al-qaida chief ayman al-zawahiri the coordinator 2016 part 19-142-caliphate-isis-52-isis-abandon

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Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2016 Part 19-142-Caliphate-ISIS-52-ISIS-Abandon

Among those who warned of the demise of the self-proclaimed Islamic State was Osama bin Laden, according to newly released documents recovered during the 2011 raid that killed the al Qaeda leader.Bin Laden saw those calling for a shift away from attacking the “apostates” and toward a self-created caliphate as impetuous youths who didn’t understand that establishing a state would be costly and potentially damaging.Today, as U.S. strikes target ISIS in Iraq and Syria, al Qaeda is exploiting a growing local frustration with an ISIS that under perpetual attack.

Isis has lost Ramadi, the capture of which was their biggest victory last year, as well as Tikrit, Baiji and Sinjar. However, The first major assault by the jihadists near the Iraq capital in months may indicate that far from being cowed by prolonged air strikes and an economic blockade, they are seizing the initiative in trying to deflect an attack by Iraqi forces on Mosul

For some time now, THE DESPERATE leader of the crumbling Islamic State (ISIS) terror group has tried to portray its crushing recent defeats as a blessing from Allah in a rambling message calling on Muslims worldwide to take up arms. He paints the seemingly impending collapse of the terrorist group as a "battle of all the infidels against all the Muslims", adding that "each time that the number of nations against us grows, so too does the certainty of the help of Allah and the fact that we are on the right path".He says: “O Muslims, the current battle is not a simple crusade, but a war of all the nations of the infidel nations against the Islamic State. It has never happened in the history of our

“Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster”― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

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people that the world has gathered in a single battle like the one taking place today." Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi assured followers his so-called Caliphate is

“fine and expanding everyday” in a bizarre audio recording issued just hours after Iraqi forces liberated the key city of Ramadi and Kurdish Peshmerga recaptured a strategic dam. In a desperate call for support the terrorist leader admitted that Western and Russian airstrikes have had a “calamitous” toll on ISIS, but brushed off the death and mutilation of thousands of its fighters as a “blessing from Allah” which are simply part of a “pre-destined ordeal”. He also bizarrely welcomed the recent widespread desertion amongst ISIS ranks, branding deserters “hypocrites and agents” and insisting that the numbers of fighters abandoning the jihadis every day is actually making the group stronger. But Bahgdadi claimed: “Don’t worry, O Muslims, your state is fine and expanding every day, and with every harshness that comes upon it, it spits out the hypocrites and agents and becomes more firm and strong.“If we are touched by death, or by injuries, if we are weakened or hit by calamity, there is no need to be surprised. This is the blessing of Allah upon us, for such an ordeal is predestined.”Pressure Points The Islamic State is falling far short of its goals to act as a state. It is unable to effectively maintain state services, including infrastructure. Medical care has devolved due to a lack of professional practitioners, equipment, and pharmaceuticals. Electricity is scarce. Oil production has dropped even before deliberate attacks on Islamic State-controlled oil resources. Its education system is practically nonexistent and there is no realistic possibility of economic growth. The population, even those who might have supported the goals of an Islamic state, is increasingly dissatisfied with the oppression of this one in practice.In the Islamic State’s Principles in the Administration of the Islamic State – 1435AH (trans.), the authors lay out governing and administrative guidelines for the establishment of a unified Sunni caliphate, but also describe the nature of the caliphate’s economic foundation of “secure financial resources”:This includes oil and gas and what the land possesses including gold as currency that does

not deteriorate or decline, as well as trade routes …The Islamic State’s plans for utilization of resources have no doubt suffered from the collapse of oil prices and the devaluation of gold: Oil has fallen to a third of its mid-2014 price level (when Principles was published) and gold has lost 20 percent of its value over the same time period. While Principles outlines preservation of industry as a priority, Islamic State territory remains among the poorest in Syria and Iraq and contains little industry not associated with agriculture or oil and gas production. The Islamic State’s claim to have established a long-dormant caliphate is one of the keys to establishing itself as a leader in the Muslim world. Declaration of a caliphate requires geographic boundaries — the caliphate cannot exist without holding territory. If Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is the caliph and Islamic State territory a caliphate, then the Islamic State holds a legitimate and historically relevant claim to religious authority as a successor to Prophet Mohammed. If the state unravels — and is clearly seen to unravel — the validity of this claim is strongly undermined, and some of the attraction to foreign fighters may wane.

