Islamic State a Spook-Run Operation

One of the principal canards about Islamic State peddled in the Western press is that the caliphate is an indigenous formation growing out of grievances that Sunnis have with the Shiite-majority government of Iraq and the Alawites of Syria. But besides the high profile of the Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, where is there any evidence that ISIS is a homegrown movement? In fact, the overwhelming preponderance of evidence is that ISIS is exogenous to Iraq and Syria, attracting foreign fighters, thanks to a sophisticated online presence, to enter the caliphate through Turkey.

Patrick Cockburn has recently published a number of stories for The Independent describing life inside Islamic State. (The stories have been re-posted on the CounterPunch website.) Cockburn
interviews members of the growing Sunni diaspora in Iraqi Kurdistan, people, mostly from Anbar Province, who have fled the ISIS occupation of their towns and cities.

Cockburn's "The One-Day Siege: ISIS’s Conquest of Hit" is a good example:

It was on 4 October last year that Isis captured the small city of Hit, seizing complete control in the space of just a few hours. For the city’s 100,000 mostly Sunni residents the takeover by the self-proclaimed Islamic State has brought changes that some support, but others deeply resent. 

Among those living in Hit when Isis rolled in was Faisal, a 35-year-old government employee who is married with two children, and a keen observer of all that has befallen the agricultural centre and former transport hub over the past five months. 

He recently fled to the Kurdish capital, Erbil, where he described to me the rule of Isis and its impact on Hit, starting with the day the city was captured.

Faisal goes on to describe a religious police state where there is little money to pay for food, little communication with the outside world, and no work except for the jihadis -- all overseen by foreign fighters and imams:

The internet has not worked in Anbar Province for the last eight months, compelling people to use satellite internet connections that are monitored by Isis. More recently the group offered a limited internet service, though this is only available in internet offices and other locations monitored by the jihadist group. There is no internet access from private homes, while in the public locations, Faisal says, “Isis can spy on computers so they can see what you are surfing and to whom you are talking”.

Predictably, Isis focuses on religion and spreading its variant of Islam. Faisal says: “Many preachers (imams) were replaced by foreign preachers from the Arab world, mostly Saudis, Tunisians and Libyans, as well as Afghans. Some new imams are appointed temporarily just for Friday speech and prayer, while others are permanent appointments. Isis removed some of the old preachers who have left for Baghdad or KRG (the Kurdish-controlled region). These are often Sufis, whose beliefs are rejected by Isis.”

There are many other signs of Isis imposing its cultural agenda in Hit. Faisal says that “at the entrance to every main street and bazaar, there are Isis groups holding black dresses that cover the whole body including the face and head. If a woman does not have one, she must buy one [for about £8] and the money goes to the Isis treasury.”

Are people joining Isis in Hit? Faisal says they do, often for economic reasons. “I know many people in my neighbourhood in Hit who joined Isis,” he says. “They are paid little money, about 175,000 dinars (£80), but they say that the salary is enough because they also enjoy many privileges, including free fuel, cooking gas, sugar, tea, bread, and many other foodstuffs and services.

“Isis still has a strong financial basis. It confiscates the houses of the people who were previously employed in the police, courts, and security forces. These houses, and any furniture in them, are confiscated by the Sharia (legal or religious) court, where the judges are Libyan and Tunisian, though the other staff are locals. The ruling authority in Hit is headed by the military governor, the religious (legal) governor, the security governor and finally the administrative governor.”

Faisal’s account of life in Hit is confirmed by eyewitnesses from other parts of the Islamic State. Isis at first benefited from widespread popular relief that the Iraqi Army was gone, but there is deepening resentment against the enforcement of outlandish rules on personal behaviour that is contrary to local religious and social traditions. These include women being forced to wear the niqab (covering their faces), obligatory attendance at prayers and the destruction of mosques, such as the Younis mosque in Mosul, deemed by Isis to be un-Islamic shrines.

