “You taught your soldiers how to surround and attack, in order to exterminate Islam and Muslims.”

Then, in the most chilling part of the 10-minute video, he looks directly into the camera and says, “God willing, we will find your towns, we will come to your homes, and we will kill you.”

He then demonstrates his dexterity with a sniper rifle by blowing apart a tomato from a distance of perhaps 25 yards. The scene is played in slow motion.

Who are the women of ISIS?

The American program in which Khalimov participated is designed to teach tactics used by police and military units against terrorists by countries that cooperate with the United States on security matters. But now experts are concerned that this defector has brought ISIS not only a propaganda victory, but also an insider’s knowledge of the playbook the United States is using in the fight against ISIS.

“That is a dangerous capability,” said former Army intelligence officer Michael Breen. “It’s never a good thing to have senior counterterrorism people become terrorists.”

“It sounds like he was involved in defending sensitive people and sensitive targets,” said Breen, who is now with the Truman Project in Washington. “He knows how to plan counterterrorism operations. So he knows how the people who protect a high-value target will be thinking; he knows how people who protect an embassy would be thinking.”

Former Army sniper Paul Scharre, now with the Center for a New American Security, said Khalimov could not only help train other ISIS fighters in tactics, but also serve as a recruiter for the group.

“They’re obviously trying to draw in recruits” with the video, he said.

War against ISIS: Successes and failures

Khalimov was an officer of the primary counterterrorism unit which responds to terrorist threats in Tajikistan, a State Department official said, so he and other members of his unit were recommended for the program by the Tajik government.

“All appropriate Leahy vetting was undertaken in advance of this training,” said spokeswoman Jhunjhunwala.

Scharre, who has served as a trainer of Afghan soldiers in Afghanistan, says there is always a risk that a trainee will turn against their American instructors.

But Breen, who has also participated in training sessions overseas, said building counterterrorism partners requires a necessary leap of faith. “There’s absolutely no way to beat an opponent like the Islamic State, without training a lot of people,” he said. “That’s a core of our strategy.”

By Dugald McConnell and Brian Todd, CNN
Updated 1804 GMT (0104 HKT) May 30, 2015 | Video Source: CNN

Find this story at 30 May 2015

© 2015 Cable News Network.

Inquiry Weighs Whether ISIS Analysis Was Distorted

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon’s inspector general is investigating allegations that military officials have skewed intelligence assessments about the United States-led campaign in Iraq against the Islamic State to provide a more optimistic account of progress, according to several officials familiar with the inquiry.

The investigation began after at least one civilian Defense Intelligence Agency analyst told the authorities that he had evidence that officials at United States Central Command — the military headquarters overseeing the American bombing campaign and other efforts against the Islamic State — were improperly reworking the conclusions of intelligence assessments prepared for policy makers, including President Obama, the government officials said.

Fuller details of the claims were not available, including when the assessments were said to have been altered and who at Central Command, or Centcom, the analyst said was responsible. The officials, speaking only on the condition of anonymity about classified matters, said that the recently opened investigation focused on whether military officials had changed the conclusions of draft intelligence assessments during a review process and then passed them on.

Photo

Iraqi Army recruits in Taji in April with U.S. Army trainers. About 3,400 American troops are advising Iraqi forces. Credit John Moore/Getty Images
The prospect of skewed intelligence raises new questions about the direction of the government’s war with the Islamic State, and could help explain why pronouncements about the progress of the campaign have varied widely.

Legitimate differences of opinion are common and encouraged among national security officials, so the inspector general’s investigation is an unusual move and suggests that the allegations go beyond typical intelligence disputes. Government rules state that intelligence assessments “must not be distorted” by agency agendas or policy views. Analysts are required to cite the sources that back up their conclusions and to acknowledge differing viewpoints.

Under federal law, intelligence officials can bring claims of wrongdoing to the intelligence community’s inspector general, a position created in 2011. If officials find the claims credible, they are required to advise the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. That occurred in the past several weeks, the officials said, and the Pentagon’s inspector general decided to open an investigation into the matter.

Spokeswomen for both inspectors general declined to comment for this article. The Defense Intelligence Agency and the White House also declined to comment.

Col. Patrick Ryder, a Centcom spokesman, said he could not comment on a continuing inspector general investigation but said “the I.G. has a responsibility to investigate all allegations made, and we welcome and support their independent oversight.”

Numerous agencies produce intelligence assessments related to the Iraq war, including the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency and others. Colonel Ryder said it was customary for them to make suggestions on one another’s drafts. But he said each agency had the final say on whether to incorporate those suggestions. “Further, the multisource nature of our assessment process purposely guards against any single report or opinion unduly influencing leaders and decision makers,” he said.

It is not clear how that review process changes when Defense Intelligence Agency analysts are assigned to work at Centcom — which has headquarters both in Tampa, Fla., and Qatar — as was the case of at least one of the analysts who have spoken to the inspector general. In the years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Pentagon has relocated more Defense Intelligence Agency analysts from the agency’s Washington headquarters to military commands around the globe, so they can work more closely with the generals and admirals in charge of the military campaigns.

Mr. Obama last summer authorized a bombing campaign against the Islamic State, and approximately 3,400 American troops are currently in Iraq advising and training Iraqi forces. The White House has been reluctant, though, to recommit large numbers of ground troops to Iraq after announcing an “end” to the Iraq war in 2009.

The bombing campaign over the past year has had some success in allowing Iraqi forces to reclaim parts of the country formerly under the group’s control, but important cities like Mosul and Ramadi remain under Islamic State’s control. There has been very little progress in wresting the group’s hold over large parts of Syria, where the United States has done limited bombing.

Some senior American officials in recent weeks have provided largely positive public assessments about the progress of the military campaign against the Islamic State, a Sunni terrorist organization that began as an offshoot of Al Qaeda but has since severed ties and claimed governance of a huge stretch of land across Iraq and Syria. The group is also called ISIS or ISIL.

Continue reading the main story
Obama’s Evolution on ISIS
Some of President Obama’s statements about the American strategy to confront ISIS and its effectiveness.

In late July, retired Gen. John Allen — who is Mr. Obama’s top envoy working with other nations to fight the Islamic State — told the Aspen Security Forum that the terror group’s momentum had been “checked strategically, operationally, and by and large, tactically.”

“ISIS is losing,” he said, even as he acknowledged that the campaign faced numerous challenges — from blunting the Islamic State’s message to improving the quality of Iraqi forces.

During a news briefing last week, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter was more measured. He called the war “difficult” and said “it’s going to take some time.” But, he added, “I’m confident that we will succeed in defeating ISIL and that we have the right strategy.”

But recent intelligence assessments, including some by Defense Intelligence Agency, paint a sober picture about how little the Islamic State has been weakened over the past year, according to officials with access to the classified assessments. They said the documents conclude that the yearlong campaign has done little to diminish the ranks of the Islamic State’s committed fighters, and that the group over the last year has expanded its reach into North Africa and Central Asia.

Critics of the Obama administration’s strategy have argued that a bombing campaign alone — without a significant infusion of American ground troops — is unlikely to ever significantly weaken the terror group. But it is not clear whether Defense Intelligence Agency analysts concluded that more American troops would make an appreciable difference.

In testimony on Capitol Hill this year, Lt. Gen. Vincent R. Stewart, the agency’s director, said sending ground troops back into Iraq risked transforming the conflict into one between the West and ISIS, which would be “the best propaganda victory that we could give.”

“It’s both expected and helpful if there are dissenting viewpoints about conflicts in foreign countries,” said Micah Zenko, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of a forthcoming book, “Red Team,” that includes an examination of alternative analysis within American intelligence agencies. What is problematic, he said, “is when a dissenting opinion is not given to policy makers.”

The Defense Intelligence Agency was created in 1961, in part to avoid what Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense at the time, called “service bias.” During the 1950s, the United States grossly overestimated the size of the Soviet missile arsenal, a miscalculation that was fueled in part by the Air Force, which wanted more money for its own missile systems.

During the Vietnam War, the Defense Intelligence Agency repeatedly warned that even a sustained military campaign was unlikely to defeat the North Vietnamese forces. But according to an internal history of the agency, its conclusions were repeatedly overruled by commanders who were certain that the United States was winning, and that victory was just a matter of applying more force.

“There’s a built-in tension for the people who work at D.I.A., between dispassionate analysis and what command wants,” said Paul R. Pillar, a retired senior Central Intelligence Agency analyst who years ago accused the Bush administration of distorting intelligence assessments about Iraq’s weapons programs before the beginning of the Iraq war in 2003.

“You’re part of a large structure that does have a vested interest in portraying the overall mission as going well,” he said.

By MARK MAZZETTI and MATT APUZZOAUG. 25, 2015

Find this story at 25 August 2015

© 2015 The New York Times Company

Ex-CIA head: Other terror groups more dangerous than ISIS

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) does not pose the biggest threat to the U.S., according to a former leader of the CIA.

It isn’t even in the top three.

“Despite that significant threat from ISIS, it is not the most significant threat to the homeland today,” former CIA deputy and acting Director Michael Morell said on Monday. “The most significant threat to the homeland today still comes from al Qaeda and three al Qaeda groups in particular.”
Those three al Qaeda subgroups — including the “core” al Qaeda branch in Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as affiliates in Yemen and Syria — have shown more willingness to confront the U.S. on its home soil, Morell said.

Of those, the most dangerous is the Yemen branch, known as al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

“The last three attempted attacks to the United States were by al Qaeda in Yemen,” Morell said. He was referring to the failed 2009 “underwear bomber” plot on Christmas Day, as well as a scuttled 2010 plan to insert bombs into printer ink cartridges and the 2012 discovery of a plan to destroy a plane with a non-metallic suicide vest.

“They have the ability to bring down an airliner in the United States of America tomorrow,” Morell said during remarks at the National Press Club.

The two other groups posing a significant threat to the U.S., he added, were the Syria-based Khorasan Group and the original senior leadership of al Qaeda, including head Ayman al-Zawahiri.

The remarks come after dramatic new gains by ISIS in Iraq. Over the weekend, the extremist group captured the city of Ramadi, a critical regional capital, in a major setback for the U.S.-backed Iraqi government.

On Monday, Morell appeared unfazed by that development.

“There’s going to be ups and downs in this war,” he said. “There’s going to be battles won and battles lost. This is a battle lost.”

“I do think that, when you look at the broader context, taking back 25 percent of the territory that they took in their blitzkrieg, it looks pretty good,” Morell added. “And I have confidence that the strategy that we have in place is eventually going to win back Iraq.”

Morell, who retired from the CIA in 2013, is promoting a new book he wrote about the fight against al Qaeda, called The Great War of Our Time.

By Julian Hattem – 05/18/15 11:26 AM EDT

Find this story at 18 May 2015

©2015 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp

Secret Intel Reports on Syria & Iraq Revealed

Almost three years ago the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) of the U.S. Dept of Defense accurately characterized the conflict in Syria and predicted the emergence of the Islamic State. This stunning revelation has emerged as a result of a Freedom of Information Act law suit filed by Judicial Watch in connection with the House Select Committee on Benghazi.

The heavily redacted August 2012 seven page intelligence report reveals the following:

1. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) confirmed the sectarian core of the Syrian insurgency. It says

“EVENTS ARE TAKING A CLEAR SECTARIAN DIRECTION. THE SALAFIST, THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, AND AQI ARE THE MAJOR FORCES DRIVING THE INSURGENCY IN SYRIA.” (capitalization in the report; AQI = Al Queda in Iraq)

This analysis is in sharp contrast with western media and political elite which has characterized the “Syrian revolution” as being driven by protestors in a quest for “democracy and freedom”.

2. DIA confirmed the close connection between Syrian opposition and Al Queda. The report says

“AQI SUPPORTED THE SYRIAN OPPOSITION FROM THE BEGINNING, BOTH IDEOLOGICALLY AND THROUGH THE MEDIA….. AQI CONDUCTED A NUMBER OF OPERATIONS IN SEVERAL SYRIAN CITIES UNDER THE NAME JAISH AL NUSRAH (VICTORIOUS ARMY)”

3. DIA confirmed that the Syrian insurgency was enabling the renewal of Al Queda in Iraq and Syria. The report says,

“THERE WAS A REGRESSION OF AQI IN THE WESTERN PROVINCES OF IRAQ DURING THE YEARS OF 2009 AND 2010; HOWEVER, AFTER THE RISE OF THE INSURGENCY IN SYRIA, THE RELIGIOUS AND TRIBAL POWERS IN THE REGIONS BEGAN TO SYMPATHIZE WITH THE SECTARIAN UPRISING. THIS SYMPATHY APPEARED IN FRIDAY PRAYER SERMONS, WHICH CALLED FOR VOLUNTEERS TO SUPPORT THE SUNNIS IN SYRIA.”

4. DIA predicted the Syria government will survive but foreign powers and the opposition will try to break off territory to establish an opposition ‘capital’ as was done in Libya. The report says,

“THE REGIME WILL SURVIVE AND HAVE CONTROL OVER SYRIAN TERRITORY…… OPPOSITION FORCES ARE TRYING TO CONTROL THE EASTERN AREAS ADJACENT TO THE WESTERN IRAQI PROVINCES (MOSUL AND ANBAR), IN ADDITION TO NEIGHBORING TURKISH BORDERS. WESTERN COUNTRIES, THE GULF STATES AND TURKEY ARE SUPPORTING THESE EFFORTS. THIS HYPOTHESIS IS MOST LIKELY IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE DATA FROM RECENT EVENTS, WHICH WILL HELP PREPARE SAFE HAVENS UNDER INTERNATIONAL SHELTERING, SIMILAR TO WHAT TRANSPIRED IN LIBYA WHEN BENGHAZI WAS CHOSEN AS THE COMMAND CENTER OF THE TEMPORARY GOVERNMENT.”

5. DIA predicted the expansion of Al Queda and declaration of “Islamic State” (two years before it happened). The report says

“IF THE SITUATION UNRAVELS THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY OF ESTABLISHING A DECLARED OR UNDECLARED SALAFIST PRINCIPALITY IN EASTERN SYRIA AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SUPPORTING POWERS TO THE OPPOSITION WANT, IN ORDER TO ISOLATE THE SYRIAN REGIME WHICH IS CONSIDERED THE STRATEGIC DEPTH OF THE SHIA EXPANSION (IRAQ AND IRAN). THE DETERIORATION OF THE SITUATION HAS DIRE CONSEQUENCES ON THE IRAQI SITUATION…… THIS CREATES THE IDEAL ATMOSPHERE FOR AQI TO RETURN TO ITS OLD POCKETS IN MOSUL AND RAMADI, AND WILL PROVIDE A RENEWED MOMENTUM UNDER THE PRESUMPTION OF UNIFYING THE JIHAD AMONG SUNNI IRAQ AND SYRIA AND THE REST OF THE SUNNIS IN THE ARAB WORLD AGAINST WHAT IT CONSIDERS ONE ENEMY, THE DISSENTERS. ISI COULD ALSO DECLARE AN ISLAMIC STATE THROUGH ITS UNION WITH OTHER TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS IN IRAQ AND SYRIA, WHICH WILL CREATE GRAVE DANGER IN REGARDS TO UNIFYING IRAQ AND THE PROTECTION OF ITS TERRITORY.”

The last prediction (in summer 2012) is especially remarkable since it predates the actual declaration of the “Islamic State” by two years.

The August and September 2012 secret reports were sent to the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, State Department, Department of Defense and U.S. Central Command.

Conclusions and Questions

The Defense intelligence report accurately characterized the sectarian core of the Syrian opposition and predicted the renewal and growth of ISIS leading to the declaration of an “Islamic State”.

The consequence has been widespread death and destruction. Today much of the world looks on in horror as ISIS military forces murder and behead Palmyra soldiers and government supporters and threaten the destruction of one of humanity’s greatest archaeological treasures.

Knowing what was in this report raises the following questions:

* Why did the U.S. Government not change their policy?

* Why did the U.S. Government continue to demonize the secular Assad government and actively support a Syrian insurgency where “THE SALAFIST, MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, AND AQI ARE THE MAJOR FORCE”?

* Why did the U.S. Government prevent mainstream media from seeing and reporting on this intelligence in 2012? (It might have quieted the barking hounds of war.)

* Why did the U.S. Government continue to allow the shipping of weapons to the Syrian opposition, as documented in another secret report from September 2012?

