• Home
  • About Us
  • Events
  • Submissions
  • Advertise
  • Contact Us
  • NewsVoir
  • Newswire
  • Nasheman Urdu ePaper

Nasheman

India's largest selling Urdu weekly, now also in English

  • News & Politics
    • India
    • Indian Muslims
    • Muslim World
  • Culture & Society
  • Opinion
  • In Focus
  • Human Rights
  • Photo Essays
  • Multimedia
    • Infographics
    • Podcasts
You are here: Home / Archives for Jabhat al-Nusra

Nusra leader: Our mission is to defeat Syrian regime

May 28, 2015 by Nasheman

Abu Mohammed al-Golani in exclusive interview to Al Jazeera says his group has no specific agenda to target West.

Abu Mohammad al-Golani

by Al Jazeera

The leader of the Nusra Front, one of Syria’s most powerful rebel groups, has said that his group’s main mission is to dislodge the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and that it has no agenda to target the West unless provoked.

“We are only here to accomplish one mission, to fight the regime and its agents on the ground, including Hezbollah and others,” Abu Mohammed al-Golani said in an exclusive interview aired on Al Jazeera on Wednesday.

“Nusra Front doesn’t have any plans or directives to target the West. We received clear orders not to use Syria as a launching pad to attack the US or Europe in order to not sabotage the true mission against the regime. Maybe al-Qaeda does that but not here in Syria,” he said.

But his statements did include a warning against the US over its attacks on the armed group, which has been blacklisted a “terrorist organisation” by the US.

“Our options are open when it comes to targeting the Americans if they will continue their attacks against us in Syria. Everyone has the right to defend themselves,” he said in an interview with the Doha-based network.

‘Khorasan fabricated’

Golani not only accused Western nations of backing the government of President Assad against the rebels, but of also fabricating the “Khorasan” group – which Washington says is a covert faction in Syria that aspires to attack the US.

“The West is targeting Nusra because they know we are the real threat to the Assad regime. This is why they came out and said they are only targeting this group that they called Khorasan,” the leader of al-Qaeda’s Syria branch said.

“There is nothing called Khorasan group.The Americans came up with it to deceive the public. They claim that this secret group was set up to target the Americans but this is not right.”

He also noted that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group (ISIL), which has been accused of rampant atrocities and controls large parts of the country, was a main threat to the Nusra Front.

“Assad forces are fighting us on one end, Hezbollah on another and ISIL on a third front. It is all about their mutual interests.”

Alawites will not be targeted

When questioned whether the Nusra Front planned to establish Islamic state in Syria, Golani said that after the whole war is over, all factions and groups in the country will be consulted before considering
“establishing an Islamic state”.

Golani also said that his group will not target the country’s Alawite minority despite their support for Bashar al-Assad’s government.

“The battle does not end in Qardaha, the Alawite village and the birthplace of the Assad clan,” he said.

“Our war is not a matter of revenge against the Alawites despite the fact that in Islam, they are considered to be heretics.

Filed Under: Muslim World Tagged With: Abu Mohammad al-Golani, Bashar al-Assad, Jabhat al-Nusra, Syria

More than 850 killed in 50 days of coalition air strikes

November 13, 2014 by Nasheman

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

by SOHR

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) documented the death of 865 people since the U.S led coalition started its strikes on Syria in 23/Sep until last night, including 50 civilians (8 children, 5 women), killed by coalition air strikes on oil fields and refineries in al-Hasakah and Der-Ezzor countrysides, al-Raqqa, Around Menbej northeast of Aleppo, and Idlib countryside.

68 fighters from Jabhat al-Nusra were killed by coalition air strikes on their HQs in the western countryside of Aleppo and the northern countryside of Idlib 746 fighters from the IS most of them were Non-Syrian fighters, were killed by coalition airstrikes on their HQs and groupings in Homs, Hama, al-Hasakah, al-Raqqa, Der-Ezzor, and Aleppo.

A fighter from Islamic battalions killed by coalition air strikes on ISIS HQ in Ma’dan in al-Raqqa countryside.

We, in SOHR, believed that the real number of casualties in ISIS is more than 746, because there is absolute secrecy on casualties and due to the difficulty of access to many areas and villages that have witnessed violent clashes and bombardment.

