Pan-Islamic merged mega thread

[The Bread Guy]

I guess the Iranians are using the same "tourist agency" the Russians used for "visits" to eastern Ukraine ...

Iran’s Army Commander Major General Ataollah Salehi denied an organized deployment of the Army Ground Force Special Forces to Syria, but at the same time noted that just a number of army forces are in the Arab country on a voluntary basis.

Some volunteers from the Army have been dispatched to Syria among whom may be a number of forces from the 65th Nohed Brigade (Special Forces), the commander told reporters on Wednesday.

He added that the Army has no responsibility in advisory assistance to Syria, stressing that those sent to the Arab country have volunteered to go there and are acting under the responsibility of an organization in Iran which governs measures related to the advisory assistance.

It came after four members of Iran’s Army Ground Force Special Forces who were on an advisory mission in Syria’s Aleppo were martyred earlier this month.

Army Ground Force Commander Brigadier General Ahmad Reza Pourdastan told Tasnim at the time that the force’s advisers are helping Syria along with the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force advisers.

According to the commander, the four were killed in a large-scale raid launched by thousands of al-Nusra Front militants and other Takfiri terrorists south of Syria’s Aleppo ...

 

[jollyjacktar]

Taliban suffer a work place accident.  ;D

[size=12pt]Taliban suicide bomber accidentally triggers explosives early, killing himself and eight other would-be martyrs at their base[/size]
-Taliban suicide bomber sets off his own vest by accident
-Set off fellow fighters's vests, killing himself and eight others
-Had planned to target Kunduz where Taliban launch new offensive

By Sara Malm for MailOnline

Published: 11:02 GMT, 27 April 2016  | Updated: 15:06 GMT, 27 April 2016

A Taliban suicide bomber accidentally killed himself and eight fellow militants after triggering his explosives vest by mistake.

The jihadist fighters had been ordered to carry out an attack in Kunduz city, Afghanistan, but all died before their got there.

However, one of the militants detonated his vest shortly after leaving a Taliban base in Dasht-e-Archi, triggering everyone elses explosives, the Afghan Interior Ministry said.

The Taliban fighters had been part of a group operating under commander Mullah Wali, the MoI statement said.

The Taliban have been trying to recapture Kunduz, a city which they held for just 14 days after months of fighting with government forces.

The fall of Kunduz, if only for a few days, was a symbolic triumph for the Taliban, who have just launched a spring offensive in Afghanistan.

The Taliban say they stalled their Kunduz assault thismonth, because they had captured four 'important points' outsidethe city and wanted to avoid harming civilians.

'Local residents are now gradually leaving for safer placesand the moment our fighters get approval from centralleadership, they will start (the) advance,' said the group'smain spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.

Uncertainty over which side has the upper hand lingers inthe streets of Kunduz, where memories of last year's deadly routare fresh.

Nearly 300 civilians were killed in the mainfighting, which lasted from April to October, according to the most conservative estimates.

'This is not how normal life should be,' said Jawad Azadzoy,whose cousin was wounded when a makeshift bomb went off outsidehis shop in downtown Kunduz on Monday.

'Life has not been normal for a long time.'

Masoom Baha, a senior doctor at the city's public hospital,said medical staff were barely able to keep up with casualtiesof the fighting, mainly from rockets and artillery fire.

Adding to the strain on emergency services, a U.S. airstrike in Kunduz on Oct. 3 killed 42 people and destroyed ahospital run by Medecins Sans Frontieres, in what the U.S.military has since called a 'tragic mistake'.

To prevent the city from falling again, Afghan troops havetried to secure main roads leading into Kunduz, includingHighway 3 to the east, after supply lines were cut during the2015 siege, slowing efforts to regain control.

Taliban fighters maintain strongholds close to thethoroughfares, however, and during recent skirmishes, somepolice checkpoints on Highway 3 were overrun.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3561255/Taliban-suicide-bomber-accidentally-triggers-explosives-early-killing-eight-martyrs-base.html#ixzz472i9n2HI
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

 

[ueo]

Give what's left of him a cigar. Keep this up and the world will be somewhat safer and saner.

 

[The Bread Guy]

Bit of a chain own goal, eh?  Good one!

 

[jollyjacktar]

Premature martyrification,  could happen to anyone their first time.  ;D

 

[AbdullahD]

Premature martyrification,  could happen to anyone their first time.  ;D

omg that is funny, wrong but funny lol

 

[The Bread Guy]

Cyberfighter/IT geek exploitation team -- UP!

Dozens of foreign IT experts from the terrorist group of ISIS have deserted the group’s ranks in Iraq’s northwestern city of Mosul over the past few days, leaving a remarkable vacuum in the ISIS-linked media centers in the region, local sources.

Local sources confirmed that hundreds of foreign terrorists have recently left ISIS ranks and returned to their home countries, including technical support experts. This has put a pressure on the group’s media centers, which used to broadcast the pro-ISIS propaganda in support of the group’s self-declared Caliphate.

The new wave of dissidence also included a number of American nationals who used to serve as professional film makers on behalf of the extremist group in Mosul and other parts of Iraq.

The head of the Nineveh media center Raafat al-Zarari said that pro-ISIS sources admitted that the group has been suffering a shortage of media workers and IT experts “because many of them have left their areas” ...

More at link

 

[Flavus101]

We can only hope that they will not be allowed to quietly return to their past lives.

 

[YZT580]

But did they really desert? 

