The Threat Posed by Islamic State ISIS – Dr. David Kilcullen Aussie Counterinsurgency Expert

David Kilcullen: It’s different in three major ways. Firstly, it is much bigger and more militarily capable than al-Qaida ever was. It has tanks, it has helicopters, it’s got very large numbers of artillery pieces, it’s got more than 30,000 fighters, so it’s significantly larger and more militarily capable. Secondly, it controls about a third of Iraq and about a third of Syria, including a network of very connected cities, economic installations that make it about between $2 million and $3 million a day in terms of revenue, and it’s really building a significant territorial state in the Middle East, which is something that al-Qaida was never able to do. Thirdly, and, actually, I think most importantly for people in Australia and New Zealand, it’s having a very significant reinvigorating effect on regional groups in South-east Asia, in Africa and the Middle East. That’s really taking us back almost to square one in terms of re-energizing a global jihad against the West. So I think all those three things adding up together, it’s really a very, very significant threat that’s somewhat larger than what we’ve really ever seen from al-Qaida.

Lisa Owen: Now, you were in Iraq with General Petraeus and helped to mastermind the troop surge there. That seemed to bring a level of stability, so why do you think we now find ourselves in this mess that we’re in?

Well, it’s actually very simple. There are two reasons, and you’re right, we did successfully stabilize Iraq, and we successfully destroyed al-Qaida in Iraq, which is the predecessor organization to ISIS, down to the point where it had less than 5 percent of its fighters left. But then the first reason is we pulled out too quickly. We essentially cut the cord and left at the end of 2011 and put the Iraqis in a position where a lot of the deals that were put in place as part of stabilizing Iraq between 2007 and 2010 just weren’t followed through on, and different parties in Iraq felt that the others weren’t acting in good faith, and the whole deal really fell apart, and that’s allowed the re-invigoration of ISIS. The second very significant reason is the Syrian civil war. So even though we had gotten ISIS down to a shadow of its former self, when the war broke out in Syria and lots of different groups turned against the Assad regime, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, at that time the head of ISIS, sent a number of his fighters into Syria to join that fight. And by their success on the ground against the Syrians, they’ve generated a lot of support within Syria. So we’ve seen two big groups—

Can we now say looking at this that the West’s intervention in Iraq was a failure?

No, I think that if you do something and it works and then you stop doing and things go bad, that means that what you did was working, not not working. What I think it tells us is that our whole approach since 9/11, which has essentially been to pick the most dangerous military aspect of Islamic jihadism worldwide and focus military effort on that has been short-sighted. And I’m worried that we’re about to make the same mistake again by switching targets from al-Qaida to ISIS, which is the next, sort of, crocodile to the canoe, if you like, instead of sitting back a little bit and saying, ‘What is it about these groups that makes them so appealing to people in our own societies, and how can we deal with that threat without, in the process, turning our own countries into police states?’ I think that’s really the question that everyone needs to be engaging on now. The military bit is important, but it’s not the forefront.

Okay, I want to come to that a bit later, but I’m wondering – is it now time to start thinking about a radical rejig in Iraq? Do we need three separate states there – Sunni, Shiites? You know, do we need to be thinking about that direction?

I think actually that ship has sailed. We’re already looking at a de facto soft partition, if you like, of Iraq into a sort of south-eastern part of the country that’s really dominated heavily by Iran and is controlled by the Shia majority government in Baghdad and then a Kurdish regional government that now includes not only northern Iraq but significant parts of Syria, and then you’ve got this sort of vacuum in the western part of the country where ISIS is currently. And it’s still a little bit unclear what the future of that part of Iraq is going to be, but I think the chance that it’s ever going to be a one single unified country again is really a bit of a fantasy at this point.

Okay, so let’s go back to the first principle question, then – should we, the West, be getting involved in this at all now?

I do think we need to be getting involved, and the reason I say that is because the reason that a significant number of people are joining Islamic State from our own societies is because they want to be part of something that’s successful, that’s world historic, that seems to be making a significant difference. And one of the most important things we can do to limit that recruitment is to, sort of, take the shine off the Islamic State. Does that mean we should be invading and occupying and trying to restabilise Iraq? Absolutely not. So I think it’s a question of how much is enough in terms of military effort to really set back Islamic State as this attractive thing that people are turning to. But, you know, that’s only part of the issue, as I said. There’s a lot of other stuff that needs to happen in our own societies that, in my view, is actually more important.

Yeah, so looking at the military effort, then – what do we need to do? You’ve been critical, I think, of the air strikes – the level of air strikes. Do we need boots on the ground? What do you see as the way forward?