Worth to mention that the coalition air strikes targeted oil refineries and oil fields in Der-Ezzor, al-Hasakah and al-Raqqa, what led to material damages in these refineries and oil fields.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights expresses its strong condemnation, to the fall of the civilians, as a result of the coalition air strikes, and Calls neutralize civilians areas from the military operations from any party, because the the Syrian people who have lost hundreds of thousands and been displaced in millions, is looking forward to a decent safe life away from Humiliation, detention, and destruction, a life of democracy, justice, freedom and equality.

Filed Under: Muslim World Tagged With: Airstrikes, Jabhat al-Nusra, SOHR, Syria, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, United States, USA

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

Syria: How the U.S lost its war within hours

September 30, 2014 by Nasheman

Barack Obama, Oslo, Norway Photo: Sandy Young/Getty Images

Barack Obama, Oslo, Norway Photo: Sandy Young/Getty Images

– by Scott Lucas, EA WorldView

Wednesday morning’s statement from US Central Command was — unsurprisingly — buoyant. The US and allies from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, and Jordan had launched attacks the previous day inside Syria, with 14 airstrikes and 47 Tomahawk missiles. Multiple targets of the Islamic State had been hit in northern and eastern Syria, including “fighters, training compounds, headquarters and command and control facilities, storage facilities, a finance center, supply trucks, and armed vehicles”.

Central Command promised, “The U.S. military will continue to conduct targeted airstrikes against ISIL in Syria and Iraq as local forces go on the offensive against this terrorist group.”

Behind the confident assessment, Central Command did not point to — and presumably did not recognize — reality: with those initial strikes, the US had probably already lost its belated intervention in the 42-month Syrian conflict.

The military did not mention that the greatest casualties of the first night’s attacks had not been suffered by the Islamic State, which had moved most of its forces before the arrival of the warplanes. Instead, the US had struck hardest on two locations of the Islamist insurgents Jabhat al-Nusra, killing more than 70 fighters and civilians in Idlib and Aleppo Provinces.

Central Command cloaked those attacks in the final two paragraphs of its statement:

Separately, the United States has also taken action to disrupt the imminent attack plotting against the United States and Western interests conducted by a network of seasoned al-Qa’ida veterans — sometimes referred to as the Khorasan Group — who have established a safe haven in Syria to develop external attacks, construct and test improvised explosive devices and recruit Westerners to conduct operations. These strikes were undertaken only by U.S. assets.

In total, U.S. Central Command conducted eight strikes against Khorasan Group targets west of Aleppo to include training camps, an explosives and munitions production facility, a communication building and command and control facilities.

Many in the US media eagerly ran with this presentation of a necessary attack on evil plotters — who had only surfaced a week earlier in headline declaration by American intelligence services — planning a toothpaste-tube bomb on an airliner.

But inside Syria, that declaration carried little weight with many civilians, as well as the opposition and insurgency. Already angered that the US — which had stepped away from intervention a year earlier after the Assad regime’s chemical weapons attacks — was again sparing the President and his military, these groups reacted with bitter statements and large protests on Friday.

The suspicion is that if the US is serious about confronting the Islamic State, it is also — without any acknowledgement, and possibly through deception — attacking a faction which has part of the Syrian insurgency for more than two years. The sentiment was summarized in posters and chants that, while Washington had stayed away, the fighters of Jabhat al-Nusra had defended those facing the ground and aerial assaults of the Assad regime.

And even if that sentiment could be set aside, the question remained: what exactly was the strategy behind the US assault on the Islamic State? Insurgent commanders and opposition leaders said the US — which had told Israel, Syria’s ally Iran, and the Assad regime of the imminent strikes — had seen no reason to coordinate operations with the “moderate” insurgents whom it is supposedly supporting. So the Islamic State could move freely on the ground, not only evading the aerial assault but pressing its own offensives such as the attack on the Kurdish center of Kobane in northern Syria.

Attacks on Jabhat al-Nusra and the Mysterious “Khorasan Group”

There was a strange disconnect on Tuesday between the headline news of US airstrikes and claims seeping through social media. Videos and photographs showed that the greatest damage had been suffered in the village of Kafar Daryan in Idlib Province in northwest Syria. There were images of slain civilians, with others in the rubble of demolished buildings.

