Saturday, May 17, 2025

In Canada, Prosecuting Funders of Islamist Terrorism -- While the Liberal Government Funds Terrorism-Enablers

On May 12, 2025, at the Superior Court of Justice in Toronto, Khalilullah Yousuf (36), of Toronto plead guilty to two charges relating to the largest terrorism financing scheme in Canadian history.
Between September 2019 and December 2022, Mr. Yousuf used cryptocurrency and money transfers to fund terrorism overseas. Yesterday, in an agreed upon statement of facts, Mr. Yousuf admitted to the financing of terrorism, contrary to section 83.03 of the Criminal Code of Canada.
"As part of the plea agreement, Khalilullah Yousuf has admitted to raising over $15,000 through the platform "GoFundMe" and contributing over $35,000 to multiple receivers for the benefit of Daesh, a listed terrorist organization."
"Regarding the second charge, Mr. Yousuf has plead guilty to participating in the activities of a terrorist group, contrary to section 83.18 of the Criminal Code of Canada. He has admitted to creating and distributing a collection of over 3,800 internet-based hyperlinks. These links were curated with the purpose of radicalizing, indoctrinating and recruiting for the benefit of Daesh, a listed terrorist organization. Between October 2020, and March 2021, Mr. Yousuf communicated with an individual in the United States who was later convicted there for attempting to provide material support to the same listed terrorist organization."
"This is the largest terrorism financing conviction to date in Canada in terms of monetary value. This conviction is also the first successful terrorism financing conviction in Canada where the accused used crypto currency and the first where they used online crowdfunding."
"The success of this RCMP-led project would not be possible without the contributions of the following Canadian partnerships: RCMP Federal Policing Central Region (Ontario) The Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC), Forensic Accounting Management Group (FAMG), Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), Public Prosecution Service of Canada (PPSC), Ministry of the Attorney General (MAG), and the Toronto Police Service (TPS)."
"The RCMP would also like to recognize and thank our international partners that were instrumental in this file: The Spanish Guardia Civil Special Central Unit 2, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Maldives Police Service."
Royal Canadian Mounted Police, 15 May 2025 report 
https://www.ctvnews.ca/resizer/v2/6TAZJOE4XTBPXG3VNJM3WV7TOI.jpg?smart=true&auth=b2b30c7fdbc69ff628aa8649887516f143213cacc81696e5111e386bb014aff7&width=1600&height=899
An RCMP patch is seen on the shoulder of a Surrey RCMP Officer in Charge on Friday, April 28, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

"At its core, terrorism is violence that seeks to justify itself. But the violence needs support by advocates, recruiters, and financiers as essential parts of the cycle of intimidation and destruction."
"The verdicts and sentences… represent how Canadian society in accordance with the rule of law, emphatically holds to account those who make the violence possible."
George Dolhai, director public prosecutions, Public Prosecution Service of Canada
 A 12-year prison sentence was handed down to a man, now 36 years of age, who has Canadian citizenship and was a resident of Toronto. Khalilullah Yousuf pleaded guilty to involvement and taking part in financing a terrorist group named as the Islamic State. He admitted to crowdfunding on such sites as GoFundMe on behalf of Palestinians in Gaza and for Muslim religious events, all the while collecting the funding by Canadian contributors to send what he collected to ISIS group supporters in the United States, Spain and other countries.
 
He had applied for, and received pandemic COVID Emergency Response Benefits (CERB) and contributed that money too that he received from the government of Canada under false pretenses. Supporters, on receiving the tens of thousands he provided for ISIS benefit, forwarded to him as proof ISIS was receiving the funding, photographs of weapons and ammunition provided by the funding, along with an ISIS flag.
 
https://smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital/nationalpost/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/8399011.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=564&h=423&type=webp&sig=zx426rutL9uzFgQ9X4VlXQ
Crowdfunding, or raising money from several investors over the Internet, has made websites like GoFundMe and Kickstarter popular. Photo: Karissa Donkin/Telegraph-Journal
 
This man and his schemes do not represent the rare and only incidents of funding collected in Canada by groups and individuals portraying themselves as legitimate charities whose only concern is raising funds for charitable programs to benefit Palestinians or other so-called marginalized groups, or civilian groups caught up in conflict in the Middle East, sending funding collected in actual fact, to the very terrorist militias that cause sectarian, tribal and anti-Western, along with anti-Israel war situations. There are a multitude of such groups masquerading as humanitarian while financially supporting Islamist terror groups.
 
In this instance, Khalilullah Yousuf, who was closely embroiled in an international ISIS funding network, communicated with the group through encrypted messages online, while taking part in recruitment and creating propaganda while providing methodology to supporters on how to mount successful attacks on behalf of violent Islamist culture. A two-year investigation on this man's activities involved intelligence forces in Canada, the U.S. and Spain, leading to an arrest in July of 2023. 
 
Cryptocurrency, increasingly being used for funding terrorism, may have signalled to authorities that there was something to investigate there. Samidoun, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Hezbollah and Hamas, have all received funding through Canadian sources that have successfully exploited the Canadian public to fund terrorism both abroad and internally.
 
Popular fundraising sites encourage crowdfunding in various and mostly specific categories that include patient medical needs, support of school teams, raising funds for Palestinian children, with sky-high funding goals. And while the platforms emphasize their trust that users will collect funds only for the stated reasons and not resort to illegally collecting funding in support of proscribed terror groups, any kind of actual policing of the results is not followed as being unfeasible.  

The Government of Canada itself sends mixed messages on the funding of terrorism; on the one hand decrying terrorism, and on the other continuing to fund it with taxpayer money. As with the Liberal government overturning the previous Conservative government's cutting off of UNRWA funding in recognition of its complicity in Palestinian terrorism where UNRWA-run school curricula teach Palestinian children to hate Jews and to visualize themselves as future martyrs in the 'struggle' against Israel.
 
Proven reports that UNRWA staff were actively involved in the October 7 attacks on southern Israel, and that almost two hundred were, while on UNRWA staff, also Hamas or Islamic Jihad operatives. UNRWA teachers glorify terrorism, encourage martyrdom, demonize Israelis and incite to antisemitism among their Palestinian pupils, modelling them in the vision of Hamas. Despite all of this, known and yet excused, the Liberal government continues its funding of UNRWA.
 
https://globalnews.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/isis-financier-toronto.jpeg?w=2048
Photo sent by ISIS facilitator to show donated funds were going to fighters. U.S. Department of Justice
 

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posted by Pieface @ Saturday, May 17, 2025

Thursday, September 03, 2020

The Freedom to Blaspheme

French Emmanuel Macron in Beirut (picture-alliance/AP Images/G. Fuentes)

"[People in France havethe]freedom to blaspheme."                                 "In France, there's also a freedom to blaspheme that is linked to the freedom of conscience. So, from where I stand, I'm there to protect all those freedoms."                        "I don't have to comment on a journalist's choice. I just have to say that, in France, one can criticize people who are governing and one can blaspheme."                                                                                                            French President Emmanuel Macron

"[The threat of terrorist attacks] remains extremely high in the country."               "The risk of terror of Sunni origin is the main threat our country is facing" [32 planned terrorist attacks had been foiled since 2017]."                                        French Interior Minister  Gerald Darmanin

Police standing guard at the Eiffel Tower in2015 (Getty Images/AFP/B. Guay)

Nowhere is it stated, but it can be inferred that some of those apprehended atrocities planned for the Republic, and more anticipated, emanate from within France's borders. From its burden of millions of Muslims among whom violence is always simmering, from their unapproachable ghettoes, the banlieues into which police fear to tread and where firefighters risk their lives on entering to fight fires. The banlieues out of which from time to time come demonstrations of discontent when vehicles are torched in a show of defiance against authority.