* Is the destruction and mayhem the result of a mistake or is it intentional?

Intentional or not, aren’t the U.S. government and Gulf/NATO/Turkey allies significantly responsible for the mayhem, death and destruction we are seeing in Iraq and Syria today?

Rick Sterling is a founding member of Syrian Solidarity Movement. He can be reached at rsterling1@gmail.com
Posted By Rick Sterling On May 22, 2015 @ 8:55 am In articles 2014 onward | Comments Disabled

Find this story at 22 May 2015

Copyright http://www.counterpunch.org/

After Iraq-Syria Takeover, the Inside Story of How ISIL Destroyed Al-Qaeda from Within

A year ago this month, fighters from the self-proclaimed Islamic State declared they had established a caliphate in the territories they controlled in Iraq and Syria. Since then, the Islamic State has continued to grow, building affiliates from Afghanistan to West Africa while recruiting new members from across the globe. In response, President Obama has sent thousands of U.S. troops back to Iraq. The deployment of another 450 troops was announced on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the rise of the Islamic State has reshaped the jihadist movement in the region, essentially bringing al-Qaeda to the brink of collapse. According to a new investigation by The Guardian, the Islamic State has successfully launched “a coup” against al-Qaeda to destroy it from within. The Islamic State began as al-Qaeda’s branch in the heart of the Middle East but was excommunicated in 2014 after disobeying commands from al-Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri. While the Islamic State has since flourished, The Guardian reports al-Zawahiri is now largely cut off from his commanders and keeping the group afloat through little more than appeals to loyalty. We are joined by Guardian reporter Shiv Malik.

TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: A year ago this month, fighters from the Islamic State declared they had established a caliphate in the territories they controlled in Iraq and Syria. Since then, the Islamic State has continued to grow, building affiliates from Afghanistan to West Africa while recruiting new members from across the globe. In response, President Obama has sent thousands of U.S. troops back to Iraq. The deployment of another 450 troops was announced on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the rise of the Islamic State has reshaped the jihadist movement in the region, essentially bringing al-Qaeda to the brink of collapse.

AMY GOODMAN: According to a new investigation by The Guardian, the Islamic State has successfully launched a coup against al-Qaeda to destroy it from within. The Islamic State began as al-Qaeda’s branch in the heart of the Middle East but was excommunicated in 2014 after disobeying commands from al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. While the Islamic State has since flourished, The Guardian reports al-Zawahiri is now largely cut off from his commanders and keeping the group afloat through little more than appeals to loyalty. The Guardian also reports the United States has been slow to grasp the implications of al-Qaeda’s decline and possible collapse.

Joining us now from London is Shiv Malik, lead author on The Guardian investigation headlined “How Isis Crippled al-Qaida.” Shiv, if you can talk about, well, just how ISIS crippled al-Qaeda and your meeting in Jordan with the leading al-Qaeda theorists?

SHIV MALIK: Yeah. So, this has been going on for a while now, for a couple of years at least. And, you know, from the outside, we get little pictures. You hear these skirmishes that have been going on. You hear that sort of ISIS has killed a few other members of al-Qaeda, the sort of Syrian branch of al-Qaeda called Jabhat al-Nusra. There was a big conflagration in January last year, in 2014, in which thousands died.

But the real inside story of this comes from just actually a few players, really. And thankfully, we were able to interview Muhammad al-Maqdisi and another guy called Abu Qatada. To British people, he’s quite famous because he lived here for many years, and the home secretary here—actually, various home secretaries tried to deport him over a process of almost 10 years to Jordan to face terrorism charges. He was acquitted of those eventually. But he’s been described as kind of al-Qaeda’s spiritual—or Bin Laden’s spiritual ambassador in Europe. And Maqdisi, who is actually little known in the West, is actually even more senior than Qatada in regards to al-Qaeda.

And what they’ve been doing is, actually, behind the scenes, kind of negotiating between al-Qaeda and ISIS, trying to bring these people back to the table. And they finally gave up about sort of, you know, six months ago or thereabouts, because they all used to be one family. It used to be, if you want, the al-Qaeda family. So, that’s the story that we’ve got from them, which is this process, as I said, of about over two years of how ISIS has sort of risen to take the mantle of the leadership of the sort of global jihad, if you want, from al-Qaeda.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Shiv Malik, could you explain how you came to research this story? And you went to Jordan to speak to these two figures. Could you talk a little about that?

SHIV MALIK: Yeah. So, Maqdisi and Qatada kind of, for obvious reasons, both have—well, Maqdisi also has sort of terrorism convictions, but they’re in and out of prison all the time, as you can imagine—Maqdisi often without charge. He’s just sort of taken by Jordanian security services and sort of locked up. But he was released in February again, and so we went to visit him then, sort of soon afterwards. And then we carried on interviewing him. We’ve got—you know, there’s a big team of investigators that were on this piece, and so we continued to interview him and ask him questions.

And actually, when you meet him, you know, you sort of—you don’t really know what you’re going to get. This guy is the spiritual godfather of al-Qaeda, and Zawahiri counts him as a personal friend. He’s been mentor to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He mentored him, and Zarqawi is the founder of ISIS, if you want. He mentored him for five years in prison, and Zarqawi then went on to, of course, create absolute havoc in Iraq in 2003, beheading people, massacring Shias by the thousands. And so, you don’t know what to expect. But when you meet him, he’s sort of—he’s this very interesting guy. I mean, he’s completely energetic, enthusiastic. He’s almost childlike in his enthusiasm for talking about almost anything. His hands flail all over the place. He’s rake thin. And he’s got a real sense of humor, which, you know, sort of throws you, and you don’t really know what to do.

Qatada, on the other hand, is this very large, lumbering man, and he’s very tall, and physically, in that sense, quite intimidating. It’s quite hard to grasp just how big this guy is from sort of the pictures that we have. And he speaks very quietly, and he almost sounds like Marlon Brando in The Godfather, you know, but sort of slightly higher-pitched. So it’s this sort of—and he pauses a lot. So they kind of make an odd pair, if you want.

But we went to speak to them, and they were both very upset. They’ve spent—their life’s work has basically been bringing jihadis under one banner. And for that, that was al-Qaeda. So al-Qaeda is not just an organization, which we know has been incredibly ruthless and bloody and plotting away at terrorism events around the globe; they’re also an idea. And the idea is sort of twofold. First, it’s—and we often look at this from a Western perspective, but, you know, of course, these guys have their own agency. So, the first part of this is that al-Qaeda was created as a kind of a failure, a response to the failures of kind of localist jihadist issues going back to the ’80s and ’90s, and Algeria, for example, being a failure, and Afghanistan. So the idea was that they would all come together under one banner, and they would attack, and they would put their focus on America, because they said this is—the theory was that, look, attack the snake’s head, if you want. And so that’s what they did. And they planned against that, obviously, culminating most visciously in September the 11th. And these scholars then—this was their idea there.

But the second part of this is they’re also a vanguard for a revolutionary idea of setting up the caliphate. And those who are au fait with kind of what happened with the communist movements will know about vanguardist organization, but the idea is that they educate the people to accepting the notion of an Islamic state, and then they eventually, one day, set it up. So this is what al-Qaeda has meant for these two scholars.

And ISIS have been quietly bubbling away. They’ve alway been—they’ve been a branch of—they’ve been al-Qaeda’s branch in Iraq. That’s the best way to think of them. And they had been, for a very long time, the most troublesome branch, as well—kind of don’t listen to orders, don’t take criticism very well, won’t listen to anyone. And bin Laden had problems with them, and we know that from the Abbottabad documents that have sort of come out, the sort of tranche of documents that were seized when Americans went in and killed bin Laden in 2011 in May. But we also know this from, then, subsequently, what’s happened and what Zawahiri has said publicly. So they’ve been very troublesome.

And at one point, the sort of the peace was broken, if you want, when ISIS sent—when the Syrian civil war started, they sent some people into Syria, and they said, “You know, we’ll grab some turf. We’ll start a branch there.” And the people who then went on to lead that, sort of bunch of rebels fighting against Assad, went on to become incredibly powerful. And ISIS in Iraq say, “Ah, we’re a bit threatened by this. I’ll tell you what. We’ll just create a merger.” And it’s that point that—it was basically a bit of a power play over territory and patches of land and who would control what. Zawahiri steps in and says, “Actually, let’s just put things back to where they were.” Baghdadi steps up and says, “No way. You know what? We’re not going to do this. We don’t need you, old man in Waziristan, anymore. And if you tell us otherwise, we’re just not going to listen to you.”

So, that’s what starts a giant civil war, basically, and eventually it gets to the point where, as I said, in January 2014 just all hell breaks loose. And jihadis just keep killing jihadis, and veterans from al-Qaeda are killed, and people in ISIS are killed, and it’s incredibly messy. And it’s almost impossible to keep track of. And we spent a very long time trying to piece together, bit by bit, which villages ISIS were taking over, who was getting killed when, who was saying what. And at one point, they even killed—ISIS ended up killing Zawahiri’s emissary, which he had sent over to make peace. They killed him, too. So it was incredibly vicious and incredibly bloody. In step with scholars, which is—

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, very soon, Shiv Malik—

SHIV MALIK: Yes.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Very soon after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, there was already a split, a falling out between Maqdisi, whom you spoke to, and al-Zarqawi, who was initial leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, the so-called—the precursor to ISIS. So could you talk about what the ideological divisions are between these two groups and, in particular, focus on what their position came to be on the recruitment of former Baath leaders within this movement, the position of ISIS versus the position of al-Qaeda, what it had been and what it became?

SHIV MALIK: So, I mean, in terms of ideological divisions, the big division came when ISIS set up this caliphate. They declared this caliphate. And I said, you know, al-Qaeda is supposed to be the vanguardist organization. And there they are, ISIS, setting up a caliphate and saying, “You know, the revolution is complete. We’ve done it. We set up the caliphate. We’ve got there finally.” And that has also made, in that sense, al-Qaeda a bit redundant. They managed, ISIS, to hold onto this caliphate for a whole year now, or almost—we’re coming up to the anniversary in a couple of weeks—which is remarkable. So that’s certainly one ideological difference. And with that, they’ve been able to—ISIS have been able to capture the imagination of young radicals, who would already be susceptible to this, and also the funders. So the money and the men, the prestige is all going to ISIS at this point in time. And al-Qaeda therefore is being drained of all of that, of that pool. So they’ve been really left on the back foot.

Now, these scholars are saying—Maqdisi and Qatada, that we spoke to, have said, “Look, actually, these guys aren’t the real deal.” And that’s why they sort of stepped in. They said, “Look, we’re the elite scholarship. You know, if you’re more than gangsters, and you’re ideologues, then you’ve got to listen to us, because we’re the people who wrote the books.” So, they stepped in, and ISIS basically completely—there was a long period of time when they thought maybe there can be some reconciliation. Baghdadi actually wrote a letter to Maqdisi and said, “Please, come join us in the caliphate. Come see what it’s like. Judge for yourself.” And there was some suggestion from these two, when we interviewed them, that if they went, they’d never come back: They might get killed. So they’re obviously frightened, as well. And there was a situation, as well, a security situation in Jordan, where, again, these two might get bumped off because they’d been so critical of ISIS. You know, someone might just appear masked and gun them down. So, there’s been that, as I said, that fraticide, but ultimately, they want the same thing in the end, and these are, to Western observers certainly, very petty ideological differences.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Shiv Malik, this may sound like a far-out question, but could you see any scenario in which the U.S. would side with al-Qaeda against ISIS?

SHIV MALIK: Not really. And they shouldn’t. I mean, you know, it’s not like al-Qaeda are friends of America by any means. In fact, they’re still very much focused on attacking America. And that’s how they—you know, this is where they find their niche now. If their marketplace has been closed down for them by ISIS, some of it anyway, then they—again, they reformulate themselves on doubling what they did before, if you want, which is to attack the West and gain, if you want, prestige from that, to appeal to their own base. And that should be very worrying for the West.

Now, that doesn’t mean that America should simply carry on focusing on al-Qaeda and not regear its intelligence machine, its military machine towards ISIS. You know, if you were wondering what’s a greater threat, ISIS certainly is. And the reason is, is because, as I mentioned before, they have a patch of land. It’s actually a very sizable territory with a massive city of a couple million people, in Mosul, in Iraq, which they’re in charge of. And this is very worrying, because this idea is now real. They’ve managed to say to the world, “Actually, we’ve held it for a year. We’ve even expanded it by taking Ramadi, which is another major city in Iraq. And look, you know, clearly God’s on our side.” You know, these people are, in that sense, sort of people of faith and religion. And if the caliphate carries on existing, it must be that we’re on the winning side. So, America should regear. And what they’ve announced already, or what seems to have been reported, was, you know, they’re going to send a few other thousand people over to Iraq, or a couple hundred other extra advisers to advise the Iraqi army. I’m not sure if that will be enough, but we’ll see.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And before we conclude, Shiv Malik, could you talk about the significance of the civil war in Syria in precipitating the self-proclaimed Islamic State’s rise and the collapse or near collapse of al-Qaeda?

SHIV MALIK: Yeah, I mean, the civil war has allowed for chaos, and in that sense, you know, these people are sort of like gangsters or sort of drug dealers. They need turf, and they need turf so they can get money and, as I said, recruits. And it’s like a business in that sense. It has to keep itself going. And Syria provided that field. Once the revolution broke out, Assad then brutally put people down and killed them and slaughtered them. And then people decided to arm themselves, and that created the chaos. Then, in stepped—as I said, you know, in stepped ISIS, who were over the border, or ISI, as they were known then, and sent people over to sort of take advantage of all of this. So, in that sense, they have taken advantage completely of what’s been going on, but that’s not to say that people shouldn’t want to resist Assad. They should, you know? He’s been using chemical weapons and certainly chlorine bombs on his population. He’s a despicable dictator. So the question—you know, it’s a complete mess. And someone at some point is going to have to step in, whether it’s European and American forces or something else, and sort that out. But until then, as I said, ISIS will certainly take advantage of it. And they’re doing very well out of it financially.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you, Shiv Malik, for joining us, investigative reporter at The Guardian, lead author of the new in-depth report, “How Isis Crippled al-Qaida: The Inside Story of the Coup That Has Brought the World’s Most Feared Terrorist Network to the Brink of Collapse.” Shiv was speaking to us in London. We’ll link to that piece at democracynow.org. This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we go to Texas. Major anti-choice actions are taking place there. Stay with us.

THURSDAY, JUNE 11, 2015

Find this story at 11 June 2015

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In a propaganda war against ISIS, the U.S. tried to play by the enemy’s rules

CONFRONTING THE ‘CALIPHATE’ | This is part of an occasional series about the rise of the Islamic State militant group, its implications for the Middle East, and efforts by the U.S. government and others to undermine it.

Hear from the man responsible for one of the most controversial counter-messaging videos produced by the U.S. State Department. EDITOR’S NOTE: The Washington Post has blurred the graphic images from the State Department video. (The Washington Post)
As fighters surged into Syria last summer, a video surfaced online with the grisly imagery and sneering tone of a propaganda release from the Islamic State.

“Run, do not walk, to ISIS Land,” read the opening line of a script that promised new arrivals would learn “useful new skills” such as “crucifying and executing Muslims.” The words were juxtaposed with images of the terrorist group’s atrocities: kneeling prisoners shot point-blank; severed heads positioned next to a propped-up corpse; limp bodies left hanging from crosses in public squares.

The source of the video was revealed only in its closing frame: the U.S. Department of State.

“Welcome to ISIS Land” was in some ways a breakthrough for the U.S. government after years of futility in attempting to compete with the propaganda of al-Qaeda and its offshoots. The video became a viral phenomenon — viewed more than 844,000 times on YouTube — and a cause of significant irritation to its target.

But the minute-long recording also became a flash point in a much broader debate over how far the United States should go in engaging with a barbaric adversary online.

The clip was assembled by a special unit at the State Department charged with finding ways to contain the spread of militant Islamist ideology. The Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications, or CSCC, had direct backing from President Obama, help from the CIA, and teams of Arabic, Urdu and Somali speakers who were thrust into the fray on Twitter and other social-media platforms.

The center was to function “like a war room in a political campaign — shake things up, attack ads, opposition research,” said Alberto Fernandez, a veteran U.S. diplomat who was put in charge of the group. The video targeting the Islamic State, which is also known by the abbreviations ISIS and ISIL, was emblematic of that edgy approach, using the enemy’s own horrific footage to subvert the idea that recruits were “going off to Syria for a worthy cause,” Fernandez said, “and to send a message that this is actually a squalid, worthless, dirty thing.”