The mystery was that, while Jabhat al-Nusra members were killed by the US missiles, there were no Islamic State fighters in the village. Indeed, there have been no ISIS units in Idlib Province since they were pushed out by insurgents early year.

And Kafar Daryan was not the only target beyond the Americans’ official cause of hitting the Islamic State. Even deadlier — though almost unnoticed, because there was no video — was an attack on the Aleppo suburb of al-Muhandiseen. The Local Coordination Committee said more than 50 Jabhat al-Nusra fighters died.

None of this was noted in Central Command’s statement that it hit eight targets “west of Aleppo”. So what was the US doing with attacks beyond its initial declared aim of hitting the Islamic State?

As the US military’s PR strategy made clear, the answer was the “Khorasan Group”. Unnamed US officials primed the media even before Central Command issued its statement:

Administration officials said Tuesday they have been watching the Khorasan Group, an al-Qaida cell in Syria, for years….Intelligence showed that the Khorasan Group was in the final stages of plotting attacks against the U.S. and Europe, most likely an attempt to blow up an airplane in flight.

“An intelligence source with knowledge of the matter told CNN” that plots against the US had been discovered over the past week, including “a bomb made of a non-metallic device like a toothpaste container or clothes dipped in explosive material”.

Indeed, the set-up for the US attack had been made more than a week earlier. On September 13, the Associated Press ran a story fed by “American officials”:

While the Islamic State group 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.

Five days later, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, told a conference, “There is potentially yet another threat to the homeland,” similar to that posed by the Islamic State.

If you read past the mainstream media, there was a curiosity about the US campaign as its first missiles were fired: leading experts on Al Qa’eda and jihadists were questioning the US Government’s timing and presentation. Washington, they said, had merely slapped a label on some fighters who had professed allegiance to Al Qa’eda and had come from Afghanistan and Pakistan to fight with Jabhat al-Nusra.

There’ve been guys from AQ Khurasan (AfPak) in JN for more than year. This isn’t news. And it’s not a separate group. Nice work intel/media.

— Aaron Y. Zelin (@azelin) September 22, 2014

It’s cute Pentagon is literally making up new group called ‘Khurasan’ when it’s just AQ AfPak/Iran guys in JN. Don’t get my gov sometimes. — Aaron Y. Zelin (@azelin) September 23, 2014

One of the few public mentions of the “Khorasan Group” before last week backs up Zelin’s remarks. Peter Bergen, writing for CNN, briefly said:

According to both British counterterrorism officials and U.S. intelligence officials, senior al Qaeda members based in Pakistan have traveled to Syria to direct operations there. They are known as the Khorasan group. Khorasan is an ancient term for an Islamic empire that once incorporated what is now Afghanistan.

Unnamed US officials only fuelled the scepticism as they pressed their case through the week. One official said the threat from the Khorasan Group was “imminent”, but another denied this as “there were no known targets or attacks expected in the next few weeks”.

The officials said that the Group was led by Muhsin al-Fadhli, a Kuwaiti who was “Al Qa’eda’s senior leader in Iran” before he moved to Syria in 2013 to fight with Jabhat al-Nusra. The State Department’s designation of al-Fadhli says he was “among the few trusted Al Qa’eda operatives who received advance notification” of the attacks of September 11, 2001 — even though he was only 20 at the time. Now, the US sources said, “Al Qa’eda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri dispatched this deputy to recruit those Western fighters, who have a better chance of escaping scrutiny at airports and could place bombs onto planes”.

For someone who is supposedly a high-level Al Qa’eda operative in Syria, there is little public information on al-Fadhli. One of the lengthiest reports is in the Arab Times in March, based on “informed sources”. The Yemeni supposedly played a role in the decision of Al Qa’eda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri’s decision to support Jabhat al-Nusra in 2013 when the Islamic State challenged it for leadership of the jihadist movement. Yet does this establish that al-Fadhli was planning a terror attack on the US? The Arab Times offers no evidence and makes the bizarre assertion that the Yemeni and Al Qa’eda were acting on behalf of Iran: 

The most important objective is to use Al Qa’eda’s world terror cells to target Western nations particularly the United States of America, in case [Iran’s] nuclear facilities face any kind of military strikes from the US or Israel. [The sources] revealed that Iran believes Al-Qa’eda’s terror cells are the most important asset that can be used in either secret or open negotiations with the United States. Iran offered to train al-Qaeda elements on how to use bombs, and provided some financial support and safe refuge as part of an agreement that was reached in 2009, which resulted in the execution of the related agendas.