I think that the way forward has been relatively well set in terms of the tactics of it, which is that we’re going to provide advisers, probably a limited number of special forces for raiding and targeting of high-value targets and then people to designate air strikes and control air power. So it is boots on the ground, but it’s not independent combat units. The main Australia, New Zealand, UK effort here is going to be in training Iraqis and possibly Syrians to take the fight directly to ISIS, but that’s going to be a matter of months, possibly years before those guys are ready to do that. Then—

But who exactly are they training, though? Because there are a lot of commentators that are saying, say, for example, the Iraqi army is in complete disarray and has fallen apart. So who exactly are they training?

That’s not actually a good understanding of what’s going on with the Iraqi military. The Iraqi special operations forces and a number of the Iraqi combat units are actually in pretty good shape. The problem is that over the intervening period since 2011, a lot of the leadership were weeded out and replaced with in some cases corrupt, in other cases sort of politically connected people who were much more interested in the politics of Baghdad than in actually building a viable military force. There’s a lot of potential in the Iraqi military, and I think it won’t be too long before they are able to come back. The real challenge is in Syria, and this puts its finger on the heart of the problem, which is a lot of Syrians are not willing to back a US-led effort unless it’s going to result in the overthrow of Assad. And right now, we’re not focusing on that. We’re not striking the Syrian regime, and there’s a worry that, sure, you can strike ISIS, but all you’re going to do is create space that allows the Assad regime to expand.

I want to just in the time we’ve got left talk a little bit about New Zealand’s involvement in this. Our Prime Minister says that we’re going to be behind the wire – that’s the phrase he likes to use. So not in the front line, offering people to train troops on the ground. But should we prepare ourselves for the possibility of casualties, even though he likes to say we’re away from the main action?

It really depends where New Zealanders end up. If they are not in Iraq, if they’re training people in Saudi Arabia or elsewhere, then I think that they are relatively safe from attack. It’s when you’re operating in Iraq or even in Syria that you’re going to find yourself in an environment where there really is not front line, and, sure, you can be inside the wire, but that doesn’t mean you’re safe. If I were advising Kiwis, I’d be saying, ‘Look, prepare yourselves for not only a significant military conflict but one that could last quite some time, and prepare yourself for a domestic threat within New Zealand.’ And that’s part of the challenge that we’re all facing, which is this is not just restricted to the Middle East. It is in our own societies, and it’s affecting public safety in big cities.

Well, when you mention the domestic threat, again, the Prime Minister has released figures publicly that says there are about 40 people who are on a watch list in New Zealand for supporting Islamic State, 40 more than need investigation and about five that have been fighting for Islamic State. Does that sound like realistic numbers to you?

I don’t have any better information than what you have, but it sounds about right when you compare it to what we’ve seen from the UK and Australia and Canada and the US. It’s about on par with that, and I think it’s worth pointing out that the number of foreign fighters who are going to join Islamic State is somewhere between 10 and 12 times the scale of what we saw during the Iraq War. It’s a very substantial number of people. I think the paradox again is the vast majority of Muslims are not involved in anything like this, but yet obviously 100 percent of people involved in the Islamic State are Muslims, so there’s a danger here that we’re going to tar everybody with the same brush and start looking at an entire subset of our own society as a threat. And I think that’s a really important fine line that we need to walk as we deal with the challenge.

But in saying that, how real is the threat on home turf? In New Zealand, say, that something could happen?

So again, back to your very original question – why is this more of a threat than al-Qaida? Al-Qaida’s style of operating was to generate teams of terrorists who would go in a pre-planned way to attack a target and so on. What we’re dealing with now is something that’s a lot, sort of, lower level but is actually rather more dangerous, which is this idea of remote radicalization so that individuals who have a social media connectivity with the Islamic State or they have friends over there becoming radicalized and essentially taking to the streets and carrying out more or less random acts of violence upon people in society. And the example that I point to is what happened in Woolwich in London last year, where two men of Nigerian descent ran down an off-duty British soldier on the street in a car—

And beheaded him in the street.

And then beheaded him in the street. Now, you can’t really protect against that in the same way you can protect against something like 9/11. The challenge for people—

So are you realistically saying, though, that that is something that could happen in New Zealand?

Absolutely. Absolutely. But I think what people need to say is how much surveillance, how much police protection are we prepared to tolerate before we turn our own societies into a police state? And you have to recognise that it’s a real risk and it could happen, but is it worth the sort of mass surveillance and police presence that governments may want to put in place to protect against it?

Well, it’s funny that—

And that’s something that every citizen needs to be involved in.

It’s funny that you raise that, because our government is saying that they would like to bring in 48 hours of warrantless surveillance so that they can watch people for 48 hours without going to the court for a warrant and that they would like to put cameras on private property. So how far or how much privacy should we be prepared to give up? And is privacy something that we have a right to now, or is that notion just gone?