The propaganda wars since 9/11 VIEW GRAPHIC
In seeking to change minds overseas, however, the CSCC also turned heads in Washington. Experts denounced the group’s efforts as “embarrassing” and even helpful to the enemy. Critics at the State Department and White House saw the use of graphic images as a disturbing embrace of the adversary’s playbook. And for all the viral success of “ISIS Land,” even the center’s defenders could never determine whether it had accomplished its main objective: discouraging would-be militants from traveling to Syria.

The fallout has put the U.S. government in a frustratingly familiar position — searching yet again for a messaging strategy that might resonate with aggrieved Muslims and stem the spread of Islamist militancy.

It is a problem that has proved more difficult to solve than almost any other for counterterrorism officials. In the 14 years since the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States has degraded al-Qaeda, tracked down and killed Osama bin Laden and protected the country from any mass-casualty follow-up attacks.

Al-Qaeda’s brand of militant ideology, however, has only spread.

Previous U.S. efforts have ranged from covert CIA propaganda programs to a Walt Disney-produced film. Their ineffectiveness has hindered attempts to rebalance U.S. counterterrorism policy, leaving the government heavily dependent on armed drones, commando teams and other instruments of lethal force.

With less than two years to go in Obama’s second term, his administration is trying yet another approach. Fernandez, 57, has been replaced, and the unit he led has been instructed to stop taunting the Islamic State. The State Department recently launched a new entity, the Information Coordination Cell, which plans to enlist U.S. embassies, military leaders and regional allies in a global messaging campaign to discredit groups such as the Islamic State.

The plan is to be “more factual and testimonial,” said Rashad Hussain, 36, a former White House adviser brought in to lead the effort. It will seek to highlight Islamic State hypocrisy, emphasize accounts of its defectors, and document its losses on the battlefield — without recirculating its gruesome images or matching its snide tone. “When amplified properly, we believe the facts speak for themselves,” Hussain said.

‘What I’ve been asking for’
The CSCC began with more going for it than any of its predecessors, but it also faced major obstacles.

It was always vastly outnumbered by its online adversaries, had a minuscule budget by Washington standards, and was saddled with what some regard as the insurmountable burden of having to affix the U.S. government label to messages aimed at a skeptical Muslim audience.

The center was conceived by senior officials at the State Department, including its counterterrorism chief, Daniel Benjamin, who was among a group of administration insiders who worried that the White House had become more focused on killing terrorists than preventing the recruitment of new ones.

It also became a priority for then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who wrote in a memo that the unit should be modeled on a campaign “war room,” equipped to monitor every utterance by the adversary and respond rapidly.

[From hip-hop to jihad, how the Islamic State became a magnet for converts]

Even with Clinton’s backing, however, a 2010 meeting at the White House offered an early indication of how contentious the plan would be. The CIA’s drone war in Pakistan was at full throttle when Benjamin pitched the idea for the center to Obama and key players on his national security team, including Clinton, counterterrorism adviser John Brennan and senior aide Denis McDonough.

As Benjamin wrapped up, Obama erupted.

“This is what I’ve been asking for — why haven’t we been doing this already?” the president demanded, according to a former senior U.S. official who attended the meeting and did not represent the State Department.

“There was irritation” in Obama’s voice, the former official said, aimed at aides he had been pressing for options to keep al-Qaeda’s ideology from spreading. “Everybody on his counterterrorism team had a little bit of egg on their face at that point,” said the former official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the meeting and requested anonymity.

McDonough, Brennan and others seemed angered to have been upstaged, former officials said, and would continue to be seen as obstacles to the plan.

“The whole thing got off on a bad foot bureaucratically,” the former official said. “The antibodies were out to kill it from the beginning.”

The proposal languished long after Obama’s flash of frustration. In her memoir, Clinton said that “despite the president’s pointed comments in July 2010, it took more than a year for the White House to issue an executive order” establishing the center.

That order, which was finally signed just two days shy of the 10-year anniversary of the Sept. 11. attacks, outlined the center’s mission in broad terms and made Obama’s backing explicit. But its most important provision to State was language requiring the CIA, Pentagon and Justice Department to contribute employees and resources to the CSCC.

‘Happy Muslim’ campaign
The authority seemed to mark a turning point for the State Department after years of being powerless to compel cooperation from other departments, and an opportunity to break from approaches tried in a string of earlier, ill-fated initiatives.

Among them were videos commissioned in 2002 by former Madison Avenue advertising executive Charlotte Beers, who was appointed to the public diplomacy post one month after the Sept. 11 attacks. The $15 million campaign, called “Shared Values,” profiled Muslims living contentedly in the United States, including a baker in Ohio and a fire department medic in Brooklyn.

Some in the State Department derisively labeled it the “Happy Muslim” campaign. It was quickly shelved, and Beers left the administration in 2003.

As the Iraq war raged in 2005, President George W. Bush turned to his longtime communications adviser, Karen Hughes, to reverse the plunging global opinion of the United States. As the new head of public diplomacy, she created a unit named the Digital Outreach Team to defend U.S. policies in online chat rooms that seethed with hostility toward the United States. She also persuaded Disney to produce a feel-good “Portraits of America” film that was shown in airports and U.S. embassies.

As U.S. efforts faltered, al-Qaeda was learning to take advantage of a rapidly changing media landscape.

The group’s early attempts at messaging had often been amateurish, consisting mainly of stilted videos that showed bin Laden staring into the camera, lecturing followers and referring to world events that had occurred weeks or months earlier — a reflection of how long it took to smuggle out the recordings.

Osama bin Laden speaks in this image made from an undated video broadcast on Friday, Oct. 29, 2004 by Arab television station Al-Jazeera. In the statement, bin Laden directly admitted for the first time that he carried out the Sept. 11 attacks, and said “the best way to avoid another Manhattan” was to stop threatening Muslims’ security. ((Al-Jazeera via AP))

In this Monday, Nov. 8, 2010 file photo taken from video and released by SITE Intelligence Group, Anwar al-Awlaki speaks in a video message posted on radical Web sites. ((SITE/AP))
But al-Qaeda understood the importance of messaging from the outset. It had established a media wing known as As-Sahab, or “The Cloud,” to manage its propaganda efforts. The unit began turning out dozens of films a year and was led by an American convert, Adam Gadahn, who helped produce the group’s Western-aimed propaganda until he was killed in January in a CIA drone strike.

By 2009, al-Qaeda had found a compelling voice for the Internet age in Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born cleric who joined the terrorist group’s affiliate in Yemen, known as AQAP. Awlaki’s English-language sermons attracted a global following, and his calls for violence were seen as a catalyst in a series of attacks, including a 2009 shooting at Fort Hood in Texas that killed 13 people.

A year later, that same Yemen-based franchise began releasing an English-language online magazine called Inspire with bomb recipes and articles encouraging lone wolf attacks. The first issue arrived the same month as the White House meeting in which Obama endorsed the CSCC plan.

[The hidden hand behind the Islamic State militants? Saddam Hussein’s.]

As the center finally began to take shape at the State Department, there was a sense that significant ground had already been lost.

When Richard LeBaron, a career U.S. diplomat, was asked to be the center’s first director, he described the job offer to his wife. Noting that it had been nine years since the Sept. 11 attacks, she reacted with disbelief.

“You’re doing this now?” she asked.

LeBaron spent much of his first year securing resources and assembling staff. As the group’s work got underway, he steered away from the mass audience approaches of Beers and Hughes, campaigns that he thought had only convinced Muslims that “the United States perceived them as a problem,” he said. He believed that al-Qaeda’s ideology appealed to a tiny fraction of that population and that any effort to divert recruits had to be “fought in a very, very narrow trench.”

Under LeBaron, the group produced its first online video mocking al-Qaeda. The video alternated footage of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri declaring that only violence would bring change to the Middle East with scenes of what were then the largely peaceful uprisings of the Arab Spring.

GoPro cameras and fanboys
The center’s appetite for barbed attacks intensified when LeBaron retired in early 2012 and was replaced by Fernandez.

A Middle East expert and one of the State Department’s best Arabic speakers, Fernandez had studied al-Qaeda’s ideology and propaganda strategy with the mind-set of a scholar. But he also had a penchant for bluntness that sometimes rankled his bosses. In 2006, he was forced to apologize for remarks during an interview on Al Jazeera television in which he said the United States had been guilty of “arrogance and stupidity” in Iraq.

As head of the center, Fernandez sought to sharpen a campaign that some in the State Department already saw as uncomfortably edgy. He pushed the team to take a more combative stance against al-Qaeda online. But his arrival coincided with the emergence of a new adversary with its own impulse to escalate.

The Islamic State began as an Iraq-based franchise of al-Qaeda, but it severed those ties and transformed itself into the most potent militant force in Syria with a mix of daring assaults on major cities and public displays of gruesome violence, including videotaped beheadings of Western prisoners.

The group’s power in Syria accounts for much of its appeal. But the danger it poses beyond the Middle East is based largely on the global following it has amassed by exploiting Twitter and other social media in ways that al-Qaeda never envisioned.

Compared with the Islamic State, “al-Qaeda is your parents’ Internet,” Fernandez said. “It’s AOL.com or MySpace.”

Over the past four years, more than 20,000 foreign fighters have flocked to Syria and Iraq, including at least 3,400 from Western countries. The migration has eclipsed the flow of militants into Afghanistan in the 1980s, and the Islamic State has been the main draw.

Map: Flow of foreign fighters to Syria VIEW GRAPHIC
The Islamic State’s media wing employs a virtual production line, turning battle footage captured on GoPro cameras into polished propaganda films, including an hour-long documentary called “Flames of War,” that are disseminated by an army of followers and “fanboys.” The group has produced unsettlingly authentic “news” reports with the coerced cooperation of one of its prisoners, British television correspondent John Cantlie. Through exchanges on Twitter, it has also enticed Western women to travel to Syria to become “ISIS brides.”

U.S. officials have described the Islamic State’s propaganda as remarkably slick and sophisticated, characterizations that LeBaron called “borderline racist.” “The notion behind that is how could these Arabs be so smart? How could these terrorists be so skilled?” he said. “Why wouldn’t they be? They’re growing up with the same exposure to social media.”

[Islamic State appears to be fraying from within]

By mid-2013, the Islamic State had eclipsed al-Qaeda as the CSCC’s top priority. The team produced dozens of videos and banners depicting ISIS as a menace to Muslims in Syria, and it tried to trade blows with the group on Twitter, even though State Department posts were often drowned out by the volume of Islamic State messages.

As the center’s campaign intensified, the Islamic State showed flashes of irritation. The group launched a Twitter account, @Al-Bttar, specifically to engage in running arguments with the State Department team.

It also orchestrated campaigns aimed at getting the team kicked off Twitter and YouTube by bombarding those companies with waves of complaints accusing the CSCC of violating their terms of service. At times, Fernandez said, the effort forced State Department officials to appeal to the companies to get their accounts restored.

There were also death threats. Most were vague vows by Islamic State followers to track down the center’s employees. But in one case, ISIS managed to identify one of the center’s contract workers by name and singled him out as a target. The threat was traced to a militant in Spain who was subsequently arrested, U.S. officials said.

Inspired by Monty Python
The center occupies a cramped second-floor office at the State Department that officials said is the only space in the department’s Public Diplomacy Bureau equipped with the locks, alarms and other systems needed to serve a classified facility. Inside, employees track terrorist propaganda and devise responses at computers that are equipped with access to reports from the CIA’s Open Source Center and other channels. Most of the front-line work on social media is carried out by contractors in a separate building nearby.

Since its inception, the center had purposely avoided posting any material in English. It did so in part to avoid running afoul of rules barring the State Department from attempts to influence American citizens. But officials also cited another concern: venturing into English would expose the center’s efforts to more scrutiny in Washington.

At times the constraint seemed absurd. In September 2013, gunmen from al-Shabab staged an assault on a shopping mall in Nairobi while supporters of the Somali terrorist group touted the unfolding carnage on Twitter. Although the al-Shabab tweets were in English, the State Department team could respond only in Somali or Arabic.

As the Islamic State expanded its efforts to attract Western recruits — largely through English-language propaganda — the State Department scrapped its policy.

In late 2013, the center unveiled an English-language campaign dubbed “Think Again Turn Away” aimed at the Islamic State. In a typical skirmish last year, the terrorist group launched a barrage of messages on Twitter under the hashtag #CalamityWillBefallUS. The center tried to disrupt the stream with caustic replies. One showed a feeble-looking bin Laden watching television in the compound where he was killed and warned Islamic State followers: “I want to remind you what happens to terrorists who target us.”

At first, the messages caused only small ripples of reaction outside these narrow channels on social media. But Fernandez soon began scribbling out a script for a new video that would draw a much bigger audience.

The idea for “ISIS Land” emerged in the summer of 2014, while the Islamic State was rapidly expanding. The group had stormed into Iraq and seized Mosul, a city of 2 million, with virtually no resistance from the American-trained Iraqi army. The organization changed its name from ISIL to the Islamic State as it formally declared itself ruler of a restored caliphate — a highly symbolic move that harked back to the historic empires of Islam.

Simultaneously, the Islamic State unleashed a barrage of new videos in English. Among them were segments dubbed “five-star jihad” that depicted life for Islamic State fighters as lavish, with access to hillside mansions, gleaming SUVs and swimming pools overlooking the group’s conquered terrain.

Fernandez, who had served in Syria, wanted to counter that message with a video that would both mock and mimic the Islamic State’s preening style. Fernandez drew inspiration from Monty Python spoofs of the Crusades, and he asked his team to gather some of the most brutal footage of the Islamic State available online.

“Welcome to ISIS Land” sat largely unnoticed on the center’s YouTube channel after it was posted on July 23, 2014. It was part of a much larger collection that included nearly 300 other clips, including more than 200 in Arabic.

Then, like so many online phenomena, “ISIS Land” was propelled into the mainstream by seemingly inexplicable forces.

Alberto M. Fernandez is the State Department’s Coordinator for the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
A reporter for a British newspaper, the Guardian, posted a link to the video on his Twitter feed. CNN aired an arched-eyebrow segment. HBO comedian John Oliver lambasted the video on his mock news show. And Islamic State followers responded with a parody of their own called “Run Do Not Walk to U.S. Terrorist State.”

Critics blasted not only the video, but also the broader “Think Again Turn Away” campaign. Rita Katz, whose SITE Intelligence Group tracks the online communications of terrorist groups, began cataloguing what she considered to be the center’s most embarrassing materials and said the campaign was playing into the Islamic State’s hands by bolstering its reputation for cruelty and expanding its audience.

“It’s better to not do anything than to do what they’re doing at the State Department,” Katz said.

Others bridled at what they considered the unseemly spectacle of a U.S. government entity behaving like a social-media punk. “They’re trying to reach these kids, but it’s backfiring,” said Patrick M. Skinner, a former CIA agent who works as a counterterrorism consultant. “It’s like the grandparents yelling to the children, ‘Get off my lawn.’ ”

Underfunded, falling short
Fernandez had made sure that the “ISIS Land” video was approved in advance by officials from the White House, the CIA, the Pentagon and the State Department. But the public reaction emboldened insiders who were already skeptical of the center’s work.

Amid the rash of negative coverage, Marie Harf, a State Department spokeswoman, began urging that the CSCC be reined in. In an e-mail to White House communications adviser Ben Rhodes and others, she said that she was “supremely uncomfortable” with the graphic images that were “going out under the State Department seal.”

The center’s ability to fend off the criticism was hampered by the difficulty of measuring the effectiveness of its work. The group could point to the size of its following on Twitter and argued that all the death threats and efforts to shut down its accounts were evidence that the center had gotten under the Islamic State’s skin.

But the claims were seen by many as irrelevant or unconvincing.

“The consensus has been that this has been ineffective,” said Rep. Edward R. Royce (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which has oversight of the State Department and its operations. “If we can’t measure the impact of what we’re doing, how do we prove that it’s effective?”

“Welcome to ISIS Land” went on to be viewed in numbers never approached by any of the center’s other films. But even now it is not clear that any of those viewers were ever at risk of joining the Islamic State, let alone diverted from that path.

To Fernandez, the center has been subjected to an impossible standard.