The report is further shaken by its assertion that al-Fadhli was directing activities not only against the Islamic State and the Assad regime, but also against the Free Syrian Army and the Islamic Front — both of whom were fighting alongside Jabhat al-Nusra against Syrian forces.

The stories, beginning with the Associated Press “Al-Qaida’s Syrian Cell Alarms US” on September 13, also invoked the name of Ibrahim al-Asiri, “Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s master bomb-maker” — but without establishing that al-Asiri had ever stepped foot inside Syria or had been in contact with al-Fadhli.

Whether or not al-Fadhli and a “Khorasan Group” were planning terror attacks, what matters is the perception — and the perception of many inside Syria is that the claim was just a pretext for the Americans to strike their real target: Jabhat al-Nusra.

So What’s Wrong With Hitting Jabhat al-Nusra?

One might claim that, even if the US was being deceptive in refusing to declare its real intention, the attack on Jabhat al-Nusra makes sense. After all, the group has been listed as a terrorist organization by the US since late 2012. Its leadership is linked to Al Qa’eda, even if it has pursued a local fight against the Assad regime, working with Syrian organizations and communities. Before spring 2013, it was connected with the Islamic State.

The problem is that this case was not made effectively inside Syria. A series of opposition and insurgent groups — from the “moderates” whom the US has said it wants to promote to the Islamic Front to independent brigades — castigated the US airstrikes as counter-productive. Rallies on the day after the attack bluntly set out the sentiment of some Syrians: “Jabhat al-Nusra came to support us, when the whole world abandoned us.”

See Syria Daily, Sept 24: US Missiles Hit Insurgents, Kill Civilians, Upset the Opposition The US might have the simple formula of “moderates” v. “extremists”, but the reality is that Jabhat al-Nusra is part of the insurgency, even if it is formally kept as some distance because of Washington’s position.

So that means the attack on the group is considered an attack on the insurgents. The point was made, directly or indirectly, by the US-backed Supreme Military Council, the General Staff of the US-backed Free Syrian Army, the US-backed Harakat Hazm Brigade, the faction Jaish al-Mujahideen, and the Islamic Front, as well as Jabhat al-Nusra.

The Supreme Military Council (SMC) & 18+ other #Syria rebel groups have condemned US-led strikes so far. MANY others doing so privately. — Charles Lister (@Charles_Lister) September 27, 2014

A “moderate” insurgent source inside Syria summarized, “The US strategy? How about turning possible coalition partners on the ground into sceptics, if not enemies, with the first wave of missiles?” Firing from the Air, Losing on the Ground The anger at the US airstrikes was compounded by Washington’s failure — whether deliberate policy or an oversight — to connect its operations with the situation on the ground. The US informed Israel, Syria’s ally Iran, and the Assad regime of the impending attacks, but did not see fit to mention them to insurgents. That meant that even those US attacks which hit the Islamic State struck far from the key frontlines. An article by McClatchy News gave one example:

There are now 10 groups fighting [the Islamic State] north of Aleppo, near the town of Mare, but the U.S. and its allies “offered very little ammunition support, no information, no air cover, and no collaboration in military plans and tactics – nothing,” said Colonel Hassan Hamadi.

Far from being crippled by the airstrikes, the Islamic State simply took their fighters and their offensives elsewhere. While the US-led coalition hit Raqqa, the largest city held by the jihadists, they moved more forces to the assault on the Kurdish center of Kobane near the Turkish center — where there were no coalition attacks until last weekend.

So, far from being a coherent operation to “degrade” the Islamic State, the opposition saw no connection between the aerial campaign and the declared Obama Administration effort for $500 million to arm and train “moderate” insurgents. Indeed, even as the planes flew, that effort receded: the head of the American military, General Martin Dempsey, said it would be many months before even 5,000 insurgents — a fraction of the fighters inside Syria — were completely trained and equipped.

An Alternate US Strategy?

Given the shredding of any US strategy — if there was one to work with insurgents, one can only search for alternatives.

Perhaps the US believes it can “contain” the Islamic State with airstrikes alone?