Tension is high in France with the start of a trial of 14 people linked to the Islamist terrorist attack that took place in January of 2015 when Said and Cherif Kouachi broke into the Paris headquarters of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo with the intention of mass slaughter. They succeeded to the extent of their ambition, in killing a dozen people, among them the magazine's cartoonists, when they sprayed the building with automatic gunfire.

That week, a total of 17 people died over a three-day mission undertaken in the name of the Islamic State. Following the horrific attack at the Charlie Hebdo offices -- with France reeling in disbelief at the assaults, the carnage, the deaths, the slaughterhouse that once was a magazine headquarters -- an acquaintance of the Kuachi brothers killed a female police officer and on the following day Amedy Coulibaly attacked a kosher supermarket in eastern Paris, where he killed four Jewish men.

It is a crime punishable by death to commit the unforgivable offence of publishing a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad. And those who did that very thing paid for their casual sin with their lives. For Islam brooks of no insults to its prophet, much less its Koran and Allah, the god of peace. The fourteen accomplices several of whom are being tried in absentia, are charged as accomplices, enablers of the killings. 

Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA

No trial is required for the killers; all three were engaged in separate standoffs with Paris police and failed to survive their reckoning as was no likely their intention as martyrs prepared to ascend to Paradise and awaiting virgins. To commemorate the tragedy of the assault and mass death of Charlie Hebdo's writers and cartoonists, and the onset of the trail of the enablers, the magazine has decided to republish the offending cartoons.

It is a glove thrown as an invitation to a duel to the death. A red flag to re-antagonize and prod a beast whose slavering jaws and pounding hooves are prepared to do battle to humble the pride that assaults the prophet of Islam. Just as ten years earlier cartoons published on a dare by a Danish newspaper where in one cartoon Mohammad wears a bomb-shaped turban with a lit fuse, precipitated violent pandemonium all over the world when pious Muslims went on a rampage, destroying, pillaging, killing. Themselves, mostly. Such is the power of sacred outrage.

"[The suspects were not being tried as] little helpers."                                             "It is about individuals who are involved in the logistics, the preparation of the events, who provided means of financing, operational material, weapons, a residence. [Such things were] essential to the terrorist action."                          National anti-terror prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard

Composite image of events in France

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posted by Pieface @ Thursday, September 03, 2020

Friday, November 29, 2019

Courtesy of Recep Tayyip Erdogan

"All of the European countries, especially those with most of the foreign fighters, have desperately been looking for the past year for a way to deal with them without bringing them back."
"But now, European nations are being forced to consider repatriation since Turkey is going to put people on the plane."
Rik Coolsaet, expert, Egmont Institute research group, Brussels

 "They'll be freed one day, that's for sure. But it's preferable that they be incarcerated in French prisons from where they can't escape."
"In Iraq or Syria, I don't have much faith in their intelligence services keeping track of our jihadists."
Jean-Charles Brisard, Center for Analysis of Terrorism
Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a joint news conference after talks with his Serbian counterpart Aleksandar Vucic in Belgrade, Serbia, Monday, Oct. 7, 2019. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

Previously, Turkey's President Erdogan coerced Europe into paying immense sums to guarantee that Turkey will continue to ensure that a renewed flood of Syrian refugees will not re-emerge. He agreed to keep the flood-gates closed as long as Europe paid a share of what Erdogan claimed it cost his country to give haven to the millions of Syrian refugees who have fled that charnel house for Sunni Syrians that their country of birth became when Bashar al-Assad responded to their first timid protests with the wrath of a Medieval-era bloodthirsty despot.

Now, Europe continues to try to cope with migrants from North Africa and the Middle East who arrive in much more discrete numbers, impacting Italy and Greece badly, and far less so the rest of Europe. But another dilemma looms on the horizon where the countries from which Islamist jihadists left to join the then-growing caliphate of Islamic Jihad of Iraq and the Levant and who now wish to be rescued from their hellhole detention camps, knowing their countries of origin have no wish to repatriate them.

Logically these jihadists should be tried in a court of law and imprisoned for their crimes against humanity, but Western justice is such that it requires irrefutable proof of guilt, and where is that proof to be found within countries which no one not associated with ISIS could enter to discover that damning evidence? Laws could be re-written to assume that all the jihadists are equally guilty of the atrocities perpetuated on minorities and 'enemies' of ISIL, but that kind of 'solution' is antithetical to democratic Western values.
View image on Twitter

While Iraq and Syria might see no problem in simply executing them all, Europe would blanch at the suggestion, and so they are stuck with a moral, legal dilemma of what to do, how to treat, in what manner to respond to the return of these Islamist jihadis now detained by the Turkish forces whom the United States effectively gave permission to occupy a corridor inside Syria just outside Turkey's borders with the country. In the process completely deserting the loyal Kurds upon whom the U.S. depended to vanquish Islamic State.

Turkey news:
 Turkey launched the incursion against Kurdish forces (Image: getty)

Turkey's green light to mount an offensive against the Kurdish enclaves for whom that area is home, and to create a hundred thousand refugees fleeing the Shiite militias who have murdered Kurdish civilians as they have taken control of towns and villages, has also left Turkey with the incarcerated ISIL jihadis. Turkey's solution to Europe's (and North America's) reluctance to take back their citizens is to simply send them back, whereas the Kurds politely urged Europe to take the jihadis off their hands, all the while knowing they would not, and struggling to cope on their own.

Britain has already received a dozen or more of its Islamist citizens, with more, far more to come. Denmark, Germany and the United States have seen the return of some of theirs and that's just for starters. Erdogan is once again using the jihadis as a handy threat against the Europeans who criticized his treatment of the Kurds and the incursion into Syria. Their threat of sanctions with respect to Turkey's plans to drill for oil in the eastern Mediterranean off Cypress no doubt gives Erdogan ever greater satisfaction that he has another cudgel to beat them with.

FILE - In this March 31, 2019 file photo, women residents from former Islamic State-held areas in Syria line up for aid supplies at Al-Hol camp in Hassakeh province, Syria. Syrian Kurdish forces said Monday, Oct. 28, 2019 they are beefing up security in prisons and detention facilities where tens of thousands of Islamic State militants and supporters are held, including foreigners, following the killing of the extremist group's leader. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo, File)

European justice systems are now being confronted with issues relating to security and civil liberties evolving around citizens to be returned who were engaged in terrorism. Returnees will all be investigated, with decisions made whether they should be detained and cases built against them for crimes that occurred in far distant lands. Europe faces an issue of public safety and security either way, even while experts in the field assess that having the jihadis in European detention provides Europe with the potential for tighter control and security.

France has repatriated over 250 jihadis with ISIL so far and half have been judged, given sentences averaging ten years. France awaits the return of yet another 400 of its fine citizens dedicated to global jihad. And under French law there will be no reason to continue detaining them once the decade of their sentence has elapsed; they will be free to roam wherever they wish as citizens, and presumably return to their pressing ideal of establishing a more lasting caliphate.

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posted by Pieface @ Friday, November 29, 2019

Monday, September 28, 2015

Gatestone Institute


Migration Crisis: "Islam Will Conquer Europe Without Firing a Shot"

by
  • The failed foreign policies of the EU and the US under President Obama, have brought the Arabs to the brink of chaos, and destroyed regimes which, even though they were not democratic utopias, at least provided governance and public order. These failed policies have abandoned the Arabs to the atrocities of the Sunni Islamists and to the murderous proxies of the Iranian Islamic Revolution -- and are ultimately the cause of the tsunami of refugees beating at the gates of Europe.
  • Now the EU and Obama want to bring the catastrophe of Gaza to the West Bank.
  • The American FDA is more careful with experiments on animals than the White House is with experiments on the people of the Middle East.
  • Every time the Palestinians have taken steps against the Israelis, we have hurt no one but ourselves, and are left with -- nothing.
  • The Arabs living in Israel and the Palestinian Authority territories know, although it is a bitter pill to swallow, that we have been favored by fortune, because under the State of Israel we live in security.
  • In the face of ongoing mass murder in the Middle East, what arcane consideration, apart from Federica Mogherini being a racist, could possibly bring the EU to deal with something as marginal to global issues as boycotting Israeli face-cream and cookies?
With the recent anniversary of Al-Qaeda's September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, internal Palestinian discourse revolves around radical Islam and America's actions. It relates to the slaughter, rape and millions of refugees who have fallen victim to Al-Qaeda, the humanitarian calamity and the Islamist terrorist organizations to which it gave birth, such as ISIS. Today a disaster of apocalyptic proportions is unfolding in territories that used to be Arab states but are now the battle grounds for feuding Arab tribes, whose only objective is to destroy one another.