“How do you prove a negative?” he asked. “Unless some guy comes out with his hands up and says, ‘I was going to become a terrorist. I saw your video. I loved it. I changed my mind.’ You’re never going to get that.”

The fallout weakened the center’s already wobbly footing in Washington.

Since its creation, the center’s budget had hovered between $5 million and $6 million per year, a range that barely registers on Washington’s spending scale.

The Pentagon, by comparison, spends about $150 million each year to influence public opinion and win “hearts and minds.” The CIA has spent more than $250 million to monitor social media and other “open” sources of intelligence, according to documents obtained by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, with millions more spent on covert propaganda efforts.

At the State Department, the stagnant funding became a major source of frustration, at times spilling into public view. When an ABC News story described the administration’s media strategy against militant Islam as underfunded and falling short, Rhodes, the Obama adviser, fired off an e-mail to Fernandez saying that he had backed the group’s work. He also told Fernandez that he thought criticism of the White House was unfair.

Fernandez replied in an e-mail that he hadn’t been a source for the story, but he agreed with its contents, according to several officials familiar with the exchange. Fernandez declined to comment on the matter.

The center’s troubles were compounded as its supporters in the administration dwindled. Benjamin, who had pushed to create the group, left the State Department at the end of 2012 for an academic position at Dartmouth College. Clinton resigned as secretary of state weeks later and was replaced by John F. Kerry, who overhauled the department’s public diplomacy ranks.

Even so, Fernandez pressed ahead late last year with an ambitious proposal to double the center’s budget. He made his case in a memo that detailed how badly the center was overmatched. Because of budget constraints, the outreach team could be online only five days a week, rarely during hours that corresponded with peak Internet activity in the Middle East. The proposal cited the poor production quality of its videos as proof that even its equipment was inferior to that of the Islamic State.

But in a broader sense, Fernandez saw the budget struggle as a test of U.S. resolve after years of waiting for moderate Muslim leaders to take on the religion’s most radical strains.

“It is about contesting a space that had been ceded to the adversary,” Fernandez said. “Even if you’re outnumbered, even if you’re shouted down, there is value in showing up.”

‘The backfire effect’
The new leadership at the State Department eventually decided that more resources were needed, but that they would go to a new entity, and that it was time for Fernandez to retire.

Richard Stengel, a former managing editor of Time magazine hired by Kerry as head of public diplomacy, had concerns about the center’s “snarky tone.” He pushed an approach he had employed at Time: “Curate more and create less.”

“The kind of content we were creating wasn’t resonating in ways I would have hoped,” Stengel said in an interview. Going forward, messages would be more fact-based. “You say the caliphate is heaven on earth? We’re going to show you pictures where sewers don’t work. You’re winning on the battlefield? Here’s a satellite picture of you guys retreating.”

Scores of hostages, including Westerners, have been killed by the Islamic State since 2014. Here are some of the major incidents where the Islamic State killed the hostages. VIEW GRAPHIC
As foreign officials gathered in Washington in February for a White House-sponsored summit on countering violent extremism, the State Department announced the creation of the Information Coordination Cell.

In part, Stengel said the new direction was driven by resource realities. There is no way for the department to match the volume of output on social media from the Islamic State, and therefore it should enlist other departments and allies. One of the cell’s main initiatives is to distribute a “talking points” memo each day to U.S. embassies and allied governments, urging them to emphasize a common set of themes or news items about the Islamic State.

But Stengel also acknowledged that the changes reflect competing points of view in a philosophical debate.

Fernandez was convinced that the Islamic State’s appeal was largely emotional, casting itself as an antidote to feelings of victimhood and powerlessness among alienated Muslims. Undermining that appeal required using — and hopefully subverting — the graphic images and themes that resonated with the group’s recruits.

Skeptical, Stengel cited what he said researchers have called “the backfire effect: when you try to disabuse somebody who has a strongly held belief, more often than not it makes their belief even stronger.”

In February, Fernandez was replaced by Hussain, the Obama adviser who served as special envoy to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and was a close associate of Rhodes at the White House.

The center has not produced a new English-language video in several months. The “Think Again Turn Away” campaign is being shelved in favor of a new tag line: “Terror Facts.” And the CSCC is expected to be combined with the Information Coordination Cell as part of an unnamed new entity.

The center’s creators see the changes as a retreat from the war room they envisioned.

[The Islamic State’s war against history]

“The fate of the CSCC just underscores the difficulty of experimentation in government — there is zero tolerance for risk and no willingness to let a program evolve,” Benjamin said.“It’s easier to do the same stuff over and over and wring your hands instead of investing resources and having patience.”

In interviews, Hussain and Stengel described ambitious plans to build on the work of the center and help other nations set up messaging operations modeled on the one at State. The first of these was recently established in the United Arab Emirates, although officials said its messaging work remains in “beta mode” and has not yet surfaced online.

The department also appears to be revisiting some pages of the Bush administration’s propaganda playbook.

Late last year, Stengel reached out to Hollywood, asking for help to counter the messages of both the Islamic State and Russia. On Oct. 14, he met with Michael Lynton, chief executive of Sony Pictures Entertainment, according to company e-mails obtained by hackers and released by WikiLeaks in April.

“Michael: It was great to see you yesterday. As you could see, we have plenty of challenges in countering ISIL narratives in the Middle East,” Stengel wrote the next day. “I’d love to convene a group of media executives who can help us think about better ways to respond.”

Julie Tate contributed to this report.

Greg Miller covers the intelligence beat for The Washington Post.
Scott Higham is reporter assigned to The Post’s investigative unit.

By Greg Miller and Scott Higham May 8

Find this story at 8 May 2015

© 1996-2015 The Washington Post

Iraqi officer under Saddam masterminded rise of Islamic State

A former intelligence officer for the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was the mastermind behind Islamic State’s takeover of northern Syria, according to a report by Der Spiegel that is based on documents uncovered by the German magazine.

Spiegel, in a lengthy story published at the weekend and entitled “Secret Files Reveal the Structure of Islamic State”, says it gained access to 31 pages of handwritten charts, lists and schedules which amount to a blueprint for the establishment of a caliphate in Syria.

The documents were the work of a man identified by the magazine as Samir Abd Muhammad al-Khlifawi, a former colonel in the intelligence service of Saddam Hussein’s air defense force, who went by the pseudonym Haji Bakr.

Spiegel says the files suggest that the takeover of northern Syria was part of a meticulous plan overseen by Haji Bakr using techniques — including surveillance, espionage, murder and kidnapping — honed in the security apparatus of Saddam Hussein.

The Iraqi national was reportedly killed in a firefight with Syrian rebels in January 2014, but not before he had helped secure swathes of Syria, which in turn strengthened Islamic State’s position in neighboring Iraq.

“What Bakr put on paper, page by page, with carefully outlined boxes for individual responsibilities, was nothing less than a blueprint for a takeover,” the story by Spiegel reporter Christoph Reuter says.

“It was not a manifesto of faith, but a technically precise plan for an ‘Islamic Intelligence State’ — a caliphate run by an organization that resembled East Germany’s notorious Stasi domestic intelligence agency.”

The story describes Bakr as being “bitter and unemployed” after U.S. authorities in Iraq disbanded the army by decree in 2003. Between 2006 to 2008 he was reportedly in U.S. detention facilities, including Abu Ghraib prison.

In 2010 however, it was Bakr and a small group of former Iraqi intelligence officers who made Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi the official leader of Islamic State, with the goal of giving the group a “religious face”, the story says.

Two years later, the magazine says, Bakr traveled to northern Syria to oversee his takeover plan, choosing to launch it with a collection of foreign fighters that included novice militants from Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Europe alongside battle-tested Chechens and Uzbeks.

Iraqi journalist Hisham al-Hashimi, whose cousin served with Bakr, describes the former officer as a nationalist rather than an Islamist. The story argues that the secret to Islamic State’s success lies in its combination of opposites – the fanatical beliefs of one group and the strategic calculations of another, led by Bakr.

Spiegel said it had obtained the papers after lengthy negotiations with rebels in the Syrian city of Aleppo, who had seized them when Islamic State was forced to abandon its headquarters there in early 2014.

(Writing by Noah Barkin; Editing by Crispian Balmer)
World | Sun Apr 19, 2015 12:42pm EDT Related: WORLD, SYRIA, IRAQ
REUTERS/THAIER AL-SUDANI

Find this story at 19 April 2015

Copyright http://www.reuters.com/

Terror-Mastermind Haji Bakr

Der Spitzel-Führer des “Islamischen Staates”

Er entwarf den Masterplan zur Machtübernahme in Syrien, baute ein Spitzelnetz auf, installierte den selbst ernannten Kalifen: Haji Bakr war der wichtigste IS-Stratege, die Religion nutzte er nur als Mittel zum Zweck. Der SPIEGEL hat seine Geheimdokumente ausgewertet.

Die meisten kannten ihn als den Mann mit dem weißen Bart, manche als den mit dem schwarzen Bart. Der örtliche Rebellenkommandeur erinnerte sich an ihn unter dem Namen “Schweib”, zuständig für die Waffenbeschaffung. Einer der örtlichen politischen Köpfe kannte ihn als “Abu Bakr al-Iraqi”, als den Verantwortlichen für religiöse Belange in der Kleinstadt Tal Rifaat in der umkämpften Ebene Nordsyriens.

Erst nachdem ein kleines Rebellenkommando ihn erschossen hatte, Anfang 2014, wurde allen klar: Es war stets derselbe Mann. Ein Mann, der darauf bedacht war, möglichst keine Spuren zu hinterlassen.

Die Rebellen wussten im ersten Moment nicht, wen sie da im Feuergefecht erschossen hatten. Aber sie wunderten sich: Warum brachte der “Islamische Staat” eine regelrechte Streitmacht von Süden heran, um die Stadt zu stürmen? Warum rückten sie mit mehr als einem Dutzend Pick-ups mit aufmontierten Maschinengewehren an? Warum schickten sie einen Selbstmordattentäter vor, der sich am Stadtrand in die Luft sprengte?

Sie hatten den Trupp frühzeitig entdeckt, erwartet und zurückgeschlagen. Aber keiner wusste zunächst, welches Ziel so wertvoll war, dass der IS mit solcher Wucht angriff. Die Leiche des Erschossenen verstauten die Rebellen in einer Kühltruhe.

Bakr steuerte anderthalb Jahre lang die Eroberung Nordsyriens

So endet die Geschichte von Haji Bakr, wie der Mann innerhalb der IS-Miliz hieß. Es ist die Geschichte des wohl einflussreichsten Terror-Strategen der jüngeren Vergangenheit – dem Architekten der Organisation, die in den vergangenen Jahren weite Teile Syriens und des Iraks unter ihre Kontrolle und Terror über viele Tausend Menschen gebracht hat. Es ist die Geschichte des Kopfes hinter dem “Islamischen Staat”.

Die Rebellen holten den Leichnam erst wieder hervor, als ein Anführer aus einer anderen Stadt sie alarmierte. Sie legten den leblosen Körper auf eine orangefarbene Wolldecke im tiefgrünen Wintergras – jeder sollte ihn sehen können; jeder sollte sich von seinem Tod überzeugen. Dann verscharrten sie ihn, den Mann mit den vielen Namen, in einem namenlosen Grab.

Sein richtiger Name lautet Samir Abed al-Mohammed al-Khleifawi, einst Oberst im irakischen Militärgeheimdienst mit dem erhöhten Rang einer Generalstabsverwendung. Mehr als zwei Jahrzehnte lang hatte er im Herzen von Saddam Husseins Geheimdienststaat gelernt, wie man mit einem System aus flächendeckender Überwachung und feindosiertem Schrecken eine Bevölkerung im Griff hält.

Wie sehr er seine Lektionen verinnerlicht, wie geschickt und penibel er geplant hatte, das wurde den Rebellen erst klar, als sie das unscheinbare Haus durchsuchten, in dem Haji Bakr gelebt und von dem aus er anderthalb Jahre lang die Eroberung Nordsyriens gesteuert hatte.

Im Haus fanden sie die Pläne, die die Strategie des IS offenbarten – und anhand derer sich das Vorgehen der Terrororganisation in den vergangenen Jahren en détail rekonstruieren lässt: Wie eine Handvoll aus dem Irak eingesickerter erfahrener Machtübernahme-Profis unter Bakrs Anleitung ihren schleichenden Eroberungszug begonnen und wie der IS zur wichtigsten Terrororganisation der Gegenwart wurde.

Die Papiere liegen dem SPIEGEL vor (hier finden Sie die Dokumente in der aktuellen Ausgabe). Es sind komplexe handschriftliche Aufrisse, manche so umfangreich, dass sie auf mehrere zusammengeklebte Blätter gezeichnet worden waren. “So etwas hatten wir noch nie gesehen”, sagte Radwan Qarandel, der örtliche Rebellenführer.

In dem Konvolut findet sich unter anderem Folgendes:

der detaillierte Plan für den Einstieg: Spionagezellen, als islamische Missionsbüros getarnt, sollen in allen Dörfern und Städten etabliert werden
Ablaufpläne dafür, wie Orte “geöffnet” werden sollten
Organigramme für konkurrierende Geheimdienste
der Entwurf für separate Abteilungen, die geheime Morde und Entführungen planen und durchführen, als Vorstufen zur anschließenden Machtübernahme.
“Hochintelligent, entschlossen, exzellenter Logistiker”

Die Geschichte Haji Bakrs ist weniger die Geschichte eines Ideologen als die eines kühlen Strategen. Er war “absolut kein Islamist”, erinnert sich der irakische Journalist und Kenner der Radikalenszene, Hischam al-Haschimi, an den früheren Karriereoffizier, der gemeinsam mit Haschimis Cousin auf der Luftwaffenbasis Habbaniya stationiert gewesen war. “Oberst Samir”, wie er ihn nennt, “war hochintelligent, entschlossen und ein exzellenter Logistiker.” Aber als Paul Bremer, der US-Statthalter nach Saddams Sturz in Bagdad, “im Mai 2003 einfach per Dekret die gesamte Armee auflöste, war er arbeitslos und verbittert”.

Es begann der lange Weg des nüchternen Geheimdienstprofis, der nichts dem Zufall und schon gar nicht dem Glauben überließ, an die Spitze der schon damals brutalsten Dschihadistengruppe, die als al-Qaida im Irak bekannt wurde. Im Untergrund traf Haji Bakr, wie er sich nun nannte, Abu Mussab al-Sarkawi, den weltweit berüchtigten Drahtzieher zahlloser Selbstmordanschläge auf amerikanische Soldaten, das Uno-Hauptquartier in Bagdad, aber ebenso auf schiitische Heiligtümer und Geistliche.

Für zwei Jahre saß Haji Bakr im amerikanischen Gefangenenlager Camp Bucca und im Gefängnis von Abu Ghuraib, wo viele der späteren Terrorkontakte erst geknüpft wurden. Die US-Besatzer im Irak hatten ein tragisches Talent dafür, sich erst mit der Auflösung der gesamten Armee und dann mit oft wahllosen Massenverhaftungen ihre intelligentesten Feinde selbst zu schaffen und zu vereinen.

Die Intrige um al-Baghdadi

Es dauerte Jahre, bis die kühlen Strategen aus Saddams Geheimdiensten und die islamistischen Fanatiker zusammenkamen. Erst als 2010 der aus al-Qaida im Irak hervorgegangene “Islamische Staat” fast seine gesamte Führungsspitze verlor, war dies der goldene Moment für Haji Bakr: Stets die graue Eminenz im Hintergrund intrigierte er den heutigen “Kalifen” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi an die Spitze des IS.

Er erzählte den versteckten Anführern je einzeln, dass die anderen schon einverstanden seien. Wer trotzdem noch dagegen war, würde in den folgenden Monaten spurlos verschwinden. So wie ab 2013 im anarchischen Nordsyrien die von Haji Bakrs Spitzel-Kohorten ausgemachten Gegner einer nach dem anderen verschleppt und ermordet würden.

In seinen Plänen, die akribisch umgesetzt wurden und den IS bis 2014 zum Herrscher über ungefähr ein Drittel Syriens machten, tauchte der Islam, außer in den Eingangsfloskeln, gar nicht auf. Scharia, islamische Gerichtsbarkeit, verordnete Frömmelei – alles war nur Mittel zum Zweck, unterworfen einem einzigen Ziel: die neu gewonnenen Untertanen zum Gehorsam zu zwingen und die enorme Zugkraft des Dschihad, die zu Tausenden aus aller Welt strömenden Radikalen, benutzen zu können.