If so, the approach flies in the face of the experience in Iraq next door, where the jihadists are only being pushed back when aerial operations support ground attacks. Washington has not set out how the Islamic State can be held back from further advances, such as the possible takeover of Kobane, let alone be removed from bases of powers such as Raqqa and Deir Ez Zor — two of the seven largest cities in Syria.

Perhaps the Obama Administration envisage a refashioned “moderate” insurgency as the ground component of the strategy?

Washington’s rhetoric, as it pressed for the $500 million from Congress, set out this line; however, it was quickly erased by Dempsey’s “clarification” on what armament and training meant in practice.

President Obama’s interview on Sunday night was an effective admission that the strategy is a non-starter: “There is a moderate Syrian opposition, but right now, it doesn’t control much territory. They are being squeezed between [the Islamic State] on the one hand and the Assad regime on the other.”

That leaves one other option: could the US see the Syrian military as the ground force to check the Islamic State?

Publicly the Administration is not pointing to any consideration of the option. Obama continued to tag Damascus as a “barbaric regime” in his speech last week at the UN, and he repeated the formula last night that President Assad would have to step aside in a political transition.

Still, the biggest cheerleader for the US-led airstrikes is the Assad regime. Damascus switched within 48 hours from opposition to intervention to a welcoming of the attacks, and its caution is being replaced with an acceptance of operations not only by the US but also Gulf States and Europeans — provided, of course, they are strictly focused on the Islamic State.

In practice, the Assad regime is indicating that there does not have to be a formal commitment for an alternate US strategy. It is quite happy to accept an American approach which takes on its recent enemy of the Islamic State, as well as its longer-term foe of the insurgency — or, at least, parts of it.

Bolstering Extremists?

That welcome from Damascus does not constitute a US “victory”, of course, but it is as good as Washington can get after a week of its campaign.

And even that will not be much in the weeks to come. For Washington, far from containing the “extremists”, may have bolstered the threat that it has been generating in the media as well as facing on the ground.

The declaration of the leader of Jabhat al-Nusra, Abu Mohammad al-Joulani, is not a declaration of war on the US. It is not close to a renewed “alliance” with the Islamic State, despite the misguided headlines in some media outlets. As an EA analyst framed al-Joulani’s message this morning, “Well, brother Barack, if you rethink your approach and consider the possible backfiring from it, then you’re safe from that backfire.”

However, an insurgency which has been alienated by the US attacks gives significant relief to the Islamic State, which can rest assured that it will not face a coordinated challenge as it does in Iraq. It may even give them more recruits: even if al-Joulani stands aside from reconciliation, individual Jabhat al-Nusra units and fighters — and indeed those of other elements in the insurgency — may join the jihadists out of anger against America.

And while most insurgents will not pursue that option, they are likely to conclude that there is no prospect of working with the US against the Islamic State, let alone the Assad regime.

As a leader of the Islamic Front said this weekend:

We have been calling for these sorts of attacks for three years and when they finally come they don’t help us. People have lost faith.

Filed Under: Muslim World Tagged With: Ayman al-Zawahiri, Barack Obama, Bashar al-Assad, IS, ISIS, Islamic State, Jabhat al-Nusra, Khorasan Group

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

Alan Henning: Al-Qaeda appealed to Isis to release British aid worker following kidnap

September 17, 2014 by Nasheman

Representatives of rival groups held summit in Syrian town to decide fate of captive Briton

Representatives of rival groups held summit in Syrian town to decide fate of captive Briton

– by Tom Harper, The Independent

Al-Qaeda appealed to Isis to release the British hostage Alan Henning because it believed he was an innocent aid worker who was genuinely trying to help suffering Muslims, it can be revealed.

In evidence that the depravity exhibited by Isis is now repelling Muslims of all views and backgrounds, even the terrorist group behind the 11 September attacks on the US in 2001 decided that kidnapping the aid-convoy volunteer was a step too far.

Mr Henning, a taxi driver from Eccles, Salford, was so moved by the plight of Muslims in Syria that he decided to miss last Christmas with his wife and two children and travel 4,000 miles to deliver medical equipment to refugees holed up in the town of Al-Dana. A local commander – or emir – of Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, visited his then-allies in Isis four days after Mr Henning, 47, was captured. The emir confronted the kidnappers, arguing that their actions were “wrong under Islamic law” and “counter-productive”, according to a journalist who interviewed the man immediately after the encounter.

