Pan-Islamic merged mega thread

[CougarKing]

Yemen disintegrating into a 3-sided civil war between Al Qaeda vs the Houthi/Shia rebels vs Yemeni Pres. Hadi's govt. forces...

Military.com

Yemen, a U.S. Counter-Terrorism Partner, Teeters on Edge of Collapse

Los Angeles Times | Mar 01, 2015 | by Patrick J. McDonnell
SANA, Yemen -- The capital remains firmly in the hands of northern-based Shiite Muslim rebels.

Sunni Muslim tribesmen to the east are arming in revolt and threatening to sabotage the country's crucial oil and gas infrastructure.

In the south, where separatist sentiment is rampant, President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi is setting up a rival power base with loyal militiamen, army units and tribes -- and the backing of powerful Persian Gulf states.

The fast-moving events of recent weeks have left Yemen, a key partner in U.S. counter-terrorism efforts, on the edge of collapse and veering toward a possible civil war with sectarian overtones.

(...SNIPPED)

 

[a_majoor]

More Christian soldiers taking to the field. Sadly, as a minority group they simply don't have the numbers to do more than defend their own enclaves for however long they can:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/11442355/How-Syrias-Christians-stopped-turning-the-other-cheek.html

How Syria's Christians stopped turning the other cheek
New Christian militia goes into battle against Isil - but pays a high price
By RIchard Spencer, Middle East Editor
7:11PM GMT 28 Feb 2015

Like many of Syria’s warriors, Kino Gabriel was a student four years ago, training to be a dentist.

Like many other Syrians, he resisted the call to war, until he saw the threat to the towns and villages where he grew up and worshipped.

Like countless thousands, he soon found himself, gun in hand, snow falling in the bitter Syrian winter, fighting for his life, claiming his first kills.

Mr Gabriel, though, is a rarity in this remorseless conflict. He is a Christian, a member of a minority that in both Syrian and Iraqi wars has tried desperately to stay on the sidelines.

No longer. Christian militias have existed for a number of years, sometimes patrolling neighbourhoods, sometimes venturing further afield. But now they are engaged in their first major battle.

For the last week, they have been fighting the jihadists of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant across a major front in north-west Syria, in alliance with the YPG, the Kurdish defence forces. They have had mixed fortunes, but the battle has energised Middle East Christians worldwide - many of them exiles who fled the chaos of post-Saddam Iraq.

“We saw what happened in Iraq in 2003,” Mr Gabriel said, speaking by Skype from Qamishli, near the front line. “Our people were left alone, with no autonomy, no army that could defend them.

“Most of our people have emigrated, thanks to attacks from al-Qaeda and other groups. They couldn’t defend themselves. We learned that lesson and have prepared ourselves.”

In 2003, the Christian population of Iraq was well over one million. Now it is less than half that. In June last year, more than 600,000 were driven out of their homes when Isil swept across the Nineveh plain, traditional homeland of Assyrian Christians, in northern Iraq last summer.

In Syria, when the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began in 2011, the church was split, with many bishops supporting the regime but individuals joining forces with liberal activists in protest against him.

Few actually felt compelled to fight, though, until the onslaught against Christian villages and churches, first by Jabhat al-Nusra, and later by Isil.

Christians have seen churches blown up, crosses torn down, and those living under jihadist rule have been forced to pay the “jizya”, a special tax.

In a particular irony, Armenian Christians who came to Syria in flight from pogroms in their native Turkey 100 years ago have now been forced to flee in the opposite direction.

Syria, even more than Iraq, is a patchwork of sects and languages: many of these Christians speak and conduct services in Aramaic, the language of Christ.

Mr Gabriel’s chance at the front came at Christmas 2013, when he joined a militia known as the Syriac Military Council, which was fighting alongside Kurds in a battle for the town of Tel Hamis, south of Qamishli, his home city. Tel Hamis was in the hands of Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian Al-Qaeda branch from which Isil then split off.

“I think I was prepared,” Mr Gabriel, a former lay servant in the church, said. “I was a little bit afraid - it was my first battle.”

He and his fellow fighters managed to drive the Jabhat al-Nusra fighters back, but the attack stalled in the December snow. The area has been fought over ever since, with the YPG and their Syriac Military Council allies claiming on Friday to have finally retaken Tel Hamis, this time from Isil, which took over Jabhat al-Nusra positions last year.

The local Arab population is split, with some supporting the Kurds, others the Islamists.

