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You are here: Home / Archives for Al Qaeda

Deadly clashes continue in Yemen as embassies shutdown

February 14, 2015 by Nasheman

Clashes between Shi’ite Houthi militiamen and Sunni fighters have killed 26 people in Yemen.

The embassy closures have isolated Yemen's new rulers and lent urgency to struggling talks over internal power-sharing which the Houthis.

The embassy closures have isolated Yemen’s new rulers and lent urgency to struggling talks over internal power-sharing which the Houthis.

by Reuters

Sanaa: Clashes between Shi’ite Houthi militiamen and Sunni tribesmen fighting alongside Al Qaeda militants killed 26 people in Yemen, local officials said, as the United Arab Emirates joined Saudi Arabia and Western countries in closing its embassy in the country.

Heavy fighting was ongoing in the southern mountainous province of al-Bayda, leading to the death of 16 Houthi rebels along with 10 Sunni tribesmen and militants, security officials and tribal sources told Reuters.

The state faces collapse in Yemen two weeks after the Houthi group took formal control of the country and continued an armed push southward.

France, the United States, Britain, Germany, Italy and Saudi Arabia have closed their missions in the capital Sanaa and withdrawn staff, citing security concerns.

The United Arab Emirates announced the closure of its embassy in Sanaa on Saturday, state news agency WAM said.

It cited “the increasing deterioration of the political and security situation Yemen is witnessing and the tragic events after the Houthis undermined the legitimate authority.”

Yemen’s rich Sunni Gulf neighbors loathe the Iranian-backed rebels and have called their rise to power a “coup.”

The embassy closures have isolated Yemen’s new rulers and lent urgency to struggling talks over internal power-sharing which the Houthis are conducting with opposition parties.

Hailing their advance as a “revolution” aimed at corrupt officials and economic ruin, the Houthis dissolved parliament and set up their own ruling body earlier this month.

Opponents say the group is backed by Yemen’s former strongman president Ali Abdullah Saleh – ousted in 2011 Arab Spring protests – and is bent on seizing land and the levers of power.

The Houthi spread to Yemen’s well-armed tribal regions in the East and South has prompted locals to make common cause with militants from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, one of the deadliest arms of the global militant organization.

Months of combat and AQAP bombings directed against Houthi targets in Sanaa have stoked fears of an all-out sectarian war.

Filed Under: Muslim World Tagged With: Al Qaeda, AQAP, France, Houthis, IS, ISIL, ISIS, Islamic State, UK, USA, Yemen

Embassies closed in Yemen as AQAP supporters pledge allegiance to ISIS

February 12, 2015 by Nasheman

Security forces stand guard around the US Embassy building in Sanaa, Yemen, on February 11, 2015 after the US government closed down its embassy. Anadolu/Mohammed Hamoud.

Security forces stand guard around the US Embassy building in Sanaa, Yemen, on February 11, 2015 after the US government closed down its embassy. Anadolu/Mohammed Hamoud.

Britain, the United States and France have pulled their ambassadors and other staff out of Yemen and suspended work at the embassies due to fears over the security situation, officials said on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, a group of Islamist militants in Yemen, which formerly had supported al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), reportedly pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) on Tuesday.

The US State Department said on Tuesday it made the decision to close its Yemen embassy “due to the deteriorating security situation in Sanaa,” just as the United Nations brokered a second day of talks aimed at resolving the crisis gripping the country.

The UK’s move came after the United States said it was closing its embassy indefinitely after the Houthi militants, who staged a political takeover on February 6 , warned against attempts to destabilize the country.

Britain’s Foreign Office in London said operations at its embassy had been suspended “temporarily.”

“The security situation in Yemen has continued to deteriorate over recent days,” Tobias Ellwood, the Foreign Office minister with responsibility for the Middle East, said.

“Regrettably we now judge that our embassy staff and premises are at increased risk.”

“We have therefore decided to withdraw diplomatic staff and temporarily suspend the operations of the British Embassy in Sanaa,” Ellwood added. “Our ambassador and diplomatic staff have left Yemen this morning and will return to the UK.”

On Wednesday, the French embassy also suspended its operations for “security reasons.”

Anti-Houthi demonstrations

Yemenis in the central city of Taiz and the capital Sanaa held the largest protests yet against a takeover by a the Houthi militia group on Wednesday after Western countries shut their embassies in Yemen over security fears.

Houthi fighters, bedecked in tribal robes and automatic rifles, were out in force manning checkpoints and guarding government buildings they control in the capital.

Houthi gunmen shot in the air and thrust daggers at hundreds of protesters opposing their rule in Sanaa.

In Taiz, which the Houthis do not control, huge crowds of thousands carried banners and chanted slogans against the militants.

Meanwhile, Yemeni Nobel Peace Prize winner Tawakkol Karman has urged revolutionaries to use the fourth anniversary of the 2011 uprising that toppled ousted dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh to launch a fresh revolution against what she called the Houthi “coup.”

“This new revolutionary wave won’t stop until the army’s weaponry is restored, militias dissolved, and a modern state — that respects freedom, dignity, justice and equality — is established,” Karman said in a statement.

The Nobel laureate said that Yemen was currently at a critical juncture. “It will either be consumed by chaos and war or the youth will defeat violence through their peaceful and popular will,” she said.

Unfounded fears

On Tuesday, Houthi militia chief Abdel Malek al-Houthi said that foreign diplomats fears of instability was unfounded.

Speaking in a televised address as the UN-brokered talks carried on at a Sanaa hotel, Houthi sought to reassure diplomats after reports that some embassies in Sanaa intended to close.

“Some people are raising concerns among diplomatic missions so that they flee the country,” he said, adding that “these fears are unfounded. The security situation is stable.”

“It is in the interests of everyone, both inside and outside the country, that Yemen be stable,” Houthi stressed.

“The interests of those who bet on chaos and want to hurt the economy and security of the people will suffer,” the Houthi leader warned.

In particular, he singled out the monarchies in the Gulf, who have vowed to defend their interests in the face of what Houthis’ opponents are calling a coup.

Addressing his adversaries, Houthi proposed what he called “a partnership” under the “constitutional declaration” by which the militia seized power.

He took particular aim at the Islamist party al-Islah, one of the fiercest opponents of his militia, urging it to give up an ideology “that excludes the other.”

On February 6, matters came to a head when the Houthis said they had dissolved parliament and created a presidential council to bring the country out of crisis.