In their heart of hearts, the Arabs living in Israel and the Palestinian Authority territories know, although it is a bitter pill to swallow, that we have been favored by fortune because under the State of Israel we live in security. This reality is brought home to us by the feeble international response and the strange behavior of U.S. President Barack Obama and the leaders of the Western world who have abandoned the Arabs to the atrocities of the Sunni Islamists (and their supporters in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar), and to the murderous proxies of the Iranian Islamic Revolution (mainly in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon).

In view of what is happening in neighboring countries, it is clear to us what will happen if Israel is in danger of destruction: no Western state will come to its aid and no Arab state will come to our aid. Our fate will be the same as that of our brothers beyond Israel's borders. It is hard not to identify and sympathize with Israel's efforts to fight terrorism and with its objections to the nuclear agreement with Iran.

Despite the chaos and worse than chaos in the Middle East, the EU's foreign policy representative, Federica Mogherini, recently announced that the EU had decided to mark products made in the Israeli settlements. That is mind-boggling, so say the least. In the face of the ongoing mass murders in the Middle East, what arcane consideration, apart from Mogherini being a racist, could possibly bring the EU, now, to deal with something as blatantly marginal to global issues as the provenance of face cream and cookies?


Despite the chaos and mass murders in the Middle East and the wave of migrants into Europe, the EU's foreign policy representative, Federica Mogherini (left), recently announced that the EU will mark products made in Israeli settlements. Pictured at right, Palestinian anti-Israel activists dump out Israeli-made dairy products that they confiscated from local merchants in Ramallah, March 2, 2015.


In the final analysis, if the Europeans harm Israel's ability to market goods manufactured in the West Bank, the first victims will be the Palestinian workers in the Israeli settlement factories. Every time the Palestinians have taken steps against the Israelis, we have hurt no one but ourselves. The last time we boycotted Israeli products we wound up buying them on the black market at double and triple the price. When we refused to work on construction sites, the Israelis switched to modular, prefabricated units, and the Palestinian construction workers who went on strike are unemployed to this day. When we refused to work in Israeli agriculture, they brought in workers from Thailand, who took our jobs and left us with -- nothing.

The Western pressure on Israel and the Palestinians to establish a Palestinian state as soon as possible, when viewed through the prism of the mass murders and uncertainty in the Middle East, is incomprehensible. The initiative, and the obsession, to promote such a dangerous project at a time when everyone understands that the conditions on both sides are not yet ripe is dangerous; and the motives involved, whatever they really are, are suspicious. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not new, it has been waged in an atmosphere of terrorism and violence, hostility and complete lack of trust for a hundred years. So why exert pressure now?

Everyone, at least everyone living in the Middle East, knows full well that the conflict will not end with a "peace for our time" agreement forced on the two sides and accompanied by a handful of empty, meaningless documents; the dynamics are too dangerous. For both us and the Israelis it is a matter of life and death, not semantics; and it will probably take another hundred years before enough trust can be built on both sides to find a just solution.

The irony is staggering. At a time when the Arab states that were artificially created after the First World War crumble to dust, the EU is pressing for the creation of another artificial Arab state, this one called "Palestine," to be carved out of territories once belonging to Jordan and Egypt. If "Palestine" is granted the status of statehood, it will force not only Israel but the rest of the world to grant it complete control over its borders, airports and a seaport. That will expose the new weak "state" to a rapid and certain takeover by Hamas, ISIS and various other terrorist organizations. Given the current situation in the West Bank, the elected government of "Palestine" will be controlled by Hamas. It will overthrow the Palestinian Authority, the way it did in the Gaza Strip, take over the West Bank, use its airports and seaport to import missiles, various other weapons and Islamist terrorists, and help Islamist terrorism in general, and ISIS in particular, to operate from its territory. The Islamists will proceed to attack Israel and Jordan the way ISIS is currently attacking Egypt in the Sinai Peninsula. Worse, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad will enter the new "Palestine" and strengthen its relations with Iran, just as it has in the Gaza Strip and Syria, and with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Evidently the Israeli withdrawal in 2005, which led directly to Hamas's bloodbath and takeover of the Gaza Strip, the expulsion of the Palestinian Authority and the entrenchment of Islamist terrorism, was not enough for Europe. Now the EU and U.S. President Barack Obama want to bring the catastrophe of the Gaza Strip to the West Bank. The American Food and Drug Administration is more careful with experiments on animals than the White House is with experiments on the people living in the Middle East.

In view of the events in the Arab countries, it is clear to the Palestinians that American and European actions in the Middle East are the direct result of stupidity and complete ignorance of the Middle Eastern mindset, if not outright racism and malevolence. What is inescapable is that under Obama, both America and Europe brought the Arabs to the brink of chaos and beyond, destroyed regimes which, even though they were not democratic utopias like the United States, at least provided governance and public order. That is ultimately the cause of the tsunami of refugees beating at the gates of Europe, all of it caused by the United States and its failed foreign policy.

All the signs indicate that the Middle East disaster is hardly far from over. It is actually just beginning. it will get worse because of the tens of billions of dollars that will now pour into the Ayatollahs' coffers from the insane agreement with Iran. Much of this money will go directly not only to the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards' Qods Force, Iran's arm of international terrorism, but to the various proxy terrorist organizations Iran supports, thus hastening the total destruction of the Middle East and eventually large swaths of Africa.
The wave of refugees will increase, and the price will be paid by the Europeans, already faced with legions of refugees and no plan for dealing with them. Eventually Gaddafi's prophecy will come true: Islam will conquer Europe without firing a shot.
Bassam Tawil is a scholar based in the Middle East.

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posted by Pieface @ Monday, September 28, 2015

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Gatestone Institute


EU, Qatar and Turkey
Who Could Be Whipping Up Terrorists?

by Bassam Tawil
February 25, 2015 at 5:00 am
Al-Jazeera -- in Arabic -- encourages terrorist attacks in Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula by the Muslim Brotherhood, and preaches the destruction of Israel, non-stop.
Recently Al-Jazeera has been broadcasting a "documentary" series glorifying Hamas and the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, its military-terrorist wing. The entire series is devoted to idealizing Islamist terrorism and encouraging mass-casualty terrorist attacks against Jews, in the name of radical Islamist ideology.
One of the stars is the Palestinian arch-terrorist, Abd al-Karim al-Hanini, who was released from prison in Israel and found safe haven in Qatar.
No one has even tried to prevent Qatar's participation in a global anti-terrorism forum.
The EU and the U.S. have recently been holding meetings in Brussels and Ankara with Turkey and Qatar, two of the major funders of terror groups, to form an "anti-terrorism task force" -- while the very Islamists they support have been spiritedly spreading out. Turkey and Qatar have even agreed to help fight ISIS, apparently on the condition that the Turkish-trained forces also try to unseat Syria's President, Bashar al-Assad.

Turkey, under the leadership of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated AKP Party, has been a supporter of terrorists, such as Hamas and ISIS.