Well, I think if you want to continue to live in a democracy that’s an open society, as New Zealand is, then it has to be something that’s open for debate, and we have to be looking very carefully at safeguards to the kinds of surveillance and security measures that people are putting in place. In Australia, for example, there’s been a debate where the Attorney General has said, ‘Well, look, it’s okay. We’re not planning to use these regulations in order to, for example, shut down journalists’, but once the regulations are on the books, some future government can use them to do whatever it wants. So I think we have to really be looking carefully at things like sunset clauses, where these regulations are up for review on a regular basis, and we have to be encouraging public debate and helping people see that it’s not choice between perfect security and risk at the hands of groups like ISIS. It’s about how much of your security or how much of your privacy and freedom are you willing to give up, and is it worth doing that in order to achieve security against this kind of risk? And, of course, the answer to that is different in every different country, and everyone needs to be part of the discussion, otherwise we’re likely to find ourselves looking back on this and saying, ‘It looked like a good idea at the time, but now we find ourselves living in a different society from how we were originally’.

Dr Kilcullen, thank you. So interesting to talk to you this morning. Thank you for your time and for joining us on The Nation.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Transcript provided by Able. http://www.able.co.nz

Read more: http://www.3news.co.nz/tvshows/thenation/interview-counter-insurgency-expert-david-kilcullen-2014111515#ixzz3cDF1e1zL

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/b/7529bc35-c11e-4897-8de4-0117bccab136
Video Link Above to Charlie Rose Show

Runaway schoolgirls' contact in Turkey 'confesses to Isis link as cash courier'

Man arrested last week told police he delivered foreign donations to militants in Sanliurfa close to Syrian border, according to Turkish newspaper

An agent who helped three British schoolgirls cross into Syria to join the Islamic State group was also working as a courier to transfer money to jihadis, a Turkish newspaper reported on Sunday.

Turkey announced on Thursday that it had arrested an intelligence agent working as a spy for an unidentified country in the US-led coalition and said he was a Syrian national.

Media reports in Turkey have said he was working for Canadian intelligence – a claim rejected by Ottawa.

The Milliyet newspaper reported that the man, a dentist using the name Doctor Mehmed Resid, told Turkish police during questioning that he had withdrawn the cash from Western Union branch and delivered it to Syrian jewellers working in the south-eastern Turkish city of Sanliurfa close to the Syrian border.

The jewellers then contacted their colleagues in Syria and a middleman would come to their shops.

The agent told investigators that his brother, who lived in the Syrian city of Raqqa, an Isis stronghold, received the money from the jewellers and delivered it to militants, according to Milliyet.

The report did not reveal who sent the money, only that it came from abroad.

Video footage that emerged on Friday purportedly showed the same man helping the British girls into a car in Sanliurfa on their way to Syria.

Kadiza Sultana, 16, and Shamima Begum and Amira Abase, both 15, entered Syria after boarding a flight from London to Istanbul on 17 February.

They took a bus from Istanbul to Sanliurfa, from where they are believed to have crossed the frontier.

Life under ISIS In Mosul Takes A Turn For The Bleak

Thousands of Sunni Arabs from Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, escaped to Erbil at the end of the summer when the militants of the self-proclaimed Islamic State first overran the city and imposed a draconian social code.

Among them is a man we'll call the professor -- he, his wife and their children fled Mosul in August. He doesn't want his name published because his extended family still lives there under ISIS control.

The professor now lives in Erbil, at the Motel Delicious, a seedy place despite the enticing name, with parakeets in the lobby and every room packed with his neighbors from Mosul.

"I think ISIS is losing now," says the professor.

He and others from Mosul are all watching for signs that their city will be the next target of an Iraqi government assault to oust ISIS from major urban areas seized by the militants last summer. The professor says that ISIS is more paranoid than they were when the militant group first entered the city in June. Six months ago, they blew up the cell phone towers around the city. Now, his relatives can only call late at night, standing on roof tops to catch distant signals. Recently, ISIS shut down all the escape routes out of the city.

"So dangerous to try to get of Mosul now," he says, based on reports from his sisters still in Mosul.

Getting out was never easy. Residents could go for hospital treatments and education, but they had to pledge to return, handing over documents for cars and houses as a guarantee. These days, even that deal has been called off.

"Nowadays, they forbid everything. No one can get out of Mosul," he says.

The only way is by paying a smuggler, but even those routes are dangerous due to coalition bombings.

It's a city where beheadings and floggings became routine, and people believed to be heretics, like the Yazidis, a religious minority in Iraq, could be sold as slaves. Smoking is forbidden and women must be completely covered from head to toe. Lately, even their eyes must be covered. Despite the harsh social rules, the markets remain full. Produce is brought in from Syria and sellers set up shop from the back of the trucks, he says.

