ISIS: an essential reading collection

[Bill Moore]

https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/201...seone_today_nl

For nearly a year, Islamic State-watchers had wondered whether Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the group, was alive. Then on Wednesday, he resurfaced for the first time in 11 months, releasing a recorded speech to mark the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha. In the 55-minute speech—his longest of those that have been made public—he referenced recent events, indicating that it was recorded over the past few weeks.

Aside from its preachy opening, Baghdadi’s speech charted a course for ISIS to regroup. In one key passage, he called for lone-actor attacks in Western countries, including bombings, car-rammings, and gun and knife attacks. Previously, such calls only came from ISIS’s former spokesman; coming from the self-styled caliph himself, they’re likely to carry more weight. Baghdadi even quantified his expectations: One attack in the West equals a thousand in the Middle East—a ratio that recalls the Irish Republican Army’s campaign of terror in Britain decades ago, which stipulated that one bomb in Britain was worth 100 in Northern Ireland. ISIS, like the violent Irish nationalists before it, knows that such attacks will garner more publicity and spark greater reaction than the slaughter of 200 Druze civilians in southern Syria or a car bombing in the heart of Baghdad.

His speech made it clear that ISIS remembers the lessons of the past two decades very well. Whether his enemies also do is the difference between victory and defeat.

A lot more in the article, to include how they are conducting targeted killings in Iraq to weaken Sunni resistance to ISIS reemergence. No idea how accurate the reporting is, but the author of the article wrote the go to book on ISIS, ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror, so I assuming he knows what he is talking about.

[Bill Moore]

Good news, but in the end is there really a so-what factor? Rinse, repeat, we keep repeating the same successes multiple times a year, and 17 years later we're still fighting in the same terrain.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/02/polit...tan/index.html

US forces in Afghanistan confirmed Sunday that the head of ISIS in the country was killed in a strike a little over a week ago.

The death of the leader is the third time US forces have killed a self-proclaimed head of ISIS in Afghanistan since July 2016, according to the US.

Yet even with a shared goal of eliminating ISIS from Afghanistan, the Taliban still view the US and the Afghan government with distrust.
"Enemy is first ISIS, then government," Taliban commander Agha said.

[davidbfpo]

Good news, but in the end is there really a so-what factor? Rinse, repeat, we keep repeating the same successes multiple times a year, and 17 years later we're still fighting in the same terrain.

Bill,

It's Tuesday, it must be ISIS day. I write this as The Soufan Group has a similar commentary, which starts with - their emphasis:

Bottom Line Up Front

• Small pockets of Islamic State fighters have regrouped throughout parts of Iraq and Syria.
• Jihadists are becoming more brazen, executing coordinated attacks on security services and oil fields.
• The Islamic State’s remaining war chest could prove to be sufficient for the group to fund its resurgence.
• Engineering a comeback is part of the group’s current strategy of resting, rearming, and recuperating.

With the renewed vigor of the so-called Islamic State in areas north and west of Baghdad, a residual American military presence in Iraq is necessary to keep the terrorist group from staging a comeback in areas previously considered ‘liberated.’

Link:http://thesoufancenter.org/intelbrie...pt-and-evolve/

[AdamG]

The first known private military contracting and consulting firm catering just to jihadists issued a new online fundraising appeal for help in arming fighters while also noting this week that donors came through to build a training camp for jihadists in Syria.

"We have finished our project about the building new training camp for brothers and I am so glad. And we are going to start the new lessons after a few days, inshallah, special courses for shooters of PKM and RPG," Malhama Tactical leader Abu Salman Belarus said in an English-language video posted to his Twitter account Wednesday, thanking those who "supported our project."

https://pjmedia.com/homeland-securit...th-donor-help/

Malhama Tactical, referred to as Blackwater for jihadists, offers trainers who hail from Russia's Caucasus region and the former Soviet states. Excerpts of training videos are frequently posted online.

Their contracting clients have included Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, the umbrella group known as al-Qaeda in Syria that includes the former al-Nusra Front. Then-leader Abu Rofiq, an Uzbek who said he was a veteran of the Russian military, told Foreign Policy magazine last year that territorial setbacks for jihadist groups didn't dampen their business demand, yet they were also considering new regions to branch out their business.

Malhama Tactical launched in May 2016 and by the end of that year was advertising on Facebook for trainers to come join their “fun and friendly team” with vacation allowance and a day off per week. The group also manufactures and supplies certain equipment to jihadist groups.

[AdamG]

Reminder: OSINT sources can be fallible.

[davidbfpo]

An Anglo-Dutch report 'The Cost of Crying Victory: Policy Implications of the Islamic State’s Territorial Collapse' by ICSR and the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism – The Hague (ICCT).

The Summary opens with:

In light of the territorial demise of the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria, this report analyses the continued risks posed by IS. Given that IS is playing a long game, the report calls upon policymakers to keep up the counter-terrorism pressure, to sidestep policy fatigue at all costs to avoid undoing years of progress, and to continue fostering the emergence of resilient and inclusive societies.

Link:https://icct.nl/publication/the-cost...rial-collapse/

I have not read it, but Charlie Winter & Shiraz Maher (ICSR) are experts on IS.

[AdamG]

The new leader of the United Kingdom’s army said that Russia is a bigger security threat than the Islamic State group (ISIS) in his first interview since becoming chief in June.

https://globalnews.ca/news/4695735/u...eat-than-isis/