UN envoy Jamal Benomar warned that Yemen was at a “crossroads,” and urged political leaders to “take up their responsibilities and achieve consensus” as he battles for a negotiated solution.

Meanwhile, Houthis affirmed their military supremacy across the country as clashes broke out on Tuesday, leading to the militia taking control of the central al-Bayda province.

In Tuesday’s fighting, residents of the central city of Bayda said elements of the Republican Guard still loyal to the ousted dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh had supported the Houthis in the heavy combat that led to the province falling under Houthi control.

In the west of the province, 10 Houthis were killed and another six captured in fighting with local tribesmen, tribal sources revealed.

The Houthi takeover has drawn international condemnation, including from UN chief Ban Ki-moon calling for President Abed-Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who has resigned, to be restored to power.

“The situation is very, very seriously deteriorating, with the Houthis taking power and making this government vacuum. There must be restoration of legitimacy of President Hadi,” Ban said.

The fall of Hadi’s government has sparked fears that impoverished Yemen — strategically located next to oil-rich Saudi Arabia and on the key shipping route from the Suez Canal to the Gulf — could plunge into chaos.

AQAP allegiance to ISIS

Meanwhile, a group of Islamist fighters in Yemen renounced their loyalty to al-Qaeda’s leader and pledged allegiance to the head of ISIS, according to a Twitter message retrieved by US-based monitoring group SITE.

The monitoring group could not immediately verify the statement distributed on Twitter purportedly from supporters of AQAP based in central Yemen.

AQAP is considered the most powerful branch of the global militant network headed by Ayman al-Zawahiri and has previously rejected the authority of ISIS, which has declared a caliphate in large swathes of land in Iraq and Syria.

“We announce the formation of armed brigades specialized in pounding the apostates in Sanaa and Dhamar,” the purported former AQAP supporters wrote, referring to two central provinces.

“We announce breaking the pledge of allegiance to the sheikh, the holy warrior and scholar Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahiri … We pledge to the caliph of the believers Ibrahim bin Awad al-Baghdadi to listen and obey,” they said.

Militants in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and Libya have also joined ISIS, signaling a competition for loyalty among armed Islamists battling states in the Middle East and North Africa.

US drones keep flying over Yemen

The Pentagon on Tuesday acknowledged that Yemen’s political unrest was impacting its counter-terrorism capabilities but said it was still training some Yemeni forces and could still carry out operations inside the country against al-Qaeda militants.

“There’s no question as a result of the political instability in Yemen that our counter-terrorism capabilities have been … affected,” Rear Admiral John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, told a news briefing.

“As I stand here today, we continue to conduct some training. We continue to have the capability — unilaterally if need be — of conducting counter-terrorism operations inside Yemen.”

Turmoil in the wake of late January’s collapse of a US-backed Yemeni government after days of clashes in the capital Sanaa, forced the US State Department to reduce staff and operations at the US Embassy.

The turmoil has also cast doubt over the future of a key partnership for Washington in the fight against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Only last September, US President Barack Obama touted cooperation with Yemen as a model in counter-terrorism.

The crisis in the Arab world’s poorest country threatens to create a power vacuum that could allow AQAP to expand across the peninsula.

In Late January, US officials said training of Yemeni special forces had ground to a halt in the capital, though some joint activities were continuing in the south.

The US officials added that they can continue drone strikes, as demonstrated by a February 10 attack in Hadramawt province in southeastern Yemen, which killed four suspected al-Qaeda members.

The Central Intelligence Agency, which conducts the bulk of drone operations in Yemen, has no drone bases on Yemeni soil but operates from Saudi Arabia and Djibouti, US officials say.

Yemen is a key US ally in the fight against al-Qaeda, allowing Washington to conduct a longstanding drone war against the group on its territory. However, US drone attacks in the impoverished Gulf country have also killed many civilians unaffiliated with al-Qaeda.

(AFP, Reuters, Anadolu, Al-Akhbar)

Filed Under: Muslim World Tagged With: Al Qaeda, AQAP, France, Houthis, IS, ISIL, ISIS, Islamic State, UK, USA, Yemen

Yemen’s Al-Qaeda claims responsibility for Paris attacks

January 14, 2015 by Nasheman

This still image grab taken off a propaganda video posted online on January 14, 2015, by al-Malahem Media, the media arm of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), purportedly shows one of the group's leaders, Nasser bin Ali al-Ansi delivering a video message from an undisclosed location and claiming responsibility for the attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo's offices in Paris. AFP/HO/al-Malahem Media

This still image grab taken off a propaganda video posted online on January 14, 2015, by al-Malahem Media, the media arm of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), purportedly shows one of the group’s leaders, Nasser bin Ali al-Ansi delivering a video message from an undisclosed location and claiming responsibility for the attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo’s offices in Paris. AFP/HO/al-Malahem Media

by Al-Akhbar

Al-Qaeda in Yemen claimed responsibility for the attack on French magazine Charlie Hebdo, saying it was retribution for insulting the Prophet Mohammad, according to a video posted on YouTube.

“As for the blessed battle of Paris, we, the organization of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), claim responsibility for this operation as vengeance for the Messenger of God,” one of the group’s leaders, Nasser al-Ansi, said in the video titled “A message regarding the blessed battle of Paris.”

Ansi said the attack was ordered by Ayman Zawahiri, the network’s global commander.

“The leadership was the party that chose the target and plotted and financed the plan… It was following orders by our general chief Ayman al-Zawahiri,” he said.

“The heroes were chosen and they answered the call,” Ansi added.

Speaking over footage of the attack that killed 12 people, Ansi said: “Today, the mujahideen avenge their revered prophet, and send the clearest message to everyone who would dare to attack Islamic sanctities.”

On January 7, Cherif and Said Kouachi targeted the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical magazine known for its controversial depictions of the Prophet Mohammad. They killed 12, including a police officer. The two French brothers were killed two days later by French security forces after an extended manhunt.

On January 9, Amedy Coulibaly, a French citizen linked to the Kouachi brothers who is believed to have also killed a police officer on January 7, held people hostage in a kosher supermarket, where he killed four people before being killed himself by security forces.

Despite condemnation of the attacks by Muslims in France and across the world, the Central Council of Muslims in France said there have been more than 50 anti-Muslim assaults since the attack on Charlie Hebdo.

