Good article here on the tensions within the Jaysh al-Fatah coalition, and more specifically between Ahrar al-Sham and Jund al-Aqsa - http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/...f-conquest-syrian-rebel-alliance-shows-cracks
ISIS in Iraq and Syria
- Thread starter Suli
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Any chance of posting the article here? I seem to be getting a paywall
I fell for Daily Mail headline but they weren't the only ones reporting it that way.
Any chance of posting the article here? I seem to be getting a paywall
The End of the Army of Conquest? Syrian Rebel Alliance Shows Cracks
Syria’s most successful rebel alliance may have just barely avoided breaking apart. Over the spring and summer of this year, the coalition of Islamist rebels groups known as Jaish al-Fateh, or the Army of Conquest, scored a series of dramatic victories over the regime of Bashar al-Assad in northwest Syria. But in the past several weeks, just as Jaish al-Fateh announced a major new offensive, one of its most hard-line factions, Jund al-Aqsa, very publicly quit the coalition. The acrimony that has followed the withdrawal of Jund al-Aqsa—an ultra-extreme splinter of al-Qaida’s Syrian affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra—has exposed the persistent and probably unresolvable divisions among Syria’s rebels. And the announcement from rebel corners last week that Jund al-Aqsa may rejoin Jaish al-Fateh does not mean these divisions are going away.
Northern rebels formed the Jaish al-Fateh operations rooms, a kind of coordination cell, in March 2015 with the aim of capturing the city of Idlib, the capital of Syria’s northwest Idlib province. The coalition centers on Jabhat al-Nusra and the Salafist rebels in Ahrar al-Sham, but it also includes five smaller factions that range from less ideological brigades to Jund al-Aqsa. Thanks in part to newly coordinated and generous backing from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar, Jaish al-Fateh was able to not only take Idlib in days last spring, but also overrun a series of key regime military bases and almost entirely drive the regime from the province. In weeks, Jaish al-Fateh had made enough headway that it posed a real threat to the regime’s strongholds in central and coastal Syria.
Last month, despite an ongoing Russian-backed regime counteroffensive that seems to have largely targeted Jaish al-Fateh—rather than the self-proclaimed Islamic State, as Moscow first claimed it would—the rebel coalition announced it would launch a new offensive to take central Hama province. But less than two weeks later, Jund al-Aqsa declared its withdrawal from the coalition in the most controversial terms possible: It not only quit, it nearly accused some of its former allies of apostasy. Rumors swirled that Jabhat al-Nusra, one of Jaish al-Fateh’s two core groups, had also suspended its role in the coalition.
Jund al-Aqsa said it was leaving Jaish al-Fateh because of what it called some coalition members’ un-Islamic political positions and because of “constant pressure” from Ahrar al-Sham specifically to fight the Islamic State. Jund al-Aqsa said it would rejoin only if Jaish al-Fateh’s members met its high-ceilinged demands, including that the coalition declare war on Russia and America and commit to a binding Islamic charter. (This despite the fact that Jaish al-Fateh has administered Idlib city in accordance with strict Islamic law.)
Jund al-Aqsa’s complaints that Jaish al-Fateh members have supported “projects in conflict with Islamic shariah” seem to have been aimed in large part at Ahrar al-Sham. The latter Islamist rebel group has evolved lately from a more traditionally jihadi faction to something more sophisticated and interested in political engagement. But some of its outreach has provoked criticism from harder-line jihadi elements. Ahrar al-Sham certainly seems to have assumed it was the target of Jund al-Aqsa’s criticisms, as two of Ahrar’s top leaders issued sharply worded responses.
But whatever political grievances Jund al-Aqsa mustered, the main reason for its withdrawal seems to have been its borderline refusal to fight the Islamic State. Any Jaish al-Fateh offensive south into Hama will eventually bring rebels face-to-face with the Islamic State. In its statement announcing the Hama offensive, Jaish al-Fateh promised to fight any military force that stood in its way, including the Islamic State. Although Jund al-Aqsa said it viewed the Islamic State’s “caliphate” as invalid and condemned its extremist transgressions, it only said that repelling the Islamic State’s aggression “in the areas where we are present” was legitimate. Instead, it proposed an unlikely truce between the Islamic State and Syria’s Islamist brigades.