The effect on the wider community of the expanded fighting front, though, has been disastrous. Many of the Christians have fled - more than 1,000 families in the last week alone, according to George Merza, head of the local Assyrian council.

On Monday, more than 300 of those Christians that remained were taken hostage in a lightning Isil counter-offensive in villages around Tel Tamer, in north-west Syria’s semi-desert.

“They are innocent people, children, women and elders,” Mr Merza said. “We demand an immediate intervention to save our people, who have lived on this land for thousands of years in peace. Today they are driven to death and destruction. This is inhuman.”

The Syriac Military Council is hoping to offer Isil a prisoner swap, returning eight jihadis captured in the battle for Tel Hamis for the civilian captives, but no negotiations have yet begun.

The resistance put up by the Christian fighters from these ancient communities, heirs to Senacherib and Ashurnasirpal, the great Assyrian emperors of the Biblical era, has heartened an international diaspora which has up to now watched events unfold with glum, helpless horror.

Assyrians and Syriacs as far afield as London, New York and Sweden have posted patriotic appeals online. For many, it is their cousins who have been captured, and who are dying in battle.

Some have also taken it upon themselves to return home to join up, and have been joined by a number of other Western volunteers. Ashley Johnston, a former Australian soldier, became the first Westerner to die fighting alongside the Kurds and Christians in the battle for Tel Hamis on Monday.

“Ashley was a good man who never complained and was always positive,” Jordan Matson, the unofficial leader of the Kurds’ foreign legion, said in a Facebook tribute. “I consider it an honour to have known and served with him.”

Mr Matson pointed out that Mr Johnston was considered a criminal in Australia, which has made it an offence to fight in the war on either side.

The question of whether to fight or not remains, though, a major big question for the Christian exiles. They ask themselves whether it is right or even worthwhile to risk their lives for a diminished, violent homeland.

The Christians of the region have long held that they should “turn the other cheek” in the face of assault and discrimination.

Father Tony Malham, an Assyrian priest who has left Iraq and now serves the community in London, says that this is the only pragmatic response, given that Christians are overwhelmingly outnumbered.

“On the one hand, this is our homeland; on the other, it’s not true to say it’s our homeland any more,” he said. “If we want to have a home for ourselves we have to fight for it, but as Christians we can’t fight, we can’t kill.

“We have to talk, we have to talk in a civilised way. But these people who are against us can’t talk, they can only fight and kill.

Mr Gabriel acknowledges that at just 1,000 strong, his militia is a small force compared to those ranged against it. But he says he can no longer stand by and watch his people driven from their homes like sheep.

“Over the past century, our people six times have suffered displacement, massacres, other forms of aggression,” he said.

“This has targeted the Syriacs and the Christian presence in the Middle East. We are acting based on the facts before us - to protect ourselves on our historical land. This is our right and duty.”

 

[jollyjacktar]

Full story and photos at link below.

Isis 'fed murdered kidnap victim to his own mother after she travelled to their headquarters and demanded to see him'

ByJennifer Newton for MailOnline

Published: 06:05 GMT, 2 March 2015 | Updated: 14:49 GMT, 2 March 2015

A British fighter who travelled to Iraq to stop the Islamic State claims the terror group fed a murdered kidnap victim to his own mother after she went to their headquarters and demanded to see him.

Yasir Abdulla, a security guard from Keighley, West Yorkshire decided to go to Iraq and fight against ISIS after hearing they came within six miles of taking control of his home village in Kurdistan, which he left in 2000.

It has been reported that the 36-year-old bought a set to combat fatigues online for £100 before going to Kurdistan and buying an assault rifle.

He then joined hundreds of other Kurdish and Peshmerga forces who are trying to stop the spread of ISIS by patrolling a ten-mile front line in Iraq.

Mr Abdulla returned to the UK last week but told The Sun how an elderly Kurdish woman, whose son was captured by ISIS and taken to Mosul, went to meet the jihadis to try and secure his release and was then fed his body.

The father of four told the newspaper: 'She was determined to find her son and went to ISIS headquarters and asked to see him.

'The ISIS men told her to sit down because she had travelled a long way and said she should have some food before they took her to meet her son.

'They brought her cups of tea and fed her a meal of cooked meat, rice and soup. She thought they were kind.

'But they had killed him and chopped him up and after she finished the meal and asked to see her son they laughed and said "You've just eaten him."'