"Everything is available there, and people are still taking salaries from the government," he says. "Maybe at least 30, 40 percent of people are still taking salaries." Iraqi officials confirm Baghdad spends up to $16 million a month on the government payroll in Mosul. But ISIS taxes the wages and takes a cut, say Western diplomats.

Daily life is increasingly grim. Fighters are on edge as coalition airstrikes hit ISIS military bases and convoys. Some ISIS fighters have retreated to Mosul from the nearby battlefront in Tikrit, where the government launched the first major assault against ISIS. Other fighters are pulling out of Mosul to head for the relative safety of Syria.

Other ISIS fighters are pulling out of Mosul to head for the relative safety of Syria. The professor's relatives report there is tension between the local Iraqis and the foreign fighters. "I saw them fighting -- Iraqi's local and the foreigners," he says. "Some of the foreigners started to take their families and travel outside -- and the local fighters reject."

On Tuesday, across Mosul, Iraqi government planes dropped 2 million leaflets promising liberation soon.

"Your armed forces are close to you, and they are ready to participate with you in defeating ISIS," was the message on the floating papers. But that seems unlikely. The Iraqi army is far from ready for an assault on Iraqi's second largest city. The first assault on ISIS in Tikrit has stalled for more than a week. The forces leading that military campaign are primarily Iraq's Shiite militias, backed and trained by Iran.

And if they succeed?

"You bring in the military force, and you fight the terrorist there, you evict them. And then what?" asks Qubad Talabani, vice president of the Kurdish regional government. In other words, Iraq's militia may be able to take Tikrit, but it's unclear they will be able to hold it. Mosul will be even a more difficult and sensitive operation, Talabani says. The city is five times larger than Tikrit, with more than 1 million civilians, mostly Sunni Arabs, who welcomed ISIS when they first arrived, relieved to be rid of an oppressive Shiite-dominated government and army. Now, the Sunnis of Mosul are watching Shiite forces battling ISIS in Tikrit.

"That's the problem with the Tikrit operation, that it is a purely Shiite-led military operation against a heavily Sunni place of the country," Talabani says. "This is Saddam's birthplace here, with no political endgame anywhere in sight. Not for the people of Tikrit, not for the Sunnis of Iraq." The professor says attitudes in Mosul have changed after eight months of ISIS rule. Compared to those early months, ISIS is beginning to lose support day by day. "Every day, rejection is increasing," he says. But it's still not clear if a loss for ISIS is a win for the government of Baghdad. There is no political plan for broad reconciliation between Iraqi's Sunnis and Shiites as the push against ISIS #daeshbags in Tikrit and Mosul is on hold.

41 #Daeshbags killed Kobane County

I know  a lot of people think Kobane is clean of ISIS. While the City of Kobane has been cleared except the occasional suicide bomber. But Kobane County is still being cleaned up of ISIS #Daeshbags.

People’s Protection Units killed 41 of mercenaries Daash in Kobanî County, and was able to grab as many military weapons and ammunition, as well as on the impact of the body of 12 units in the hands of a mercenary protection.

Saturday, March 7, 2015 7:58

Anf – Kobanî

People’s Protection Units killed 41 of mercenaries Daash in Kobanî County, and was able to grab as many military weapons and ammunition, as well as on the impact of the body of 12 units in the hands of a mercenary protection.

Contacted news agency Hawar of clashes in the area Kobanî County reported that the People’s Protection Units after the liberation of the town elders hypospadias, located on the western side of the county, a sweep launched in the town and was able to control the entire town.

Correspondence and confirmed that clashes broke out strong in the southeast in the cement quarry, between the People’s Protection Units and mercenaries Daash, and expect as a result was able protection modules Edit quarry full of mercenaries. Also killed in the quarry 30 mercenary body 12 of them in the hands of protection modules. It also detonated a car protection units of mercenaries.

And managed protection modules of the seizure of many weapons and military ammunition and weapons, including pixie 0.8 Claenchenkov, sniper.

In the village of Aqpash located in the southeastern and protection units carried out an operation against mercenaries and managed to kill Mrtezkin.

Protection modules also carried out an operation in the village of evil, located in the southeastern and expect as a result killed three mercenaries.

On the same morning attacked the mercenaries Daash Euphrates River and confronted them with units protect the people, and expect as a result clashes erupted and killed 6 mercenary

New coalition program aims to coordinate Peshmerga trainings

By Campbell MacDiarmid 21/2/2015

Dutch soldier leads Peshmerga in rifle practice. Photo by author

ATROSH VILLAGE, Kurdistan Region – It's a recent afternoon in the Kurdish countryside and the pop of small arms fire echoes through the valley below the Duhok Infantry Training Center. 