So far: Western powers have been unable to advance any viable alternative to the Islamic State. The best that airpower can do under these conditions is to weaken the Islamic State by reducing its ability to provide public services, interdicting materiel and monetary flows, and depriving it of a viable oil and gas industry. A best-case scenario would be a





disruption of economic, transport, and production functions in Islamic State-occupied areas so severe that they become ungovernable by any technique

available to the Islamic State, including the violent oppression that is its domestic hallmark. If the Islamic State is induced to collapse, some form of local security apparatus will eventually restore itself, but if so, some form of warlordism is the likely outcome. Dissolution of Islamic State territory might also assist the Iraqis in reestablishing control of their own territory as Islamic State outposts die on the vine.The fall of the caliphate is a worthwhile end unto itself. The loss of caliphate status will remove Baghdadi’s position as caliph, which may be more important over the long term than killing him, an outcome that would necessarily generate a successor. In order to establish a caliphate, jihadists must control territory. In order to cause the Islamic State to collapse, and limit its military threat to Jordan, Turkey and Iraq, we must deprive the Islamic State of the tools for maintaining even limited governance, which necessarily renders that territory ungovernable. In the end, the Islamic State will likely still remain a viable terrorist organization, but it may be possible to constrain it to local operations and reduce its global appeal and reach.

Over the last months: "Morale isn't falling – it's hit the ground," the activist said. "Local fighters are frustrated – they feel they're doing most of the work and the dying … foreign fighters who thought they were on an adventure are now exhausted." "The Sharia Court of Mosul decided to behead them in front of hundreds of ISIS members in order to prevent others from taking such a move without the permission of their military leadership." It's not the first time the terrorist organisation has publicly executed its own fighters to warn people to obey orders. Last month 73 militants were killed for escaping battles with with the Kurdish Peshmerga forces in Shingal (Sinjar) district in northern Iraq. Islamic State militants recently executed at least 100 of their own foreign fighters in the group's Syrian





stronghold of Raqqa after the fighters were caught trying to abandon the group's Syrian base, a source close to the conflict said.

The Financial Times reports that an unnamed anti-ISIS activist, who also opposes the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, has confirmed that ISIS executed the foreign fighters because they attempted to desert from the jihad after ISIS released a new set of rules designed to prevent fighters from deserting. One foreign fighter, still fighting for ISIS, told FT that things have gotten so bad that fighters are no longer allowed to "speak the truth" and are "forced to do useless things."A former ISIS fighter from Syria, who has since fled to Turkey, told NPR that ISIS wants to kill anyone who says "No!" "Everyone must be with them," the former ISIS fighter said. "[If] you turn against ISIS, they will kill you."

Tunisia: Why foreign fighters abandon ISILNearly 700 ISIL fighters have returned to Tunisia but there is no formal strategy to deal with them, analysts say.Ksibet el Medouini, Tunisia - Lamia pulls out her mobile phone and scrolls through a series of pictures on a messaging app. There is her eldest son, Bilal, smiling jauntily in a black beret bearing the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group logo and a gun in his hand.There he is posing on a bombed-out street with a friend, or standing in front of a colour-coded map of Syria. "I just kept telling him I wanted him to come back," said Lamia, who did not give Al Jazeera her last name, from her home in Ksibet el Mediouni, a small village near the coastal city of Monastir in Tunisia.In July 2013, Bilal, then 20, told his parents he was going to the beach.Instead, he went to fight with ISIL in Syria.In late March 2014, Bilal stopped calling his parents. A fellow fighter contacted the family to say Bilal had died, though the family still holds out hope he might be alive.According to recent United Nations statistics, 5,500 Tunisians have gone to join ISIL, Jabhat al-Nusra, and al-Qaeda in Syria, Iraq, and Libya.As the wars have dragged on, thousands, like Bilal, have been killed; hundreds more have been jailed in Syria. But for other fighters, home beckons.To date, nearly 700 fighters have returned to Tunisia, according to a spokesman for the interior ministry.Most fighters return after becoming disenchanted by the war, being cajoled by their distraught families, or hoping to recruit their fellow countrymen."They don't realise that when they come back, it will be another challenge. They are really going to be hassled," said Mohammed Iqbel Ben Rejeb, the president and founder of the Rescue Association of Tunisians Trapped Abroad (RATTA), a civil society group founded in 2013 to work with families of children caught in conflicts around the world.

