ISIS in Iraq and Syria

Some old BBC footage from Syria:

In this video the famous CIA operative Miles Copeland discusses his role in one of Syria's many pre-1970 coups, in this case the first one of 1949:



This one from 1957 shows how obsessed the West was with the threat of communism, how unpopular the West was in Syria, and how popular Egypt's Nasser was:



This is the British Pathe report on the formation of the United Arab Republic (union of Egypt and Syria) in 1958:



This one shows the Syrian reaction against Nasser after the breakup of the UAR in 1961:



And here's some footage from the aftermath of the 1966 coup which brought the radical wing of the Ba'th to power, and then some weirdly edited footage from Hafiz al-Assad's reign (edit: ah, it's Adam Curtis, which explains the editing and trippy music):

 
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So.. the last few US servicemen killed in action have been killed by ISIS in Afghanistan, or "ISIA" (I guess).

Looks like we've managed to let them metastasize back to our original W-on-T locale.
 
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This is worth a look. Nusra (under whatever their latest name is) have turned Idlib into a replica of the Islamic State:



And apparently the latest name change has bamboozled the Americans so much that they're no longer on the terror list.
 


Some people saying they hit a Hezbollah and IRGC convoy.
 
No idea how credible this story is, but if it's true it's pretty bad:

 
RedTiger said:
I don't know bro, apparently there are a few Shia followers who use names like Omar and Usman so perhaps the article is true.
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Yeah maybe, lots of mixed families in Iraq back in the day as well. Who knows? I really hope it's not true/exaggerated.
 
Kaos said:
Or maybe he was taking the piss.
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Dunno, perhaps?

Perhaps as a taunting ironic gesture, say as a Sunni would commit atrocities while falsely giving his name as Abbas or Haider.

Admittedly I haven't read the article though.
 
IS in the Philippines have apparently captured a fairly large city in Mindanao.

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Pogue Mahone said:
Here's an interesting, evidence-based, counter argument to the idea that the current jihadist terrorist threat can be directly related to western foreign policy. Some very good points IMO. Food for thought anyway.
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Funny you should post that now, I came here straight from FB where a mate has posted this morning that ISIS can explained by going back to the US overthrow of the Iranian PM Mossadegh in 1953...

Anyway, here's my take:

I think the impact of the West works on three different levels. First, there is the basic effect of Western realpolitik going back over a century, which has often led the West to support various strains of Islamic conservatism and Islamism (mostly Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia and less often the Muslim Brotherhood in various other contexts) in order to counter the Ottoman Empire, the Soviet Union, Arab nationalism, and today Iran. That is unhelpful at best, and treacherous at worst, given these movements' attitudes toward the West. It is something Middle Eastern secularists and religious minorities will find very hard to forgive the West for.

Second, there are the specific violent actions the West has conducted and/or supported in the Islamic world. In cases like Iraq and Libya, they've helped open up the space the jihadis require in order to operate. But more than that, such violence can and does play a role in driving individuals to seek revenge. There's no point denying it - the jihadis regularly tell us that they act, at least in part, in response to Western actions in the Muslim world. It is a regular feature of individual martyrdom video explanations, and a large part of al Qaeda and ISIS propaganda is dedicated to highlighting the suffering of Muslims at the hands of Western bombs or Western-backed regimes. This doesn't necessarily mean that any particular Western action is inherently wrong - bin Laden for example got famously upset over support for the independence of East Timor and South Sudan at the expense of the Muslim countries Indonesia and Sudan respectively; but specific actions can and do play the role that, say, Bloody Sunday did in Northern Ireland in helping to drive recruitment for the IRA. And so logically a less heavy Western footprint in the region should go some way to lessening the number of recruits.

However, where things get a bit hazy from there is when we consider the other things al Qaeda and ISIS tell us about their motivations, and the other actions they conduct - and this is where the role of Islam comes in IMO. Because the jihadis also regularly tell us that they're fighting to (re)establish God's law on earth; to restore the Caliphate; to reconquer Palestine, Spain, India, and all the other historically 'Muslim' regions lost over the centuries; to subjugate the non-Muslim world; to eradicate polytheism (hence the genocidal campaigns directed at the Yazidis - try explaining that one by referring to Western policy - and the Shi'a); and on and on. This is a body of ideas that almost all Sunni Islamist movements going back a century or more adhere to to some degree - where they tend to differ is over the legitimacy of the means used to achieve them, and the role of violence therein (The jihadis of al Qaeda and ISIS tend to combine the social conservatism and harsh sectarian outlook of Saudi-style Salafism (Wahhabism) with the revolutionary violence and fascist-like political program of the Muslim Brotherhood, or at least that wing of Islamist thought inspired by thinkers like Mawdudi and Qutb).