During his time on the front line, Mr Abdulla revealed how ISIS are terrorising locals by calling them and threatening to kidnap them and bury them alive unless they surrender.

He also told of how the terror group kill prisoners they capture by throwing them on a 'human bonfire' and that he saw his own cousin killed in an ISIS attack.

But despite returning back to his family in Yorkshire, Mr Abdulla is keen to go back to Kurdistan saying he wants to finish the job in defeating ISIS.

The new details about the cruelty of ISIS come as Iraq's prime minister called on tribal fighters to abandon the jihadis ahead of an offensive to retake Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit from extremists.

Haider al-Abadi offered no timeline for an attack on Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad, which fell into the hands of ISIS last summer.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2975200/Isis-fed-murdered-kidnap-victim-mother-travelled-headquarters-demanded-him.html#ixzz3TFJzYwMc
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

 

[jollyjacktar]

What a surprise...  :

Jihadi John's mother screamed 'that's my son' when she saw first beheading video - but did not report him

Ghania Emwazi realised that the the knife-wielding executioner who appeared in video showing murder of US journalist James Foley was her son Mohammed

By Robert Tait, in Kuwait City  2:26PM GMT 02 Mar 2015

The mother of Mohammed Emwazi knew instantly he was Jihadi John when he first appeared in front of the cameras in the murder of American journalist James Foley after recognising his voice, Kuwaiti investigators have been told.

Ghania Emwazi screamed "that's my son" as the knife-wielding executioner made a speech in English while standing behind Mr Foley moments before beheading him last August. 

But she did not tell the authorities, it has emerged.

Mr Foley, 40, was the first of at least five Western hostages of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant thought to have been executed at the hands of Mohammed Emzawi, who grew up in London.

Western media revealed last week that British and US intelligence had established that the killer was Emwazi, causing widespread shock and dismay in Kuwait, the Arab Gulf kingdom, where he was born.

But it emerged on Monday that Emwazi's parents had been aware of their son's activities for months after realising that his was the voice on the video, according to testimony given to Kuwaiti police by his father, Jassem, 51.

Mr Emwazi Snr was questioned along with one of his sons for most of the day on Sunday after being summoned by police.

"The mother recognised the voice and she screamed 'that is my son' while he was talking before beheading the first American hostage," a source familiar with the Kuwaiti investigation said. "When they played the video again, the father was sure it was his son."

Insiders described Mr Emwazi as "emotional and upset at what had happened to his son" while talking to investigators.

"I am waiting day-by-day to hear about his death," he is said to have told his interrogators."

Mr Emwazi – who now lives in Al-Oyoun, a neighbourhood near Taima, about 20 miles outside Kuwait City – said he last had contact with his son in 2013, shortly before he travelled to Turkey. He is said to have told his parents that he planned to move to Syria to "deliver aid".

The father, who holds British citizenship like his son, is understood to be employed by a Co-op supermarket in Kuwait. But workers there said he only showed up every six months in order to renew his Kuwaiti residence permit.

Although Emwazi emigrated to the UK along with his parents and siblings in the 1990s, most members of the family are believed to have moved back to Kuwait, where police kept them under close surveillance following the recent revelations.

The al-Oyoun area was described as a closed zone on Monday.

Mr Emwazi snr is said to have been a Kuwaiti police officer himself, having served from 1980 until 1993. He has been reported by some sources to have left Kuwait after collaborating with Saddam Hussien's Iraqi forces after they invaded Kuwait in 1990. He gained British citizeship in 2002 and moved back to Kuwait the following year, according to local sources.

The family belongs to a group known as Bedoons (without in Arabic), who do not have full Kuwaiti citizenship and lack full educational and employment rights. Many live in impoverished sprawling neighbourhoods in Taima in ramshackle tumbledown houses.

Full story here:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/islamic-state/11444736/Mother-of-Mohammed-Emwazi-knew-he-was-Jihadi-John-from-the-outset.html

 

[cupper]

The more I read about what these turds carry out in the name of the twisted form of their religious beliefs, the more I think that we should institute retribution eye for eye, hand for hand.

Maybe rounding up family members if known ISIS members and doing to them the same that they do to hostages, subjugated populations. Taking captured ISIS members and doing the same as they do to captured allied forces.

But that would be wrong, and stooping to the same level of barbarism as these f__ktards.

