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Isis is the Fourth Reich: V.S. Naipaul, Think-Israel, Mar. 21, 2015— Imagine a world in which a young man is locked in a cage, has petrol showered over him and is set alight to be burnt alive.
ISIS is Booming Everywhere America’s Left a Void: Benny Avni, New York Post, June 10, 2015 — ISIS is having a good week.
For U.S., Killing Terrorists Is a Means to an Elusive End: Mark Mazzetti & Scott Shane, New York Times, June 16, 2015 — Twice in the last week, the United States has focused its vast manhunting machinery on tracking down and striking terrorist leaders in anarchic countries that for the White House once embodied the promise of the Arab revolutions across the Middle East.
Quietly, Al-Qaeda Offshoots Expand in Yemen and Syria: Hugh Naylor, Washington Post, June 4, 2015 — Al-Qaeda affiliates are significantly expanding their footholds in Syria and Yemen, using the chaos of civil wars to acquire territory and increase their influence, according to analysts, residents and intelligence officials.
Face Reality: Many Muslims Support ISIS: Tarek Fatah, Toronto Sun, June 16, 2015
Sudan’s Bashir is the Palestinians’ and Pretoria’s Favorite Genocidal Tyrant: Eugene Kontorovich, Washington Post, June 15, 2015
There Can be No Peace in Jordan Until the World Appreciates the Country’s True Ethnography: Geoffrey Clarfield & Salim Mansur, National Post, June 8, 2015
How Libya Continues to Flummox Europe: Anne Applebaum, Washington Post, Apr. 3, 2015
The Libyan Quagmire: Col. (ret.) Dr. Jacques Neriah, JCPA, Mar. 25, 2015
V.S. Naipaul
Think Israel, Mar. 21, 2015
Imagine a world in which a young man is locked in a cage, has petrol showered over him and is set alight to be burnt alive. Imagine the triumphant jeering of an audience that has gathered to witness this. Imagine, also, a 12-year-old child with elated determination on his features shooting at close range a kneeling man with his arms tied behind his back. Then picture the spectacle of a hundred beheadings of victim after victim in humiliating uniforms, their hands and feet bound, kneeling with their backs to their black-robed executioners who wield knives to cut their throats as though they were sacrificial lambs.
Picture queues of helpless men and women being marched by zealous executioners who nail them to wooden crosses and crucify them, howling and bleeding to death as crowds watch. Then picture thousands of girls and women, their arms tied, being marched by hooded and armed captors into sexual slavery. And then, if that is not enough, picture men being thrown off cliffs to their deaths because they are accused of being gay.
Yes, all these scenes could have taken place in several continents in the medieval world, but they were captured on camera and broadcast to anyone with access to the internet. These are scenes, of yesterday, today and tomorrow in our own world. I have always distrusted abstractions and have turned into writing what I could discover and explore for myself. So I must begin by admitting that I have not recently travelled in those regions threatened by barbarism — the Middle East, the north west of Africa, in pockets of Pakistan and in the Islamic countries of south eastern Asia.
However, in the 1980s and early 1990s I undertook to examine the 'revival' of Islam that was taking place through the revolution in Iran and the renewed dedication to the religion of other countries. I travelled through Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia attempting to discover the ideas and convictions behind this new 'fundamentalism'. My first book was called Among The Believers and the second, perhaps prophetically, Beyond Belief. Since those books were written, the word 'fundamentalism' has taken on new meanings.
As the word suggests, it means going back to the groundings, to the foundations and perhaps to first principles. It is used to characterise the interpretation given to passages of the Koran, to the Hadith, which is a collection of the acts in the life of the Prophet Mohammed and to an interpretation of sharia law. However, the particular fundamentalist ideology of 'Islamist' groups that have dedicated themselves to terror — such as Al Qaeda, Boko Haram and now in its most vicious, barbaric and threatening form the Islamic Caliphate, Isis or the Islamic State (IS) — interprets the foundation and the beginning as dating from the birth of the Prophet Mohammed in the 6th Century.
This fundamentalism denies the value and even the existence of civilisations that preceded the revelations of the Koran. It was an article of 6th and 7th Century Arab faith that everything before it was wrong, heretical. There was no room for the pre-Islamic past. so an idea of history was born that was fundamentally different from the ideas of history that the rest of the world has evolved.