There is also the fear of conscription of young men to fight for the Islamic State, an obligation that is increasingly difficult to avoid and is leading many families to try to leave Isis-controlled territory, which is not easy to do.

But despite resentment by many at its takeover of mosques and schools, Isis is able to use these to propagate its views and to make converts – something that may strengthen the forces of the Islamic State. Conscription does not seem to have diluted the fanaticism of Isis fighters, or their willingness to take heavy casualties, according to Kurdish commanders who have come under attack by Isis units in recent months.

Local eyewitnesses confirm that the unpopularity of Isis is not universal. Sameer, a Kurdish shopkeeper in Mosul, told The Independent last November that “in spite of the coalition air strikes every night and every morning, Isis increases in terms of the number of its men and the territory they occupy”.

Since then, Isis has retreated from much of the Sinjar area west of Mosul, but Ali Hussein Mustafa, a 21-year-old university student who left Mosul last month, says that “many Isis men were much better than the fighters of the Iraqi Army in dealing with people and helping them”.

He says this better behaviour was not invariable and criticised Isis fighters at some checkpoints who harassed or swore at women whose face was not hidden. He added, however, that many people had now concluded that “Isis rule is no better, and maybe worse, than what they endured before [when the US or Iraqi government was in charge of Mosul from 2003 to 2014]”.

It should be said that Patrick Cockburn has always stuck to the "ISIS is an indigenous response to Shiite misrule of al-Maliki" argument, putting the leftist journalist in line with the U.S. State Department. But recently he published a story, "Is the Defeat of ISIS in Iraq Inevitable?," that sort of softened his pro-Sunni "It's all Maliki's fault" slant:

As Isis’s columns advanced last year, its fighters carried out massacres to spread fear just as Saddam Hussein had done against the Kurds and Shia a quarter of a century earlier. When the government’s Badush prison, near Mosul, was captured by Isis, its fighters slaughtered 670 Shia prisoners. At Camp Speicher, outside Tikrit, 800 Shia cadets were lined up in front of trenches and machine-gunned. Pictures of the scene resemble those of atrocities carried out by the German army in Russia in 1941. In August, when Isis fighters stormed into Kurdish-held regions, they targeted the Yazidis as “pagans” to be murdered, raped and enslaved.

To me it seems obvious that ISIS is a spook-run operation, meaning a government intelligence bureau is either at the control board or actively assisting a small leadership group in directing the caliphate. Popular movements are messy and enthusiastic, always either falling short or spilling over stated objectives in a public way. ISIS is nothing of the sort. It is opaque and mercenary; its messaging strictly controlled. No, this is definitely a top-down production.

When ISIS suffered a defeat recently in Tikrit at the hands of the Iraqi Army and Shiite militias working in concert with Kurdish pesh merga there was a prompt asymmetrical response: the terror attack targeting tourists at a museum in Tunisia and the suicide bombings at two Zaydi Shiite mosques in Sana. This reminded me of the old Rumsfeld neocon logic of "When you have a problem one way to solve it is to make it bigger."

Scott Shane had a story, a good one, that was featured prominently on The New York Times website for most of the weekend. In "From Minneapolis to ISIS: An American’s Path to Jihad," it is clear that the young Somali men from Minneapolis were able to hook up with ISIS recruiters at a mosque in Bloomington. Answer the question of who paid for their plane tickets and we'll be a little clearer how the ISIS network operates and who funds it.

And it will turn out that ISIS is no different than Al Qaeda, an organization funded and supported by the Gulf Sheikhdoms.

Anne Barnard's Schizophrenic Syrian Civil War Reporting

Anne Barnard has been working overtime in her reporting on the Syrian civil war to paint the conflict as an oppressed people rising up against an Alawite Stalin, Bashar al-Assad, bent on ethnic cleansing. Any Syrian who supports the government is either a dupe, a Shiite zealot or a regime goon. 