So what you have is a fairly coherent ideology whose main body of ideas and goals is derived from a particular understanding of the way Islamic history has played out over the last 200 years or so. And here we see the impact of the third level of Western involvement. Because it is from around 200-250 years ago that the Islamic world began to come under the domination of Western or Christian countries - Russia in the Crimea, Caucasus and Central Asia, Britain in the Indian subcontinent, the Dutch in the East Indies, and the French in North Africa. And finally, the British and French in the Middle East. For the Islamists, and probably for many apolitical Muslims, this is a betrayal of the way history was supposed to play out, and indeed had (in their eyes) played out up until that point - Islam was supposed to dominate the rest, not the other way around. And so the one thing that all Islamist movements - whether Sunni or Shi'i, jihadi or non-violent - agree on is that the Muslims must take control of their own destiny by ousting the West from Muslim lands and revealing it for the Paper Tiger they believe it is.

But maybe more than the military and political domination, and the economic domination that went with it, Islamist ideology has grown as a response to the effects of Western cultural prestige and influence in the Islamic world - the fear that Muslims will forget who they are and what it is that makes them Muslim in the face of the spread of liberalism, democracy, etc; that they will become 'Muslim' the way that most Westerners today are 'Christian'. There's nothing unique to the Islamic world in this - retaining an authentic sense of identity has been a challenge for all those regions that came under modern Western domination, including within the West itself. And it has helped provoke the rise of ideologies such as Hindutva, Fascism, Russian Nationalism, "Asian Values", etc. All these of course have their own unique points of reference which have shaped them and which they believe are culturally authentic - the role of Islam has been to shape these reference points in the Muslim response to the West over the past two hundred years or so. Hence the focus of Islamist movements on things like jihad, shari'ah, and Khilafa, all terms and ideas which carry huge weight for any Muslim with a conscious attachment to Islam. For any Muslim who feels that the modern world has been an unrewarding, harsh, and alienating environment in which to be a Muslim (and let's face it, there are good reasons why huge numbers of Muslims might feel that way), such ideas are likely to become rallying points in the attempt to change things for, as they see it, the better.
 
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Air strikes in east Syria kill more than 100: Observatory

Air strikes since Thursday evening have killed more than 100 people including children and other family members of Islamic State fighters in al-Mayadin, a town held by the jihadists near Deir al-Zor in eastern Syria, a war monitor reported.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the raids were carried out by U.S.-led coalition warplanes.

A spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State told Reuters that its forces had conducted strikes near al-Mayadin on May 25 and 26 and were assessing the results.

The Observatory said more than 40 children were among those killed in the strikes, which leveled al-Mayadin's municipality building.

Many of the families had fled from Raqqa, Islamic State's stronghold to the northwest, which U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish and Arab fighters are pushing toward in an offensive against the jihadists, the Observatory said.

Residents saw reconnaissance aircraft and warplanes circling the city at 7:25 p.m. (1625 GMT) before they fired missiles which struck two buildings, one of which was a four-storey block housing Syrian and Moroccan families of Islamic State fighters.

More strikes took place after midnight.

Islamic State is losing ground in both Syria and Iraq under assault from an array of sometimes rival forces in both countries. Many of its fighters who have retreated from other fronts are massing in Syria's Euphrates basin area.

The U.S.-led coalition says it is careful to avoid civilian casualties in air strikes and investigates any that are reported to have taken place.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Here's an interesting, evidence-based, counter argument to the idea that the current jihadist terrorist threat can be directly related to western foreign policy. Some very good points IMO. Food for thought anyway.
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I'm VERY unconvinced by that - some really faulty implicit assumptions.
Few examples:
1. Support for terrorism attacking civilians is constant in invaded and sovereign countries. Which means terrorism has nothing to do with invasion.
Terrorist activities are carried out by a small percent of people, not the population as a whole. "Fueling terror" doesn't mean an action causes the population to rise in violence. It means an increase in incidents of violence, by a group of people. People can react to domination in many ways, lashing out is one of them (not saying all terrorists have faced foreign domination)
2. The efficacy of terrorism has nothing to do with its causes.
3. The Israeli civliian casualties is a statistical strawman.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Gaza_War_(2008–09)
--------------All killed--------Combatants killed
Palestinian---1200-1500-------250-700
Israeli---------13--------------------10
Subsequent "wars" were similar.

4. I completely don't get the point being made by the reduction in violence (the 1st half of the post). More troops means less attacks? Well, yes, probably the troops were doing their job. Post-Stalin the USSR had very low rates of non-natural mortality, whether from crime or by the state. That is the sign of strong policing and nothing more.
 
This is years out of date, and probably already been said...but, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in Iraq and Syria? RIP in peace?
 
Just another day in Baghdad. ISIS blow up about a dozen people (mostly women and children) at an ice-cream stall, then target a group of OAPs collecting their pensions, killing another dozen or so.
 
Raoul said:
An overwhelming majority of civilian deaths have been due to Assad. The Russians also bomb indiscriminately.
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Oh no doubt - and I even get that as blase as it sounds...people die in wars...they always have and always will.

But, regardless of the realities...I expect us to be better.
 
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