The issue hits close to home for Ben Rejeb: His younger brother went to Syria in March 2013 and celebrated his 24th birthday at an al-Nusra Front training camp.He spent only 10 days in Syria, during which time his family bombarded him with phone calls and messages pleading with him to come home, before returning to Tunisia.But Ben Rejeb's brother's case is unique. His brother has muscular dystrophy and is confined to a wheelchair, which made it difficult for him to perform any duties in the al-Nusra Front camp.The peculiar nature of the case garnered media attention in the Arab world, as did a public plea by Ben Rejeb. In the end, he was given authorisation to leave and re-enter Tunisia without hassle.





For most returning fighters, jail and state surveillance are common. But that is only if they are able to return to Tunisia at all.

Jounedi Ayed's son went to Syria in 2012, leaving behind an education, a stable job, and his family.At the family's home near Monastir, Ayed, who did not want his son's name made public, recounted his son's journey from partying teenager to pious Muslim to member of ISIL. Ayed told Al Jazeera from his home near Monastir that his son "realised his mistake" after witnessing abuses of power in Syria.But since sneaking out of Syria into Turkey, his son has been stuck in Istanbul without a passport. According to the RATTA, dozens of Tunisians are caught in limbo in Turkey.Disillusioned fighters usually try to return to Tunisia one of three ways.The most common route is to fly directly from Turkey to Tunisia, but that involves a high probability that would-be returnees will be arrested at the airport.According to Ben Rejeb, returnees may also try flying from Turkey to Tunisia with a stop in Morocco, where they are known to burn their passports and go to the Tunisian embassy to get new ones. Upon receiving a new passport, they then proceed to Tunisia. Finally, some fighters attempt to cross the border with Libya, either undetected or by presenting themselves to border guards at the Ras Ajdir checkpoint. The RATTA estimates that 400-500 fighters have re-entered Tunisia undetected.Many former fighters have repented, but don't have the opportunity to demonstrate this to the Tunisian authorities, Ben Rejeb said.In November 2015, then Foreign Minister Taieb Baccouche staunchly declared that Tunisia "would not accept a pardon for these Tunisians just on the basis of a declaration of repentance without legal accountability."Ayed said he believes his son has changed. But though he wants to return home, Ayed said he is worried that his son's future will be spent in a Tunisian prison cell.The EU-wide Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN) notes that an effective policy for rehabilitating returning fighters includes "dialogue and engagement with a wide range of actors from the micro to macro level, such as families (both immediate and wider), community members and leaders, religious scholars, teachers, local authorities, police, and intelligence services."But Tunisia has not established a formal strategy to deal with returning fighters, though the government uses powers accorded through a new anti-terrorism law to contain them.President Beji Caid Essebsi signed the law in July 2015, following two ISIL-claimed attacks on the Bardo museum and a Sousse beach resort. It is designed to give the government sweeping powers to combat terrorism, and most returning fighters are immediately placed in jail following a trial, or kept under surveillance."Ninety-five percent of them [returning fighters] were arrested and interrogated by police upon their return, while the others remained under surveillance," Walid Elweikene, spokesperson for the Ministry of Interior said last December, according to the Saudi paper Asharq al Awsat. The government has emphasised addressing immediate security objectives through surveillance and imprisonment. European countries such as France and the UK are also following such hardline measures, while other countries are pursuing softer strategies, such as rehabilitation. "So far there is too little evidence to suggest that one approach is better than the other. The rehabilitation programmes that exist are small and have had few 'graduates'. It will take time to measure their long-term effect," writes Richard Barrett, senior vice president of the Soufan Group, in an email to Al Jazeera.According to Charles Lister, a research fellow at the Brookings Doha Center, around 11





percent of fighters pose a credible threat upon returning home.The three large-scale attacks in 2015 were claimed by ISIL, with all the

attackers being trained in Libya before returning to Tunisia. To this extent, the possibility that a returning fighter could orchestrate an attack should be taken into account - in this case, around 70 fighters - but neither should it be exaggerated.Ben Rejeb said while returnees convicted of committing crimes in Syria, or who pose a proven threat to Tunisian security, can be imprisoned, it is not a blanket solution.Tunisia's overcrowded and under-served prisons are well-known breeding grounds for recruitment and the dissemination of radical ideas, he added."In the short term you've won, but in the long term it's a flaw," Ben Rejeb said.