 

[Sean Murray]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/01/main-u-s-backed-syrian-rebel-group-disbanding-joining-islamists.html

This is a huge setback. Would it be safe to say that the West has failed in Syria? Is it fair to say that the failure of the west to get involved sufficiently has resulted in the decline of moderate forces and the rise of radical jihadists? Is it safe to say that with the loss of this brigade, there will be a further lack of will by the West to get involved more deeply in the conflict?

 

[cupper]

Its Bamiyan all over again.

It appears that the damage may not be as bad as first thought, although there were some real antiquities destroyed. Turns out that a lot of the artifacts inside the museum were actually replicas, with the real artifacts "safely" ensconced in the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad.

Did ISIS Smash Fake Sculptures in Mosul? Experts Say Many of Them Were Replicas

http://news.artnet.com/art-world/did-isis-smash-fake-sculptures-in-mosul-271776

While no one should take ISIS to be any less of a threat than it is, we might take some small consolation from the possibility that some of the sculptures the militants smashed on video this week at the Nineveh Museum in Mosul, Iraq, were replicas. While an Assyrian stone lion smashed in the videos is indisputably a terrible loss, the destruction of replicas in this particular case may soften the blow.

"According to archaeologists, most if not all the statues in the Mosul museum are replicas not originals," reports Channel 4 News, London. “The reason they crumble so easily is that they're made of plaster. ‘You can see iron bars inside," pointed out Mark Altaweel of the Institute of Archaeology at University College, London, as we watched the video together. ‘The originals don't have iron bars.'"

“According to the British Institute," adds Channel 4, “the originals were taken to Baghdad for safekeeping. ISIS probably wouldn't care about the distinction. One false idol is the same as another."

All the same, reaction around the world has been swift and horrified (see The Metropolitan Museum and Others Respond to ISIS Destruction of Assyrian Sculptures). ISIS has also done a brisk business in smuggling antiquities out of the region for sale on foreign markets (see Increase in Antiquities Smuggling Busts amidst Government Crackdown), though the international trade is mostly focused on smaller items.

Why are the militants so bent on destruction of the region's cultural heritage? Amr al-Azm, a Syrian anthropologist and historian, told the New York Times that the destruction of artworks, and the slaughter and capture of Assyrians and others in the area that it accompanied, are strategic. While the militants claim that they are smashing the sculptures because they are idols forbidden by Islam, he posits that “It's all a provocation" aimed to lure U.S. and Iraqi forces to try to retake Mosul. “They want a fight with the West because that's how they gain credibility and recruits," Azm said.

ISIS has “repeatedly threatened to destroy [the museum's] collection," according to the Times, since they took the city in June.

Islamic State fighters smash historic statues in Iraq

http://www.channel4.com/news/islamic-state-fighters-smash-historic-statues-in-iraq

It looks terrible - vandals of the Islamic State attacking ancient Assyrian statues with sledge-hammers.

Nineveh, on the site of modern day Mosul, was the capital of the Assyrian empire that lasted nineteen centuries from 2500 to 605 BC.

But, according to archaeologists, most if not all the statues in the Mosul museum are replicas not originals. The reason they crumble so easily is that they're made of plaster.

"You can see iron bars inside," pointed out Mark Altaweel of the Institute of Archaeology at University College, London, as we watched the video together. "The originals don't have iron bars."

According to Eleanor Robson, chair of the British Institute for the Study of Iraq, the majority of original statues have been taken to the Baghdad Museum for safe-keeping.

'The winged bull'

Nonetheless, the stone winged bull you can see being destroyed is an original, probably one at the gates to Nineveh, dating back to the seventh century.

"I think the Winged Bull is very important locally, because it's one of the few objects that hasn't left the country or gone to Baghdad," said Dr Robson.

The demolition squad of the Islamic State are following in the tradition of the Taliban who blew up the Buddhas at Bamyan, in Afghanistan, and the Malian jihadi group Ansar al Dine which destroyed mud tombs and ancient Islamic manuscripts in Timbuktu.

They quote suras from the Koran that they say demand the destruction of idols and icons. But iconoclasm isn't just a Salafi Islamic idea. In the 17th Century, puritans, under the rule of Oliver Cromwell, destroyed Catholic holy objects and art in Britain.

"We pulled down two mighty great angells, with wings, and divers other angells . . . and about a hundred chirubims and angells," wrote William Dowsing, Cromwell's chief wrecker, after leading his henchmen into Peterhouse college chapel in Cambridge in December 1643.

Countless works of art were lost to history. But such vandalism doesn't just destroy objects. It's also an attempt to deny people their sense of self.