 

[Colin Parkinson]

omg that is funny, wrong but funny lol

seconded and I had to steal it for FB  [lol:

 

[CougarKing]

Meanwhile, in Yemen:

Military Times

U.S. reveals troops on the ground in Yemen
Andrew Tilghman, Military Times 7:01 p.m. EDT May 6, 2016

A “small number” of U.S troops are deployed on the ground in Yemen to help fight the al-Qaida affiliate there that was controlling a major port city, a defense official said Friday.

A Pentagon spokesman declined to say how many U.S. troops are there supporting operations led by the Yemeni military and the United Arab Emirates around the port city of Mukalla.

(...SNIPPED)

 

[Edward Campbell]

Meanwhile, in Yemen:

Military Times

An old idea, updated, just a bit ...

 

[The Bread Guy]

Mmmmm, Al Qaeda looking to Syria instead of Pakistan as new home turf?

Al Qaeda’s top leadership in Pakistan, badly weakened after a decade of C.I.A. drone strikes, has decided that the terror group’s future lies in Syria and has secretly dispatched more than a dozen of its most seasoned veterans there, according to senior American and European intelligence and counterterrorism officials.

The movement of the senior Qaeda jihadists reflects Syria’s growing importance to the terrorist organization and most likely foreshadows an escalation of the group’s bloody rivalry with the Islamic State, Western officials say.

The operatives have been told to start the process of creating an alternate headquarters in Syria and lay the groundwork for possibly establishing an emirate through Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, the Nusra Front, to compete with the Islamic State, from which Nusra broke in 2013. This would be a significant shift for Al Qaeda and its affiliate, which have resisted creating an emirate, or formal sovereign state, until they deem conditions on the ground are ready. Such an entity could also pose a heightened terrorist threat to the United States and Europe.

Qaeda operatives have moved in and out of Syria for years. Ayman al-Zawahri, the group’s supreme leader in Pakistan, dispatched senior jihadists to bolster the Nusra Front in 2013. A year later, Mr. Zawahri sent to Syria a shadowy Qaeda cell called Khorasan that American officials say has been plotting attacks against the West.

But establishing a more enduring presence in Syria would present the group with an invaluable opportunity, Western analysts said. A Syria-based Qaeda state would not only be within closer striking distance of Europe but also benefit from the recruiting and logistical support of fighters from Iraq, Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon ...

 

[Journeyman]

.....The operatives have been told to start the process of creating an alternate headquarters in Syria and lay the groundwork for possibly establishing an emirate through Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, the Nusra Front, to compete with the Islamic State, from which Nusra broke in 2013.

For anyone seriously interested in some background info on this "schism," I recommend the Institute for the Study of War's series, which includes Jabhat al Nusra and ISIS: Sources of Strength. 

It includes sufficient detail without getting too pedantic (or assuming that the reader knows each of the 'Abu al-NAME  players); it's particular strength (attached link to report #3) is in explaining why the current Western 'plan' will inevitably fail.

 

[Eye In The Sky]

There's a plan?  Wow.  ;D

 

[CougarKing]

The prelude to a more substantial US armed intervention to stabilize this country?

Reuters

Report says US special forces stationed in Libya as rival groups race to expel IS from bastion
By: Agence France-Presse | Reuters
May 13, 2016 10:44 AM


TRIPOLI, Libya -- (UPDATE - 10:59 a.m.) US special operations troops have been stationed at two outposts in Libya since late last year to try to enlist local support for a possible offensive against Islamic State, the Washington Post reported on Thursday, citing US officials.

Two teams totaling fewer than 25 troops are operating from around the cities of Misurata and Benghazi to seek potential allies and glean intelligence on threats, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, the newspaper reported.

(...SNIPPED)

 

[The Bread Guy]

The prelude to a more substantial US armed intervention to stabilize this country?

Reuters

And a little something on what such a fight might look like, from the tech editor of Defense One.

... Defense Department officials said they were “realistically hopeful” about the prospects for the Unity Government* but added, “there will be hardliners who continue to push back.”

“There are likely to be spoilers...dead-enders that will be irreconcilable under any conditions. That could be anywhere between ten to 40 percent of the militias that are out there,” said Chris Chivvis associate director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at RAND “That’s a reality that Libya has to deal with.”

Such spoilers would put an international protection force in an awkward position, depending on how many people side against the government. Exactly how unified or unifying is a government that rules from behind a wall of foreign troops? ...

Soup sandwich, indeed ...

* - That's a "Unity" gov't between, according to different sources, two or three currently-trying-to-govern bodies.

 

[The Bread Guy]

Looking a bit more broadly at some recent attacks ...

A series of coordinated attacks in three cities in Syria and Yemen Monday by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) provides important new insights into the group's current capabilities and strategy, suggesting that the months ahead will be increasingly violent in the Middle East and perhaps further afield.

At least five distinct aspects of the Monday attacks should raise eyebrows and security concerns in many countries: their locations, simultaneity, logistical prowess, multi-country coordination and ISIL's evolving strategy in its wider political-military context.

The most noteworthy aspect of the attacks was the combination of multiple, large-scale bombings in the political hearts of the Syrian and Yemeni governments, which both appear more vulnerable than assumed ...

 

[Journeyman]

“There are likely to be spoilers...dead-enders that will be irreconcilable under any conditions. That could be anywhere between ten to 40 percent of the militias that are out there,” said Chris Chivvis associate director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at RAND “That’s a reality that Libya has to deal with.”

I would suggest that Libyans are quite aware of the reality on the ground.  That's a reality that 'the West' has to honestly deal with.


* And by "the West," I'm not remotely including anyone  who believes that UN blue berets are the answer;  those people don't even understand the question.

 

[The Bread Guy]

... That's a reality that 'the West' has to honestly deal with ...

And I think they have to understand it first, no?