Jittery Islamic State Lashes OutJamie Dettmer, Voice of America, Several mass executions by the Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq suggest the terror group is encountering more dissent or at least fears losing its grip on the territory it controls. In Iraq, the jihadists have released a list of names of more than 1,000 people they have executed during the past few months in the city of Mosul, posting the list on the walls of the group’s religious court. Hundreds of residents have been checking the names for missing relatives, say local anti-IS activists. Most of the victims were accused of spying or helping Kurdish peshmerga forces.Beheading IS beheaded a Belgian jihadist who was convicted of “high treason” for trying to desert on February 26 in Deir ez-Zor in eastern Syria. According to a local activist network called Deir ez-Zor Is Being Slaughtered Silently, “The group beheaded the Belgian fighter after a Sharia official read a statement to the public, explaining how he tried to escape fighting the enemies of the Caliphate.” On March 1, the militant group shot dead three foreign fighters, a Tunisian and two Algerians, in the Deir ez-Zor provincial town of al-Mayadeen, claiming they had accepted bribes from locals.Again, a Sharia court official read a statement before the three were shot, accusing the foreigners of robbery, say local activists. The three were members of the IS police in al-Mayadeen city. Days earlier, the militants also stoned to death two teenage girls in Deir ez-Zor city in front of hundreds of onlookers. The 17-year-old and 16-year-old were accused of committing adultery; the men they were alleged to have had improper relations with were flogged and then freed.Resistance to IS IS has ruled its self-styled caliphate with an iron and ruthless hand, seeking to intimidate locals into submission. But the latest round of slayings in eastern Syria has not stopped resistance fighters from striking back. A group of gunmen in Deir ez-Zor city shot dead a leading member of the terror group after abducting him during the weekend. The body of Abu Saleh al-Jazrawi, who was in charge of tax collection in the city, was dumped.Local activists say IS responded to the killing with a curfew and arrested dozens of people. The slaying came two weeks after resistance fighters gunned down an IS "emir" in the province, after intercepting his convoy and killing four bodyguards.Resistance fighters in Deir ez-Zor have killed several IS officials in the past few months in hit-and-run attacks. “They work in uncoordinated groups,” an activist called Ghaith told VOA. Some of the fighters are believed to be from the Al-Sheitaat tribe. IS killed more than 700 members of the tribe two years ago when it overran much of the province.Anxious About US OperationsActivists say the terror group appears highly anxious about U.S.-led coalition airstrikes targeting IS leaders and the danger of U.S. commando raids, especially in the wake of a special forces operation that captured a senior IS operative during a raid in northern Iraq.





On February 29, U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said a 200-member Expeditionary Targeting Force is “in position ... having an effect and

operating."A U.S. counterterrorism official told VOA that recent reversals for the terror group in Iraq and the loss of territory in Syria have stressed the militants."ISIL’s veneer of invincibility was an allure to would-be jihadists and helped propagate its myth of inevitable victory,” he said. “The group has now suffered a string of setbacks that have eroded that pillar, including the loss of revenue streams from energy resources and the destruction of bulk cash sites. While these blows alone will not serve as a knock-out punch, there’s no doubt that the losses are rippling across ISIL’s self-declared caliphate."But IS remains a resilient opponent, analysts say, and still maintains an ability to fight on several fronts and to mount offensive operations in different parts of Syria and Iraq.Battlefield Gains In recent weeks IS has made territorial gains in western Syria; mounted a surprise offensive on the town of Tal Abyad, just north of Raqqa in northern Syria, and maintained a fierce fight with Assad regime forces around the village of Khanaser on the outskirts of Aleppo. At the same time, it has held off a Russian-backed Syrian government ground offensive in Deir ez-Zor near Al-Taim oilfield.IS captured several villages this week in Hama province, bringing militant fighters nearer Salamiya, the capital of the country’s Ismaili minority, a group IS considers apostate.The jihadist advance is prompting fears among the Ismaili that they could face a similar fate to the Yezidis, another minority group IS targeted, executing men and enslaving hundreds of women in 2014. nIsmaili cleric Haidar al-Saleh told local news agencies, “We are aware of the ongoing progress by ISIS, and our community is highly concerned about what would happen if they overran the city.”

Regards Cees***

Osama bin Laden Warned an Islamic State Would FailBefore he was killed, the Al Qaeda chief urged his followers to put off dreams of a caliphate and focus on more pressing concerns.Among those who warned of the demise of the self-proclaimed Islamic State was Osama bin Laden, according to newly released documents recovered during the 2011 raid that killed the al Qaeda leader.Throughout the latest cache of 113 documents, which U.S. intelligence officials released Tuesday, bin Laden refuses to embrace calls by his subordinates to establish a caliphate, which is the central mission of the Islamic State, or ISIS. The documents capture an ongoing debate among al Qeada members about when to take control of territory and attempt to govern it under religious rule.Bin Laden saw those calling for a shift away from attacking the “apostates” and toward a self-created caliphate as impetuous youths who didn’t understand that establishing a state would be costly and potentially damaging. Instead, Bin Laden pushed for eliminating any threats to a future Islamic state, including in the West and against U.S. and European allies in the Middle East.When a subordinate noted that members wanted to establish a state, a bin Laden supporter wrote: “My brother, all of these strange stories are unfounded and unreliable and they contradict what we are already certain of.”Bin Laden was also was often consumed with more immediate challenges. Several documents spell out how he struggled just to pay the costs associated with supporting the widows and children of jihadist fighters.