"What ISIS does by destroying cultural sites is fundamentally to undermine people's hope," said Dr Robson. "It undermines the cohesion that holds communities and societies together. That's why it's so damaging and so hard."

 

[quadrapiper]

It appears that the damage may not be as bad as first thought, although there were some real antiquities destroyed. Turns out that a lot of the artifacts inside the museum were actually replicas, with the real artifacts "safely" ensconced in the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad.

Now would be the time for the National Museum, and any other institution with moveable antiquities in Iraq, to pack up their treasures and send them abroad: to India or Australia, perhaps. Can't imagine tourists are flocking to Baghdad at the moment.

 

[cupper]

Now would be the time for the National Museum, and any other institution with moveable antiquities in Iraq, to pack up their treasures and send them abroad: to India or Australia, perhaps. Can't imagine tourists are flocking to Baghdad at the moment.

In fact the Iraqi National Museum just pushed up it's reopening after the 2003 invasion to today, as a show of standing up to ISIS.

On another note, ISIS or agents acting for them have made threats against Twitter, its CEO and employees in reaction to having their Twitter feeds shut down,

http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2015/03/02/isis-threatens-billionaire-jack-dorsey-and-twitter-as-terrorists-display-social-media-savvy/

 

[a_majoor]

The more I read about what these turds carry out in the name of the twisted form of their religious beliefs, the more I think that we should institute retribution eye for eye, hand for hand.

Maybe rounding up family members if known ISIS members and doing to them the same that they do to hostages, subjugated populations. Taking captured ISIS members and doing the same as they do to captured allied forces.

But that would be wrong, and stooping to the same level of barbarism as these f__ktards.

Jordan is already at that point, and given human nature I am fairly certain that more and more people are going to flip over to that way of looking at things. Looking at the history of the 30 years war, that is about a certain a prediction as you can get.

Since this is, to a large extent, a religious war between the Shia and Sunni's, the best thing *we* can do is to take a step back and let the Saudi's, Iranians and Turks use their proxies to fight it out for regional hegemony. They can bloody their hands with atrocities and take the consequences. Far better for us to stand aside and contain the fighting to within the region as the most active road we should take.

 

[a_majoor]

More on Christian soldiers coming to join the fight against ISIS, in the National Post:

http://news.nationalpost.com/2015/03/02/moved-by-plight-of-christians-modern-day-crusaders-head-to-iraq-as-holy-defenders-of-faith-against-isis/

Moved by plight of Christians, modern-day defenders of the faith head to Iraq to fight ISIS
Loveday Morris, Washington Post | March 2, 2015 | Last Updated: Mar 2 11:39 AM ET

DOHUK, Iraq — In a smoky living room in a makeshift military headquarters in this northern Iraqi city, Brett, a former U.S serviceman with tattoos of Jesus etched on his forearms, explains how he hopes to help to keep the church bells of Iraq ringing.

“Jesus tells us what you do unto the least of them, you do unto me,” said the 28-year-old from Detroit, who served an extended tour in Iraq in 2006 and 2007 and asked for his surname not to be published to protect his family at home. “I couldn’t sit back and watch what was happening, women being raped and sold wholesale.”

So in December he travelled to northern Iraq, where he joined a growing band of foreigners leaving their lives in the West behind to fight with newly formed Christian militias. The leaders of those militias say they’ve been swamped with hundreds of requests from veterans and volunteers from around the world who want to join them.

The new arrivals add to a varied array of foreign fighters and donors drawn to the expanding conflict, which has had a brutal impact on Iraq’s minority sects and is threatening Christianity here at its roots. But while they say they welcome the gesture, Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq are wondering how to vet foreign recruits who are clamoring to sign up.

Brett’s group, Dwekh Nawsha, which means “self-sacrifice” in Aramaic, the ancient language spoken by Jesus, has only six Westerners among its 200 Iraqi Assyrian Christian fighters. But Emanuel Khoshaba Youkhana, the secretary general of the Assyrian Patriotic Party, which funds the group, says more than 900 other foreigners have been in touch to find out how to join.

Some of the newly arrived say they’ve come to fight for their religion — others just to fight. Brett calls himself the “King of Nineveh” — after the province of ancient Christian villages now occupied by the Islamic State. He lifts his shirt to show a tattoo of St. Michael on his back and the Twenty-Third Psalm, inked up his side.