In the centuries following, the world moved on. Ideas of civilisation, of other faiths, of art, of governance of law and of science and invention grew and flourished. This Islamic ideological insistence on erasing the past may have survived but it did so in abeyance, barely regarded even in the Ottoman Empire which declared itself to be the Caliphate of all Islam. Islamic State is dedicated to a contemporary holocaust. But now the evil genie is out of the bottle. The idea that faith abolishes history has been revived as the central creed of the Islamists and of Isis. Their determination to deny, eliminate and erase the past manifests itself in the destruction of the art, artefacts and archaeological sites of the great empires, the Persian, the Assyrian and Roman that constitute the histories of Mesopotamia and Syria.
They have bulldozed landmarks in the ancient city of Dur Sharukkin and smashed Assyrian statues in the Mosul museum. Destroying the winged bull outside the fortifications of Nineveh satisfies the same reductive impulse behind the destruction by the Taliban of the Bhumiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has described this destruction of art, artefacts, inscriptions and of the museums that house them not only as a butchery of civilisational memory but as a war crime…
Isis is dedicated to a contemporary holocaust. It has pledged itself to the murder of Shias, Jews, Christians, Copts, Yazidis and anyone it can, however fancifully, accuse of being a spy. It has wiped out the civilian populations of whole regions and towns. Isis could very credibly abandon the label of Caliphate and call itself the Fourth Reich. Like the Nazis, Isis fanatics are anti-semitic, with a belief in their own racial superiority. They are anti-democratic: the Islamic State is a totalitarian state, absolute in its authority. There is even the same self-regarding love of symbolism, presentation and propaganda; terror is spread to millions through films and videos created to professional standards of which Goebbels would have been proud.
Just as the Third Reich did, Isis categorises its enemies as worthy of particular means of execution from decapitation to crucifixion and death by fire. Whereas the Nazis pretended to be the guardians of civilisation in so far as they stole art works to preserve them and kept Jewish musicians alive to entertain them, Isis destroys everything that arises from the human impulse to beauty. Such barbarism is not new to history and every nation has suffered mass murder and barbaric cruelty in the past. That Isis has revived the religious dogmas and deadly rivalries between Sunnis and Shias, Sunnis and Jews and Christians is a giant step into darkness…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
ISIS IS BOOMING EVERYWHERE AMERICA’S LEFT A VOID
Benny Avni
New York Post, June 10, 2015
ISIS is having a good week. It’s gaining ground in Iraq, where it’s closing in on Baghdad. It’s solidifying ownership of more than half of Syria. And on Tuesday, ISIS captured a strategically located power plant in Sirte, Libya, and is closing in on the country’s oil fields. Yup, the Islamic State marches on, conquering territory and imposing harsh “comply or off-with-your-head” laws over vast populations in the Mideast and Africa. And America? Even though President Obama’s marked ISIS as our Enemy No. 1, Washington has done little more than yawn.
“We don’t yet have a complete strategy,” Obama said in Germany over the weekend, speaking of progress in his year-old vow to “degrade and destroy” ISIS. Victims of ISIS will have to wait until the commander in chief of the world’s former sole superpower completes devising a strategy. How long will it take? Please have some “strategic patience,” pleads John Kirby, the new State Department spokesman. So don’t hold your breath, world. The cavalry may be coming, but first America must end our little power nap.
This lack of ISIS strategy isn’t because, as Obama said, our Iraqi allies can’t get their act together. It isn’t, as he insinuated, because the military brass hasn’t given him good war plans. In reality, Obama does have a strategy. Early on he’d detected a desire among Americans to shrink our global footprint. He ran on a promise to do just that, won and made it his life mission to “end wars.” Several current presidential candidates are trying to cash in on that same public sentiment. Rand Paul pushes the Republican Party in that direction. Bernie Sanders wants Democrats to double down on Obama’s all-butter-no-guns sentiment.
And Hillary Clinton? Well, can anyone confidently tell? She’s an American hawk — when she’s not a dove. And vice versa. Obama’s strategy went beyond simply “ending” those wars that dominated his predecessor’s tenure. Remember, 70 years after World War II ended, tens of thousands of American troops remain stationed in Germany and Japan. Six decades after the end of the Korean War, American GIs still secure the 38th parallel against Pyongyang’s aggression.