Excepting the Islamic State, Jund al-Aqsa is probably at the most extreme end of Syria’s rebel-jihadi spectrum. It has consistently provoked controversy, with its fighters accused of being closet Islamic State sympathizers by other Syrian rebels. In his response to Jund al-Aqsa’s withdrawal, Ahrar al-Sham’s top religious official implied that Jund al-Aqsa members were still sympathetic to their “brothers” in the Islamic State and that they continued to harbor its fighters. Jund al-Aqsa has stoned “adulterous” women, helped Jabhat al-Nusra dismantle various rebel brigades seen as Western-backed, and even allegedly assassinated the commander of another Jaish al-Fateh member.
While Jund al-Aqsa is out on the fringe, however, it is not alone, and its members are not the only jihadis in Syria uncomfortable with fighting the Islamic State. In that sense, the Jaish al-Fateh coalition may have been a sort of geographic accident rather than an ideologically uniform alliance. Earlier this year, Syria’s northern rebels had only one active front against the Islamic State, in the northern Aleppo countryside; on all other sides, they faced the regime and its allies, including Hezbollah and Iranian-backed Shiite militias. West of Aleppo, it was possible to put off the question of whether and how to fight the Islamic State in the interest of a project like Jaish al-Fateh that could unite more mainstream rebels with the jihadi fringe. But the coalition’s own success made that untenable: As it advanced, it would eventually be forced to confront the Islamic State and lay bare these internal contradictions.
Jaish al-Fateh’s successes have been attributed in large part to a new rapprochement between Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar. But even open-handed external support and battlefield momentum may only go so far in holding together Syria’s more mainstream rebels with jihadis like Jund al-Aqsa and Jabhat al-Nusra. However much effort and resources regional powers expend to bolt together ideologically diverse factions, those clients ultimately have their own probably irreconcilable agendas.
Jund al-Aqsa rejoining Jaish al-Fateh will not somehow fix that. As part of the agreement bringing Jund al-Aqsa back in, the rebel coalition will reportedly issue the sort of Islamic charter the hard-liners demanded. A charter tailored to Jund al-Aqsa’s extremist views will not reconcile the politics of these factions. What it could do, however, is succeed in making Jaish al-Fateh’s more mainline members toxic to an international audience, thus sabotaging their attempts at diplomatic outreach.
Jaish al-Fateh’s unity looks untenable over the long term. The centrifugal forces that drive Syria’s rebels and jihadis apart, from ideology to money to personality, are still at work, even within such a successful alliance. And whatever efforts regional states and rebels themselves make, there may be nothing that can ultimately keep these rebels together.
Thanks @2cents
If the rebels had got their act together from day 1, Assad would have been gone by now. Infuriating.
Syria like Libya will never be a properly functioning nation again. Whether that's under Assad, 'moderate rebels' or 'islamists'.
It certainly won't in its current guise. Which is why an international intervention is required to get rid of ISIS and create a bit of security, create humanitarian corridors where Syrians can feel safe, then begin the process of setting up a new government, constitution, and eventually proper elections that don't take place under the nose of authoritarian intimidation. The current US and Russian approaches are bandaid on a bullet wound and won't work.
Syrian army breaks two-year siege at Aleppo airbase: state TV.
https://news.yahoo.com/clashes-near-syrian-besieged-islamic-state-monitor-105629514.html
https://news.yahoo.com/clashes-near-syrian-besieged-islamic-state-monitor-105629514.html
There were 314 soldiers inside the airbase, fighting (and totally besieged deep in ISIS territory) for 35 months. It's amazing how it didn't fall. ISIS are being dealt very harsh blows both in Iraq and Syria since the Russian airstrikes started, which only means one thing...
U.S., Allies to Boost Aid to Syria Rebels
America and Russia need to talk. An agreement might not appear fair or democratic or completely to anyone's liking but it could save an awful lot of lives.
edit: and Turkey.
edit: and Turkey.
Really good interview here with Josh Landis, I could quibble with one or two points but he's generally spot on. Well worth a read - http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/re...n-syria-landis-interviewed-by-rts-sophieco-2/
Very good interview, but no good news for Syria.