The incidents included 21 reports of shooting at sites frequented by Muslims and the throwing of some form of grenades, and 33 threats.

AQAP in Yemen

AQAP, which is reported to have trained at least one of the two brothers, is seen by Washington as the al-Qaeda network’s most dangerous branch.

The first known attack of al-Qaeda in Yemen dates back to 1992, when bombers hit a hotel that formerly housed US Marines in the southern city of Aden, in which two non-American citizens were killed.

AQAP was formed in January 2009 as a merger of the Yemeni and Saudi branches of al-Qaeda and is led by Nasser al-Wuhayshi.

Since then, AQAP has regularly carried out deadly attacks against Yemeni security forces and, more recently, has claimed a series of bombings against Houthi militants and civilians in the capital Sanaa and central provinces.

The group recently called for its supporters to carry out attacks in France, which is part of a US-led coalition conducting airstrikes against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) Islamist group.

In December, AQAP’s English-language propaganda magazine “Inspire” urged jihadists to carry out “lone wolf” attacks abroad. In 2013, it named Charlie Hebdo cartoonist and editor-in-chief Stephane Charbonnier among its list of targets.

Charbonnier, better known as Charb, was one of 12 people killed in Paris on Wednesday when the two gunmen stormed the magazine’s offices.

Drone strikes

AQAP took advantage of the weakness of Yemen’s central government during an uprising in 2011 against now-ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh to seize large swathes of territory across the south.

But after a month-long offensive launched in May 2012 by Yemeni troops, most militants fled to the more lawless desert regions of the east towards the Hadramawt province.

Yemen is a key US ally in the fight against al-Qaeda, allowing Washington to conduct a longstanding drone war against the group on its territory. However, US drone attacks in the impoverished Gulf country have also killed many civilians unaffiliated with al-Qaeda.

(AFP, Reuters, Al-Akhbar)

Filed Under: Muslim World Tagged With: Al Qaeda, AQAP, Charlie Hebdo, Cherif Kouachi, France, Paris, Said Kouachi, Yemen

At least 13 killed in failed US bid to rescue hostages

December 9, 2014 by Nasheman

yemen

by Reuters

A woman, a 10-year-old boy and a local Al-Qaeda leader were among at least 11 people killed alongside two Western hostages when US-led forces battled militants in a failed rescue mission in Yemen, residents said.

US special forces raided the village of Dafaar in Shabwa province, a militant stronghold in southern Yemen, shortly after midnight on Saturday, killing several members of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

American journalist Luke Somers, 33, and South African teacher Pierre Korkie, 56, were shot and killed by their captors during the raid intended to secure the hostages’ freedom, US officials said.

AQAP, formed in 2006 by the merger of the Yemeni and Saudi branches of the network, has for years been seen by Washington as one of the movement’s most dangerous branches.

Western governments fear an advance by Shi’ite Muslim Houthi fighters.

However, since Islamic State in Syria and Iraq began distributing films of its militants executing Western hostages, the focus on AQAP, which has traditionally used hostage-taking as a way to raise funds, had diminished until now.

At least one Briton and a Turkish man are still held by the group.

“AQAP and Daesh (Islamic State) are essentially the same organisation but have different methods of execution and tactics,” a senior Yemeni intelligence official said on the sidelines of a conference in Bahrain this weekend.

Reports on social media feeds of known militants also said one of those killed was an AQAP commander and two members of the group. Six other people from the same southern Yemen tribe also died, the reports said, although they could not be immediately verified.

Senior US officials have said the raid was carried out by US forces alone, but both Yemen’s government and local residents said Yemeni forces also participated in the raid and engaged militants holding Somers and Korkie.

Filed Under: Muslim World Tagged With: Al Qaeda, AQAP, Luke Somers, Pierre Korkie, United States, USA, Yemen

Washington moving towards wider war in Iraq and Syria

November 10, 2014 by Nasheman

A pair of U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles fly over northern Iraq

by Bill Van Auken, WSWS

There are new indications that Washington is moving toward a wider and protracted military intervention in the Middle East in the name of combating the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

In the wake of last weekend’s collapse of US-backed Syrian “rebels” in the face of an offensive by Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, the Al Nusra Front, plans are being prepared to extend the three-month-old US-led bombing campaign deeper into Syria. The ostensible purpose of these air strikes would be to provide air support for the Western-backed militias formed to prosecute the war for regime change against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

The concern within US military and intelligence circles is that the Nusra Front fighters appear poised to seize control of the strategic Bab al-Hawa border crossing with Turkey, which has served as a key conduit for funneling arms and other aid to the Syrian “rebels.”

A substantial portion of that aid, including heavy weapons such as TOW anti-tank missiles and GRAD rockets, fell into the hands of the Nusra Front last weekend as the American-backed groups—the Syrian Revolutionary Front and Harakat Hazm (Steadfastness Movement)—surrendered without a shot being fired. Many of the members of these groups then joined the Nusra Front.

“The recent fighting in northwestern Syria has been taking place a long way from areas farther east where US and Arab warplanes have been pounding Islamic State positions,” the Washington Post reported Wednesday. “But US concern has grown rapidly in recent days amid fears about the [Bab al-Hawa] border crossing, according to senior administration officials who spoke about internal discussions on the condition of anonymity.”

The report cited discussions about likely “complications” arising from air strikes in the area, in particular whether the Syrian government would “tolerate an expansion” of the war beyond Iraq and areas of Syria near the Iraqi border, which have fallen under ISIS control.

There are, however, multiple demands that Washington carry out such an expansion with the aim of directing the US-led war precisely at toppling the Assad regime.

This is the position being advanced by the governments of both France and Turkey. French foreign minister Laurent Fabius wrote an opinion column published by several media organizations earlier this week calling on the US and its allies to shift the military intervention away from the Kurdish border town of Kobane, where there have been regular US bombings, to the city of Aleppo. Previously Syria’s industrial capital, Aleppo has been the scene of stepped up fighting as the Syrian government seeks to consolidate its control by defeating the so-called rebels.

“France cannot resign itself to the breakup of Syria or to the abandonment of the Aleppans to this fate,” Fabius wrote. “That is why—together with our coalition partners—we must focus our efforts on Aleppo, with two clear objectives: strengthening our support for the moderate Syrian opposition, and protecting the civilian population from the twin crimes of the regime and Daesh [ISIS]. After Kobane, we must save Aleppo.”