A line of 10 Peshmerga soldiers await orders from a Dutch soldier. Before barking the command, however, he quickly consults the pen-scrawled phrases written on his palm.

“Dushman,” he yells – the Kurdish word for enemy – and the trainees cock their weapons and take aim. 

Scenes of mild confusion like this are common these days as sympathetic countries rush to overcome language barriers, military mismatches and cultural differences in order to help Kurdish forces in the fight against the Islamic State, or ISIS. 

More than 20 nations are so far actively supporting the Peshmerga with many sending military equipment and trainers -  although largely on an ad hoc basis and with little coordination. For example, the Dutch trainer was issued a phrasebook in Arabic.

The newly formed Kurdistan Training Coordination Center (KTTC), a joint effort of the Dutch, Italian, British and German governments, aims to unify the military assistance of these countries, hopefully overcoming some of these difficulties.

The soldiers in the Peshmerga rifle squad are part of the first group to receive a new KTTC basic training program. The current four-week program, which started last Sunday, will train eight platoons of roughly 30 soldiers each at bases in Atrosh village and the Binaslawa district of Erbil.

According to Dutch liaison officer Jaap, who like most coalition troops is required to give only one name for security reasons, the course will cover basic shooting and battlefield maneuvers, medical training, IED identification, urban fighting, leadership training and international humanitarian law. 

A test program run last month earned high marks from the front.  

“We heard from commanders at the frontline that they saw significant difference between the troops which were trained [by the KTTC] and those which stayed behind,” Jaap told Rudaw.

BATTLE EXPERIENCE

Another twist in the relationship between international military trainers and their Peshmerga trainees is experience. Most of the Kurdish fighters are battle-tested, even if they are almost completely untrained.

The fact is not lost on Lieutenant Walter, a Dutch platoon commander, who notes the irony of his troops offering instruction to hardened Peshmerga, some of whom have served for 18 years. Meanwhile, as Walter points out, the youngest Dutch soldier is 19 and does not yet have his driver's license. 

“You try and be aware of that,” Walter says. “You hear their stories and well, yeah, they've seen some stuff.” 

Take Peshmerga officer Lieutenant Ali. Four days before the KTT training, Ali and his men were on the frontlines. The 27-year-old platoon commander says he has led his men at six different battlefields in the last eight months. 

In Rabia, a town on the border with Syria, Ali and his  platoon fought for seven hours to take a hospital filled with Islamic State snipers and mined with c4 explosives. Around Sinjar, another hotly contesed border town, they repulsed nightly attacks by swarms of fighters armed with “dushka,” or heavy machine guns. 

In one engagement alone 15 of his comrades were killed, he says. 

But on this day, Ali and his men, who range in age from their early 20s to mid-40s, listen attentively as a Dutch instructor explains contact drills – what to do when under attack. For most of his men, this is the first formal training, beyond marching and shooting, they have ever received. 

They wear a motley collection of camouflage fatigues and most carry variations of the AK47 assault rifle. There are Soviet, Czech and Chinese models, some with cracked wooden stocks, others with plastic parts clad in, and the butt of one is missing. 

“They're all different, but all the same,” says Walter, meaning despite their various provenance and vintage, they all fire the same round. 

This cannot be said of the recently donated German G3 and G36 rifles two of the men are carrying. Each weapon takes a different calibre of bullet, meaning the platoon needs to be supplied with three different kinds of ammunition.

For now having enough AK47 ammunition is satisfactory, says KTCC public affairs officer Lieutenant Colonel Jürgen Bredtmann. The ammunition has to come from Baghdad because the coalition partners are not able to supply the Peshmerga directly. And with fighters at the front needing a constant supply, it is difficult to convince the Peshmerga to divert thousands of rounds for the training.

The payoff, so far, is clear. Peshmerga troops at the training have already been shown how to adjust the sights on the rifles to improve accuracy. “They weren't aware of this before,” says Jaap.

A day earlier, one of the men was told to try shooting left handed. Suddenly, three years after first picking up a weapon, he could hit the target.

Still, Milayo, a 23-year-old Dutch soldier, is frank in his assessment of the men he has been assigned to train.

“They're a militia,” he says. “They're citizens with guns.”

This is not a criticism, he says, just that they haven't received much instruction. “They're are eager and they are motivated,” he adds. 

‘STILL FIGHTING’

The next morning there is snow in the hills around camp and the men hunch into their jackets as they watch the Dutch instructors demonstrate a drill for taking cover when someone is shot.

Tayar Muhammad, a 33-year-old Peshmerga from Akre, has already learned this lesson – the hard way – and he hopes his comrades are taking note. 

A few months ago his captain was injured during an engagement. As he lay in the dust with bullet wounds in his arm and stomach he called out for his men to stay behind cover. One man ignored the order, running to rescue his commander. A bullet hit him in the head and he was killed instantly. 