Turkish President (then Prime Minister) Recep Tayyip Erdogan, right, meeting with Hamas leaders Khaled Mashaal (center) and Ismail Haniyeh on June 18, 2013, in Ankara, Turkey. (Image source: Turkey Prime Minister's Press Office)

Meanwhile, Qatar's TV channel, Al-Jazeera, regularly incites terrorism against Egyptian President el-Sisi's pro-Western regime. El-Sisi's heroic pro-Western stance is apparently unreciprocated: the U.S. State Department just hosted an official meeting for his arch-enemy, the Muslim Brotherhood, father of Hamas, while Al Jazeera -- in Arabic -- encourages terrorist attacks in Egypt and Sinai Peninsula by the Muslim Brotherhood, and preaches the destruction of Israel, non-stop.

It was Al-Jazeera that created the "Arab Spring" by twisting a story about a Tunisian fruit-seller, who set himself on fire because he could not get a work permit, into a story of Tunisian oppression. The station ran the story again and again, whipping up Tunisians to overthrow their secular leaders and bring in Islamist leaders. To the Tunisians' credit, like the Egyptians, after a few years of Islamist rule, they also threw the Islamist leaders out.

Recently, Al-Jazeera has been broadcasting a "documentary" series glorifying Hamas and the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, its military-terrorist wing. The entire series is devoted to idealizing Islamist terrorism and encouraging mass-casualty terrorist attacks against Jews, in the name of radical Islamist ideology.

One of the stars of the series is the Palestinian arch-terrorist, Abd al-Karim al-Hanini, who was released from prison in Israel and found a safe haven in Qatar. He explains how to construct explosives from agricultural substances, such as chemical fertilizer and sulfur; how to fill an empty gas balloon with the explosives, and how to detonate the bomb mechanically, electronically or with a suicide-bomber (shaheed), in order to kill as many Israelis as possible.

Al-Hanini boasts about his terrorist activities killing Israeli civilians and soldiers, and details tactics that mujahideen will use in their jihadi "inner struggles," and presumably also their outer ones. These tactics can be used as blueprints by future terrorists. The series can easily be viewed by all intelligence agencies in the world, but so far no one has tried to prevent it from being broadcast -- or has even criticized Qatar for broadcasting it.

No one has even tried to prevent Qatar's participation in a global anti-terrorism forum.
Bassam Tawil is a scholar based in the Middle East.

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posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Exceptional Terrorism

Suleyman Shah was a tribal leader and grandfather of Osman I, the founder of the Ottoman Empire which lasted for six centuries. Travelling through what is now Syria around 1236, Shah, as the legend has it, fell from his horse, drowning in the Euphrates close to the site of his tomb. It is believed that followers of the Shah travelled into modern-day Turkey where Osman I founded the empire in 1299.
 Tomb of Suleyman Shah The shrine, pictured here in 2006, is in an area that has seen heavy fighting

Turkey signed a treaty with France at a time when it ruled Syria in 1921, the Treaty of Ankara which granted Turkey the land -- sitting across the border from Turkey in Syria -- surrounding the tomb. That small area spitting into Syria has been considered part of Turkey ever since, much as an embassy in a foreign country is considered by internationally-recognized convention to represent the territory of that country represented by the embassy.

Turkey's sour relations under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan with Syria's President Bashar al Assad related to the civil war there, reflects in part Turkey's similar critical view of Kurds whose longtime quest for a homeland of their own that would encompass part of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran has garnered enmity for the Kurds. In the sectarian wars raging within the Middle East, the Syrian Shiite Alawite regime's brutal assault on its Sunni majority (echoed in Iraq) has deeply offended the Sunni Turkish government.

Leading Turkey to give haven and support to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham in its no-holds-barred-by-humanitarian-concerns battle against Shi'ite Muslims and Christians and other minority ethnic and religious groups, even as a member of NATO. A more polarizing conflict of interests would be harder to find. When, as a NATO member, Turkish troops sat immovable on the border between Turkey and Syria while ISIS was slaughtering Kurds for possession of Kobane, its actions were universally condemned.

Now, however, Turkey saw fit to send 600 Turkish troops backed by tanks and drones into Syria to 'rescue' dozens of Turkish soldiers standing guard over the tomb of Suleyman Shah. Archaeological artefacts memorializing Turkey's Ottoman Empire crucible were worth defending and protecting, but not helpless Syrian Kurdish civilians whose town ISIS was devastating, and whose Kurdish defenders were undermanned and under-weaponized.



Soldiers raise a Turkish flag in the Esme region of Syria where the remains of Suleyman Shah have been relocated.
Soldiers raise a Turkish flag in the Esme region of Syria where the remains of Suleyman Shah have been relocated. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Vacating the Mausoleum of its contents, the Turkish troops exploded the building itself, to prevent its use by jihadists. Suleyman Shah's new resting site sits in the Syrian district of Eshme, about 650 feet from the Turkish border. Once a new Mausoleum has been erected the archaeological remains will be interred there. The danger was that the terrorist jihadi group that Turkey gave haven to would destroy the tomb as they have done other religious sites whose presence offends them.

The final passage in this unsavoury message of Islamist dysfunction is that it was only after Kurdish forces succeeded with the aid of NATO airstrikes in taking Kobani, forcing the ISIS forces' withdrawal, that the Turkish military was enabled to enter Syria; through Kobani no less. Turkish soldiers coordinated their passage through the kindly auspices of Enver Muslim, leader of a Syrian Kurdish group controlling Kobani.

The Kurds are capable of extending such courtesies denied them by the Turks who view the People's Protection Units of the Syrian Kurds representing an extension of Turkey's Kurdistan Workers Party, which it has designated a terrorist organization. A sovereign territorial threat merits the designation of terrorism, but not ISIS whose credentials as a jihadi terrorism fount of brutal atrocities cannot be sufficiently abhored.

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posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Thinking Twice, and Then Again, Jihadi Brides

"They were seen in Tal Abyad yesterday. They were travelling with a Syrian male in a private car. They were using Syrian identity cards."
"We understand that after arriving in Istanbul the girls met an [ISIS] member who is charged with helping foreigners who want to join the group."
Turkish intelligence source

"They are in Istanbul and are trying to reach a town on the Turkish border to cross into Syria. There is someone coordinating with them. A smuggler. They can't move by themselves."
ISIS source, Istanbul

"On this particular occasion we weren't notified that these girls were travelling. If we had been notified then we might have been able to intervene."
Commander Richard Walton, Metropolitan London Police counter-terrorism command

"I told her [sister] that if you need anything from us just let us know and she said that all they need is our prayers and she started crying."
Salmon Farsi, East London Mosque spokesman
Kadiza Sultana
Shamima Begum
Amira Abase
Lured to jihad: Kadiza Sultana, 16, top, Shamima Begum, 15, centre, and Amira Abase, 15, bottom, at Gatwick

There you have it, Turkey's interests colliding with that of another NATO member. Within Turkey Syrians can operate freely if they are not committed to the regime of Bashar al-Assad, now in bad odour with Turkey's Islamist Erdogan, but rather operating on behalf of ISIS. And ISIS members too are given free reign to move about with impunity, given a theatre out of which they may facilitate moving new recruits to their jihadist campaign into Syria.

And in London, relations between mosque and government security is so fragmented that even when it should be obvious that a family is frightened and concerned over the fate of one of their members attracted to ISIS's invitations to present as brides for mujahadeen, that when three teen-age girls decamp ostensibly without their families' knowledge to fly to Turkey for passage through to Syria and marriage with ISIS members, no one has been alerted to pre-empt their plans.

Three young girls from Bethnal Green Academy in East London being the object of an international search to discover their whereabouts before they are swallowed into the jihadist swamp, but with little hope they can be recovered at this juncture. Shamina Begum, 15, Kadiza Sultana, 16, and 15-year-old Amira Abase for whom the exploits of a school chum who had previously made the trip seemed irresistible to them as well, crossed into Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham-controlled Syria.