The Iraqi Assyrians he fights alongside, not all of whom are impressed by the “King of Nineveh” persona, stress that this is not a crusade, but a fight to return to their homes.

“We don’t want to fight a holy war for Christians,” said Marcus Naissan, 25, an Iraqi Assyrian fighter. “We fight for our land.”

He said that while the influx of foreigners brings the media spotlight and potential funding, it also brings concerns.

“We aren’t crusaders,” he said. “That’s how they make it look.”

Brett and others say they receive dozens of emails a day from potential recruits.

“This place will be flooded,” he said. “From Australia, Asia, literally everywhere. It’s overwhelming, it’s awesome.”

All recruits are interviewed before they come to ensure their intentions are good, he said. Youkhana says checks are carried out, but he wouldn’t go into the details.

At the base in Dohuk, Louis Park, a former Marine from Houston, nervously drums his fingers on his Kalashnikov as he explains that he’s desperate get to the front line to fight Islamic State militants.

“I was prepared for this to be a one-way ticket,” said the 24-year-old, who was discharged from the service just over a month ago after being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, following a six-month tour in Afghanistan in 2012. “I just want to get out there.”

He decided to join the group after the Marines said he would not be deployed again because of his diagnosis.

“I couldn’t adjust to peacetime,” he said. “The fight for me wasn’t over. I felt I didn’t have a purpose anymore.”
 
While religion wasn’t a particular motivation, he said Dwekh Nawsha’s fight against the Islamic State was an easy one to relate to.

Some foreigners have concerns about potential legal entanglements on their return home. The Christian units are on the home turf of the Kurds, and a Kurdish paramilitary group that is battling the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, called the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, is affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, designated a terrorist organization by the United States.

Masrour Barzani, Kurdistan’s national security chief, said that foreign governments were being kept up to date on those travelling to join military groups.

“There are regulations we have to bear in mind and make sure everything happens according to the legal structure,” said Barzani. “We are thankful for any volunteer that is coming here and fight. But we don’t lack men, we lack weapons.”

Currently waiting for papers to confirm that their status is legal, most of the foreigners with Dwekh Nawsha have yet to see much in the way of combat.

Just two have the right paperwork to travel with their weapons, Youkhana said, leaving the others largely confined to their base in Dohuk.

Other recruits are being held back until paperwork is organized for those who have already arrived.

Hussein Malla / AP PhotoIn this, Feb. 28, 2015 photo, an Assyrian man with a red cross painted on his forehead holds a banner as he walks during a protest of several hundred people in solidarity with Christians abducted in Syria and Iraq, in downtown Beirut, Lebanon. ..

Tim Locks, a 38-year-old from Britain who ran a construction firm before arriving in Iraq two weeks ago, admits the wait has been frustrating.

“We are just waiting for the I’s to be dotted and the T’s to be crossed,” he said.

As the Islamic State takes hundreds of Christians hostage across the border in Syria, the leaders here say they are still trying to work out how best to use outside assistance.

“It’s very good to have the Westerners coming,” said Cpt. Khalid Hamzo, an officer with the official peshmerga forces. He said he recently obtained permission to take two foreigners out to the front lines to see if they could help resolve an issue with a supply of mortars that weren’t exploding.

“But they couldn’t help without the Internet,” he said, as he left the makeshift headquarters with a printout of a manual on 81-mm. mortars. “We need artillery experts.”
 
The Assyrian Christian fighters are largely kept away from the front lines. At Dwekh Nawsha’s forward operating base in the Christian village of Baqufa, they make up the second line of defence behind Kurdish peshmerga forces. The battle here is largely static, but mortar fire is exchanged daily.

For the Iraqi Christian fighters here, the battle is more personal.

Roni Najm, 21, can see his village from the telescope positioned on the building’s roof. Islamic State’s black flag flutters above its church.

“It just makes you cry,” he said.

 

[OldSolduer]

IIRC a bunch of terrorists kidnapped some Soviet Citiznes in Lebanon in the 80s. According to the story, the Soviets kidnapped some Lebanese citizens and sent a finger of one of them to the terrorists with the note "Release ours or there will be more parts to follow".
The Soviets were released quite shortly after this.

 

[Remius]

Full story and photos at link below.

That story might be a fabrication...

http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/isisfedson.asp

 

[jollyjacktar]

That story might be a fabrication...

http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/isisfedson.asp

Yes, the thought did cross my mind as well.  But, so far pretty well everything and more that has been said about their antics has panned out.  There might be at the very least a grain, however small, of truth to this claim.  As this war seems to be a race to the bottom in regards of the depths they won't plunge to on all sides and cruelty abounds as the participants and war becomes vile, it would not surprise me if it is not a fabrication.