“It was a trap,” says Muhammad.

Down in the valley the Italian troops are taking another group of Peshmerga through “contact drills”. The translator switches rapidly between Italian and Kurdish as the men fire questions at the instructor at his whiteboard. 

When they break for lunch the sun has come out. The Peshmerga break into a song and dance in a line. 

Emilio, one of the older Italian paratroopers, has seen this kind of display before. He was deployed by the Italian army to Kurdistan in 1991 to provide security and resupply civilians.

“It's the same passion, the same pride I see in the Peshmerga,” he says, reflecting back.

“A lot of years have passed but some things remain the same – they're still fighting.”

Muslims Condemn ISIS around the World !!

Muslims Condemn ISIS actions and declare ISIS are not true Muslims, ISIS are barbarians.

Around the World Muslims have protested and condemned the #ISIS / #ISIL / #Daeshbags atrocities, #Daesh is an abomination. Currently they control #Mosul in #Iraq and #Raqqa in #Syria. Their Defeat in #Kobane in Northern Syria finally has #ISIL on the run. The #Kurdish #Peshmerga have done an amazing job of pushing #ISIS out of Kobane and they are now pushing them all the way back to #Raqqa. The #Kurds in Iraq have #Mosul surrounded on 3 sides and are ready to oust them from #Iraq. But we are still waiting on the #Iraqi army. I expect the Iraqi Army will approach Mosul from the South or Southeast of Mosul. This should start in about a month but may take 2 months till the big battle for Mosul Starts. The #deashbags in MOsul have told the citizens in Mosul that they must give them one boy from each family to help #ISIS in the fight. Lets hope these unwilling recruits will turn their guns on #ISIL. I hope that we wil see what happened in Baquba in 2007 when the citizens helped point out where the terrorists were hiding.

Counterinsurgency Expert Dr. David Kilcullen talks about ISIS in Iraq and Syria 2015

Most recent one hour lecture by Dr. David Kicullen talking about counterinsurgency and how to defeat ISIL / Daesh / ISIS / Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and elsewhere. David John Kilcullen FRGS (born 1967) is an Australian author, strategist and counterinsurgency expert and is currently the non-executive Chairman of Caerus Associates, a strategy and design consulting firm that he founded.^[2] From 2005 to 2006, he was Chief Strategist in the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the U.S. State Department.^[3]

Kilcullen was a senior counter-insurgency advisor to General David Petraeus in 2007 and 2008, where he helped design and monitor the Iraq War troop surge.^[4] He was then a special advisor for counter-insurgency to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.^[5] Kilcullen has been a Senior Fellow of the Center for a New American Security^[6] and an Adjunct Professor at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.^[7] He has written three books: The Accidental Guerrilla, Counterinsurgency, and Out of the Mountains.^[8]

Contents

  [hide] 

• 1 Education
• 2 Australian military career
• 3 Career in the United States
• 4 Contributions to counter-insurgency
  • 4.1 Complex Warfighting
  • 4.2 "Countering Global Insurgency"
  • 4.3 "Counterinsurgency Redux"
  • 4.4 "Twenty-Eight Articles"
  • 4.5 Conflict ethnography
  • 4.6 Counterinsurgency
• 5 Positions on American policy
  • 5.1 Iraq War
  • 5.2 Criticizing American policy
  • 5.3 Drone use
• 6 Publications and testimony
  • 6.1 Books
• 7 See also
• 8 References
• 9 External links

Kurdish YPG forces invade Islamic State's Raqqa stronghold

Lalish - Kurdistan - Yazidi holy city

Kurdish YPG forces have seized a hill inside the Syrian province of Raqqa, the Islamic State (Isis) Syrian stronghold, after deadly clashes.

Kurdish troops have taken Baghdak Hill south of the border town Kobani which is situated within Raqqa province. IS has been driven from Kobani by the YPG and the all-female YPJ Kurdish forces, and assisted by US-led air strikes.

YPG YPJ and FSA fighters form a joint command to attack ISIS in Raqqa

The jihadist group established its de facto capital in the city of Raqqa last year after seizing vast swaths of land straddling between Iraq and Syria. In recent months the city has been pounded by warplanes from the US-led coalition.

At least 35 IS fighters and four YPG members had been killed on Sunday (15 February) in fighting near Kobani.

The Kurds have taken over at least 163 villages around the border of Kobane, which became key in the international efforts to defeat IS. Several hundred rebel fighters joined the Kurds in their effort against the Sunni militants.

The #YPG press centre claimed that 18 Daesh / ISIS / ISIL militants were captured alive.

Battle for Iraq and Syria in maps

The rapid advance across Syria and Iraq by militant fighters from Islamic State (IS) in 2014 threw the region into chaos and led to US air strikes against their key positions.