These "grade A" pupils have now been a week into their adventure, from Gatwick airport, on to Istanbul, and finally into the embrace of Islamic State in Syria; fodder for the upcoming generation of newborns who will populate the looming, growing caliphate whose expression is the fervent desire of Islamist expansion and global conquest. Neither Scotland Yard nor Turkish Airlines, let alone the U.K. Border Force had been alert to the girls' adventure.

Yet one of the girls' older sister had expressed concerns over what she discerned as unusual behaviour, and she did so in her approach to the East London Mosque. She obviously found little interest, let alone alarm or assistance from that source. And once in Istanbul the network of ISIS "representatives" active there were more than capable of preventing detection of the whereabouts of the three girls, finally expediting their travel to Syria.

Abase Hussen, father of Amira, expressed his family's grief, that the family "cannot stop crying". And, he pleaded with his daughter, somewhat tardily, "The message we have for Amira is to get back home. We miss you. We cannot stop crying. Please think twice. Don't go to Syria."

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posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Saturday, November 29, 2014

Enabling Islamic State


ISIS began its Kobane offensive in mid-September. The town later became the focus of airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition against the militants. (File Photo: AFP) 

There, it is official; Turkey has no truck with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Turkey has never supported them, never given them haven, and there are none within Turkey who support the work of ISIS in Syria and Iraq. And nor has Turkey ever been an effective welcome staging area for new recruits to assemble before joining Islamic State, enabling them to cross the border into Syria with ease and good wishes for success.

The latest accusations that Islamic State jihadists have launched an attack on the border town of Kobane from Turkish territory are likewise nothing but yet another slanderous attack on the honour of Turkey, confirmed by an official statement from the office of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, busily receiving Pope Francis, but not too busy to deny any complicity.

Of course, Turkey's key interest in the conflict is the defeat of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and ISIS is similarly invested in that very same interest. The coincidence, however, does not make them conspiratorial bedfellows.

And nor has Turkey's official refusal to deploy its considerable military strength in assisting the Syrian Kurdish YPG in their defence of Kobane against the Islamic State jihadists who have held it under siege for months. "It is known that the terrorist group ISIS has been attacking too many places simultaneously in Kobane and also to Mursitpinar border gate since this morning", the statement obligingly offered.

"One of these attacks was made in the Syrian side of the border by a bomb-laden vehicle. The allegation that the vehicle in the mentioned attack reached the border gate through Turkish land is definitely a lie." Turkish officials strenuously denying that the vehicle groaning under its load of bombs passed the border from Turkey. This, in response to claims by activists and Kurds identifying the attack by ISIS as having emanated from Turkish territories.
 
Nawaf Khalil, a spokesman for the Kurdish Democratic Union Party of Syria held otherwise, explaining that ISIS "used to attack the town from three sides ... today, they are attacking from four sides." A suicide bomb in an armored vehicle on the border crossing between Kobane and Turkey began the assault, according to a spokesman for the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, operating out of Britain.

Turkey remains embittered that the United States  -- while pressing the Turkish government to become involved with the U.S.-led strikes against ISIS in Syria, and at the very least permit the Incerlik air base just north of the Syrian border, in close distance to ISIL targets both in Syria and Iraq be opened for use by the U.S. and its allies -- has not agreed to target the Syrian regime for its crimes against its own people.

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posted by Pieface @ Saturday, November 29, 2014

Miracles and Barbarism

"It's a miracle that we are still alive. Bombs fall day after day."
Gabriel Daoud, Syrian Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch, Saint George Church, Damascus

"[They have been] evicted from their homes and native lands, sold as slaves, killed, beheaded, crucified or burned alive, under the shameful and complicit silence of so many."
"There is another threat, that of state terrorism. Each state, for its own part, feels it has the right to massacre terrorists. But so many innocent people perish at the same time as the terrorists."
Pope Francis
Christians balk at leaving Syrian city under siegeThe arch at the entrance to the Dakhaniyeh neighbourhood of Damascus is damaged in fighting in Syria. Despite the destruction, ruin and constant danger, many in the city do not want to leave the place that is their home.   Photograph by: STR, Getty Images , London Daily Telegraph

The Old City of Damascus remains yet, despite the Syrian army bombardments, its ancient walls reverberating. Inhabited for over four thousand years, the residents wonder how much longer they will be able to live there, their lives in constant danger. Christians were largely neutral in the war, but they know they are targeted by the jihadists They have been kidnapped, churches desecrated. Pope Francis has spoken of the "barbaric acts of violence", to which he says force can be used to stop an "unjust aggressor".

The Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad may not have given permission to The U.S. to fly aerial assaults on ISIS over Syrian territory, holding out for an agreement between the U.S. and Syria which Assad may have thought would be forthcoming, but which the U.S. would certainly view with the horror it deserves, but that bombing of the Islamic State of Iraq and Al Sham is certainly to the benefit of Damascus.

It's difficult to really discern which is the worst human-rights offender; the regime or ISIS. Nothing has been beyond Bashar al-Assad's arsenal of pay-back to his majority Sunni population for the rise of Sunni opposition to his Alawite Shiite rule disentitling Sunnis. The abduction and torture of children, the rape of women, the helicopter warships, the chemical weapons attacks, the barrel bombings, the deliberate starvation, and the routing of millions of Syrians from their homes.

There is no area of Syria in which Syrian Sunnis live or once lived that was immune from artillery fire, from bombing, leaving vast swathes of its capital along with other cities in absolute ruins. The city of Damascus, lived in for thousands of years, parts of which represented a living archaeological treasure, forever destroyed. Revenge attacks against the Sunni population for harbouring rebel Syrian Sunni insurgents continue unabated.

If the Syrian Free Army once thought they had a chance to defeat their murderous oppressor and in the absence of aid from the West to help arm them to match their defences against those of the regime, welcomed foreign jihadis, that hope was dashed with the steady incursion of Islamist jihadists with their own agendas, from all over the Sunni world of terrorism and vengeance against the minority Shiites. Who had their own militias from which to match the barbarism of the invading terrorists.

Hezbollah and the Republican Guard came to the regime's rescue to help it regain positions it had lost to the rebels. And the rebels began to suffer losses both at the hands of the regime and at those of the al-Qaeda-linked Islamists. And now, the United States and its allies have been persuaded to help the regime even further, even if by default, by attacking ISIS from the air.

A man walks amid smoke and fire following a reported air strike by Syrian government forces in the ISIS group controlled Syrian city of Raqa, on Nov. 25. 2014. (AFP)

The U.S. and its allies know that Raqqa is the stronghold in Syria of the extremists whose presence they are anxious to eradicate. They know as well that the city is one of civilian residence who have had no option but to live there with the Islamic State terrorists among them, now governing every aspect of their civilian life through fanatical religious edicts. Where Western morals restrain the U.S. from considering bombing the city, no such constraints concern Bashar al-Assad.

Over 63 Syrians died when Syria's war planes struck on Tuesday. At least half of those who died in the strikes were estimated to be of the civilian population. But a victory for the regime which hasn't bothered commenting, since half of those whom they killed were obviously ISIS jihadis.  According to Rami Abdulrahman of the Observatory for Human Rights in Britain, ten war planes struck ten targets in Raqqa.

"The majority of the strikes were in the eastern part of the city. At least 36 of those killed are civilians. As for the rest, we are not sure yet if they were fighters." The Local Coordination Committees, according to the Associated Press, commented that at least 70 people were killed in the strikes, while the collective naming itself Raqqa is Being Silently Slaughtered claim it had documented over 80 deaths.

Since the U.S.-led coalition began its attacks on Islamic State positions, the regime's air force has responded by an increase in its strikes right across Syria. There may be no cooperation between the Syrian regime and the West but by default the United States is working alongside the Islamic Republic of Iran in both Iraq and Syria to defeat the Islamic State. Of huge benefit to the Syrian regime.