The documents, which primarily are from 2009 to 2011, offer a window into the divide among jihadists around the time of bin Laden’s death, which would

eventually lead to the emergence of ISIS. Those who rejected bin Laden’s call for attacking the West first before establishing a caliphate would eventually join the group.The divide over the best path forward persists today, and the documents shed light on the factors that to contributed to an eventual al Qaeda-ISIS split.Bin Laden, for example, supported winning over local populations so that they would embrace religious rule. He called for followers to remember their “morals” and not kill Muslims in mosques and markets. But those who eventually joined ISIS adopted brutal tactics to hold residents hostage.Today, as U.S. strikes target ISIS in Iraq and Syria, al Qaeda is exploiting a growing local frustration with an ISIS that under perpetual attack. Al Qaeda leaders, in their push to win back support, note that they developed relationships with local leaders over the years rather that brutalize residents. Working with locals is an idea evident in the bin Laden documents.And in recent months, al Qaeda has argued it is the enduring terror group.Where younger al Qaeda members believed an Islamic State was within their reach, bin Laden imagined that such a state would not be possible in his lifetime. Rather he saw himself as a “strategic guide” toward an eventual caliphate, a senior U.S. intelligence explained during a briefing with reporters Tuesday.Bin Laden persistently rejected calls for establishing a state even as more of his subordinates pushed for one.

“We heard from more than one person at the leadership level that they are claiming to be an independent state and to have no ties with al-Qa’ida and the Shaykh, God save him, which has confused and bewildered the brothers even more,” a fighter only identified as





Abu al Abbas warned in an undated letter.But bin Laden was singularly focused. He wanted to “crush the head of the

snake” the intelligence official explained, by forcing the Western world to withdraw its support for countries he considered apostates, including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Qatar and Egypt. Without support, bin Laden predicted the countries’ governments would collapse of those states. Only then would conditions be ripe for standing up a caliphate.In a document titled “Liberating Humans before Liberating States,” bin Laden saw the recent history of the Middle East as evidence that Muslims cannot live in truly Islamic states unless they are free from apostates, like the U.S.-backed emirs, kings and presidents of the region.He urged Muslims “to learn the dangers surrounding us and inside us.”When others called for establishing a state, bin Laden pushed followers to craft new means to attack the West.“We need to extend and develop our operations in America and not keep it limited to blowing up airplanes,” bin Laden wrote to Nasir al-Wuhayshi, head of al Qaeda’s Yemen branch.But the documents are short on how specifically al Qaeda would attack the U.S. And they reveal how much paranoia consumed the al Qaeda leader.Frustrated in his hideout in Pakistan, he began asking his subordinates to find a new home from him just five months before his death.He worried that doctors included a grain-sized tracking device in his wife’s dental filling. In a May 11, 2010, letter to his then second-in-command, Atiyah Abd al Rahman, bin Laden worried that the U.S. could be tracking Al Jazeera journalist Ahmad Zaidan, whom he wanted to interview him.And while the documents show bin Laden was a student of world affairs, he always viewed the United States through a prism of conspiracy. He believed President Barack Obama was essentially a figurehead leader while a cabal of Jews actually shaped U.S. affairs.In a letter titled “To the American people,” bin Laden wrote: “Your former president warned you previously about the devastating Jewish control of capital and about a day that would come when it would enslave you; it has happened. Your current president warns you now about the enormity of capital control and it has a cycle whereby it devours humanity when it is devoid of the precepts of God’s law (Shari’a).”Bin Laden began making plans for a media blitz to mark the 10-year anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He proposed giving an interview to Zaidan, reaching out to CBS and other unnamed American news organizations and asking journalist Robert Fisk, who had interviewed bin Laden in 1993, to moderate a talk.As it turned out, bin Laden would be dead five months short of the anniversary.




al-qaida chief ayman al-zawahiri the coordinator 2016 part 19-142-caliphate-isis-52-isis-abandon

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