 

[Remius]

Yes, the thought did cross my mind as well.  But, so far pretty well everything and more that has been said about their antics has panned out.  There might be at the very least a grain, however small, of truth to this claim.  As this war seems to be a race to the bottom in regards of the depths they won't plunge to on all sides and cruelty abounds as the participants and war becomes vile, it would not surprise me if it is not a fabrication.

I wouldn't put it past them, though either.

 

[CougarKing]

Places like Malaysia and Indonesia have a certain amount of "cultural" strength to resist the advances of Wahhabi fundamentalism, but ultimately it will take the collective will of the people saying "sod off!" and stomping on these goons to effectively preserve their culture and society.

Seems the cultural strength mentioned above by Colin P. wasn't enough to prevent these Malaysians from joining IS, or their predecessors from joining Jemaah Islamiyah (an Al-Qaeda affiliate) or a related Malaysian affiliate group called KMM.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were more IS recruits from Malaysia, Indonesia, the southern Philippines and southern Thailand.

2 Islamic insurgent groups in the southern Philippines called BIFF and Abu Sayyaf recently pledged allegiance to ISIS, if I can recall correctly.

Reuters

Two Malaysians identified in IS beheading video from Syria

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysian authorities have identified two Malaysians in a video by the Islamic State of a beheading that is believed to have taken place in Syria.

Mohd Faris Anuar and Muhamad Wanndy Muhammad Jedi, aged 20 and 25 respectively, were identified as the men involved in the beheading of a Syrian man in a video posted to Facebook on Feb. 22, said Ayub Khan Mydin, the police counter-terrorism division's deputy chief.

Wanndy traveled with his wife Nor Mahmudah Ahmad to Syria on Jan. 26, while Faris went last September, said Ayub Khan.

(...SNIPPED)

 

[CougarKing]

How was ISIS able to use these oil fields to fund its activities if most of the international community knows that buying from them essentially funds terrorism/instability? Black market buyers of oil from Turkey, etc.?

Reuters

Islamic State torches oil field near Tikrit as militia advance

By Saif Hameed and Dominic Evans

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Islamic State militants have set fire to oil wells northeast of the city of Tikrit to obstruct an assault by Shi'ite militiamen and Iraqi soldiers trying to drive them from the Sunni Muslim city and surrounding towns, a witness said.

The witness and a military source said Islamic State fighters ignited the fire at the Ajil oil field to shield themselves from attack by Iraqi military helicopters.

The offensive is the biggest Iraqi forces have yet mounted against IS, which has declared an Islamic caliphate on captured territory in Iraq and Syria and spread fear across the region by slaughtering Arab and Western hostages and killing or kidnapping members of religious minorities like Yazidis and Christians.

(...SNIPPED)

 

[a_majoor]

How was ISIS able to use these oil fields to fund its activities if most of the international community knows that buying from them essentially funds terrorism/instability? Black market buyers of oil from Turkey, etc.?

Reuters

Because oil is a fungible commodity (i.e. the end user generally neither knows nor cares where it comes from), the black market is probably the best explanation. After a few links in the chain, the end buyer really has no idea where the oil came from if the documentation is doctored. Fungability works both ways; the crash in oil prices affects both friends (Alberta) and enemies (Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran), even if the proximate causes are far removed (modern tracking technology driving a production boom in the US is a big factor, reducing demand for imported oil).

And BTW, although the Persian Gulf is perhaps the main global source of crude oil, the US imported much of its oil from Mexico, Venezuela and Canada, so US reduction in demand for imported oil isn't directly impacting OPEC, but by changing market forces is indirectly impacting prices. A surge in demand from China or India, or changes in supply by Saudi Arabia could reset the picture again.

 

[Edward Campbell]

According to the Daily mail:

'Sorry mum': Jihadi John apologises to his family for having his identity revealed - but not for beheading western hostages

"Mohammed Emwazi has apologised to his parents for bringing shame to the family after being unmasked as ISIS butcher 'Jihadi John'.

But the 26-year-old executioner, who has murdered a number of western hostages, including two British aid workers, has not expressed any remorse for the barbaric killings.

Emwazi's family have been forced into hiding since his identity was revealed."