The latest installment in this effort -- since last week Barnard, Beirut Bureau Chief for the New York Times, has been reporting from Damascus -- is "Enlisting Damascus Residents to Answer Assad’s Call." And despite its toeing of the U.S. State Department line -- Barnard highlights the role of Iran in training pro-government neighborhood militias -- reality, even if it is always shunted to the bottom of her stories, finds its way into the piece:

In an apartment draped with philodendrons in the nearby Shiite quarter, Bassem Wehbe described why the militia was needed. A Sunni gang had kidnapped him from his nearby grocery store, he said, taunted him with sectarian slogans and chopped off his finger with an ax. His finger still bandaged, he played a video of the act that the captors had sent to his family. 

He said he tried to reason with his captors — who he believed were Syrians influenced by televised sermons of radical clerics in Saudi Arabia — telling them of the Sunni-Shiite mixed marriages and business dealings common in the Old City. 

“They said, ‘No, this period is over,’ ” Mr. Wehbe said. “Is it possible we were in this country?” 

A few days later, Christians packed the Street Called Straight, carrying the coffin of a man killed by kidnappers to a nearby church. 

Watching was one of the militiamen from the park, who had said earlier that he joined only to protect the neighborhood. Now, he said he would happily deploy to fight rebels in the suburbs. 

“The best way to defend,” said another militiaman, “is to attack.”

For a more nuanced assessment of support for the al-Assad government than Barnard's, check out "The Plight of Syrian Minorities," which appears on the Counterpunch website this weekend. Written by Anna Haq, a pseudonym, religious minorities -- Alawites and Christians -- are described as not being mindlessly sectarian; rather, they are secular minded and not generally in favor of the Baathist ruling party under al-Assad. It's just that the rebels are so bad there is no longer any choice but to support the government. Here are the passages that grabbed my attention:

Despite the claim of the opposition that the government has lost its credibility, the Assad regime has established its control not only militarily but also among those who remained on Syrian soil. In Homs, the army made major advances in the neighborhood of al-Khaldieh where the armed rebels gathered after the fierce battles of Baba Amer. On their route to Khaldieh, the armed rebels forced the inhabitants of old Homs, mostly Christians, out of their homes over night. Those who could not leave (the elderly and the sick) sought refuge in the Jesuit Monastery in Bustan al-Daiwan. The rebels would like to think that these sixty hostages might be there only ticket out of a foreseeable siege. Meanwhile, in retaliation for the bombardment of al-Khaldieh, and of what might seem a last hope to wreck havoc among civilians, the rebels have been firing mortars at the neighborhoods of Akrama and al-Nuzha. Concentrations of Alawites and Christians, these neighborhoods seem perfect to target allegedly pro-government civilians. 

Of course, not all Alawites and Christians are pro-Assad. Unless directly related to the Assad family, Alawites remain largely peasantry communities. Like many of the Christian minority, urban Alawites are middle-class civil servants who cannot afford a taxi ride toward Beirut or Amman and prefer a dignified death in their homes to the humiliation of refugee camps. “I have been labeled pro-government without given the chance to express my political views,” says Hisham furiously, his gesticulations are wider than the skype window. “This revolution erupted against the tyranny of the Assad family but the Sunni rebels proved to be more barbaric than the Assad army could ever be.” The recent rebel attack on al-Qumeirah checkpoint generated some attention to the plight of minorities in Syria, yet the Alawites have been spared such sympathy. “It is bad enough that the media ignored the situation of religious and ethnic minorities since the eruption of the revolution. Now that they remembered us, they seem to marginalize the Alawites,” Khaled confirms while compassionately tapping the 20-years old Hisham on the back. “I am Christian but I am anti-Assad. Well, I was anti-Assad but the rebels left us no choice. I volunteer for my neighborhood checkpoint to protect my loved ones,” adds Hisham. 

