Tag: Syria (page 7)

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has approved Sen. Melendez' draft of an Authorization for the Use of Force against ISIS. It has a three year sunset provision, unless reauthorized. It also provides that the 2001 Authorization for Use of Force will sunset 3 years after this one takes effect.

The authorization excludes the use of ground forces with exceptions (see below.) The White House has said so long as 5 conditions were met, it would support the authorization. (See below for the State Department's reaction to the committee's approval.)

The full text of the bill is here. [More....]

Via Newsweek and several other media sites: ISIS is offering to return the body of James Foley for $1 million. The family has not confirmed the report.

Also today, a news station disclosed the identity of Shami Witness, one of ISIS most ardent supporters on Twitter. He was followed by 17,000 people (including 2/3 of foreign fighters) with 2 million views of his tweets each month. The station did not disclose his full name, but they said he goes by the name Mehdi and "he is an executive in Bangalore working for an Indian conglomerate." Here's an article on him. I've used this article he wrote a few times in my posts on ISIS.

The Wall. St. Journal has an open access link to an article on how the failed Yemen rain went down.

ISIS has taken a town in Libya. The Guardian has an interesting article on how bad and frightening it is. Isis posts a series of pictures showing people in Anbar laughing and hanging out with the ISIS police. You can view the photos, which have no violence, here.. [More...]

Yesterday I expressed my doubts about the Lebanese Army's claim to have captured "a wife" of ISIS leader al Baghdadi.

Iraq’s Interior Ministry now says the detained woman, who it confirms is Saja Abdul Hamid al-Dulaimi, is not and has never been a wife of al Baghdadi.

“The one detained by Lebanese authorities was Saja Abdul Hamid al-Dulaimi, sister of Omar Abdul Hamid al-Dulaimi who is detained by authorities and sentenced to death for his participation in ... explosions,” ministry spokesman Brigadier General Saad Maan told Reuters.

“The wives of the terrorist al-Baghdadi are Asmaa Fawzi Mohammed al-Dulaimi and Esraa Rajab Mahel al-Qaisi, and there is no wife in the name of Saja al-Dulaimi,” he said.

[Video removed from You Tube] ...This is a news video from Lebanon( with English subtitles) on the detention of Saja al-Dulami, who may or may not be an ex-wife of ISIS leader al Baghdadi. There is still a lot of conflicting information as to whether she was ever married to al Baghdadi, and whether she was with her son or her daughter. Al-Dulami's family has ties to both ISIS and al Nusrah.

ISIS supporters on Twitter deny she is al Baghdadi's wife, and say that the Lebanese army knows this but released the information as part of a propaganda campaign. [More...]

Charles Lester of Brookings has a new paper on the Islamic State (ISIS) and a "Who's Who" chart of its leadership.

ISIS struck the al Waleed border crossing near Rutbah in the Anbar province of Iraq early today, killing 16 Iraqi border guards and capturing 4. They also seized weapons -- and the border trucks, which they drove into Syria. [More...]

ISIS has released a lot of videos the past few days. In one, Race Towards Good (link removed),ISIS takes us inside a training camp for Kazakh children. They are purposely indoctrinated from a young age (There's even a toddler holding a toy gun.) It shows a class teaching very young males how to write Arabic and the kids receiving receiving fighter training. There's also an adult class on how to be a sniper.

It's fascinating to watch, but horrifying that they would encourage young kids to kill those who do not share their religion. [Update: Photos removed at the request of the Government of Kazakhstan]

ISIS has released Issue #5 of its English publication, Dabiq Magazine. You can read it here.

There's nothing in it about Peter Kassig or other ISIS beheadings. It's mostly about the other groups which recently announced their allegiance to ISIS leader al Baghdadi. There's also an article about its new currency and about Kobane. And a four page essay by hostage John Cantlie, titled "If I were U.S. President Today," in which he again criticizes the policy of the U.S. and its allies. [More...]

ISIS has released Episode 6 of prisoner John Cantlie's "Lend Me Your Ears" video messages. In it, he discusses the failed U.S. rescue attempt of James Foley. He excoriates the U.S. and British governments for not negotiating with ISIS, for threatening James Foley's mother with prosecution if she participated in ransom negotiations, and for abandoning him and the other foreign hostages recently executed.

He says ISIS was holding six foreign hostages, presumably referring to Foley, Sotloff, Haines, Henning, Kassig and himself. He doesn't mention the female U.S. aid worker who reportedly is being held by ISIS. Hopefully, she's just being held in a different place.

Cantlie blasts the hypocrisy, arrogance and lies of the U.S. and Great Britain, saying they treated his life and those of the other English and American hostages like a "roll of the dice" while the other hostages all went home. He is not angry at ISIS.

You can watch the video here, but it probably won't stay up long.

The Syrian Arab Army has an official Facebook page in English. Yesterday it posted a response to the ISIS video showing the beheading of 16 of its members. [link removed]

The statement acknowledges that army personnel have beheaded ISIS fighters in the past, but says those were individual acts by a few bad apples. The army, it insists, acts with honor and dignity.

It then says the Army won't be beheading captured ISIS fighters in the future. But, it continues, ISIS fighters will beg to be beheaded, because the Army will not treat them as human beings. [More...]

All day Saturday, ISIS supporters were teasing the release of a new video with English translations. They finally released it sometime after midnight. It's called "Although The Disbelievers Dislike It" and is 15 1/2 minutes long. I've watched it, and will not link to it, so please don't include a link in comments. I found a copy on Daily Motion. Here's my recap:[More...]