By June, the jihadist group, which has fighters from across the world, announced the establishment of a "caliphate" - an Islamic state - stretching from Aleppo in Syria to the province of Diyala in Iraq.

The US went on to assemble a coalition to fight the militants, and has so far launched more than 1,200 air strikes against IS targets in Iraq since the campaign began on 8 August. Meanwhile, the UK launched its first air strikes on 30 September.

In neighbouring Syria, the US, along with Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, has also carried out more than more than 900 attacks on IS-held areas since 23 September 2014.

US President Barack Obama has warned his coalition allies they are facing a "long-term campaign".

Militants from abroad

The US Central Intelligence Agency believes IS may have up to 31,000 fighters in the region, many of whom are foreign recruits.

Figures from the London-based International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR) and the New York-based Soufan Group show an estimated 20,000 fighters from almost 80 countries have travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight with extremist groups.

The figures suggest that while about a quarter of the foreign fighters are from the West, the majority are from nearby Arab countries, such as Tunisia, Saudi Arabia and Jordan and Morocco.

Refugees

Almost four million people have fled abroad to escape the fighting in Syria. Most have gone to Lebanon and Turkey - but a significant number have also gone to Iraq.

Syrian refugees have put pressure on local services and infrastructure in Iraq - which is also having to cope with the return of many Iraqi refugees from Syria.

In addition, the UN estimates there are more than 2m Iraqis who have been forced to leave their homes to escape the conflict and are displaced within the country or elsewhere.

Battlegrounds

One of the key battlegrounds has been the fight for Kobane, a town close to the Syrian border with Turkey.

Thousands of residents were forced into Turkey to flee the fighting, while coalition airstrikes targeted the advancing Islamic State fighters.

After months of fighting, in which about 1,600 people died, US Central Command announced in January 2015 that anti-IS forces controlled 90% of the town.

Strategically for IS, Kobane's capture would have allowed the militants control of key border territory. But although the liberation of the town is a setback for the militant movement, it still controls large parts of northern and eastern Syria, as well as northern and western Iraq.

IS fighters targeted a number of Iraqi dams during their advance, capturing the facility at Falluja in April 2014. They went on to take Mosul dam in August, before US air strikes helped force them out later that month.

IS fighters also attacked the country's second largest dam at Haditha, but the area was secured by Iraqi forces In September.

In the course of its offensives in Iraq and Syria in June 2014, IS gained control of much of the oil infrastructure.

These refineries and the fields supplying them with oil have played a vital role in fuelling IS military units and in generating revenue for the group.

The coalition has targeted these locations in an attempt to damage IS capabilities.

Crazy ISIS crap - Mainfesto for Women in ISIS held territory

What ISIS Women Really Want - 

Translated to English click here for the PDF

Girls can marry at 9 then stay veiled and house-bound the rest of their lives. Quilliam, the counter-terrorism organization, translates an ISIS “manifesto” for Arab women.

LONDON — In late January online supporters of the so-called Islamic State—the group that now controls a territory larger than the United Kingdom, spanning the deserts of Syria and Iraq—began circulating a document entitled “Women in the Islamic State: Manifesto and Case Study.”

The Arabic text, which was uploaded by the all-female Al-Khanssaa Brigade’s media wing onto a jihadist forum used by ISIS, as the group is widely known, was distributed extensively among its Arabic-speaking supporters. But it was not picked up by Western jihadists, male or female. As such, it ran the risk of slipping unnoticed past non-Arabic speaking Western analysts. To avoid this, I decided to translate it (PDF).

The treatise—the first such document of its kind—clarifies a number of issues hitherto obscured by the language barrier. It attacks at length notions of “Western civilization” and universal human rights such as gender equality. It allows us to get into the mind-set of the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of women who willingly join the group’s ranks.

Much of what ISIS supporters claim on social media is designed to exaggerate, obfuscate and confuse. However, this document, clearly intended as a means of drawing in women from countries in the region, in particular those in the Gulf, presents something that is more akin to the realities of living as a female jihadist in ISIS-held territories.

From it, we learn that, while there are indeed all-female police brigades operating in Iraq and Syria and that, in certain circumstances, women may be called to battle, policing and fighting are very low on the list of responsibilities given to women. Rather, the emphasis throughout the manifesto is on the importance of motherhood and family support—in this sense, ISIS is no different from any other jihadist group. It is fundamentally misogynist and, within its interpretation of Islamism, the role of women is “divinely” limited.

The document is split into three sections: The first portion deals specifically with “Western” preoccupations like feminism, education and science. The second part is based on the author’s (or authors’) eyewitness account of life in the territories now controlled by ISIS, first in the Iraqi city of Mosul, and, secondly, in the Syrian city of Raqqa. The final section is a diatribe that compares life for women living in ISIS-held Syria and Iraq with life for women living in the Arabian Peninsula, particularly in Saudi Arabia.