Just two days later, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu warned that if Aleppo were to fall to the government forces, Turkey could face a major new refugee crisis. “This is why we called for a safe zone as well as taking measures against not only the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [ISIS] but also the Assad regime,” he said. Turkey has called for the creation of a “buffer zone” inside Syria along the Turkish border. Such a “buffer” would serve the dual purpose of providing a safe haven for the Western-backed “rebels” and breaking up the autonomous zones created in the border area by Syrian Kurds, which Ankara sees as a threat in terms of its own conflict with the country’s Kurdish population.

Turkey has also advocated the imposition of a “no fly zone,” which would entail a massive bombing campaign against Syria’s air force and air defenses.

These same positions find support within Washington from, among others, Arizona Republican Senator John McCain, who, after Tuesday’s midterm election, will become chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, giving him access to a significant lever for shifting the US toward a more aggressive policy.

On the eve of the election, McCain charged that the collapse of the American-backed “rebels” to the Nusra Front constituted proof that “the administration’s current strategy in Syria is a disaster.” He demanded a greater military intervention to “protect the Syrian people.”

An escalation of the war is a virtual certainty now the US midterm elections are over. As Foreign Policy commented Wednesday: “When it comes to foreign policy, a GOP win could make it easier for Obama … if the president decided to shift his strategy against the Islamic State, [to] win Congressional backing for sending ground troops to Iraq or Syria.”

A revealing indication of the intense and protracted character of the war that US imperialism is preparing in the Middle East was provided by theWashington Post ’s well-connected national security correspondent, Walter Pincus.

“The Defense Department is certainly preparing for a long fight,” Pincus wrote, citing a recent notice to military contractors of department plans for an eight-year contract for the Air Combat Command of the US Air Force, set to begin in October 2016. The contract is for operating and supporting the command’s “major war reserve materiel facilities in Oman, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.”

Among the items to be pre-positioned at these sites are mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles (MRAPs), massive amounts of ammunition and “medical contingency hospitals for expeditionary medical support.” The plan also calls for creating “facilities and equipment that could house 3,300 airmen and 72 fighter aircraft at expeditionary locations.”

In the meantime, the Pentagon’s Central Command announced Wednesday it had carried out four air strikes in Syria and 10 in Iraq since Monday. A CENTCOM spokesman said the strikes had hit various ISIS vehicles, bunkers and small units.

From Iraq itself, however, came a different account of the US bombing runs. In al-Qaim, in western Anbar province near the Syrian border, security officials told the National Iraqi News Agency that a US warplane fired two missiles into a popular market in the center of the city. The explosions ripped through the crowded market, leaving at least seven Iraqi civilians dead and 27 others wounded, many of them critically.

Filed Under: Muslim World Tagged With: Al Qaeda, Iraq, IS, ISIL, ISIS, Islamic State, Jabhat al-Nusra, Syria, United States, USA

Only 4% of drone victims in Pakistan named as Al-Qaeda members

October 18, 2014 by Nasheman

CIA drones targeted but missed al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri in this strike in 2006 (AFP/Getty)

CIA drones targeted but missed al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri in this strike in 2006 (AFP/Getty)

– by Jack Serle, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

As the number of US drone strikes in Pakistan hits 400, research by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism finds that fewer than 4% of the people killed have been identified by available records as named members of al Qaeda. This calls in to question US Secretary of State John Kerry’s claim last year that only “confirmed terrorist targets at the highest level” were fired at.

The Bureau’s Naming the Dead project has gathered the names and, where possible, the details of people killed by CIA drones in Pakistan since June 2004. On October 11 an attack brought the total number of drone strikes in Pakistan up to 400.

The names of the dead have been collected over a year of research in and outside Pakistan, using a multitude of sources. These include both Pakistani government records leaked to the Bureau, and hundreds of open source reports in English, Pashtun and Urdu.

Naming the Dead has also drawn on field investigations conducted by the Bureau’s researchers in Pakistan and other organisations, including Amnesty International, Reprieve and the Centre for Civilians in Conflict.

Only 704 of the 2,379 dead have been identified, and only 295 of these were reported to be members of some kind of armed group. Few corroborating details were available for those who were just described as militants. More than a third of them were not designated a rank, and almost 30% are not even linked to a specific group. Only 84 are identified as members of al Qaeda – less than 4% of the total number of people killed.

These findings “demonstrate the continuing complete lack of transparency surrounding US drone operations,” said Mustafa Qadri, Pakistan researcher for Amnesty International.

Pakistan drone strike
deaths in numbers
Total killed 2,379
Total identified as militants 295
Total named as al Qaeda 84
Total named 704

When asked for a comment on the Bureau’s investigation, US National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said that strikes were only carried out when there was “near-certainty” that no civilians would be killed.

“The death of innocent civilians is something that the U.S. Government seeks to avoid if at all possible. In those rare instances in which it appears non-combatants may have been killed or injured, after-action reviews have been conducted to determine why, and to ensure that we are taking the most effective steps to minimise such risk to non-combatants in the future,” said Hayden.

“Associated forces”

The Obama administration’s stated legal justification for such strikes is based partly on the right to self-defence in response to an imminent threat. This has proved controversial as leaked documents show the US believes determining if a terrorist is an imminent threat “does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on US persons and interests will take place in the immediate future.”

The legal basis for the strikes also stems from the Authorisation for the Use of Military Force (Aumf) – a law signed by Congress three days after the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks. It gives the president the right to use “all necessary and appropriate force” against those behind the attacks on the US, wherever they are.

The text of Aumf does not name any particular group. But the president, in a major foreign policy speech in May 2013, said this includes “al Qaeda, the Taliban and its associated forces”.

Nek Mohammed speaks at a Jirga three weeks before he died in a CIA drone strike (Reuters/Kamran Wazir)

It is not clear who is deemed to be “associated” with the Taliban. Hayden told the Bureau that “an associated force is an organised armed group that has entered the fight alongside al Qaeda and is a co-belligerent with al Qaeda in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners.”

The CIA itself does not seem to know the affiliation of everyone they kill. Secret CIA documents recording the identity, rank and affiliation of people targeted and killed in strikes between 2006 to 2008 and 2010 to 2011 were leaked to the McClatchy news agency in April 2013. They identified hundreds of those killed as simply Afghan or Pakistani fighters, or as “unknown”.