Selbst für die zwangsweise Bekehrung zum Islam, in seinem Verständnis die sklavische Unterwerfung, verwendet Haji Bakr keinen religiösen, sondern einen technischen Begriff: “Takwin”. Er bezeichnet die Implementierung. Ein nüchternes Wort, das sonst in der Geologie oder Bauwissenschaft verwendet wird.

Vor 1200 Jahren allerdings war es schon einmal auf eigentümliche Art berühmt geworden: bei schiitischen Alchemisten als Bezeichnung für die Schaffung künstlichen Lebens. In seinem “Buch der Steine” hatte der Perser Jabir Ibn Hayyan im 9. Jahrhundert von der Erschaffung eines Homunkulus, eines künstlichen Menschen, geschrieben, in Geheimschrift und Codes: “Das Ziel ist es, alle zu täuschen, bis auf jene, die Gott liebt.”

Ob Haji Bakr von dieser lang versunkenen Bedeutung seines Wortes für die Schaffung der Gläubigen wusste? Wahrscheinlich nicht. Aber die alten Geheimdienstler an der Spitze des IS agieren wie Alchemisten der Gegenwart, die aus der Angst der anderen und ihrem nüchternen Machtkalkül den künstlichen Gottesstaat erschaffen wollten.

19. April 2015, 13:17 Uhr
Von Christoph Reuter

Find this story at 9 April 2015

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2015

Now the truth emerges: how the US fuelled the rise of Isis in Syria and Iraq

The sectarian terror group won’t be defeated by the western states that incubated it in the first place

The war on terror, that campaign without end launched 14 years ago by George Bush, is tying itself up in ever more grotesque contortions. On Monday the trial in London of a Swedish man, Bherlin Gildo, accused of terrorism in Syria, collapsed after it became clear British intelligence had been arming the same rebel groups the defendant was charged with supporting.

The prosecution abandoned the case, apparently to avoid embarrassing the intelligence services. The defence argued that going ahead withthe trial would have been an “affront to justice” when there was plenty of evidence the British state was itself providing “extensive support” to the armed Syrian opposition.

That didn’t only include the “non-lethal assistance” boasted of by the government (including body armour and military vehicles), but training, logistical support and the secret supply of “arms on a massive scale”. Reports were cited that MI6 had cooperated with the CIA on a “rat line” of arms transfers from Libyan stockpiles to the Syrian rebels in 2012 after the fall of the Gaddafi regime.

Clearly, the absurdity of sending someone to prison for doing what ministers and their security officials were up to themselves became too much. But it’s only the latest of a string of such cases. Less fortunate was a London cab driver Anis Sardar, who was given a life sentence a fortnight earlier for taking part in 2007 in resistance to the occupation of Iraq by US and British forces. Armed opposition to illegal invasion and occupation clearly doesn’t constitute terrorism or murder on most definitions, including the Geneva convention.

But terrorism is now squarely in the eye of the beholder. And nowhere is that more so than in the Middle East, where today’s terrorists are tomorrow’s fighters against tyranny – and allies are enemies – often at the bewildering whim of a western policymaker’s conference call.

For the past year, US, British and other western forces have been back in Iraq, supposedly in the cause of destroying the hyper-sectarian terror group Islamic State (formerly known as al-Qaida in Iraq). This was after Isis overran huge chunks of Iraqi and Syrian territory and proclaimed a self-styled Islamic caliphate.

The campaign isn’t going well. Last month, Isis rolled into the Iraqi city of Ramadi, while on the other side of the now nonexistent border its forces conquered the Syrian town of Palmyra. Al-Qaida’s official franchise, the Nusra Front, has also been making gains in Syria.

Some Iraqis complain that the US sat on its hands while all this was going on. The Americans insist they are trying to avoid civilian casualties, and claim significant successes. Privately, officials say they don’t want to be seen hammering Sunni strongholds in a sectarian war and risk upsetting their Sunni allies in the Gulf.

A revealing light on how we got here has now been shone by a recently declassified secret US intelligence report, written in August 2012, which uncannily predicts – and effectively welcomes – the prospect of a “Salafist principality” in eastern Syria and an al-Qaida-controlled Islamic state in Syria and Iraq. In stark contrast to western claims at the time, the Defense Intelligence Agency document identifies al-Qaida in Iraq (which became Isis) and fellow Salafists as the “major forces driving the insurgency in Syria” – and states that “western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey” were supporting the opposition’s efforts to take control of eastern Syria.

Raising the “possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality”, the Pentagon report goes on, “this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran)”.

American forces bomb one set of rebels while backing another in Syria
Which is pretty well exactly what happened two years later. The report isn’t a policy document. It’s heavily redacted and there are ambiguities in the language. But the implications are clear enough. A year into the Syrian rebellion, the US and its allies weren’t only supporting and arming an opposition they knew to be dominated by extreme sectarian groups; they were prepared to countenance the creation of some sort of “Islamic state” – despite the “grave danger” to Iraq’s unity – as a Sunni buffer to weaken Syria.

That doesn’t mean the US created Isis, of course, though some of its Gulf allies certainly played a role in it – as the US vice-president, Joe Biden, acknowledged last year. But there was no al-Qaida in Iraq until the US and Britain invaded. And the US has certainly exploited the existence of Isis against other forces in the region as part of a wider drive to maintain western control.

The calculus changed when Isis started beheading westerners and posting atrocities online, and the Gulf states are now backing other groups in the Syrian war, such as the Nusra Front. But this US and western habit of playing with jihadi groups, which then come back to bite them, goes back at least to the 1980s war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, which fostered the original al-Qaida under CIA tutelage.

It was recalibrated during the occupation of Iraq, when US forces led by General Petraeus sponsored an El Salvador-style dirty war of sectarian death squads to weaken the Iraqi resistance. And it was reprised in 2011 in the Nato-orchestrated war in Libya, where Isis last week took control of Gaddafi’s home town of Sirte.

In reality, US and western policy in the conflagration that is now the Middle East is in the classic mould of imperial divide-and-rule. American forces bomb one set of rebels while backing another in Syria, and mount what are effectively joint military operations with Iran against Isis in Iraq while supporting Saudi Arabia’s military campaign against Iranian-backed Houthi forces in Yemen. However confused US policy may often be, a weak, partitioned Iraq and Syria fit such an approach perfectly.

What’s clear is that Isis and its monstrosities won’t be defeated by the same powers that brought it to Iraq and Syria in the first place, or whose open and covert war-making has fostered it in the years since. Endless western military interventions in the Middle East have brought only destruction and division. It’s the people of the region who can cure this disease – not those who incubated the virus.

Seumas Milne
Wednesday 3 June 2015 20.56 BST Last modified on Thursday 4 June 2015 11.37 BST

Find this story at 3 June 2015

© 2015 Guardian News and Media Limited

Terror trial collapses after fears of deep embarrassment to security services

Swedish national Bherlin Gildo’s lawyers argued British intelligence agencies were supporting the same Syrian opposition groups as he was
A Free Syrian Army fighter fires his weapon during clashes in Aleppo. The Old Bailey was told by the crown that there was no longer a reasonable prospect of a prosecution.

The prosecution of a Swedish national accused of terrorist activities in Syria has collapsed at the Old Bailey after it became clear Britain’s security and intelligence agencies would have been deeply embarrassed had a trial gone ahead, the Guardian can reveal.

His lawyers argued that British intelligence agencies were supporting the same Syrian opposition groups as he was, and were party to a secret operation providing weapons and non-lethal help to the groups, including the Free Syrian Army.

Bherlin Gildo, 37, who was arrested last October on his way from Copenhagen to Manila, was accused of attending a terrorist training camp and receiving weapons training between 31 August 2012 and 1 March 2013 as well as possessing information likely to be useful to a terrorist.

Riel Karmy-Jones, for the crown, told the court on Monday that after reviewing the evidence it was decided there was no longer a reasonable prospect of a prosecution. “Many matters were raised we did not know at the outset,” she told the recorder of London, Nicholas Hilliard QC, who lifted all reporting restrictions and entered not guilty verdicts.

In earlier court hearings, Gildo’s defence lawyers argued he was helping the same rebel groups the British government was aiding before the emergence of the extreme Islamist group, Isis. His trial would have been an “affront to justice”, his lawyers said.

Henry Blaxland QC, the defence counsel, said: “If it is the case that HM government was actively involved in supporting armed resistance to the Assad regime at a time when the defendant was present in Syria and himself participating in such resistance it would be unconscionable to allow the prosecution to continue.”

Blaxland told the court: “If government agencies, of which the prosecution is a part, are themselves involved in the use of force, in whatever way, it is our submission that would be an affront to justice to allow the prosecution to continue.”

After Monday’s hearing, Gildo’s solicitor, Gareth Peirce, said his case had exposed a number of “contradictions” – not least that the matters on which he was charged were not offences in Sweden, and that the UK government had expressed support for the Syrian opposition.

“He has been detained in this country although he did not ever intend to enter this country. For him it’s as if he has been abducted by aliens from outer space,” she said.

“Given that there is a reasonable basis for believing that the British were themselves involved in the supply of arms, if that’s so, it would be an utter hypocrisy to prosecute someone who has been involved in the armed resistance.”

Gildo’s defence lawyers quoted a number of press articles referring to the supply of arms to Syrian rebels, including one from the Guardian on 8 March 2013, on the west’s training of Syrian rebels in Jordan. Articles on the New York Times from 24 March and 21 June 2013, gave further details and an article in the London Review of Books from 14 April 12014, implicated MI6 in a “rat line” for the transfer of arms from Libya.

Gildo was was flying to Manila to join his wife, a Filipina, when he was stopped under schedule 7 of the 2000 Terrorism Act, the same statute used to question David Miranda, partner of the former Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, in 2013.

The court heard that Gildo had sought the help of the Swedish secret service, Sapo, when he wanted to return to his home country.

It is not the first time a British prosecution relating to allegations of Syrian terrorism has collapsed. Last October Moazzem Begg was released after “new material” was said to have emerged.

The attorney general was consulted about Monday’s decision. Karmy-Jones told the court in pre-trial hearings that Gildo had worked with Jabhat al-Nusra, a “proscribed group considered to be al-Qaida in Syria”. He was photographed standing over dead bodies with his finger pointing to the sky.

The Press Association contributed to this report

Richard Norton-Taylor
Monday 1 June 2015 14.33 BST Last modified on Monday 1 June 2015 18.19 BST

Find this story at 1 June 2015

© 2015 Guardian News and Media Limited

The Red Line and the Rat Line; Seymour M. Hersh on Obama, Erdoğan and the Syrian rebels (2014)

In 2011 Barack Obama led an allied military intervention in Libya without consulting the US Congress. Last August, after the sarin attack on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, he was ready to launch an allied air strike, this time to punish the Syrian government for allegedly crossing the ‘red line’ he had set in 2012 on the use of chemical weapons.​＊ Then with less than two days to go before the planned strike, he announced that he would seek congressional approval for the intervention. The strike was postponed as Congress prepared for hearings, and subsequently cancelled when Obama accepted Assad’s offer to relinquish his chemical arsenal in a deal brokered by Russia. Why did Obama delay and then relent on Syria when he was not shy about rushing into Libya? The answer lies in a clash between those in the administration who were committed to enforcing the red line, and military leaders who thought that going to war was both unjustified and potentially disastrous.

Obama’s change of mind had its origins at Porton Down, the defence laboratory in Wiltshire. British intelligence had obtained a sample of the sarin used in the 21 August attack and analysis demonstrated that the gas used didn’t match the batches known to exist in the Syrian army’s chemical weapons arsenal. The message that the case against Syria wouldn’t hold up was quickly relayed to the US joint chiefs of staff. The British report heightened doubts inside the Pentagon; the joint chiefs were already preparing to warn Obama that his plans for a far-reaching bomb and missile attack on Syria’s infrastructure could lead to a wider war in the Middle East. As a consequence the American officers delivered a last-minute caution to the president, which, in their view, eventually led to his cancelling the attack.

For months there had been acute concern among senior military leaders and the intelligence community about the role in the war of Syria’s neighbours, especially Turkey. Prime Minister Recep Erdoğan was known to be supporting the al-Nusra Front, a jihadist faction among the rebel opposition, as well as other Islamist rebel groups. ‘We knew there were some in the Turkish government,’ a former senior US intelligence official, who has access to current intelligence, told me, ‘who believed they could get Assad’s nuts in a vice by dabbling with a sarin attack inside Syria – and forcing Obama to make good on his red line threat.’

The joint chiefs also knew that the Obama administration’s public claims that only the Syrian army had access to sarin were wrong. The American and British intelligence communities had been aware since the spring of 2013 that some rebel units in Syria were developing chemical weapons. On 20 June analysts for the US Defense Intelligence Agency issued a highly classified five-page ‘talking points’ briefing for the DIA’s deputy director, David Shedd, which stated that al-Nusra maintained a sarin production cell: its programme, the paper said, was ‘the most advanced sarin plot since al-Qaida’s pre-9/11 effort’. (According to a Defense Department consultant, US intelligence has long known that al-Qaida experimented with chemical weapons, and has a video of one of its gas experiments with dogs.) The DIA paper went on: ‘Previous IC [intelligence community] focus had been almost entirely on Syrian CW [chemical weapons] stockpiles; now we see ANF attempting to make its own CW … Al-Nusrah Front’s relative freedom of operation within Syria leads us to assess the group’s CW aspirations will be difficult to disrupt in the future.’ The paper drew on classified intelligence from numerous agencies: ‘Turkey and Saudi-based chemical facilitators,’ it said, ‘were attempting to obtain sarin precursors in bulk, tens of kilograms, likely for the anticipated large scale production effort in Syria.’ (Asked about the DIA paper, a spokesperson for the director of national intelligence said: ‘No such paper was ever requested or produced by intelligence community analysts.’)

Last May, more than ten members of the al-Nusra Front were arrested in southern Turkey with what local police told the press were two kilograms of sarin. In a 130-page indictment the group was accused of attempting to purchase fuses, piping for the construction of mortars, and chemical precursors for sarin. Five of those arrested were freed after a brief detention. The others, including the ringleader, Haytham Qassab, for whom the prosecutor requested a prison sentence of 25 years, were released pending trial. In the meantime the Turkish press has been rife with speculation that the Erdoğan administration has been covering up the extent of its involvement with the rebels. In a news conference last summer, Aydin Sezgin, Turkey’s ambassador to Moscow, dismissed the arrests and claimed to reporters that the recovered ‘sarin’ was merely ‘anti-freeze’.

The DIA paper took the arrests as evidence that al-Nusra was expanding its access to chemical weapons. It said Qassab had ‘self-identified’ as a member of al-Nusra, and that he was directly connected to Abd-al-Ghani, the ‘ANF emir for military manufacturing’. Qassab and his associate Khalid Ousta worked with Halit Unalkaya, an employee of a Turkish firm called Zirve Export, who provided ‘price quotes for bulk quantities of sarin precursors’. Abd-al-Ghani’s plan was for two associates to ‘perfect a process for making sarin, then go to Syria to train others to begin large scale production at an unidentified lab in Syria’. The DIA paper said that one of his operatives had purchased a precursor on the ‘Baghdad chemical market’, which ‘has supported at least seven CW efforts since 2004’.

A series of chemical weapon attacks in March and April 2013 was investigated over the next few months by a special UN mission to Syria. A person with close knowledge of the UN’s activity in Syria told me that there was evidence linking the Syrian opposition to the first gas attack, on 19 March in Khan Al-Assal, a village near Aleppo. In its final report in December, the mission said that at least 19 civilians and one Syrian soldier were among the fatalities, along with scores of injured. It had no mandate to assign responsibility for the attack, but the person with knowledge of the UN’s activities said: ‘Investigators interviewed the people who were there, including the doctors who treated the victims. It was clear that the rebels used the gas. It did not come out in public because no one wanted to know.’

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In the months before the attacks began, a former senior Defense Department official told me, the DIA was circulating a daily classified report known as SYRUP on all intelligence related to the Syrian conflict, including material on chemical weapons. But in the spring, distribution of the part of the report concerning chemical weapons was severely curtailed on the orders of Denis McDonough, the White House chief of staff. ‘Something was in there that triggered a shit fit by McDonough,’ the former Defense Department official said. ‘One day it was a huge deal, and then, after the March and April sarin attacks’ – he snapped his fingers – ‘it’s no longer there.’ The decision to restrict distribution was made as the joint chiefs ordered intensive contingency planning for a possible ground invasion of Syria whose primary objective would be the elimination of chemical weapons.