By contrast, Obama simply hightailed it out of Iraq and, but for heavy political pushback, would have done the same in Afghanistan. He devised a “war is ended, we’re outta here” strategy. In Libya, Obama outdid himself — this time “ending” his own war. Reluctantly, and pushed by the Europeans to intervene in a battle to overthrow the odious Moammar Khadafy, America contributed air power and intel to help Libyans realize their dreams of freedom. According to former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Hillary was among those who pushed Obama into that war. She even took credit for the administration’s success in liberating Libya, though she may yet argue at one point soon that she, like Gates, thought it was a mistake.
But the mistake wasn’t that we helped Arabs overthrow a long-ruling anti-American tyrant. It was that we got involved, and then immediately waved goodbye, violating Colin Powell’s old rule, “You break it, you own it.”
With no American presence in, or even slight curiosity about, post-Khadafy Libya, it became chaotic. Local gangs of all stripes fought over territory and formed at least two competing governments. Leaderless Libyans, in other words, mixed the perfect ground for ISIS to stake its black flag in. So did Iraqi Sunnis after America left them to their own devices in 2011. And so did Syrians when we drew a “red line” for Bashar al-Assad, and then turned color blind.
For the world, America’s detachment from global affairs is growing more disastrous by the day. ISIS is just the symptom. Powers from Iran and al Qaeda to China and Russia rush to fill in all those empty spaces we leave behind. At one point Americans will awaken and realize that such voids are our problem, too. That will happen when an enemy hits us badly or, preferably, before that — when a presidential candidate makes the case for reversing America’s strategy in the last six years. You know that strategy. It’s the one that’s incomplete — by design.
FOR U.S., KILLING TERRORISTS IS A MEANS TO AN ELUSIVE END
Mark Mazzetti & Scott Shane
New York Times, June 16, 2015
Twice in the last week, the United States has focused its vast manhunting machinery on tracking down and striking terrorist leaders in anarchic countries that for the White House once embodied the promise of the Arab revolutions across the Middle East. A drone strike in Yemen killed Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, who had built a terror franchise feared in the capitals of the West. Days later, the Pentagon dispatched F-15 jets to Libya to kill Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who in 2013 planned the seizure of an Algerian gas plant in which 38 foreign hostages died. On Tuesday, it was still uncertain whether he had been among those killed in the attack.
The strikes may prove to be lasting victories for the mode of long-distance warfare embraced by President Obama, but the ultimate impact of killing terrorist leaders like Mr. Wuhayshi remains to be seen. The administration and its foreign allies have been unable to stem the chaos in Yemen and Libya, and hopes that a new democratic order could emerge after the fall of dictators have been reduced to far more humble goals. In the 18 months remaining in Mr. Obama’s presidency, and with Qaeda and Islamic State fighters filling a power vacuum in both Yemen and Libya, the occasional killing of militant leaders might be the most the administration can hope to achieve in the two war-racked countries.
“At the moment, we’re very limited in what we can do in places like Yemen and Libya,” said Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. He said that in Yemen, Obama administration officials had once spoken about economic development, improving water supplies and rebuilding civil society. “Now,” he said, “we’re pretty much back to counterterrorism operations.”
Mr. Wuhayshi is the most senior Qaeda operative killed since Osama bin Laden in 2011 — he had assumed the role of the global terror network’s second-ranking leader — and American officials said his death would disrupt Qaeda operations throughout the region. In a statement released on Tuesday, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula said its military commander, Qassim al-Raymi, had been chosen as Mr. Wuhayshi’s successor.
“Let it be known to the enemies of God that their battle is not only with one person or figure, no matter how important,” a senior Qaeda operative, Khaled Batarfi, said in a statement. “To the infidel America: God has kept alive those who will trouble your life and make you taste the bitterness of defeat.” A spokesman for the National Security Council, Ned Price, on Tuesday called Mr. Wuhayshi’s death a “major blow” to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. He said it “removes from the battlefield an experienced terrorist leader and brings us closer to degrading and ultimately defeating these groups.” “The president has been clear that terrorists who threaten the United States will not find safe haven in any corner of the globe,” Mr. Price said.