The world has looked on in disbelief in recent weeks as fighters from Isis, also known as Islamic State, have beheaded three Western journalists and aid workers, including a Briton, David Haines. In a video posted online on Saturday night, Isis warned that Mr Henning would be next.

Today, the Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, admitted that special forces were struggling to mount a rescue mission because intelligence chiefs did not know exactly where Mr Henning was being held.

Bilal Abdul Kareem, a US film-maker who has reported extensively from Syria, told The Independent that “anybody of any influence” – including al-Qaeda – had appealed to the Sunni militant group when it seized Mr Henning in December, warning that such a move would backfire. He said: “Four days after he was captured, the emir went to Al-Dana and said: ‘Look, what you are doing is wrong. You have no business what you are doing. You have no right to abduct him. You have no reason to detain him just because he is not Muslim’.”

Alan Henning at a refugee camp on the Syrian-Turkish border

Alan Henning at a refugee camp on the Syrian-Turkish border

Mr Henning was the only non-Muslim in a group of volunteers from a UK-based Islamic charity, which organised a convoy of old ambulances to transport medical supplies to Al-Dana, a few miles from the Turkish border. He was abducted on Boxing Day last year.

Mr Kareem said: “I spoke to the emir from Jabhat al-Nusra after he came back. Initially, he was confident that Henning would be released because that is what Isis was saying. But then Henning was removed from his prison in Al-Dana and never heard of again.”

News of Al-Qaeda’s attempt to save Mr Henning echoes reports that the terror group once led by Osama bin Laden passionately disagrees with the direction taken by Isis, which has quickly taken control of an area the size of Great Britain inside Syria and Iraq.

Professor Peter Neumann, the director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, based at King’s College London, said: “Al-Qaeda has been critical of Isis in recent months. It understands how its behaviour will be perceived by the Western public. Although the two groups’ underlying ideology is still very similar, Al-Qaeda is much more strategic. For example, it is not opposed to beheadings but realises it makes no sense to carry them out in the way that Isis does because this tactic will lose them a lot of friends.”

Dr Afzal Ashraf, a consultant at the Royal United Services Institute, who holds a doctorate in terrorist ideology, said: “The murders of these innocent Western hostages, and the latest threats made against Alan Henning, just go to show how completely incomprehensible Isis’s strategy is. It is absurd and Al-Qaeda realises such behaviour will turn potential recruits away.”

Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, admitted that special forces were struggling to mount a rescue mission because intelligence chiefs did not know exactly where Mr Henning was being held (AFP)

Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, admitted that special forces were struggling to mount a rescue mission because intelligence chiefs did not know exactly where Mr Henning was being held (AFP)

On his internet blog, Mr Kareem provided more details of the discord among Islamist extremists over the abduction of Mr Henning. “Isis said that he was suspected to be a spy,” he wrote. “The Muslims on the convoy asked for proof as they regarded this as a totally ridiculous claim. Isis cited that they could not believe that a white Christian would want to come to Syria at this time, except that he was a spy.

“The Isis commander then showed them Henning’s passport and said that this was the proof, [saying]: ‘There is a secret chip inside. This is so that the intelligence service can continue tracking him.’ One of the other Muslims from the convoy said: ‘All of the passports from the UK are like that!’, showing him his UK passport.

“The other Muslims on the convoy told them that this man had given up Christmas with his family to come to help save the people that Isis said it was trying to save.”

Later, Mr Kareem claimed that Isis was confronted by rival groups, which implored it to release Mr Henning. “Isis said that he was to remain their prisoner and they would ransom him for something. ‘Why?’ they were asked. They said: ‘We will trade him for someone in the UK prison system.’ The other Muslims told him this was not Islamically correct and they had no charge against him.

“One of the aid workers told them that the people rely on these convoys and actions like these would create problems for their efforts in helping the Syrian people. The Isis commander replied: ‘We don’t need convoys – we have Allah’.”

Meanwhile, Mr Haines’s teenage daughter, Bethany, posted a message on Facebook, saying she had been “touched” by the support she had received from the public following his murder.

She wrote: “Hi, I’m David’s daughter who lives in Perth. I was really touched by the messages of support during this hard time. I know my dad would be really touched and grateful.”