Just disagree about the helping mujahadeen in Afghanistan leading to 9/11 part. Of course the connection is initially obvious because the attack was perpetrated by a former "ally". But there are more than 10 years between the two events, 9/11 could've not happened if the CIA and FBI had done their jobs better, or if the White House hadn't backed off of any of the plans to try and kill UBL in the 90s. Besides that, AQ was not the only group in the world in 2001 that would've liked to attack the US, they were just the most able. What I'm saying is just there's too much that had to happen a certain way in between for there to be that direct a tie between helping the Afghan Muj and 9/11.
Spot on.
I think it basically symbolises the fact that you helped create a terrorist state in Afghanistan, which is the main point. If it wasn't 9/11 it will eventually be something else.
You helped create a vacuum where Pakistan would be free to influence, rather than a Soviet republic. But 3 things are: Taliban only came to power in 1996, not right after the Soviets left. UBL was in Sudan before Afghanistan, and one could argue that if he hadn't been allowed to go to Afghanistan he could've easily set up shop in Somalia. I always think the role of UBL is overstated regarding 9/11, and that KSM is understated. KSM had the idea, recruited many of the hijackers and instructed them on specifics. And he was doing this mostly from Pakistan, right?
I'm not arguing all this to suggest that the US was in no way victim of unintended consequences of its own actions. I just prefer to point out that much like a airplance accident, multiple things have to fall in line for a major terrorist attack to happen.
Yeah it's one of my quibbles. America's favoured mujahideen faction in Afghanistan was Massoud's, who later came to be the Taliban's greatest enemy (but no angel himself whatever the image of him in the West today). But the Americans never controlled where the bulk of the aid went, and the ISI ensured it went to Hekmatyar and the more extreme groups. And when the Soiets withdrew, the Americans stopped caring anyway, which allowed the ISI a free hand to go ahead and bring the Taliban to power a few years later.
But I think the broader point is valid - that flooding a war-torn Islamic country with arms is likely to come back to haunt you at some point.
Vice's film on Jabhat al-Nusra is up:
Lots of reports of increasing pressure on the IS in Iraq this morning - getting squeezed from both sides by Iraqi gov forces around Ramadi and by Peshmerga near Sinjar. Some saying the main highway linking Mosul to Raqqa has been cut by Peshmerga.
ISIS has been taking some serious beating in the last month and a half, both in Syria and Iraq.
And this is why as a muslim I am so sad - look at those little kids, not bad enough they're screaming jihad, jihad...when they should be watching cartoons or playing football - but in Syria, fighting against Assad....
what do they say -
We are going to fight the Jews.
And this is why as a muslim I am so sad - look at those little kids, not bad enough they're screaming jihad, jihad...when they should be watching cartoons or playing football - but in Syria, fighting against Assad....
what do they say -
We are going to fight the Jews.
That child wanting to be a suicide bomber is what hit me the most. Absolutely disgusting.
Looked to me like he was being prompted by someone in the background.
That's the sad part.
Watching this just fills me with anger, these kids never have a chance ffs.
Have to say, its amusing how they chant death to America while being armed and funded by them.
US air strike on Mohammed Emwazi (Jihadi John) in Raqqa today apparently.
It seems almost all of Sinjar has been liberated.
Great news - hope they don't raze the area to the ground, though.
the turks might now...
Sinjar?
Why? It used to house thousands and thousands of Yazidis...if anything you'd expect ISIS to raze it to the ground on their way out.
the turks might now...
There's a poker joke in there somewhere...
But I don't think the Turks would venture that down south / into Iraq.
No doubt...but as I said - Sinjar was mostly Yazidi with Arab and Assyrian minorities.
There are Yazidi fighters alongside the Peshmerga. Assyrians are orthodox christian - so if any are left in sinjar, they wouldn't have been exactly best mates with ISIS.
That leaves the small number of arabs. I'm sure they've run away and if there homes are razed, it would be a small number.
British IS leader Jihadi John 'probably' killed in air strike
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015...151113?utm_source=twitter#1rECyiMzsiMFEyeP.99
Seems like the US are in chest beating bravado in the face of Russia's airstrikes.
Bad day for ISIS - Jihadi John probably gone and Sinjar taken over by the Kurds.
As much as I'd have been all for Jihadi John coming on trial over here, I'm not sure how that would've been at all feasible. Suppose his death is some sort of small peace for mourning families.
A "leader"? Went up in the world... Probably dead now.
Was it actually Jihadi John / Emwazi that carried out those beheadings?
Whos to know Uzz? It don't matter, they got some good PR anyhow.