The former intelligence official said that many in the US national security establishment had long been troubled by the president’s red line: ‘The joint chiefs asked the White House, “What does red line mean? How does that translate into military orders? Troops on the ground? Massive strike? Limited strike?” They tasked military intelligence to study how we could carry out the threat. They learned nothing more about the president’s reasoning.’

In the aftermath of the 21 August attack Obama ordered the Pentagon to draw up targets for bombing. Early in the process, the former intelligence official said, ‘the White House rejected 35 target sets provided by the joint chiefs of staff as being insufficiently “painful” to the Assad regime.’ The original targets included only military sites and nothing by way of civilian infrastructure. Under White House pressure, the US attack plan evolved into ‘a monster strike’: two wings of B-52 bombers were shifted to airbases close to Syria, and navy submarines and ships equipped with Tomahawk missiles were deployed. ‘Every day the target list was getting longer,’ the former intelligence official told me. ‘The Pentagon planners said we can’t use only Tomahawks to strike at Syria’s missile sites because their warheads are buried too far below ground, so the two B-52 air wings with two-thousand pound bombs were assigned to the mission. Then we’ll need standby search-and-rescue teams to recover downed pilots and drones for target selection. It became huge.’ The new target list was meant to ‘completely eradicate any military capabilities Assad had’, the former intelligence official said. The core targets included electric power grids, oil and gas depots, all known logistic and weapons depots, all known command and control facilities, and all known military and intelligence buildings.

Britain and France were both to play a part. On 29 August, the day Parliament voted against Cameron’s bid to join the intervention, the Guardian reported that he had already ordered six RAF Typhoon fighter jets to be deployed to Cyprus, and had volunteered a submarine capable of launching Tomahawk missiles. The French air force – a crucial player in the 2011 strikes on Libya – was deeply committed, according to an account in Le Nouvel Observateur; François Hollande had ordered several Rafale fighter-bombers to join the American assault. Their targets were reported to be in western Syria.

By the last days of August the president had given the Joint Chiefs a fixed deadline for the launch. ‘H hour was to begin no later than Monday morning [2 September], a massive assault to neutralise Assad,’ the former intelligence official said. So it was a surprise to many when during a speech in the White House Rose Garden on 31 August Obama said that the attack would be put on hold, and he would turn to Congress and put it to a vote.

At this stage, Obama’s premise – that only the Syrian army was capable of deploying sarin – was unravelling. Within a few days of the 21 August attack, the former intelligence official told me, Russian military intelligence operatives had recovered samples of the chemical agent from Ghouta. They analysed it and passed it on to British military intelligence; this was the material sent to Porton Down. (A spokesperson for Porton Down said: ‘Many of the samples analysed in the UK tested positive for the nerve agent sarin.’ MI6 said that it doesn’t comment on intelligence matters.)

The former intelligence official said the Russian who delivered the sample to the UK was ‘a good source – someone with access, knowledge and a record of being trustworthy’. After the first reported uses of chemical weapons in Syria last year, American and allied intelligence agencies ‘made an effort to find the answer as to what if anything, was used – and its source’, the former intelligence official said. ‘We use data exchanged as part of the Chemical Weapons Convention. The DIA’s baseline consisted of knowing the composition of each batch of Soviet-manufactured chemical weapons. But we didn’t know which batches the Assad government currently had in its arsenal. Within days of the Damascus incident we asked a source in the Syrian government to give us a list of the batches the government currently had. This is why we could confirm the difference so quickly.’

The process hadn’t worked as smoothly in the spring, the former intelligence official said, because the studies done by Western intelligence ‘were inconclusive as to the type of gas it was. The word “sarin” didn’t come up. There was a great deal of discussion about this, but since no one could conclude what gas it was, you could not say that Assad had crossed the president’s red line.’ By 21 August, the former intelligence official went on, ‘the Syrian opposition clearly had learned from this and announced that “sarin” from the Syrian army had been used, before any analysis could be made, and the press and White House jumped at it. Since it now was sarin, “It had to be Assad.”’

The UK defence staff who relayed the Porton Down findings to the joint chiefs were sending the Americans a message, the former intelligence official said: ‘We’re being set up here.’ (This account made sense of a terse message a senior official in the CIA sent in late August: ‘It was not the result of the current regime. UK & US know this.’) By then the attack was a few days away and American, British and French planes, ships and submarines were at the ready.

The officer ultimately responsible for the planning and execution of the attack was General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the joint chiefs. From the beginning of the crisis, the former intelligence official said, the joint chiefs had been sceptical of the administration’s argument that it had the facts to back up its belief in Assad’s guilt. They pressed the DIA and other agencies for more substantial evidence. ‘There was no way they thought Syria would use nerve gas at that stage, because Assad was winning the war,’ the former intelligence official said. Dempsey had irritated many in the Obama administration by repeatedly warning Congress over the summer of the danger of American military involvement in Syria. Last April, after an optimistic assessment of rebel progress by the secretary of state, John Kerry, in front of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Dempsey told the Senate Armed Services Committee that ‘there’s a risk that this conflict has become stalemated.’

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Dempsey’s initial view after 21 August was that a US strike on Syria – under the assumption that the Assad government was responsible for the sarin attack – would be a military blunder, the former intelligence official said. The Porton Down report caused the joint chiefs to go to the president with a more serious worry: that the attack sought by the White House would be an unjustified act of aggression. It was the joint chiefs who led Obama to change course. The official White House explanation for the turnabout – the story the press corps told – was that the president, during a walk in the Rose Garden with Denis McDonough, his chief of staff, suddenly decided to seek approval for the strike from a bitterly divided Congress with which he’d been in conflict for years. The former Defense Department official told me that the White House provided a different explanation to members of the civilian leadership of the Pentagon: the bombing had been called off because there was intelligence ‘that the Middle East would go up in smoke’ if it was carried out.

The president’s decision to go to Congress was initially seen by senior aides in the White House, the former intelligence official said, as a replay of George W. Bush’s gambit in the autumn of 2002 before the invasion of Iraq: ‘When it became clear that there were no WMD in Iraq, Congress, which had endorsed the Iraqi war, and the White House both shared the blame and repeatedly cited faulty intelligence. If the current Congress were to vote to endorse the strike, the White House could again have it both ways – wallop Syria with a massive attack and validate the president’s red line commitment, while also being able to share the blame with Congress if it came out that the Syrian military wasn’t behind the attack.’ The turnabout came as a surprise even to the Democratic leadership in Congress. In September the Wall Street Journal reported that three days before his Rose Garden speech Obama had telephoned Nancy Pelosi, leader of the House Democrats, ‘to talk through the options’. She later told colleagues, according to the Journal, that she hadn’t asked the president to put the bombing to a congressional vote.

Obama’s move for congressional approval quickly became a dead end. ‘Congress was not going to let this go by,’ the former intelligence official said. ‘Congress made it known that, unlike the authorisation for the Iraq war, there would be substantive hearings.’ At this point, there was a sense of desperation in the White House, the former intelligence official said. ‘And so out comes Plan B. Call off the bombing strike and Assad would agree to unilaterally sign the chemical warfare treaty and agree to the destruction of all of chemical weapons under UN supervision.’ At a press conference in London on 9 September, Kerry was still talking about intervention: ‘The risk of not acting is greater than the risk of acting.’ But when a reporter asked if there was anything Assad could do to stop the bombing, Kerry said: ‘Sure. He could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week … But he isn’t about to do it, and it can’t be done, obviously.’ As the New York Times reported the next day, the Russian-brokered deal that emerged shortly afterwards had first been discussed by Obama and Putin in the summer of 2012. Although the strike plans were shelved, the administration didn’t change its public assessment of the justification for going to war. ‘There is zero tolerance at that level for the existence of error,’ the former intelligence official said of the senior officials in the White House. ‘They could not afford to say: “We were wrong.”’ (The DNI spokesperson said: ‘The Assad regime, and only the Assad regime, could have been responsible for the chemical weapons attack that took place on 21 August.’)

*

The full extent of US co-operation with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar in assisting the rebel opposition in Syria has yet to come to light. The Obama administration has never publicly admitted to its role in creating what the CIA calls a ‘rat line’, a back channel highway into Syria. The rat line, authorised in early 2012, was used to funnel weapons and ammunition from Libya via southern Turkey and across the Syrian border to the opposition. Many of those in Syria who ultimately received the weapons were jihadists, some of them affiliated with al-Qaida. (The DNI spokesperson said: ‘The idea that the United States was providing weapons from Libya to anyone is false.’)

In January, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report on the assault by a local militia in September 2012 on the American consulate and a nearby undercover CIA facility in Benghazi, which resulted in the death of the US ambassador, Christopher Stevens, and three others. The report’s criticism of the State Department for not providing adequate security at the consulate, and of the intelligence community for not alerting the US military to the presence of a CIA outpost in the area, received front-page coverage and revived animosities in Washington, with Republicans accusing Obama and Hillary Clinton of a cover-up. A highly classified annex to the report, not made public, described a secret agreement reached in early 2012 between the Obama and Erdoğan administrations. It pertained to the rat line. By the terms of the agreement, funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar; the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi’s arsenals into Syria. A number of front companies were set up in Libya, some under the cover of Australian entities. Retired American soldiers, who didn’t always know who was really employing them, were hired to manage procurement and shipping. The operation was run by David Petraeus, the CIA director who would soon resign when it became known he was having an affair with his biographer. (A spokesperson for Petraeus denied the operation ever took place.)

The operation had not been disclosed at the time it was set up to the congressional intelligence committees and the congressional leadership, as required by law since the 1970s. The involvement of MI6 enabled the CIA to evade the law by classifying the mission as a liaison operation. The former intelligence official explained that for years there has been a recognised exception in the law that permits the CIA not to report liaison activity to Congress, which would otherwise be owed a finding. (All proposed CIA covert operations must be described in a written document, known as a ‘finding’, submitted to the senior leadership of Congress for approval.) Distribution of the annex was limited to the staff aides who wrote the report and to the eight ranking members of Congress – the Democratic and Republican leaders of the House and Senate, and the Democratic and Republicans leaders on the House and Senate intelligence committees. This hardly constituted a genuine attempt at oversight: the eight leaders are not known to gather together to raise questions or discuss the secret information they receive.

The annex didn’t tell the whole story of what happened in Benghazi before the attack, nor did it explain why the American consulate was attacked. ‘The consulate’s only mission was to provide cover for the moving of arms,’ the former intelligence official, who has read the annex, said. ‘It had no real political role.’

Washington abruptly ended the CIA’s role in the transfer of arms from Libya after the attack on the consulate, but the rat line kept going. ‘The United States was no longer in control of what the Turks were relaying to the jihadists,’ the former intelligence official said. Within weeks, as many as forty portable surface-to-air missile launchers, commonly known as manpads, were in the hands of Syrian rebels. On 28 November 2012, Joby Warrick of the Washington Post reported that the previous day rebels near Aleppo had used what was almost certainly a manpad to shoot down a Syrian transport helicopter. ‘The Obama administration,’ Warrick wrote, ‘has steadfastly opposed arming Syrian opposition forces with such missiles, warning that the weapons could fall into the hands of terrorists and be used to shoot down commercial aircraft.’ Two Middle Eastern intelligence officials fingered Qatar as the source, and a former US intelligence analyst speculated that the manpads could have been obtained from Syrian military outposts overrun by the rebels. There was no indication that the rebels’ possession of manpads was likely the unintended consequence of a covert US programme that was no longer under US control.

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By the end of 2012, it was believed throughout the American intelligence community that the rebels were losing the war. ‘Erdoğan was pissed,’ the former intelligence official said, ‘and felt he was left hanging on the vine. It was his money and the cut-off was seen as a betrayal.’ In spring 2013 US intelligence learned that the Turkish government – through elements of the MIT, its national intelligence agency, and the Gendarmerie, a militarised law-enforcement organisation – was working directly with al-Nusra and its allies to develop a chemical warfare capability. ‘The MIT was running the political liaison with the rebels, and the Gendarmerie handled military logistics, on-the-scene advice and training – including training in chemical warfare,’ the former intelligence official said. ‘Stepping up Turkey’s role in spring 2013 was seen as the key to its problems there. Erdoğan knew that if he stopped his support of the jihadists it would be all over. The Saudis could not support the war because of logistics – the distances involved and the difficulty of moving weapons and supplies. Erdoğan’s hope was to instigate an event that would force the US to cross the red line. But Obama didn’t respond in March and April.’

There was no public sign of discord when Erdoğan and Obama met on 16 May 2013 at the White House. At a later press conference Obama said that they had agreed that Assad ‘needs to go’. Asked whether he thought Syria had crossed the red line, Obama acknowledged that there was evidence such weapons had been used, but added, ‘it is important for us to make sure that we’re able to get more specific information about what exactly is happening there.’ The red line was still intact.

An American foreign policy expert who speaks regularly with officials in Washington and Ankara told me about a working dinner Obama held for Erdoğan during his May visit. The meal was dominated by the Turks’ insistence that Syria had crossed the red line and their complaints that Obama was reluctant to do anything about it. Obama was accompanied by John Kerry and Tom Donilon, the national security adviser who would soon leave the job. Erdoğan was joined by Ahmet Davutoğlu, Turkey’s foreign minister, and Hakan Fidan, the head of the MIT. Fidan is known to be fiercely loyal to Erdoğan, and has been seen as a consistent backer of the radical rebel opposition in Syria.

The foreign policy expert told me that the account he heard originated with Donilon. (It was later corroborated by a former US official, who learned of it from a senior Turkish diplomat.) According to the expert, Erdoğan had sought the meeting to demonstrate to Obama that the red line had been crossed, and had brought Fidan along to state the case. When Erdoğan tried to draw Fidan into the conversation, and Fidan began speaking, Obama cut him off and said: ‘We know.’ Erdoğan tried to bring Fidan in a second time, and Obama again cut him off and said: ‘We know.’ At that point, an exasperated Erdoğan said, ‘But your red line has been crossed!’ and, the expert told me, ‘Donilon said Erdoğan “fucking waved his finger at the president inside the White House”.’ Obama then pointed at Fidan and said: ‘We know what you’re doing with the radicals in Syria.’ (Donilon, who joined the Council on Foreign Relations last July, didn’t respond to questions about this story. The Turkish Foreign Ministry didn’t respond to questions about the dinner. A spokesperson for the National Security Council confirmed that the dinner took place and provided a photograph showing Obama, Kerry, Donilon, Erdoğan, Fidan and Davutoğlu sitting at a table. ‘Beyond that,’ she said, ‘I’m not going to read out the details of their discussions.’)

But Erdoğan did not leave empty handed. Obama was still permitting Turkey to continue to exploit a loophole in a presidential executive order prohibiting the export of gold to Iran, part of the US sanctions regime against the country. In March 2012, responding to sanctions of Iranian banks by the EU, the SWIFT electronic payment system, which facilitates cross-border payments, expelled dozens of Iranian financial institutions, severely restricting the country’s ability to conduct international trade. The US followed with the executive order in July, but left what came to be known as a ‘golden loophole’: gold shipments to private Iranian entities could continue. Turkey is a major purchaser of Iranian oil and gas, and it took advantage of the loophole by depositing its energy payments in Turkish lira in an Iranian account in Turkey; these funds were then used to purchase Turkish gold for export to confederates in Iran. Gold to the value of $13 billion reportedly entered Iran in this way between March 2012 and July 2013.

The programme quickly became a cash cow for corrupt politicians and traders in Turkey, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. ‘The middlemen did what they always do,’ the former intelligence official said. ‘Take 15 per cent. The CIA had estimated that there was as much as two billion dollars in skim. Gold and Turkish lira were sticking to fingers.’ The illicit skimming flared into a public ‘gas for gold’ scandal in Turkey in December, and resulted in charges against two dozen people, including prominent businessmen and relatives of government officials, as well as the resignations of three ministers, one of whom called for Erdoğan to resign. The chief executive of a Turkish state-controlled bank that was in the middle of the scandal insisted that more than $4.5 million in cash found by police in shoeboxes during a search of his home was for charitable donations.