Filed Under: Muslim World Tagged With: Al Qaeda, Alan Henning, Iraq, IS, ISIS, Islamic State, Jabhat al-Nusra, Philip Hammond, Syria

Follow Us

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

KNOW US

  • About Us
  • Corporate News
  • FAQs
  • NewsVoir
  • Newswire
  • Realtor arrested for NRI businessman’s murder in Andhra Pradesh

GET INVOLVED

  • Corporate News
  • Letters to Editor
  • NewsVoir
  • Newswire
  • Realtor arrested for NRI businessman’s murder in Andhra Pradesh
  • Submissions

PROMOTE

  • Advertise
  • Corporate News
  • Events
  • NewsVoir
  • Newswire
  • Realtor arrested for NRI businessman’s murder in Andhra Pradesh

Archives

  • May 2025 (9)
  • April 2025 (50)
  • March 2025 (35)
  • February 2025 (34)
  • January 2025 (43)
  • December 2024 (83)
  • November 2024 (82)
  • October 2024 (156)
  • September 2024 (202)
  • August 2024 (165)
  • July 2024 (169)
  • June 2024 (161)
  • May 2024 (107)
  • April 2024 (104)
  • March 2024 (222)
  • February 2024 (229)
  • January 2024 (102)
  • December 2023 (142)
  • November 2023 (69)
  • October 2023 (74)
  • September 2023 (93)
  • August 2023 (118)
  • July 2023 (139)
  • June 2023 (52)
  • May 2023 (38)
  • April 2023 (48)
  • March 2023 (166)
  • February 2023 (207)
  • January 2023 (183)
  • December 2022 (165)
  • November 2022 (229)
  • October 2022 (224)
  • September 2022 (177)
  • August 2022 (155)
  • July 2022 (123)
  • June 2022 (190)
  • May 2022 (204)
  • April 2022 (310)
  • March 2022 (273)
  • February 2022 (311)
  • January 2022 (329)
  • December 2021 (296)
  • November 2021 (277)
  • October 2021 (237)
  • September 2021 (234)
  • August 2021 (221)
  • July 2021 (237)
  • June 2021 (364)
  • May 2021 (282)
  • April 2021 (278)
  • March 2021 (293)
  • February 2021 (192)
  • January 2021 (222)
  • December 2020 (170)
  • November 2020 (172)
  • October 2020 (187)
  • September 2020 (194)
  • August 2020 (61)
  • July 2020 (58)
  • June 2020 (56)
  • May 2020 (36)
  • March 2020 (48)
  • February 2020 (109)
  • January 2020 (162)
  • December 2019 (174)
  • November 2019 (120)
  • October 2019 (104)
  • September 2019 (88)
  • August 2019 (159)
  • July 2019 (122)
  • June 2019 (66)
  • May 2019 (276)
  • April 2019 (393)
  • March 2019 (477)
  • February 2019 (448)
  • January 2019 (693)
  • December 2018 (736)
  • November 2018 (572)
  • October 2018 (611)
  • September 2018 (692)
  • August 2018 (667)
  • July 2018 (469)
  • June 2018 (440)
  • May 2018 (616)
  • April 2018 (774)
  • March 2018 (338)
  • February 2018 (159)
  • January 2018 (189)
  • December 2017 (142)
  • November 2017 (122)
  • October 2017 (146)
  • September 2017 (178)
  • August 2017 (201)
  • July 2017 (222)
  • June 2017 (155)
  • May 2017 (205)
  • April 2017 (156)
  • March 2017 (178)
  • February 2017 (195)
  • January 2017 (149)
  • December 2016 (143)
  • November 2016 (169)
  • October 2016 (167)
  • September 2016 (137)
  • August 2016 (115)
  • July 2016 (117)
  • June 2016 (125)
  • May 2016 (171)
  • April 2016 (152)
  • March 2016 (201)
  • February 2016 (202)
  • January 2016 (217)
  • December 2015 (210)
  • November 2015 (177)
  • October 2015 (284)
  • September 2015 (243)
  • August 2015 (250)
  • July 2015 (188)
  • June 2015 (216)
  • May 2015 (281)
  • April 2015 (306)
  • March 2015 (297)
  • February 2015 (280)
  • January 2015 (245)
  • December 2014 (287)
  • November 2014 (254)
  • October 2014 (185)
  • September 2014 (98)
  • August 2014 (8)

Copyright © 2025 · News Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in