Determining the affiliation even of those deemed to be “Taliban” is problematic. The movement has two branches: one, the Afghan Taliban, is fighting US and allied forces, and trying to re-establish the ousted Taliban government of Mullah Omar in Kabul. The other, the Pakistani Taliban or the TTP, is mainly focused on toppling the Pakistani state, putting an end to democracy and establishing a theocracy based on extreme ideology. Although the US did not designate the TTP as a foreign terrorist organisation until September 2010, the group and its precursors are known to have worked with the Afghan Taliban.

According to media reports, the choice of targets has not always reflected the priorities of the US alone. In April last year the McClatchy news agency reported the US used its drones to kill militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas in exchange for Pakistani help in targeting al Qaeda members.

Three days before the McClatchy report, the New York Times revealed the first known US drone strike in Pakistan, on June 17 2004, was part of a secret deal with Pakistan to gain access to its airspace. The CIA agreed to kill the target, Nek Mohammed, in exchange for permission for its drones to go after the US’s enemies.

The “butcher of Swat”

Senior militants have been killed in the CIA’s 10-year drone campaign in Pakistan. But as the Bureau’s work indicates, it is far from clear that they constitute the only or even the majority of people killed in these strikes.

“Judging by the sheer volume of strikes and the reliable estimates of total casualties, it is very unlikely that the majority of victims are senior commanders,” says Amnesty’s Qadri.

The Bureau has only found 111 of those killed in Pakistan since 2004 described as a senior commander of any armed group – just 5% of the total. Research by the New America Foundation estimated the proportion of senior commanders to be even lower, at just 2%.

Waliur Rehman talks to the Associated Press less than two years before his death (AP Photo/Ishtiaq Mahsud)

Among them are men linked to serious crimes. Men such as Ibne Amin, known as the “butcher of Swat” for the barbaric treatment he and his men meted out on the residents of the Swat valley in 2008 and 2009.

Others include Abu Khabab al Masri, an al Qaeda chemical weapons expert. Drones also killed Hakimullah and Baitullah Mehsud, and Wali Ur Rehman – all senior leaders of the TTP.

There are 73 more people recorded in Naming the Dead who are described as mid-ranking members of armed groups. However someone’s rank is not necessarily a reliable guide to their importance in the organisation.

“I think it really depends on what they are,” Rez Jan, a senior Pakistan analyst at the American Enterprise Institute think tank told the Bureau. “You can be a mid-level guy who is involved in [improvised explosive device] production or training in bomb making or planting, or combat techniques and have a fairly lethal impact in that manner.”

Rashid Rauf, a British citizen killed in a November 2008 drone strike in Pakistan, is one al Qaeda member who appears to have had an impact despite not rising to the organisation’s highest echelons.

He acted as a point of contact between the perpetrators of the July 7 2005 attacks on the London Underground and their al Qaeda controllers. He also filled a similar role linking al Qaeda central with the men planning to bring down several airliners flying from London to the US in the 2006 “liquid bomb plot”.

The Bureau has only been able to establish information about the alleged roles of just 21 of those killed. Even this mostly consists of basic descriptions such as “logistician” or “the equivalent of a colonel.”

Note: This story contains a clarification. 4% of people who have been killed by CIA drone strikes have been named and positively identified as members of al Qaeda by available records. Of the drone strike victims who have been named, 12% are identified as al Qaeda. 

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Drone attacks in Pakistan, Pakistan, Taliban, United States, USA

Media wrong, no specific terror alert for Goa: CM Manohar Parrikar

October 18, 2014 by Nasheman

Manohar Parrikar (Photo credit: HT)

Manohar Parrikar (Photo credit: HT)

Panaji: Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar Friday said that there was no specific terror alert for the state and media reports quoting a top NSG official indicating the same were “incorrect”.

Parrikar told a press conference at the state secretariat here that National Security Guard (NSG) Director General J.N. Choudhury’s comments about terror threats were off hand and the media had wrongly reported them.

“We have not received an alert. That comment of the NSG director general was an off hand comment,” Parrikar said.

“He said that these kind of activities are being carried out,” Parrikar said, adding that the news reports which said that Goa was specifically in the cross hairs of Islamic terror groups like Al Qaeda and Islamic State (IS) were incorrect.

On Thursday media reports quoting Choudhury said that the IS and Al Qaeda were planning multi-city attacks in India, suggesting that Bangalore and Goa were on the terror hit list.

(IANS)

Filed Under: India Tagged With: Al Qaeda, Goa, IS, ISIL, ISIS, J N Choudhury, Manohar Parrikar, Media, National Security Guard, NSG

U.S-led raids hit grain silos in Syria, kill workers: monitor

September 30, 2014 by Nasheman

A pair of U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles fly over northern Iraq after conducting airstrikes in Syria, in this U.S. Air Force handout photo taken early in the morning of September 23, 2014.  REUTERS/U.S. Air Force/Senior Airman Matthew Bruch/Handout

A pair of U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles fly over northern Iraq after conducting airstrikes in Syria, in this U.S. Air Force handout photo taken early in the morning of September 23, 2014. REUTERS/U.S. Air Force/Senior Airman Matthew Bruch/Handout

– by Sylvia Westall and Andrew Heavens, Reuters

Beirut: U.S.-led air strikes hit grain silos and other targets in Islamic State-controlled territory in northern and eastern Syria overnight, killing civilians and wounding militants, a group monitoring the war said on Monday.

The aircraft may have mistaken the mills and grain storage areas in the northern Syrian town of Manbij for an Islamic State base, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. There was no immediate comment from Washington.

The United States has targeted Islamic State and other fighters in Syria since last week with the help of Arab allies, and in Iraq since last month. It aims to damage and destroy the bases, forces and supply lines of the al Qaeda offshoot which has captured large areas of both countries.

The strikes in Manbij appeared to have killed only civilians, not fighters, said Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the Observatory which gathers information from sources in Syria.

“These were the workers at the silos. They provide food for the people,” he said. He could not give a number of casualties and it was not immediately possible to verify the information.

Manbij sits between Aleppo city in the west and the town of Kobani on the northern border with Turkey, which Islamic State has been trying to capture from Kurdish forces, forcing tens of thousands of Syrian Kurds to flee over the frontier.

Syria’s army also carried out air raids in Aleppo province overnight, targeting areas east of Aleppo city with barrel bombs and other projectiles, the Observatory said. The army also carried out air strikes in Hama in western Syria.

Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have been battling Islamist fighters around Aleppo, which is held by a number of groups in Syria’s war

In eastern Syria, U.S.-led forces bombed a gas plant controlled by the Islamic State outside Deir al-Zor city, wounding several of the militant group’s fighters, the Observatory said.

The United States has said it wants strikes to target oil facilities held by Islamic State to try to stem a source of revenues for the group.

The raid hit Kuniko gas plant, which feeds a power station in Homs that provides several provinces with electricity and powers oil fields generators, the Observatory said.

U.S.-led warplanes also hit areas of Hasaka city in the north east and the outskirts of Raqqa city in the north, which is Islamic State’s stronghold.

Filed Under: Muslim World Tagged With: Al Qaeda, IS, ISIS, Islamic State, Syria, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, USA

The Fake terror threat used to justify bombing Syria

September 30, 2014 by Nasheman

khorasan

– by Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain, The Intercept

As the Obama Administration prepared to bomb Syria without congressional or U.N. authorization, it faced two problems. The first was the difficulty of sustaining public support for a new years-long war against ISIS, a group that clearly posed no imminent threat to the “homeland.” A second was the lack of legal justification for launching a new bombing campaign with no viable claim of self-defense or U.N. approval.

The solution to both problems was found in the wholesale concoction of a brand new terror threat that was branded “The Khorasan Group.” After spending weeks depicting ISIS as an unprecedented threat — too radical even for Al Qaeda! — administration officials suddenly began spoon-feeding their favorite media organizations and national security journalists tales of a secret group that was even scarier and more threatening than ISIS, one that posed a direct and immediate threat to the American Homeland. Seemingly out of nowhere, a new terror group was created in media lore.

The unveiling of this new group was performed in a September 13 article by the Associated Press, who cited unnamed U.S. officials to warn of this new shadowy, worse-than-ISIS terror group:

While the Islamic State group [ISIS] is getting the most attention now, another band of extremists in Syria — a mix of hardened jihadis from Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria and Europe — poses a more direct and imminent threat to the United States, working with Yemeni bomb-makers to target U.S. aviation, American officials say.

At the center is a cell known as the Khorasan group, a cadre of veteran al-Qaida fighters from Afghanistan and Pakistan who traveled to Syria to link up with the al-Qaida affiliate there, the Nusra Front.

But the Khorasan militants did not go to Syria principally to fight the government of President Bashar Assad, U.S. officials say. Instead, they were sent by al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri to recruit Europeans and Americans whose passports allow them to board a U.S.-bound airliner with less scrutiny from security officials.

AP warned Americans that “the fear is that the Khorasan militants will provide these sophisticated explosives to their Western recruits who could sneak them onto U.S.-bound flights.” It explained that although ISIS has received most of the attention, the Khorasan Group “is considered the more immediate threat.”

The genesis of the name was itself scary: “Khorasan refers to a province under the Islamic caliphate, or religious empire, of old that included parts of Afghanistan.” AP depicted the U.S. officials who were feeding them the narrative as engaging in some sort of act of brave, unauthorized truth-telling: “Many U.S. officials interviewed for this story would not be quoted by name talking about what they said was highly classified intelligence.”

On the morning of September 18, CBS News broadcast a segment that is as pure war propaganda as it gets: directly linking the soon-to-arrive U.S. bombing campaign in Syria to the need to protect Americans from being exploded in civilian jets by Khorasan. With ominous voice tones, the host narrated:

This morning we are learning of a new and growing terror threat coming out of Syria. It’s an Al Qaeda cell you probably never heard of. Nearly everything about them is classified. Bob Orr is in Washington with new information on a group some consider more  dangerous than ISIS.

Orr then announced that while ISIS is “dominating headlines and terrorist propaganda,” Orr’s “sources” warn of “a more immediate threat to the U.S. Homeland.” As Orr spoke, CBS flashed alternating video showing scary Muslims in Syria and innocent westerners waiting in line at airports, as he intoned that U.S. officials have ordered “enhanced screening” for “hidden explosives.” This is all coming, Orr explained, from  ”an emerging threat in Syria” where “hardened terrorists” are building “hard to detect bombs.”

The U.S. government, Orr explained, is trying to keep this all a secret; they won’t even mention the group’s name in public out of security concerns! But Orr was there to reveal the truth, as his “sources confirm the Al Qaeda cell goes by the name Khorasan.” And they’re “developing fresh plots to attack U.S. aviation.”

Later that day, Obama administration officials began publicly touting the group, when Director of National Intelligence James Clapper warned starkly: “In terms of threat to the homeland, Khorasan may pose as much of a danger as the Islamic State.” Then followed an avalanche of uncritical media reports detailing this Supreme Threat, excitingly citing anonymous officials as though they had uncovered a big secret the government was trying to conceal.

On September 20, The New York Times devoted a long article to strongly hyping the Khorasan Group. Headlined “U.S. Suspects More Direct Threats Beyond ISIS,” the article began by announcing that U.S. officials believe a different group other than ISIS “posed a more direct threat to America and Europe.” Specifically:

American officials said that the group called Khorasan had emerged in the past year as the cell in Syria that may be the most intent on hitting the United States or its installations overseas with a terror attack. The officials said that the group is led by Muhsin al-Fadhli, a senior Qaeda operative who, according to the State Department, was so close to Bin Laden that he was among a small group of people who knew about the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks before they were launched.

Again, the threat they posed reached all the way to the U.S.: “Members of the cell are said to be particularly interested in devising terror plots using concealed explosives.”

This Khorasan-attacking-Americans alarm spread quickly and explosively in the landscape of U.S. national security reporting. The Daily Beast‘s Eli Lake warned on September 23 — the day after the first U.S. bombs fell in Syria — that “American analysts had pieced together detailed information on a pending attack from an outfit that informally called itself ‘the Khorasan Group’ to use hard-to-detect explosives on American and European airliners.” He added even more ominously: “The planning from the Khorasan Group … suggests at least an aspiration to launch more-coordinated and larger attacks on the West in the style of the 9/11 attacks from 2001″ (days later, Lake, along with Josh Rogin, actually claimed that“Iran has long been harboring senior al Qaeda, al Nusra, and so-called Khorasan Group leaders as part of its complicated strategy to influence the region”).