Importantly, this document is not in any way aimed at a Western audience. Indeed, that it went untranslated is telling. It is a well-known fact that ISIS has a large number of English speakers within its ranks, and we have seen plenty of evidence in the past that renders apparent their ability to have propaganda translated into fluent English, French and Russian. This one targets Arab women, no more and no less.

The text is, unsurprisingly, laced with references to the Islamic scriptures. However, the myriad references—overt and otherwise—to Saudi Arabia suggest that the target audience can be narrowed down ever further to women in the Kingdom. It is therefore unlikely that this was released January 23, on the same day as the death of King Abdullah, by simple coincidence.

ISIS propaganda is always carefully honed to a particular target audience. For example, all the videos and photo reports that make it into Western media are intended to find a home there—the atrocities they depict are, first and foremost, designed to provoke outrage in the international community, a tactic that is part and parcel of the ISIS polarization strategy.

But this document plays on themes strikingly different from those used by the chief recruiters of Western women to ISIS, its English-speaking muhaajiratpopulation.

The manifesto is written in typical jihadist patois, and some sections have an almost juvenile ring to them. It tries to convince its audience that it is a fundamental necessity for women to have a sedentary lifestyle. Indeed, this is her “divinely appointed right.”

The first section, especially, provides an illuminating look into the psyche, ideology and worldview of a female ISIS supporter. After cataloguing the ills suffered by Muslims at the hands of Western civilization, it turns to the question of education: Since scientific research is central to modernity, it thus follows that the pursuit of any knowledge (except that which regards religion) is pointless. The West’s obsession with studying “the brain cells of crows, grains of sand and fish arteries” is deemed a distraction from the fundamental purpose of humanity—to worship God.

This, the manifesto argues, has sullied humanity’s purity. In the same breath, though, the author(s) insulate themselves from accusations of hypocrisy by claiming that those sciences “that people need, that help facilitate the lives of Muslims and their affairs are permissible.”

Such hypocrisy is at the root of all extremist Islamist thinking.

The above argument then moves, almost seamlessly, into an angry response to feminism, the “Western program for women.” This, the manifesto argues, has failed. The blurring of lines between the roles of each sex has caused people to forget how to worship God properly—it is a distraction that is tearing society apart.

In its attempt to identify the root cause of it all, the manifesto blames the emasculation of men. Because, it is argued, “women are not presented with a true picture of man,” they have become confused and complacent, unable to fulfill their appointed responsibilities, most of which revolve around motherhood and maintenance of the household.

The implication is obvious—the men of ISIS are deemed to be “real men.” Therefore, to live a sedentary life within the so-called Caliphate, to be exposed to their “rightful masculinity” would not only right the wrongs felt by the “Muslim community” today, it would allow a woman to be a better Muslim.

The manifesto advocates education for women, but only up to a point. A woman cannot fulfill her role if she is “illiterate or ignorant”, the manifesto argues. A curriculum is proposed would begin when girls “are seven years old and end when they are fifteen, or sometimes a little earlier”.

Then comes marriage. According to this treatise, a bride can be as young as nine years old. From this point on, it is the woman’s “appointed role [to] remain hidden and veiled and maintain society from behind.” In a jihadist perversion of feminism, then, the importance of women is championed. She is deemed to play a vital role, but always from the background.

Meanwhile, she faces myriad restrictions and an imposed piety that includeshudud or fixed punishments for breaches, including beheading, amputations and stoning.

ISIS, as usual, adapts its rigid rules to suit its own circumstances. So, some of its women are permitted to leave their houses if they are going to study theology, if they are women’s doctors or teachers, of if they have received a fatwa saying they must engage in jihad “as the women of Iraq and Chechnya did, with great sadness” when their community was in great danger.

The case studies of women “in the shade of the Caliphate” portray their experiences through rose-tinted glasses. There are no references, for example, to the myriad abuses against women that are carried out in the name of implementing ISIS’s austere version of Islamism.

The final section compares how women fare in the Arabian Peninsula to what their lives are like in ISIS-held Iraq and Syria. A litany of the offenses carried out by the Saudi monarchy is presented covers issues that range from “higher education” to “driving.” The text implores women living in the Kingdom to migrate to ISIS-held lands, and to do so urgently.

For the ISIS ideologue, women have been appointed by Got with the qualities of “sedentariness, stillness and stability” and men, “their opposites: movement and flux.” The matters of adventure and excitement, themes most used by female Western recruiters trying to lure young girls to ISIS, are limited to the realm of men.

This article was adapted from the Quilliam introduction to the “Women in the Islamic State.”