However the situation turns eventually, should Turkey's demands on the United States prevail and a coalition begin to turn its attention to the Syrian regime once the situation with ISIS levels off, (though there is concern that could very well take years to effect), there is little doubt that the regime is concerned to weaken the rebel forces even more than their current parlous state of ineffectiveness before the U.S. can make good on its promise to train and arm them.

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posted by Pieface @ Saturday, November 29, 2014

Monday, November 17, 2014

Oil Revenue War

The Middle East has long relied on the United States to maintain a balance of what passes for moderation in that highly volatile area. That oversight by the most powerful and persuasive nation on Earth has latterly undergone a tectonic power shift. Under the Obama administration the United States has gradually shifted away from its conventional role and its traditional allies in the Middle East. When Barack Obama visited Egypt shortly after his presidential inauguration he spoke to the Muslim world that a new day was dawning between America and the world of Islam.
President Barack Obama with President Hosni Mubarak, Cairo, Egypt, June 2009  Photo: Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

He was speaking of course of Arab/Muslim resentment over perceived and actual interference in the Middle East by the United States. There have always been polarizing views over the position of the U.S. in the Mideast; resentment that Israel has always seemed a protectorate of the U.S. Yet relief when the U.S. assembled allies to free Kuwait from Saddam Hussein's belief that it should be part of Iraq. And anger at the manipulations between oil-producing sheikdoms and kingdoms and the U.S.

Where once the United States of America was the champion of Israeli existence in a swamp of Islamic fury, and where the U.S. cultivated Saudi Arabia and managed Egypt, that has all undergone a change of sudden and stunning proportions. The terrorists representing al-Qaeda who destroyed the World Trade Centre in New York and took the lives of almost three thousand people, were mostly of Saudi origin. Their leader, a Saudi of Yemeni origin, set out to destroy the Saudi regime and set its sights on the U.S. as well.

Even so, the bonds between Saudi Arabia and the U.S. remained tightly oil-obsessed. But the United States electorate is tired of fighting Middle East/Muslim wars; Iraq and Afghanistan, and the U.S. administration set itself the goal of becoming energy-independent of Mideast oil; it can be said with confidence that the U.S. funded the rise of fanatical Islam through Saudi Wahhabism generating jihad, a central duty of pious Muslims. Wealthy Saudis financed al-Qaeda just as they finance the Islamic State of Syria and Al-Sham.

The predicament now for the Middle East is an implosion of violent jihad-borne Islamofascism with the rise of a totalitarian Sunni caliphate, ISIS, in competition with Shiite Iran and its proxy Shia militias, fundamentalist Islamists whose threat is more than equal to that of ISIS. And Saudi Arabia, with the U.S. poised to become completely oil-sufficient no longer requiring oil from the Middle East has found itself cast adrift. With ISIS threatening invasion on one flank, Iran threatening on the other.

The Saudis viewed with no little degree of alarm the offhand manner in which the U.S. divested itself of interest in Egypt after having supported a Muslim Brotherhood government once they abandoned Hosni Mubarak; reacting unfavourably to seeing the Brotherhood deposed. Under the Obama administration the Brotherhood had legitimacy and Egypt now finds itself partially divorced from the good graces of the U.S. In this, Egypt has a counterpart in where Israel finds itself, in the bad books of the Obama administration.

U.S. policy has seen a 90-degree turnabout under President Obama. The shift has left doubts that the U.S. will push too hard over Iran's nuclear aspirations. That being the case, Saudi Arabia now has more in common with Israel than would be otherwise, with both countries in dread of the Islamic Republic of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. While Saudi Arabia is in a political-religious war with Iran, Israel is in Iran's sights as a blot on Islamic geography waiting to be destroyed.

Where Saudi Arabia might have fondled the thought that at some point the U.S. would honour its threat to destroy Iranian nuclear installations for fear of its acquiring nuclear warheads, that is no longer the case. The power that could destroy Iran's installations will not, Israel that wishes to, cannot. Iran suffered under the U.S.-led sanctions, yet now the sanctions have been partially lifted and negotiations appear stalled at the point where it seems the U.S. is prepared to surrender key demands to Iran's ambitions.

The result of which has been a sudden glut of Mideast oil on the international market at bargain-basement prices that might go lower yet. Saudi Arabia has led the way to lower per barrel prices, taking a hit it is prepared to weather leaving it reliant on its vast currency reserves. Whereas Iran, with its much slimmer currency reserve, and ailing from the effect of the sanctions, needs higher per barrel oil prices to lift it from its economic slump.

Saudi Arabia has no intention to going to war with Iran to preserve itself, not in the conventional sense. But it can and will continue to lower oil prices a little more, leaving Iran to struggle with a critically leaner revenue source. A situation that, just coincidentally, impacts Russia, Syria and ISIS as well, all dependent on sustained high oil per-barrel prices to keep them ticking along. Russia, already in recession, and Syria in parlous straits, getting their just desserts, courtesy of Saudi Arabia.

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posted by Pieface @ Monday, November 17, 2014

Tuesday, November 04, 2014

Gatestone Institute


Who is the Real Chickenshit?

by Bassam Tawil
November 4, 2014 at 5:00 am
Judging by their actions, most Arab leaders do not want to create yet another terrorist Islamist state, dedicated to the Muslim Brotherhood's ideology and to toppling their regimes. We do want a Palestinian state, but please, only one that will provide responsible governance.
According to the "Arab street," it is the Americans and Europeans who are cowards, afraid to take significant steps against Iran, and terrified of the Islamic ghettoes in their cities, which have been exporting terrorists to fight for the Islamic State, and providing housing to the seasoned fighters who return.
To Arabs, the ultimate irony is that America is paying Qatar to have its airbase there, while Qatar is paying terrorists to kill Americans.
When John Kerry claimed it was the unresolved Palestinian issue that caused a ripple effect that crated ISIS, he simply inspired the Palestinians to use Al-Aqsa mosque as a religious trigger for future bloodshed.
There is a civil war currently under way between radical Islam -- motivated by imperialist fantasies of restoring the Islamic Caliphate -- and the more moderate secular Muslim regimes that are seeking the path to modernization and progress.

At the same time, Sunni Islam is in the midst of an increasingly violent crisis in its dealings with Shi'ite Iran, which looks as if it is about to be granted nuclear weapons capability, and which for decades quietly has been eyeing neighboring Arab oil fields.

Into the middle of this explosive disarray, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his supporters have thrown the accusation that it was actually Israel's so-called refusal to reach a peace agreement that was responsible for the ripple effect that led to the creation of ISIS. This incorrect diagnosis of the situation merely postpones the West's efforts to find a real, workable solution for the Palestinian issue.

Does Kerry really blame Israel for ISIS? Above, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, Israel, on July 23, 2014. (Image source: U.S. State Department)

It is easy for the leaders of the Arab world to latch onto Kerry's accusation and use it justify their weakness and unwillingness to enter into a direct battle against terrorism; to let America do the dirty work, and conveniently to relieve the Arab world of having to recognize Israel and establish a Palestinian state.

They would also be able to avoid dealing with Israel's demand for the Palestinian territories to be disarmed and the Palestinians' demands for concessions from Israel.

Judging by their actions, most Arab leaders have no desire to see the Palestinian issue resolved. They seem to prefer preserving the status quo. They blame Israel for refusing to make concessions to the Palestinians and hope that this refusal will weaken Israel, even though Israel is their strategic defense against Iran.

Most Arab leaders do not want to create what is bound soon to become yet another terrorist Islamist state, dedicated to the Muslim Brotherhood's ideology and to toppling their regimes. The Arab leaders already have to contend with ISIS, Al-Qaeda and the Al-Nusra Front in Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen, which are enough for them, to say nothing of Africa from Nigeria to Somalia and everything in between.

But if Israel can be blamed for another of world's ills, with Kerry's blessing, why waste the opportunity?