The slaughtering of 14 young men at al-Qumeirah checkpoint was the latest scare in west Homs. The bodies of the four soldiers and ten young civilians were found decapitated, heads were taken as trophies. The checkpoint is one among few others set by the government around al-Zara but maintained mostly by civilians to guard their villages from the rebels treading the path from Lebanon to al-Husun. The recent attacks served as a reminder to religious and ethnic minorities of their plight: they are alone in their fight. Earlier in the conversation, Adnan wondered: “where were the BBC when a Christian engineer was slaughtered in his bed in Homs in March 2011? Do they know that he made an exceptional contribution to the Civil Engineering department at al-Baath University for which he received a prize he did not live enough to enjoy? Where were they when many other youth were murdered in their beds by the rebels? Where is the Syrian Coalition? Are they ever going to denounce the barbaric acts of the jihadist? Do they think they can win the liberals back with their cowardly silence?”

The reality of the Syrian civil war, convincingly presented in this one story, is what has Anne Barnard working overtime trying to obscure. The rebels have very little domestic support at this point. The most active rebel military units are Kurds and foreign fighters of Al Qaeda affiliates. The U.S. government cannot officially acknowledge this since it does not support Kurdish statehood, and it is at war with Al Qaeda affiliates. Yet the Obama administration is committed to providing military aid to the opposition. It's a schizophrenic position, the strain of which is reflected in Barnard's reporting.

Who is Fomenting Sectarian Hatred?

If there's any doubt who is attempting to broaden the Syrian civil war to engulf neighboring Lebanon, look no further than this morning's story, "Soldiers Clash With Sunni Sheik’s Followers in Southern Lebanon," by Ben Hubbard and Hania Mourtada. 

Sheik Ahmad al-Assir is a Sunni firebrand who has recently achieved notoriety thanks to several blistering speeches criticizing Hezbollah and attacking Hassan Nasrallah. Al-Assir's armed followers attacked Hezbollah offices earlier this month in the southern Lebanese port city of Sidon. The Lebanese Army said it was attacked yesterday by al-Assir gunmen in Abra, east of Sidon. According to the Daily Star, seventeen soldiers have been killed, along with 35 gunmen. The Lebanese commandos seized the al-Assir complex in Sidon as fighting continued for a second day:

Army eavesdropping devices indicated that Assir was still in the vicinity of the complex, the sources said, adding that the fiery sheikh was heard as urging his gunmen not to surrender to the military and "fight to the death". 

The seizure of the complex at noon came after an attempt late Monday by a group of Salafi preachers to mediate a truce reached a dead end, with the Army determined to continue its operations until Assir was captured and his followers crushed, the sources said. 

In overnight fighting, the Army had tightened the noose around Assir and his some 250 gunmen barricaded in the Abra complex, 40 km south of Beirut, the sources said. 

Fighting erupted Sunday after armed supporters of Assir attacked a military checkpoint near the Abra complex, killing three soldiers and wounding several others.

Al-Assir is seen in Lebanon as performing deeds dictated by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, two monarchies who thus far seem to be willing to go to any length, no matter the lives lost or the chaos caused, to oust Bashar al-Assad. I interpret this attack by al-Assir's group as proof that things are not going well for the rebels in Syria. There is a tried and true pattern to the conflict so far: when the opposition is getting its clock cleaned, terrorist attacks spring up in other countries in the region. In all of this, to the extent that the United States is facilitating this Saudi- and Qatari-led destabilization, the Obama administration looks truly feckless.

For a snapshot of this hopelessly confused, conflicted and dithering mindset, read Thomas Friedman's column, "Syria Scorecard," from yesterday. It seems simple to me. If you're from the "realist" school of foreign policy you apply the same standard you applied in Bahrain -- regional stability over ideology. But apparently anti-Shiite/anti-Iranian blinders are securely fastened.

A balanced, sober, lengthy piece, "The Price of Loyalty in Syria," written by Robert Worth, appeared in the New York Times Magazine yesterday. It's worth reading. It provides some insight into what it's like being an Alawite in Syria; also, it makes a convincing argument that anti-Shiite sectarianism crept in quickly to the Syrian Arab Spring uprising. It is commonly stated in the Western media that sectarianism was first introduced by the al-Assad government to raise doubts about the democratic bona fides of the opposition.