The 2011 collapse of the government of Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen led to glimmers of hope for a brighter future there. Mr. Saleh had governed the country for decades, pitting various factions inside the country against one another to shore up power. His successor, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, became a close partner of the Obama administration, working to develop a counterterrorism strategy as well as a broader campaign of economic and political development in Yemen. But Yemen dissolved into full-blown civil war last year as Shiite Houthi rebels took over Sana, the capital, and forced Mr. Hadi and his ministers into exile. Al Qaeda has gained strength in the anarchy and has forged new alliances with Sunni tribes to fight the Houthis. In April, the group seized control of Al Mukalla, Yemen’s fifth-largest city, reportedly capturing millions of dollars from the vaults of the central bank.
Adding to the violence in Yemen is an air campaign led by Saudi Arabia to dislodge the Houthis from control of Sana. The Obama administration is backing the offensive with intelligence and logistical support, which has put the United States in the strange position in Yemen of attacking Al Qaeda and the terror group’s main enemy, the Houthis, at the same time. “If you’re looking for logic here, you’re not going to find much,” said Stephen Seche, who was the United States ambassador to Yemen from 2007 to 2010. Still, Mr. Seche said that America’s ability to mitigate the violence and political stalemate in Yemen and Libya was so limited that the Obama administration had little choice but to focus on the narrow mission of counterterrorism operations.
As the revolt against Mr. Saleh was taking hold in Yemen in 2011, Libyans rose up against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. When he appeared to threaten to kill thousands of civilians, a broad coalition of European and Arab countries joined the United States to contain and then oust the Libyan dictator. This “leading from behind” approach of the Obama administration drew derision from some Republicans. But the campaign was effective, relieved the United States of assuming the whole burden of the campaign and seemed to promise at least a possibility of peaceful progress.
Those prospects were swiftly overtaken by a geographic, tribal and ideological power struggle. “The hope was to work with allies and local groups to reduce or contain the chaos,” said Daniel L. Byman, a professor at Georgetown and the research director of the Middle East program at the Brookings Institution. “But the violence took on a life of its own.” When Mr. Obama ran for president in 2008, he was sharply critical of the George W. Bush administration for failing to plan adequately to keep order after the fall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Mr. Byman noted. Now, Mr. Obama faces similar accusations about Libya, Yemen and other countries.
But Daniel Benjamin, who was the State Department’s top counterterrorism official from 2009 to 2012 and is now at Dartmouth, said the idea that proper planning might have changed the outcome ignored the scale and pace of the greatest change in the Middle East since World War I. “The forces that drove the Arab Spring were of such enormous dimensions that it’s unrealistic to think any president or any group of leaders could steer these events,” Mr. Benjamin said. Some point to the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan, where the United States committed hundreds of billions of dollars and the lives of thousands of troops. Both countries remain mired in conflict. “We have to recognize after Afghanistan and Iraq the limited ability to shape events even by using overwhelming military force,” Mr. Schiff said. “The battles can be won. They just won’t stay won.”
QUIETLY, AL-QAEDA OFFSHOOTS EXPAND IN YEMEN AND SYRIA
Hugh Naylor
Washington Post, June 4, 2015
Al-Qaeda affiliates are significantly expanding their footholds in Syria and Yemen, using the chaos of civil wars to acquire territory and increase their influence, according to analysts, residents and intelligence officials. The gains have helped the terror group’s affiliates become major players in the countries and have complicated efforts to resolve the conflicts. Al-Qaeda offshoots could also be gaining sanctuaries to eventually plan attacks against the United States and Europe, analysts say.
In Syria, al-Qaeda’s wing, Jabhat al-Nusra, plays a leading role in a new rebel coalition that has captured key areas in the northwestern part of the country. In Yemen, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has seized parts of the country’s largest province, territory that includes military bases, an airfield and ports.
“Al-Qaeda is becoming more deeply entrenched in Syria, and it is gaining significant momentum in Yemen, and the global focus on ISIS has distracted from the expansion of this other radical, transnational group,” said Fawaz Gerges, professor of Middle Eastern politics at the London School of Economics, using an acronym for the Islamic State.