When Jordan's King Abdullah called the current Islamic civil war a cry of distress, he was not speaking randomly. There is a genuine problem.

No examples are better than Turkey, Qatar and Iran. Turkey, led by its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, hosts Hamas's overseas command center; is supported by Qatar and would apparently like to take control of more Sunni territory by subverting the Sunni Arab monarchies. Such a move would enable Erdogan to realize his outspoken dream of recreating an Ottoman Empire and Caliphate.

Turkey and Qatar, its partner in plotting the return of the Caliphate, have left their fingerprints on most of the terrorist attacks and catastrophes currently visited upon the Middle East, especially in the fields of subversion, incitement to terrorism, and the arming and training of terrorists.

The Middle Eastern Sunni Islamist terrorist organizations, meanwhile, are being incited and indoctrinated by Al-Jazeera TV, a Muslim Brotherhood megaphone that belongs to Qatar's ruling al-Thani family. It was Al Jazeera's Arabic channel that created the "Arab Spring" by taking the story of a fruit-seller who merely wanted a permit, and whipping it up, non-stop, until it grew into a revolution that brought down Tunisia's government.

The Middle East's terrorist gangs are now armed and trained with funding from Qatar. Recently, in yet another savored irony, Turkey agreed to help train Syrian rebels and allow the U.S. to use its military bases -- but for Turkey, the plan is probably to bring down Syria's non-Sunni President, Bashar Al-Assad, and not, as the U.S. might imagine, to bring down ISIS.

In the past, Persian Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia joined in training Islamic terrorist cadres, but currently, as the Arab proverb goes, "The magic spell boomeranged," and Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies have to defend themselves from the very groups they helped create.
Terrorist organizations are now generously funded by Qatar and NATO-member Turkey, which inspire them to attack the regimes of Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Jordan, and various regimes in the Persian Gulf and Africa. Of course, they are all also inspired to attack Israel, as Hamas has done.

Turkey and Qatar are also exploiting the naiveté of the Western world, encouraging ISIS operatives to make preparations to attack Europe and the United States. Preachers of "political Islam" incite susceptible Islamic youths in the West and prepare them for a terrorist campaign. They use the West's political correctness, free speech and support for "pluralism," all the while insisting they are not preaching terrorism.

Turkey and Qatar, along with Iran -- which does its utmost to export the Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic Revolution throughout both North and South America, as well as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen -- are aided by a mechanism known as the da'wah, or "outreach," Da'wah, technically the preaching of Islam, is used by political Islam for indoctrinating, enlisting and handling Islamist terrorists worldwide. Perfected for terrorist purposes by the Muslim Brotherhood, its mouthpiece is Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who, like Hamas's leader, Khaled Mashaal, is based in Qatar.

While Iran's rivals, the Sunni states, conduct their civil wars, Iran only becomes stronger. Not only is it turning itself into a nuclear power, it is also strengthening all its outposts in the Middle East and around the world. It supports the Shi'ite regime in Iraq against ISIS; it arms and funds the Houthis in Yemen and the Hezbollah in Lebanon; and it supports the Syrian Alawite regime against its Sunni opponents.

When it comes to terrorism, Iran does not draw partisan lines. It also supports the Sunni groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, both of which seek to destroy Israel and attack the Egyptians in the Sinai Peninsula.

In response to the colossal threat of radical Islam, the whimpering voice of the West can barely be heard. The U.S. administration targeted Israel for condemnation. A "senior official," most likely the current White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, called Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a "chickenshit," for being afraid to make peace with the Palestinians.

According to the "Arab street," including the Palestinian street, it is the Americans and Europeans who are cowards, afraid to take significant steps against Iran, and terrified of the Islamic ghettoes in their cities, which have been exporting terrorists to fight for the Islamic State, and providing housing to the seasoned fighters who return.

The Sunni states under Shi'ite threat cannot even reach an agreement among themselves about what is to be done; and the Palestinians, in their folly, have chosen the worst possible moment to ignite violence in Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa mosque. The Palestinians seem not to understand that the Arab regimes that might support them are currently busy fighting for their own survival, and have no desire to fall prey to Palestinian provocations about what they realize all too well are fictional threats to Jerusalem.

Given the current situation, Turkey's regional political actions are dangerous, underhanded and hypocritical. To achieve their ends, Turkey's leaders seem to have no qualms about sacrificing their minorities, such as Christians and the Kurds (most of whom are Sunni). Turkey's leaders were the first to cry "humanitarian crisis" when Israel imposed a closure on the Gaza Strip to prevent Iran from sending Hamas arms. Turkey sent the Mavi Marmara flotilla to protect the Gazans, who were never in any danger in the first place. Turkey's leaders then weakened Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who, at least at that time, showed himself willing to reach a peace agreement with the Israelis. But when Syria's Kurds are being killed in Kobani on a daily basis, the Turks are silent, perhaps secretly comfortable seeing a group that wants a state of its own apart from Turkey, being attacked.

Thus, when John Kerry claimed that it was the unresolved Palestinian issue that caused a ripple effect that created ISIS, he simply inspired the Palestinians to use Al-Aqsa mosque as a religious trigger for future bloodshed. The idea is not new; it was used in 1929 by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and led to anti-Jewish riots and the massacre of the Jews in Hebron. It was used again by PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat in 2000, to incite the Palestinians to the second intifada, which killed untold numbers of Jews and Arabs. Today, Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas's Khaled Mashaal are doing the same thing to incite a jihad that this time will truly be religious and not based on real estate.

The more Kerry accuses Israel of having had a hand in creating ISIS, the more the Palestinians will use Al-Aqsa mosque to stir the fire burning under the bubbling cauldron of the Middle East.

The Palestinians' religious incitement campaign is currently being waged primarily by Mahmoud Abbas, the man who stood in front of the UN and accused Israel of fomenting a religious war. This is the same Mahmoud Abbas who calls on Palestinians to use every means available to fight Israel, while at the same time denying that he is doing so.

Meanwhile, Qatar lurks in the background, instructing Al-Jazeera TV to incite the Palestinians against Israel, Egypt and Jordan, and encouraging terrorist attacks that lead only to justified Israeli reprisals.

Qatar's royal family hides behind the security of having a major U.S. airbase on its soil, while supporting Hamas, the Islamic Movement in Israel and the terrorist organizations in the Sinai Peninsula. To Arabs, the ultimate irony is that Americans are paying Qatar to have an airbase there, while Qatar is paying terrorists to kill Americans.

Qatar also still finds time nonsensically to accuse the wakf in Jordan, responsible for Al-Aqsa mosque, of collaborating with Israel to eradicate all signs of Muslim presence on the Temple Mount. Qatar's only plan with that at the moment, however, is to cause riots in Jordan to oust Jordan's king.

Inspired by Western accusations against Israel and the West's enthusiastic recognition of a Palestinian state -- without requiring the direct negotiations with Israel, as obligated by international treaties -- the Palestinian leadership has become more radicalized.

Mahmoud Abbas has gone so far as to abandon his pretense of moderation: if the Israelis can be accused of creating the ISIS with no mention made of the culpability of Hamas, whose ideology is the same as ISIS's, Mahmoud Abbas has been freed of any commitment to peace and can actively pursue the unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state.

In addition, witnessing Russia's abrogation of its 1994 Budapest Memorandum with the Ukraine, with virtually no adverse consequences, must have seemed a precedent too tempting to ignore. Thus, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas do truly speak with one voice, but it is the voice of Hamas.

Khaled Mashaal, head of Hamas's political bureau, called on all the Palestinians to take up arms to defend Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. The mosque, he said, justifies jihad and the sacrificing of shaheeds [martyrs] to liberate it, and, as in the Hamas charter, that "resistance" is the only solution for the problems of the Palestinian people.