Late last year Jonathan Schanzer and Mark Dubowitz reported in Foreign Policy that the Obama administration closed the golden loophole in January 2013, but ‘lobbied to make sure the legislation … did not take effect for six months’. They speculated that the administration wanted to use the delay as an incentive to bring Iran to the bargaining table over its nuclear programme, or to placate its Turkish ally in the Syrian civil war. The delay permitted Iran to ‘accrue billions of dollars more in gold, further undermining the sanctions regime’.

*

The American decision to end CIA support of the weapons shipments into Syria left Erdoğan exposed politically and militarily. ‘One of the issues at that May summit was the fact that Turkey is the only avenue to supply the rebels in Syria,’ the former intelligence official said. ‘It can’t come through Jordan because the terrain in the south is wide open and the Syrians are all over it. And it can’t come through the valleys and hills of Lebanon – you can’t be sure who you’d meet on the other side.’ Without US military support for the rebels, the former intelligence official said, ‘Erdoğan’s dream of having a client state in Syria is evaporating and he thinks we’re the reason why. When Syria wins the war, he knows the rebels are just as likely to turn on him – where else can they go? So now he will have thousands of radicals in his backyard.’

A US intelligence consultant told me that a few weeks before 21 August he saw a highly classified briefing prepared for Dempsey and the defense secretary, Chuck Hagel, which described ‘the acute anxiety’ of the Erdoğan administration about the rebels’ dwindling prospects. The analysis warned that the Turkish leadership had expressed ‘the need to do something that would precipitate a US military response’. By late summer, the Syrian army still had the advantage over the rebels, the former intelligence official said, and only American air power could turn the tide. In the autumn, the former intelligence official went on, the US intelligence analysts who kept working on the events of 21 August ‘sensed that Syria had not done the gas attack. But the 500 pound gorilla was, how did it happen? The immediate suspect was the Turks, because they had all the pieces to make it happen.’

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As intercepts and other data related to the 21 August attacks were gathered, the intelligence community saw evidence to support its suspicions. ‘We now know it was a covert action planned by Erdoğan’s people to push Obama over the red line,’ the former intelligence official said. ‘They had to escalate to a gas attack in or near Damascus when the UN inspectors’ – who arrived in Damascus on 18 August to investigate the earlier use of gas – ‘were there. The deal was to do something spectacular. Our senior military officers have been told by the DIA and other intelligence assets that the sarin was supplied through Turkey – that it could only have gotten there with Turkish support. The Turks also provided the training in producing the sarin and handling it.’ Much of the support for that assessment came from the Turks themselves, via intercepted conversations in the immediate aftermath of the attack. ‘Principal evidence came from the Turkish post-attack joy and back-slapping in numerous intercepts. Operations are always so super-secret in the planning but that all flies out the window when it comes to crowing afterwards. There is no greater vulnerability than in the perpetrators claiming credit for success.’ Erdoğan’s problems in Syria would soon be over: ‘Off goes the gas and Obama will say red line and America is going to attack Syria, or at least that was the idea. But it did not work out that way.’

The post-attack intelligence on Turkey did not make its way to the White House. ‘Nobody wants to talk about all this,’ the former intelligence official told me. ‘There is great reluctance to contradict the president, although no all-source intelligence community analysis supported his leap to convict. There has not been one single piece of additional evidence of Syrian involvement in the sarin attack produced by the White House since the bombing raid was called off. My government can’t say anything because we have acted so irresponsibly. And since we blamed Assad, we can’t go back and blame Erdoğan.’

Turkey’s willingness to manipulate events in Syria to its own purposes seemed to be demonstrated late last month, a few days before a round of local elections, when a recording, allegedly of a government national security meeting, was posted to YouTube. It included discussion of a false-flag operation that would justify an incursion by the Turkish military in Syria. The operation centred on the tomb of Suleyman Shah, the grandfather of the revered Osman I, founder of the Ottoman Empire, which is near Aleppo and was ceded to Turkey in 1921, when Syria was under French rule. One of the Islamist rebel factions was threatening to destroy the tomb as a site of idolatry, and the Erdoğan administration was publicly threatening retaliation if harm came to it. According to a Reuters report of the leaked conversation, a voice alleged to be Fidan’s spoke of creating a provocation: ‘Now look, my commander, if there is to be justification, the justification is I send four men to the other side. I get them to fire eight missiles into empty land [in the vicinity of the tomb]. That’s not a problem. Justification can be created.’ The Turkish government acknowledged that there had been a national security meeting about threats emanating from Syria, but said the recording had been manipulated. The government subsequently blocked public access to YouTube.

Barring a major change in policy by Obama, Turkey’s meddling in the Syrian civil war is likely to go on. ‘I asked my colleagues if there was any way to stop Erdoğan’s continued support for the rebels, especially now that it’s going so wrong,’ the former intelligence official told me. ‘The answer was: “We’re screwed.” We could go public if it was somebody other than Erdoğan, but Turkey is a special case. They’re a Nato ally. The Turks don’t trust the West. They can’t live with us if we take any active role against Turkish interests. If we went public with what we know about Erdoğan’s role with the gas, it’d be disastrous. The Turks would say: “We hate you for telling us what we can and can’t do.”’

Vol. 36 No. 8 · 17 April 2014

Find this story at 4 April 2014

© LRB Limited 2014

From El Salvador to Iraq: Washington’s man behind brutal police squads (2013)

In 2004, with the war in Iraq going from bad to worse, the US drafted in a veteran of Central America’s dirty wars to help set up a new force to fight the insurgency. The result: secret detention centres, torture and a spiral into sectarian carnage

An exclusive golf course backs onto a spacious two-storey house. A coiled green garden hose lies on the lawn. The grey-slatted wooden shutters are closed. And, like the other deserted luxury houses in this gated community near Bryan, Texas, nothing moves.

Retired Colonel Jim Steele, whose military decorations include the Silver Star, the Defence Distinguished Service Medal, four Legions of Merit, three Bronze Stars and the Purple Heart, is not at home. Nor is he at his office headquarters in Geneva, where he is listed as the chief executive officer of Buchanan Renewables, an energy company. Similar efforts to track him down at his company’s office in Monrovia are futile. Messages are left. He doesn’t call back.

For over a year the Guardian has been trying to contact Steele, 68, to ask him about his role during the Iraq war as US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s personal envoy to Iraq’s Special Police Commandos: a fearsome paramilitary force that ran a secret network of detention centres across the country – where those suspected of rebelling against the US-led invasion were tortured for information.

On the 10th anniversary of the Iraq invasion the allegations of American links to the units that eventually accelerated Iraq’s descent into civil war cast the US occupation in a new and even more controversial light. The investigation was sparked over a year ago by millions of classified US military documents dumped onto the internet and their mysterious references to US soldiers ordered to ignore torture. Private Bradley Manning, 25, is facing a 20-year sentence, accused of leaking military secrets.

Steele’s contribution was pivotal. He was the covert US figure behind the intelligence gathering of the new commando units. The aim: to halt a nascent Sunni insurgency in its tracks by extracting information from detainees.

It was a role made for Steele. The veteran had made his name in El Salvador almost 20 years earlier as head of a US group of special forces advisers who were training and funding the Salvadoran military to fight the FNLM guerrilla insurgency. These government units developed a fearsome international reputation for their death squad activities. Steele’s own biography describes his work there as the “training of the best counterinsurgency force” in El Salvador.

Of his El Salvador experience in 1986, Steele told Dr Max Manwaring, the author of El Salvador at War: An Oral History: “When I arrived here there was a tendency to focus on technical indicators … but in an insurgency the focus has to be on human aspects. That means getting people to talk to you.”

But the arming of one side of the conflict by the US hastened the country’s descent into a civil war in which 75,000 people died and 1 million out of a population of 6 million became refugees.

Celerino Castillo, a Senior Drug Enforcement Administration special agent who worked alongside Steele in El Salvador, says: “I first heard about Colonel James Steele going to Iraq and I said they’re going to implement what is known as the Salvadoran Option in Iraq and that’s exactly what happened. And I was devastated because I knew the atrocities that were going to occur in Iraq which we knew had occurred in El Salvador.”

It was in El Salvador that Steele first came in to close contact with the man who would eventually command US operations in Iraq: David Petraeus. Then a young major, Petraeus visited El Salvador in 1986 and reportedly even stayed with Steele at his house.

But while Petraeus headed for the top, Steele’s career hit an unexpected buffer when he was embroiled in the Iran-Contra affair. A helicopter pilot, who also had a licence to fly jets, he ran the airport from where the American advisers illegally ran guns to right-wing Contra guerrillas in Nicaragua. While the congressional inquiry that followed put an end to Steele’s military ambitions, it won him the admiration of then congressman Dick Cheney who sat on the committee and admired Steele’s efforts fighting leftists in both Nicaragua and El Salvador.

In late 1989 Cheney was in charge of the US invasion of Panama to overthrow their once favoured son, General Manuel Noriega. Cheney picked Steele to take charge of organising a new police force in Panama and be the chief liaison between the new government and the US military.

Todd Greentree, who worked in the US embassy in El Salvador and knew Steele, was not surprised at the way he resurfaced in other conflict zones. “It’s not called ‘dirty war’ for nothing; so it’s no surprise to see individuals who are associated and sort of know the ins-and-outs of that kind of war, reappear at different points in these conflicts,” he says.

A generation later, and half the world away, America’s war in Iraq was going from bad to worse. It was 2004 – the neo-cons had dismantled the Ba’athist party apparatus, and that had fostered anarchy. A mainly Sunni uprising was gaining ground and causing major problems in Fallujah and Mosul. There was a violent backlash against the US occupation that was claiming over 50 American lives a month by 2004.

The US Army was facing an unconventional, guerrilla insurgency in a country it knew little about. There was already talk in Washington DC of using the Salvador option in Iraq and the man who would spearhead that strategy was already in place.

Soon after the invasion in March 2003 Jim Steele was in Baghdad as one of the White House’s most important “consultants”, sending back reports to Rumsfeld. His memos were so valued that Rumsfeld passed them on to George Bush and Cheney. Rumsfeld spoke of him in glowing terms. “We had discussion with General Petraeus yesterday and I had a briefing today from a man named Steele who’s been out there working with the security forces and been doing a wonderful job as a civilian as a matter of fact.”

In June 2004 Petraeus arrived in Baghdad with the brief to train a new Iraqi police force with an emphasis on counterinsurgency. Steele and serving US colonel James Coffman introduced Petraeus to a small hardened group of police commandos, many of them among the toughest survivors of the old regime, including General Adnan Thabit, sentenced to death for a failed plot against Saddam but saved by the US invasion. Thabit, selected by the Americans to run the Special Police Commandos, developed a close relationship with the new advisers. “They became my friends. My advisers, James Steele and Colonel Coffman, were all from special forces, so I benefited from their experience … but the main person I used to contact was David Petraeus.”

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With Steele and Coffman as his point men, Petraeus began pouring money from a multimillion dollar fund into what would become the Special Police Commandos. According to the US Government Accounts Office, they received a share of an $8.2bn (£5.4bn) fund paid for by the US taxpayer. The exact amount they received is classified.

With Petraeus’s almost unlimited access to money and weapons, and Steele’s field expertise in counterinsurgency the stage was set for the commandos to emerge as a terrifying force. One more element would complete the picture. The US had barred members of the violent Shia militias like the Badr Brigade and the Mahdi Army from joining the security forces, but by the summer of 2004 they had lifted the ban.

Shia militia members from all over the country arrived in Baghdad “by the lorry-load” to join the new commandos. These men were eager to fight the Sunnis: many sought revenge for decades of Sunni-supported, brutal Saddam rule, and a chance to hit back at the violent insurgents and the indiscriminate terror of al-Qaida.

Petraeus and Steele would unleash this local force on the Sunni population as well as the insurgents and their supporters and anyone else who was unlucky enough to get in the way. It was classic counterinsurgency. It was also letting a lethal, sectarian genie out of the bottle. The consequences for Iraqi society would be catastrophic. At the height of the civil war two years later 3,000 bodies a month were turning up on the streets of Iraq — many of them innocent civilians of sectarian war.

But it was the actions of the commandos inside the detention centres that raises the most troubling questions for their American masters. Desperate for information, the commandos set up a network of secret detention centres where insurgents could be brought and information extracted from them.

The commandos used the most brutal methods to make detainees talk. There is no evidence that Steele or Coffman took part in these torture sessions, but General Muntadher al Samari, a former general in the Iraqi army, who worked after the invasion with the US to rebuild the police force, claims that they knew exactly what was going on and were supplying the commandos with lists of people they wanted brought in. He says he tried to stop the torture, but failed and fled the country.

“We were having lunch. Col Steele, Col Coffman, and the door opened and Captain Jabr was there torturing a prisoner. He [the victim] was hanging upside down and Steele got up and just closed the door, he didn’t say anything – it was just normal for him.”

He says there were 13 to 14 secret prisons in Baghdad under the control of the interior ministry and used by the Special Police Commandos. He alleges that Steele and Coffman had access to all these prisons and that he visited one in Baghdad with both men.

“They were secret, never declared. But the American top brass and the Iraqi leadership knew all about these prisons. The things that went on there: drilling, murder, torture. The ugliest sort of torture I’ve ever seen.”

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According to one soldier with the 69th Armoured Regiment who was deployed in Samarra in 2005 but who doesn’t want to be identified: “It was like the Nazis … like the Gestapo basically. They [the commandos] would essentially torture anybody that they had good reason to suspect, knew something, or was part of the insurgency … or supporting it, and people knew about that.”

The Guardian interviewed six torture victims as part of this investigation. One, a man who says he was held for 20 days, said: “There was no sleep. From the sunset, the torture would start on me and on the other prisoners.

“They wanted confessions. They’d say: ‘Confess to what have you done.’ When you say: ‘I have done nothing. Shall I confess about something I have not done?’, they said: ‘Yes, this is our way. The Americans told us to bring as many detainees as possible in order to keep them frightened.’

“I did not confess about anything, although I was tortured and [they] took off my toenails.”

Neil Smith, a 20-year-old medic who was based in Samarra, remembers what low ranking US soldiers in the canteen said. “What was pretty widely known in our battalion, definitely in our platoon, was that they were pretty violent with their interrogations. That they would beat people, shock them with electrical shock, stab them, I don’t know what else … it sounds like pretty awful things. If you sent a guy there he was going to get tortured and perhaps raped or whatever, humiliated and brutalised by the special commandos in order for them to get whatever information they wanted.”

He now lives in Detroit and is a born-again Christian. He spoke to the Guardian because he said he now considered it his religious duty to speak out about what he saw. “I don’t think folks back home in America had any idea what American soldiers were involved in over there, the torture and all kinds of stuff.”

Through Facebook, Twitter and social media the Guardian managed to make contact with three soldiers who confirmed they were handing over detainees to be tortured by the special commandos, but none except Smith were prepared to go on camera.

“If somebody gets arrested and we hand them over to MoI they’re going to get their balls hooked, electrocuted or they’re going to get beaten or raped up the ass with a coke bottle or something like that,” one said.

He left the army in September 2006. Now 28, he works with refugees from the Arab world in Detroit teaching recent arrivals, including Iraqis, English.

“I suppose it is my way of saying sorry,” he said.

When the Guardian/BBC Arabic posed questions to Petraeus about torture and his relationship with Steele it received in reply a statement from an official close to the general saying, “General (Ret) Petraeus’s record, which includes instructions to his own soldiers … reflects his clear opposition to any form of torture.”

“Colonel (Ret) Steele was one of thousands of advisers to Iraqi units, working in the area of the Iraqi police. There was no set frequency for Colonel Steele’s meetings with General Petraeus, although General Petraeus did see him on a number of occasions during the establishment and initial deployments of the special police, in which Colonel Steele played a significant role.”

But Peter Maass, then reporting for the New York Times, and who has interviewed both men, remembers the relationship differently: “I talked to both of them about each other and it was very clear that they were very close to each other in terms of their command relationship and also in terms of their ideas and ideology of what needed to be done. Everybody knew that he was Petraeus’s man. Even Steele defined himself as Petraeus’s man.”

Maass and photographer Gilles Peress gained a unique audience with Steele at a library-turned-detention-centre in Samarra. “What I heard is prisoners screaming all night long,” Peress said. “You know at which point you had a young US captain telling his soldiers, don’t, just don’t come near this.”