On the day of the bombing campaign, NBC News’ Richard Engel tweeted this:

That tweet linked to an NBC Nightly News report in which anchor Brian Williams introduced Khorasan with a graphic declaring it “The New Enemy,” and Engel went on to explain that the group is “considered a threat to the U.S. because, U.S. intelligence officials say, it wants to bring down airplanes with explosives.”

Once the bombing campaign was underway, ISIS — the original theme of the attack — largely faded into the background, as Obama officials and media allies aggressively touted attacks on Khorasan leaders and the disruption of its American-targeting plots. On the first day of the bombing, The Washington Post announced that “the United States also pounded a little-known but well-resourced al-Qaeda cell that some American officials fear could pose a direct threat to the United States.” It explained:

The Pentagon said in a statement early Tuesday that the United States conducted eight strikes west of Aleppo against the cell, called the Khorasan Group, targeting its “training camps, an explosives and munitions production facility, a communications building and command and control facilities.”

The same day, CNN claimed that “among the targets of U.S. strikes across Syria early Tuesday was the Khorasan Group.” The bombing campaign in Syria was thus magically transformed into an act of pure self-defense, given that ”the group was actively plotting against a U.S. homeland target and Western targets, a senior U.S. official told CNN on Tuesday.” The bevy of anonymous sources cited by CNN had a hard time keep their stories straight:

The official said the group posed an “imminent” threat. Another U.S. official later said the threat was not imminent in the sense that there were no known targets or attacks expected in the next few weeks.

The plots were believed to be in an advanced stage, the second U.S. official said. There were indications that the militants had obtained materials and were working on new improvised explosive devices that would be hard to detect, including common hand-held electronic devices and airplane carry-on items such as toiletries.

Nonetheless, what was clear was that this group had to be bombed in Syria to save American lives, as the terrorist group even planned to conceal explosive devices in toothpaste or flammable clothing as a means to target U.S. airliners. The day following the first bombings, Attorney General Eric Holder claimed: “We hit them last night out of a concern that they were getting close to an execution date of some of the plans that we have seen.”

CNN’s supremely stenographic Pentagon reporter, Barbara Starr, went on air as videos of shiny new American fighter jets and the Syria bombing were shown and explained that this was all necessary to stop a Khorasan attack very close to being carried out against the west:

What we are hearing from a senior US official is the reason they struck Khorasan right now is they had intelligence that the group — of Al Qaeda veterans — was in the stages of planning an attack against the US homeland and/or an attack against a target in Europe, and the information indicated Khorasan was well on its way — perhaps in its final stages — of planning that attack.

All of that laid the fear-producing groundwork for President Obama to claim self-defense when he announced the bombing campaign on September 23 with this boast: “Once again, it must be clear to anyone who would plot against America and try to do Americans harm that we will not tolerate safe havens for terrorists who threaten our people.”

The very next day, a Pentagon official claimed a U.S. airstrike killed “the Khorasan leader,” and just a few days after that, U.S. media outlets celebrated what they said was the admission by jihadi social media accounts that “the leader of the al Qaeda-linked Khorasan group was killed in a U.S. air strike in Syria.”

But once it served its purpose of justifying the start of the bombing campaign in Syria, the Khorasan narrative simply evaporated as quickly as it materialized. Foreign Policy‘s Shane Harris, with two other writers, was one of the first to question whether the “threat” was anywhere near what it had been depicted to be:

But according to the top U.S. counterterrorism official, as well as Obama himself, there is “no credible information” that the militants of the Islamic State were planning to attack inside the United States. Although the group could pose a domestic terrorism threat if left unchecked, any plot it tried launching today would be “limited in scope” and “nothing like a 9/11-scale attack,” Matthew Olsen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said in remarks at the Brookings Institution earlier this month. That would suggest that Khorasan doesn’t have the capability either, even if it’s working to develop it.

“Khorasan has the desire to attack, though we’re not sure their capabilities match their desire,” a senior U.S. counterterrorism official told Foreign Policy.

On September 25, The New York Times — just days after hyping the Khorasan threat to the homeland — wrote that “the group’s evolution from obscurity to infamy has been sudden.” And the paper of record began, for the first time, to note how little evidence actually existed for all those claims about the imminent threats posed to the homeland:

American officials have given differing accounts about just how close the group was to mounting an attack, and about what chance any plot had of success. One senior American official on Wednesday described the Khorasan plotting as “aspirational” and said that there did not yet seem to be a concrete plan in the works.

Literally within a matter of days, we went from “perhaps in its final stages of planning its attack” (CNN) to “plotting as ‘aspirational’” and “there did not yet seem to be a concrete plan in the works” (NYT).

Late last week, Associated Press’ Ken Dilanian — the first to unveil the new Khorasan Product in mid-September — published a new story explaining that just days after bombing “Khorasan” targets in Syria, high-ranking U.S. officials seemingly backed off all their previous claims of an “imminent” threat from the group. Headlined “U.S. Officials Offer More Nuanced Take on Khorasan Threat,” it noted that “several U.S. officials told reporters this week that the group was in the final stages of planning an attack on the West, leaving the impression that such an attack was about to happen.” But now:

Senior U.S. officials offered a more nuanced picture Thursday of the threat they believe is posed by an al-Qaida cell in Syria targeted in military strikes this week, even as they defended the decision to attack the militants.

James Comey, the FBI director, and Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, each acknowledged that the U.S. did not have precise intelligence about where or when the cell, known as the Khorasan Group, would attempt to strike a Western target. . . .

Kirby, briefing reporters at the Pentagon, said, “I don’t know that we can pin that down to a day or month or week or six months….We can have this debate about whether it was valid to hit them or not, or whether it was too soon or too late…We hit them. And I don’t think we need to throw up a dossier here to prove that these are bad dudes.”

Regarding claims that an attack was “imminent,” Comey said: “I don’t know exactly what that word means…’imminent’” — a rather consequential admission given that said imminence was used as the justification for launching military action in the first place.

Even more remarkable, it turns out the very existence of an actual “Khorasan Group” was to some degree an invention of the American government. NBC’s Engel, the day after he reported on the U.S. government’s claims about the group for Nightly News, seemed to have serious second thoughts about the group’s existence, tweeting:

Indeed, a Nexis search for the group found almost no mentions of its name prior to the September 13 AP article based on anonymous officials. There was one oblique reference to it in a July 31 CNN op-ed by Peter Bergen. The other mention was an article in the LA Times from two weeks earlier about Pakistan which mentioned the group’s name as something quite different than how it’s being used now: as “the intelligence wing of the powerful Pakistani Taliban faction led by Hafiz Gul Bahadur.” Tim Shorrock noted that the name appears in a 2011 hacked Stratfor email published by WikiLeaks, referencing a Dawn article that depicts them as a Pakistan-based group which was fighting against and “expelled by” (not “led by”) Bahadur.