Mashaal was echoed by Mahmoud Abbas at the 14th Fatah conference. Abbas said that under no condition were Jews to be allowed into Al-Aqsa mosque or the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, because any Jewish presence would defile them. On whose authority did he take possession of the Christian holy sites? A short time earlier, Abbas had even claimed that he had no intention of inciting a third intifada against Israel.

Somehow, John Kerry has managed to link to Israel the Shi'ite-Sunni civil wars, radical Islam's Muslim Brotherhood-inspired global plot and the creation of ISIS. Then he linked the failure of the Palestinian issue to have been resolved to Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The unpopular and inconvenient truth is: if there is to be peace, Hamas has to be disarmed, the Palestinian Authority and the Gaza Strip have to be demilitarized, Mahmoud Abbas has to recognize the State of Israel as the homeland of the Jews, and Netanyahu has to recognize the Palestinians state. Israel will then compensate the Palestinians with land in return for the land on which the three large blocks of settlements stand, as has already been agreed.

It is not Israel but the Palestinians who are trying to avoid negotiating a final agreement. They see themselves, with the backing of the UN and Secretary Kerry -- and in a final breakdown of any trust in future international agreements -- as able to achieve their desired result without having to make any concessions.

People who repeat infamies, as Kerry has done, not only encourage radicalism, they are just delaying the establishment of a Palestinian state. We do want a Palestinian state, but please only one that will provide responsible governance.
Related Topics:  Bassam Tawil

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posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, November 04, 2014

Wednesday, October 08, 2014

Russia's role in the fight against IS


Syria's President Bashar al-Assad (L) shakes hands with Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov before a meeting in Damascus in this June 28, 2014(photo by REUTERS/SANA)

Russia's role in the fight against IS

ALMonitor, 8 October 2014
As the United States and its various partners in the Middle East continue airstrikes against the Islamic State (IS), and combine attacks on IS targets inside Syria with intensified efforts to assist the more moderate forces attempting to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his government, Washington should not forget Russia’s complex role in the fighting.

In one way, Moscow may well have been the first member (beyond the Assad regime) of the de facto coalition against the groups that coalesced to become IS. After all, Russia’s policy since the beginning of the Syrian civil war has been to support Assad to prevent the chaos that can help extremists gain power. This has led Russia to supply arms, and reportedly to share intelligence, with the Syrian government. When IS dramatically gained ground in Iraq, Russia quickly provided ground attack fighter jets and other weapons to Baghdad.

Yet, Russia objects to key elements of the Barack Obama administration’s strategy to fight IS. The Kremlin has not welcomed attacks by the United States and other countries inside Syria for two reasons. The first is Russia’s position that the airstrikes require permission from Damascus, something Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated Sept. 23 in a telephone conversation with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. From Moscow’s perspective, forcing Washington and others to appeal to Assad would buttress his legitimacy — which is precisely why US officials want to avoid anything beyond the notification they have provided so far. The second reason is Russia’s fear that the attacks on IS targets will eventually expand to include regime targets.

This in turn raises two important questions. Does Moscow believe that Assad’s military can continue to hold its ground simultaneously against IS and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) if the United States and others change the military balance? And if Russia sees the Syrian regime begin to lose ground, what else might top leaders be prepared to do?

No one outside Putin’s inner circle can answer the first of these questions, though Russia’s public disapproval of US attacks on IS in Syria and new efforts to aid anti-IS anti-Assad forces suggests some underlying concern. The second one — what Russia might do — is ultimately more important.
Media reports have thoroughly catalogued Russia’s military assistance to Syria so far, which has included Buk and Pantsyr anti-missile systems, Yakhont anti-ship missiles, Yak-130 training jets that can be adapted for ground attack missions, drones and a variety of other things, including parts and services (perhaps most notably for Russian-origin Syrian attack helicopters). According to one report, Russian advisers are actually operating surveillance drones and providing intelligence on IS troops to the Syrian military.

Of course, Russia has also provided nonmilitary help, such as a 2012 agreement to exchange Syrian crude oil for Russia’s refined petroleum products and regular diplomatic support, including multiple UN Security Council vetoes to shield Syria from further UN pressure. Syria has at various time apparently hoped for more, including seeking offshore banking services that would have allowed Damascus to continue international financial operations despite Western sanctions.

What else could Moscow do? In theory, Russia could send combat troops to Syria, but this seems quite unlikely for reasons not dissimilar from the ones discouraging the Obama administration from engaging directly on the ground in Iraq: it would be open-ended, expensive and not too popular at home. Post-Cold War Russia has thus far been unwilling to fight outside its immediate neighborhood.
Nevertheless, Russia does have other options, and for hints about how the Kremlin might proceed, it may be useful to look at eastern Ukraine and the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. While Syria and Ukraine are quite different in their details, they do share one important similarity: in both cases, Russia’s policy has attempted to prevent the collapse of a friendly regime whose survival protects important Russian interests. In Ukraine, Moscow wants to keep Kiev from eventually joining NATO; in Syria, Russian officials want to avoid a failed-state terrorist base for Chechen extremists.
How is Russia’s Ukraine policy relevant to Syria? In two ways. First, Russia’s actions in eastern Ukraine demonstrate Moscow’s determination to prevent a separatist defeat. Every time Ukraine’s forces escalated the fighting and took the upper hand, Moscow found a new way to help the separatists, initially by providing arms but later by providing armed and trained Russian “volunteers,” many of whom appeared to be Russian military personnel. Second, and conversely, Russia’s escalations were incremental rather than extravagant. Putin did not order 50,000 troops into eastern Ukraine — instead, he sent a few thousand, which was enough to tip the balance against the Ukrainian government’s weak and neglected army and its aggressive but poorly equipped militias.
Perhaps most significant looking ahead in Syria is Moscow’s apparent decision to provide Ukraine’s separatists with the now-notorious Buk anti-aircraft missile system widely believed to have brought down Malaysian Airlines flight 17 over eastern Ukraine. This tragic incident occurred not long after government forces began devastating — and effective — airstrikes against the separatists. Under the circumstances, it would have been quite logical for Russia to supply the Buk system, though Russian officials continue to deny this.

Russia has already provided the Buk system to Syria, of course, but — under pressure from the United States and Israel — Moscow has not delivered the longer-range and more dangerous S-300 system that Damascus has ordered. A report from mid-August suggested that Russia might abandon the deal, but Russian reports usually describe it as “suspended,” which implies that it could be reinstated. If top officials genuinely think that the United States or others may target Syria’s forces in air attacks, shipping the S-300s to Syria could be a natural response. Alternatively, some in Moscow could argue that giving Damascus the S-300 could encourage Washington to coordinate its attacks inside Syria with the Assad regime because of the greater risks. This could potentially be a costly path for Moscow, however — especially if Syria’s military actually tried to shoot down a US jet (or succeeded in doing so) using the system.

Of course, the S-300 would not particularly help Damascus to contend with IS or FSA forces inside Syria — since neither has an air force — so providing it would be primarily a geopolitical move rather than an immediate military response. But Russia could sell additional weapons to the Syrian armed forces, too. Since Moscow cares less and less about Western governments’ reactions and Western public opinion, the biggest limiting factor for further arms is probably what Syria can afford and how generous Russia would be with financing when the Kremlin faces its own financial pressures.

Russia cannot stop the United States or its partners from attacking targets inside Syria without consent from Damascus or from arming and training Syria’s moderate opposition. Nevertheless, Moscow can increase its own support for the Assad government and could do more than it has so far. Officials in Washington and in Middle East capitals should keep this in mind.
Paul J. Saunders
Contributor, 
Paul J. Saunders is executive director of the Center for the National Interest. He was a State Department senior adviser during the George W. Bush administration.


Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/10/russia-isis-syria-s300-missiles-assad.html?utm_source=Al-Monitor+Newsletter+%5BEnglish%5D&utm_campaign=61068533d7-October_7_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_28264b27a0-61068533d7-102396717#ixzz3FarF2U8g

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posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, October 08, 2014

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