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Two men from Samarra who were imprisoned at the library spoke to the Guardian investigation team. “We’d be tied to a spit or we’d be hung from the ceiling by our hands and our shoulders would be dislocated,” one told us. The second said: “They electrocuted me. They hung me up from the ceiling. They were pulling at my ears with pliers, stamping on my head, asking me about my wife, saying they would bring her here.”

According to Maass in an interview for the investigation: “The interrogation centre was the only place in the mini green zone in Samarra that I was not allowed to visit. However, one day, Jim Steele said to me, ‘hey, they’ve just captured a Saudi jihadi. Would you like to interview him?’

“I’m taken not into the main area, the kind of main hall – although out the corner of my eye I can see that there were a lot of prisoners in there with their hands tied behind their backs – I was taken to a side office where the Saudi was brought in, and there was actually blood dripping down the side of this desk in the office.

Peress picks up the story: “We were in a room in the library interviewing Steele and I look around and I see blood everywhere, you know. He (Steele) hears the scream from the other guy who’s being tortured as we speak, there’s the blood stains in the corner of the desk in front of him.”

Maass says: “And while this interview was going on with this Saudi with Jim Steele also in the room, there were these terrible screams, somebody shouting Allah Allah Allah. But it wasn’t kind of religious ecstasy or something like that, these were screams of pain and terror.”

One of the torture survivors remembers how Adnan Thabit “came into the library and he told Captain Dorade and Captain Ali, go easy on the prisoners. Don’t dislocate their shoulders. This was because people were having to undergo surgery when they were released from the library.”

General Muntadher fled after two close colleagues were killed after they were summoned to the ministry, their bodies found on a rubbish tip. He got out of Iraq and went to Jordan. In less than a month, he says, Steele contacted him. Steele was anxious to meet and suggested he come to the luxury Sheraton hotel in Amman where Steele was staying. They met in the lobby at 8pm and Steele kept him talking for nearly two hours.

“He was asking me about the prisons. I was surprised by the questions and I reminded him that these were the same prisons where we both used to work. I reminded him of the incident where he had opened the door and Colonel Jabr was torturing one of the prisoners and how he didn’t do anything. Steele said: ‘But I remember that I told the officer off’. So I said to him: ‘No, you didn’t — you didn’t tell the officer off. You didn’t even tell General Adnan Thabit that this officer was committing human rights abuses against these prisoners’. And he was silent. He didn’t comment or answer. I was surprised by this.”

According to General Muntadher: “He wanted to know specifically: did I have any information about him, James Steele? Did I have evidence against him? Photographs, documents: things which proved he committed things in Iraq; things he was worried I might reveal. This was the purpose of his visit.

“I am prepared to go to the international court and stand in front of them and swear that high-ranking officials such as James Steele witnessed crimes against human rights in Iraq. They didn’t stop it happening and they didn’t punish the perpetrators.”

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Steele, the man, remains an enigma. He left Iraq in September 2005 and has since pursued energy interests, joining the group of companies of Texas oilman Robert Mosbacher. Until now he has stayed where he likes to be – far from the media spotlight. Were it not for Bradley Manning’s leaking of millions of US military logs to Wikileaks, which lifted the lid on alleged abuses by the US in Iraq, there he may well have remained. Footage and images of him are rare. One video clip just 12 seconds long features in the hour-long TV investigation into his work. It captures Steele, then a 58-year-old veteran in Iraq, hesitating, looking uncomfortable when he spots a passing camera.

He draws back from the lens, watching warily out of the side of his eye and then pulls himself out of sight.

Mona Mahmood, Maggie O’Kane, Chavala Madlena, Teresa Smith, Ben Ferguson, Patrick Farrelly, Guy Grandjean, Josh Strauss, Roisin Glynn, Irene Baqué, Marcus Morgan, Jake Zervudachi and Joshua Boswell
Wednesday 6 March 2013 16.16 GMT Last modified on Friday 3 October 2014 16.50 BST

Find this story at 6 March 2013

© 2015 Guardian News and Media Limited

Pentagon report predicted West’s support for Islamist rebels would create ISIS

Anti-ISIS coalition knowingly sponsored violent extremists to ‘isolate’ Assad, rollback ‘Shia expansion’

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A declassified secret US government document obtained by the conservative public interest law firm, Judicial Watch, shows that Western governments deliberately allied with al-Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups to topple Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad.

The document reveals that in coordination with the Gulf states and Turkey, the West intentionally sponsored violent Islamist groups to destabilize Assad, and that these “supporting powers” desired the emergence of a “Salafist Principality” in Syria to “isolate the Syrian regime.”

According to the newly declassified US document, the Pentagon foresaw the likely rise of the ‘Islamic State’ as a direct consequence of this strategy, and warned that it could destabilize Iraq. Despite anticipating that Western, Gulf state and Turkish support for the “Syrian opposition” — which included al-Qaeda in Iraq — could lead to the emergence of an ‘Islamic State’ in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the document provides no indication of any decision to reverse the policy of support to the Syrian rebels. On the contrary, the emergence of an al-Qaeda affiliated “Salafist Principality” as a result is described as a strategic opportunity to isolate Assad.

Hypocrisy

The revelations contradict the official line of Western governments on their policies in Syria, and raise disturbing questions about secret Western support for violent extremists abroad, while using the burgeoning threat of terror to justify excessive mass surveillance and crackdowns on civil liberties at home.

Among the batch of documents obtained by Judicial Watch through a federal lawsuit, released earlier this week, is a US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document then classified as “secret,” dated 12th August 2012.

The DIA provides military intelligence in support of planners, policymakers and operations for the US Department of Defense and intelligence community.

So far, media reporting has focused on the evidence that the Obama administration knew of arms supplies from a Libyan terrorist stronghold to rebels in Syria.

Some outlets have reported the US intelligence community’s internal prediction of the rise of ISIS. Yet none have accurately acknowledged the disturbing details exposing how the West knowingly fostered a sectarian, al-Qaeda-driven rebellion in Syria.

Charles Shoebridge, a former British Army and Metropolitan Police counter-terrorism intelligence officer, said:

“Given the political leanings of the organisation that obtained these documents, it’s unsurprising that the main emphasis given to them thus far has been an attempt to embarrass Hilary Clinton regarding what was known about the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi in 2012. However, the documents also contain far less publicized revelations that raise vitally important questions of the West’s governments and media in their support of Syria’s rebellion.”

The West’s Islamists

The newly declassified DIA document from 2012 confirms that the main component of the anti-Assad rebel forces by this time comprised Islamist insurgents affiliated to groups that would lead to the emergence of ISIS. Despite this, these groups were to continue receiving support from Western militaries and their regional allies.

Noting that “the Salafist [sic], the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [al-Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria,” the document states that “the West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition,” while Russia, China and Iran “support the [Assad] regime.”

The 7-page DIA document states that al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the precursor to the ‘Islamic State in Iraq,’ (ISI) which became the ‘Islamic State in Iraq and Syria,’ “supported the Syrian opposition from the beginning, both ideologically and through the media.”

The formerly secret Pentagon report notes that the “rise of the insurgency in Syria” has increasingly taken a “sectarian direction,” attracting diverse support from Sunni “religious and tribal powers” across the region.

In a section titled ‘The Future Assumptions of the Crisis,’ the DIA report predicts that while Assad’s regime will survive, retaining control over Syrian territory, the crisis will continue to escalate “into proxy war.”

The document also recommends the creation of “safe havens under international sheltering, similar to what transpired in Libya when Benghazi was chosen as the command centre for the temporary government.”

In Libya, anti-Gaddafi rebels, most of whom were al-Qaeda affiliated militias, were protected by NATO ‘safe havens’ (aka ‘no fly zones’).

‘Supporting powers want’ ISIS entity

In a strikingly prescient prediction, the Pentagon document explicitly forecasts the probable declaration of “an Islamic State through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria.”

Nevertheless, “Western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey are supporting these efforts” by Syrian “opposition forces” fighting to “control the eastern areas (Hasaka and Der Zor), adjacent to Western Iraqi provinces (Mosul and Anbar)”:

“… there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).”
The secret Pentagon document thus provides extraordinary confirmation that the US-led coalition currently fighting ISIS, had three years ago welcomed the emergence of an extremist “Salafist Principality” in the region as a way to undermine Assad, and block off the strategic expansion of Iran. Crucially, Iraq is labeled as an integral part of this “Shia expansion.”

The establishment of such a “Salafist Principality” in eastern Syria, the DIA document asserts, is “exactly” what the “supporting powers to the [Syrian] opposition want.” Earlier on, the document repeatedly describes those “supporting powers” as “the West, Gulf countries, and Turkey.”

Further on, the document reveals that Pentagon analysts were acutely aware of the dire risks of this strategy, yet ploughed ahead anyway.

The establishment of such a “Salafist Principality” in eastern Syria, it says, would create “the ideal atmosphere for AQI to return to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi.” Last summer, ISIS conquered Mosul in Iraq, and just this month has also taken control of Ramadi.

Such a quasi-state entity will provide:

“… a renewed momentum under the presumption of unifying the jihad among Sunni Iraq and Syria, and the rest of the Sunnis in the Arab world against what it considers one enemy. ISI could also declare an Islamic State through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria, which will create grave danger in regards to unifying Iraq and the protection of territory.”
The 2012 DIA document is an Intelligence Information Report (IIR), not a “finally evaluated intelligence” assessment, but its contents are vetted before distribution. The report was circulated throughout the US intelligence community, including to the State Department, Central Command, the Department of Homeland Security, the CIA, FBI, among other agencies.

In response to my questions about the strategy, the British government simply denied the Pentagon report’s startling revelations of deliberate Western sponsorship of violent extremists in Syria. A British Foreign Office spokesperson said:

“AQ and ISIL are proscribed terrorist organisations. The UK opposes all forms of terrorism. AQ, ISIL, and their affiliates pose a direct threat to the UK’s national security. We are part of a military and political coalition to defeat ISIL in Iraq and Syria, and are working with international partners to counter the threat from AQ and other terrorist groups in that region. In Syria we have always supported those moderate opposition groups who oppose the tyranny of Assad and the brutality of the extremists.”
The DIA did not respond to request for comment.

Strategic asset for regime-change

Security analyst Shoebridge, however, who has tracked Western support for Islamist terrorists in Syria since the beginning of the war, pointed out that the secret Pentagon intelligence report exposes fatal contradictions at the heart of official pronunciations:

“Throughout the early years of the Syria crisis, the US and UK governments, and almost universally the West’s mainstream media, promoted Syria’s rebels as moderate, liberal, secular, democratic, and therefore deserving of the West’s support. Given that these documents wholly undermine this assessment, it’s significant that the West’s media has now, despite their immense significance, almost entirely ignored them.”
According to Brad Hoff, a former US Marine who served during the early years of the Iraq War and as a 9/11 first responder at the Marine Corps Headquarters Battalion in Quantico from 2000 to 2004, the just released Pentagon report for the first time provides stunning affirmation that:

“US intelligence predicted the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS), but instead of clearly delineating the group as an enemy, the report envisions the terror group as a US strategic asset.”
Hoff, who is managing editor of Levant Report — an online publication run by Texas-based educators who have direct experience of the Middle East — points out that the DIA document “matter-of-factly” states that the rise of such an extremist Salafist political entity in the region offers a “tool for regime change in Syria.”

The DIA intelligence report shows, he said, that the rise of ISIS only became possible in the context of the Syrian insurgency — “there is no mention of US troop withdrawal from Iraq as a catalyst for Islamic State’s rise, which is the contention of innumerable politicians and pundits.” The report demonstrates that:

“The establishment of a ‘Salafist Principality’ in Eastern Syria is ‘exactly’ what the external powers supporting the opposition want (identified as ‘the West, Gulf Countries, and Turkey’) in order to weaken the Assad government.”
The rise of a Salafist quasi-state entity that might expand into Iraq, and fracture that country, was therefore clearly foreseen by US intelligence as likely — but nevertheless strategically useful — blowback from the West’s commitment to “isolating Syria.”

Complicity

Critics of the US-led strategy in the region have repeatedly raised questions about the role of coalition allies in intentionally providing extensive support to Islamist terrorist groups in the drive to destabilize the Assad regime in Syria.

The conventional wisdom is that the US government did not retain sufficient oversight on the funding to anti-Assad rebel groups, which was supposed to be monitored and vetted to ensure that only ‘moderate’ groups were supported.

However, the newly declassified Pentagon report proves unambiguously that years before ISIS launched its concerted offensive against Iraq, the US intelligence community was fully aware that Islamist militants constituted the core of Syria’s sectarian insurgency.

Despite that, the Pentagon continued to support the Islamist insurgency, even while anticipating the probability that doing so would establish an extremist Salafi stronghold in Syria and Iraq.

As Shoebridge told me, “The documents show that not only did the US government at the latest by August 2012 know the true extremist nature and likely outcome of Syria’s rebellion” — namely, the emergence of ISIS — “but that this was considered an advantage for US foreign policy. This also suggests a decision to spend years in an effort to deliberately mislead the West’s public, via a compliant media, into believing that Syria’s rebellion was overwhelmingly ‘moderate.’”

Annie Machon, a former MI5 intelligence officer who blew the whistle in the 1990s on MI6 funding of al-Qaeda to assassinate Libya’s former leader Colonel Gaddafi, similarly said of the revelations:

“This is no surprise to me. Within individual countries there are always multiple intelligence agencies with competing agendas.”
She explained that MI6’s Libya operation in 1996, which resulted in the deaths of innocent people, “happened at precisely the time when MI5 was setting up a new section to investigate al-Qaeda.”

This strategy was repeated on a grand scale in the 2011 NATO intervention in Libya, said Machon, where the CIA and MI6 were:

“… supporting the very same Libyan groups, resulting in a failed state, mass murder, displacement and anarchy. So the idea that elements of the American military-security complex have enabled the development of ISIS after their failed attempt to get NATO to once again ‘intervene’ is part of an established pattern. And they remain indifferent to the sheer scale of human suffering that is unleashed as a result of such game-playing.”

Divide and rule

Several US government officials have conceded that their closest allies in the anti-ISIS coalition were funding violent extremist Islamist groups that became integral to ISIS.

US Vice President Joe Biden, for instance, admitted last year that Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Turkey had funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to Islamist rebels in Syria that metamorphosed into ISIS.

But he did not admit what this internal Pentagon document demonstrates — that the entire covert strategy was sanctioned and supervised by the US, Britain, France, Israel and other Western powers.

The strategy appears to fit a policy scenario identified by a recent US Army-commissioned RAND Corp report.

The report, published four years before the DIA document, called for the US “to capitalise on the Shia-Sunni conflict by taking the side of the conservative Sunni regimes in a decisive fashion and working with them against all Shiite empowerment movements in the Muslim world.”

The US would need to contain “Iranian power and influence” in the Gulf by “shoring up the traditional Sunni regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan.” Simultaneously, the US must maintain “a strong strategic relationship with the Iraqi Shiite government” despite its Iran alliance.

The RAND report confirmed that the “divide and rule” strategy was already being deployed “to create divisions in the jihadist camp. Today in Iraq such a strategy is being used at the tactical level.”

The report observed that the US was forming “temporary alliances” with al-Qaeda affiliated “nationalist insurgent groups” that have fought the US for four years in the form of “weapons and cash.” Although these nationalists “have cooperated with al-Qaeda against US forces,” they are now being supported to exploit “the common threat that al-Qaeda now poses to both parties.”

The 2012 DIA document, however, further shows that while sponsoring purportedly former al-Qaeda insurgents in Iraq to counter al-Qaeda, Western governments were simultaneously arming al-Qaeda insurgents in Syria.

The revelation from an internal US intelligence document that the very US-led coalition supposedly fighting ‘Islamic State’ today, knowingly created ISIS in the first place, raises troubling questions about recent government efforts to justify the expansion of state anti-terror powers.

In the wake of the rise of ISIS, intrusive new measures to combat extremism including mass surveillance, the Orwellian ‘prevent duty’ and even plans to enable government censorship of broadcasters, are being pursued on both sides of the Atlantic, much of which disproportionately targets activists, journalists and ethnic minorities, especially Muslims.

Yet the new Pentagon report reveals that, contrary to Western government claims, the primary cause of the threat comes from their own deeply misguided policies of secretly sponsoring Islamist terrorism for dubious geopolitical purposes.

by Nafeez Ahmed
22 May 2015

Find this story at 22 May 2015

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