There are serious questions about whether the Khorasan Group even exists in any meaningful or identifiable manner. Aki Peritz, a CIA counterterrorism official until 2009, told Time: “I’d certainly never heard of this group while working at the agency,” while Obama’s former U.S. ambassador to Syria Robert Ford said: ”We used the term [Khorasan] inside the government, we don’t know where it came from….All I know is that they don’t call themselves that.” As The Intercept was finalizing this article, former terrorism federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy wrote in National Review that the group was a scam: “You haven’t heard of the Khorosan Group because there isn’t one. It is a name the administration came up with, calculating that Khorosan … had sufficient connection to jihadist lore that no one would call the president on it.”

What happened here is all-too-familiar. The Obama administration needed propagandistic and legal rationale for bombing yet another predominantly Muslim country. While emotions over the ISIS beheading videos were high, they were not enough to sustain a lengthy new war.

So after spending weeks promoting ISIS as Worse Than Al Qaeda™, they unveiled a new, never-before-heard-of group that was Worse Than ISIS™. Overnight, as the first bombs on Syria fell, the endlessly helpful U.S. media mindlessly circulated the script they were given: this new group was composed of “hardened terrorists,” posed an “imminent” threat to the U.S. homeland, was in the “final stages” of plots to take down U.S. civilian aircraft, and could “launch more-coordinated and larger attacks on the West in the style of the 9/11 attacks from 2001.””

As usual, anonymity was granted to U.S. officials to make these claims. As usual, there was almost no evidence for any of this. Nonetheless, American media outlets — eager, as always, to justify American wars — spewed all of this with very little skepticism. Worse, they did it by pretending that the U.S. government was trying not to talk about all of this — too secret! — but they, as intrepid, digging journalists, managed to unearth it from their courageous “sources.” Once the damage was done, the evidence quickly emerged about what a sham this all was. But, as always with these government/media propaganda campaigns, the truth emerges only when it’s impotent.

Filed Under: Muslim World Tagged With: Al Qaeda, IS, ISIS, Islamic State, Khorasan Group, Syria, USA

Isis reconciles with al-Qaida group as Syria air strikes continue

September 29, 2014 by Nasheman

Jabhat al-Nusra denounces US-led attacks as ‘war on Islam’, and leaders of group holding meetings with Islamic State.

A still from a video from a plane camera shows smoke rising after an air strike near Kobani. Photograph: Reuters

A still from a video from a plane camera shows smoke rising after an air strike near Kobani. Photograph: Reuters

– by Martin Chulov, The Guardian

Air strikes continued to target Islamic State (Isis) positions near the Kurdish town of Kobani and hubs across north-east Syria on Sunday, as the terror group moved towards a new alliance with Syria’s largest al-Qaida group that could help offset the threat from the air.

Jabhat al-Nusra, which has been at odds with Isis for much of the past year, vowed retaliation for the US-led strikes, the first wave of which a week ago killed scores of its members. Many al-Nusra units in northern Syria appeared to have reconciled with the group, with which it had fought bitterly early this year.

A senior source confirmed that al-Nusra and Isis leaders were now holding war planning meetings. While no deal has yet been formalised, the addition of at least some al-Nusra numbers to Isis would strengthen the group’s ranks and extend its reach at a time when air strikes are crippling its funding sources and slowing its advances in both Syria and Iraq.

Al-Nusra, which has direct ties to al-Qaida’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, called the attacks a “war on Islam” in an audio statement posted over the weekend. A senior al-Nusra figure told the Guardian that 73 members had defected to Isis last Friday alone and that scores more were planning to do so in coming days.

“We are in a long war,” al-Nusra’s spokesman, Abu Firas al-Suri, said on social media platforms. “This war will not end in months nor years, this war could last for decades.”

In the rebel-held north there is a growing resentment among Islamist units of the Syrian opposition that the strikes have done nothing to weaken the Syrian regime. “We have been calling for these sorts of attacks for three years and when they finally come they don’t help us,” said a leader from the Qatari-backed Islamic Front, which groups together Islamic brigades. “People have lost faith. And they’re angry.”British jets flew sorties over Isis positions in Iraq after being ordered into action against the group following a parliamentary vote on Friday.

David Cameron has suggested he might review his decision to confine Britain’s involvement to Iraq alone, but for now the strikes in support of Kurdish civilians and militants in Kobani were being carried out by Arab air forces from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the UAE and Bahrain.

The US was reported to have carried out at least six strikes in support of Kurdish civilians near the centre of Kobani, where the YPG, the Kurdish militia, is fighting a dogged rearguard campaign against Isis, which is mostly holding its ground despite the aerial attacks.

Kobani is the third-largest Kurdish enclave in Syria, and victory for Isis there is essential to its plans to oust the Kurds from lands where they have lived for several thousand years. Control of the area would give the group a strategic foothold in north-east Syria, which would give it easy access to north-west Iraq.

US-led forces are also believed to have carried out air strikes on three makeshift oil refineries under Isis’s control.

Isis continued to make forays along the western edge of Baghdad, where its members have been active for nine months. The Iraqi capital is being heavily defended by Shia militias, who in many cases have primacy over the Iraqi army, which surrendered the north of the country.

That rout – one of the most spectacular anywhere in modern military history – gave Isis a surge of momentum and it has since seized the border with Syria, menaced Irbil, ousted minorities from the Nineveh plains and threatened the Iraqi government’s hold on the country.

Barack Obama said the intelligence community had not appreciated the scale of the threat or comprehended the weakness of the Iraqi army. In an interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes, he said: “Over the past couple of years, during the chaos of the Syrian civil war, where essentially you have huge swaths of the country that are completely ungoverned, they were able to reconstitute themselves. And so this became ground zero for jihadists around the world.”

Filed Under: Muslim World Tagged With: Abu Firas al-Suri, Al Qaeda, Iraq, IS, ISIS, Islamic State, Jabhat al-Nusra, Syria, USA

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