Killer: Mohammed Emwazi in the most recent
photograph known to have been taken of him before
he entered Syria to join ISIS militants.

 

[McG]

If this war will decide which nation "leads" the middle east, Iran is stepping-up to be the heavy hitter.

Signs point to Iran taking over the ground war in Iraq
While Canadian and other forces are training Iraqi Kurds, and coalition jets are bombing select IS targets, Iranian-back militias and Iranian forces themselves are leading the charge against Islamic State strongholds
Patrick Martin
Globe and Mail
06 Mar 2015

While Canadian and other forces are training Iraqi Kurds, and coalition jets are bombing select IS targets, Iranian-back militias and Iranian forces themselves are leading the charge against Islamic State strongholds

It’s been said that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” But, when it comes to Iraq and Iran, it’s not quite so simple, as the United States and allies such as Canada are finding out.

During the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, Washington made a clear choice: Iran, ruled by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, was the enemy. After all, it was Khomeini’s followers who had overrun the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held dozens of Americans hostage. Consequently, Jimmy Carter’s administration went to work helping Saddam Hussein’s forces take the fight to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. U.S. officials provided Iranian commanders with almost daily intelligence briefings on where Iran’s forces were located and what they were up to. The war was still a draw, except that more than a million people died.

These days, the United States and a coalition that includes Canada have decided that Islamic State is the enemy since it has overrun large areas of Iraq, threatening the peace and sanctity of this recovering country and the region. In the anti-IS campaign involving coalition aircraft and Iraqi and Kurdish ground forces, the United States finds itself in a defacto alliance with none other than Iran, its old enemy.

Iran too is doing much to help Iraqis fight back against Islamic State. In fact it’s doing a lot more than the U.S.-led coalition. While Canadian and other forces are training Iraqi Kurds, and coalition jets are bombing select IS targets, Iranian-back militias and Iranian forces themselves are leading the charge against Islamic State strongholds. The IS invasion last year was stopped in large part because of Iranian assistance.

This week the target is Tikrit a major Sunni city in the centre of Iraq that is famous for two things: It was the birthplace of Saladin, the great Kurdish warrior who drove the European Crusaders from the Holy Land, and home to Saddam Hussein, the brutal Iraqi dictator who would have liked to drive Kurds and Shiites out of his country.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Americans this week that Iran is as radicalized today as it ever has been and should not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. He also argued that just because Iranians are fighting against Islamic State doesn’t make them good guys. The Shia radicals of Iran and the Sunni radicals of Islamic State are “competing for the crown of militant Islam,” he told the U.S. Congress. There may be something to that.

On Monday, the two competitors squared off as a reported 30,000 Iraqi personnel launched an assault on towns in the Tikrit area that have been occupied by IS forces since June.

The attack force was comprised of regular Iraqi army units (mostly Shiites), Shia Iraqi militias, who make up about two thirds of the forces, and some Sunni tribal militias who also have opposed the IS invasion. At the helm of the operation, was Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force, who has been directing operations for some of Iraq’s Shia militias. Alongside the fighters Iranian advisers and troops were reported to be operating artillery and surveillance drones.

There was no U.S. or coalition aircraft anywhere near the fighting; nor were there any Canadian or other coalition trainers on the ground. Iraqi officials said they had not asked the United States or its partners for help. In this battle at least, it is Iran and Iraq that are the friends in the fight against the enemy, Islamic State. The United States and Canada are sidelined.

“We still welcome the international alliance’s support,” Ali al-Alaa, an aide to Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, told reporters this week. “But if they won’t be supporting us, we have no problem.”

There might be a big problem, however, if the predominantly Shia attack force attempts to drive the Sunni residents out of the Tikrit area along with the IS fighters, or to carry out reprisals against the population. Such things were perpetrated by Shia militias that defeated IS forces recently in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad.

In June, when IS forces moved into the Tikrit area, there was an apparent massacre of some 1500 Shia cadets at a former U.S. base known as Camp Speicher. The mass execution was said to have been carried out with the assistance of Sunni groups from the area, groups that once were loyal to Saddam Hussein.

While Iraqi officials say they launched this large-scale operation in Tikrit to lay the groundwork for an assault later this year on the IS-occupied northern city of Mosul, others, including U.S. commanders, aren’t so sure. They worry that the Shia forces may have revenge against the Sunnis foremost in mind and that a sectarian bloodbath may result.

Sitting on the sidelines, however, they can only watch and wait.