Although there is little evidence that the two al-Qaeda affiliates are collaborating, both are adopting similar strategies of expanding where they can in the shadows of more powerful insurgent groups, analysts say. At the same time, the two branches of al-Qaeda are trying to position themselves as more palatable brands of radical Islam among citizens in Yemen and Syria who feel threatened by the Houthi rebels and the Islamic State. Though U.S. aircraft are targeting both affiliates, only AQAP is known to have carried out attacks against the West. Jabhat al-Nusra has concentrated most if not all of its energy on the Syrian civil war.
The militants in Syria and Yemen are avoiding the sort of brutality that has distinguished the Islamic State, which split from al-Qaeda last year. The shift appears to be an attempt to win local support and avoid the kind of international military action that the Islamic State is facing, analysts say. Al-Qaeda’s leaders “are attempting to operate under the radar as part of an adaptive strategy that they see as a way to compete with and outlast ISIS,” Gerges said. A U.S.-led coalition targeted the Islamic State after it captured a vast swath of territory in Iraq and Syria, declared a caliphate and provoked global outrage with beheadings and other vicious acts. The proclamation of a caliphate was a direct challenge to al-Qaeda, which has aspired to lead Muslims around the world.
In Yemen, AQAP has quietly exploited a war between pro-government forces and Shiite rebels to seize chunks of the southern Hadramaut province, including its capital, Mukalla. AQAP fighters also are battling the rebels, known as Houthis, farther east in Bayda province, although they have not taken control of much territory there. AQAP is perhaps al-Qaeda’s most powerful affiliate, tied to several bomb plots aimed at the United States, including an unsuccessful effort to blow up a Detroit-bound plane in 2009.
In recent years, the Yemeni military had launched offensives against AQAP, often with the help of the United States. But the Yemeni army has split, with some units siding with the Houthis. The remaining pro-government forces are focused on fighting the Houthis, not AQAP. The complex war in Yemen now also involves the Saudis, who have been bombing Yemen to try to drive back the Shiite Houthis, whom they see as proxies of their rival, Shiite Iran. But the Saudis are not targeting AQAP, which comprises Sunnis. “Why would Saudi attack them if they’re effectively on the same side in this war?” said a Yemeni intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing security concerns…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
Face Reality: Many Muslims Support ISIS: Tarek Fatah, Toronto Sun, June 16, 2015—In the last week of May, the Qatar-based Arabic news network Al-Jazeera polled its Arabic-language audience on the question: “Do you support the victories of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in your region?”
Sudan’s Bashir is the Palestinians’ and Pretoria’s Favorite Genocidal Tyrant: Eugene Kontorovich, Washington Post, June 15, 2015—The President of Sudan was allowed to leave South Africa unmolested today, despite courts in the country ordering his arrest on a genocide warrant. The International Criminal Court, pursuing a case launched by the Security Council, issued warrants for Bashir’s arrest years ago. Yet he has roamed the globe with impunity.
There Can be No Peace in Jordan Until the World Appreciates the Country’s True Ethnography: Geoffrey Clarfield & Salim Mansur, National Post, June 8, 2015—Arab nationalism is dead. It lasted for 100 years and it has suddenly disappeared. In the former states of now war-torn Libya, Syria and Iraq, speaking Arabic now means nothing. However, being a member of a family, lineage or clan of either the Shia, Sunnis, Christians, Druze, Yazidi, Tuareg or Bedouin means everything. The “Arab League” is now totally dysfunctional.
How Libya Continues to Flummox Europe: Anne Applebaum, Washington Post, Apr. 3, 2015—When I was in Libya a couple of years ago, I met a man who was on a European Union mission. If memory serves, he was writing a report on the Libyan media for an E.U. institution, or perhaps an E.U.-funded one. In any case, he was walking around Tripoli, earnestly conducting interviews and holding meetings at the union’s expense.
The Libyan Quagmire: Col. (ret.) Dr. Jacques Neriah, JCPA, Mar. 25, 2015—Arab civil wars seem to follow a pre-designed pattern. Once the conflict in a particular country bursts open, the country splits into two or more areas with separate capitals and separate ethnicities.
