al-qaida chief ayman al-zawahiri the coordinator 2015 part 19-142-caliphate-isis-18

Intel to Rent C de Waart [email protected] In Confidence

Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2015 Part 19-142-Caliphate-ISIS-18

If not us, who? If not here, where? If not now, when?

'Changing regional game' ‘End times’ language from the Hadith literature (sayings attributed to the Prophet Mohammed) permeates Isis’ messaging; that of great battles involving ‘Rome,’ and ‘Constantinople.’ Council comprising diplomats from 28 NATO allies to meet amid Turkish security operations against Kurdish PKK and ISIL. 27 Jul 2015. In Article 4, members are encouraged to bring subjects to the table for discussion for political consultation. ISIS emir Abu Bakr al-Bagdhdadi (literally: “Son of Baghdad”) is taking measures to ensure a seamless transition of the top level of Islamic State power structure in the event of his death, according to U.S. Special Forces commander Gen. Joseph Votel. I would tell them then: ‘If you cannot support us – at least don’t hinder our efforts.’” Putin, however, noted that the situation has substantially changed. “Europe and the United States have realized the real dangers of extreme manifestations of radicalism and joined in the fight. As the Russian people say – it is better late than never.”

John Kirby, a senior US Pentagon official, told a news conference that the discussions with Turkey about a safe zone focused on a 110km stretch of land still under ISIL control. US has been conducting air strikes there, which could accelerate now that it can launch strikes from Turkish soil. Ankara and Washington aimed "to establish an ISIL-free zone and ensure greater security and stability along Turkey's border with Syria," he said.Any joint military efforts would not include the imposition of a "no-fly zone" - a long-standing Turkish demand - but would enable Turkey to support US "partners on the ground" already fighting ISIL in Syria, an official earlier told AFP. However, many question whether Turkey is more interested in limiting Kurdish capabilities in Syria and Iraq than tackling ISIL. The YPG has proved to be the most effective force in Syria against ISIL and the Syrian government, but its successes have been eyed suspiciously by Turkey because of its links to its own country's Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which it considers a "terrorist" organisation. Turkey on Monday denied its military was targeting the YPG in Syria after Kurdish forces and a monitoring group claimed its tanks shelled Kurdish-held villages in northern Syria.ISIS and its affiliates will spread like cancer across the world if the West doesn’t wake up to the threat of terrorism and stop funding the ideology and using terror as a weapon, says Catherine Shakdam, of the Beirut Center for Middle East Studies.

I think that ISIS and its affiliates will continue to spread like cancer across not just the Middle East, but Africa and potentially Asia and even Europe and America. People need to really wake up to this threat, because we talk a lot about how we need to fight ISIS on the ground and how we need to stop them. But I don’t think they have been making efforts to stop the ideology so far.

Muslims are caught in the eye of a ferocious storm as Islamic State’s legions spread fear across three continents. But anger has been misplaced as the real face of terror lies not with Islam but hidden in Saudi Arabia, where Wahhabism reigns all powerful.

If not for the Al Saud Royals' billions and the silence of Western powers, Wahhabism would never have crossed the deserts of Saudi Arabia.

1The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see. –Winston ChurchillCees de waart: Intel to Rent of 7

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Terror will only end with the death of its ideology.

European countries should be less beholden to military blocks and the US when considering issues concerning their own national interests, Russian President Vladimir Putin told the Swiss RTS TV channel. Putin also talked FIFA scandal and Islamic terrorism. “It would be great to see Europe show more independence and sovereignty, and the ability to stand up for its national interests – the interests of its peoples and countries,” Putin said in an interview with RTS published on Monday. He added that he “hopes” another war in Europe is not in the cards. The Russian leader added that a certain level of sovereignty is undoubtedly lost when joining any "any military-political organization [or] military-political bloc." Putin noted that “France withdrew from NATO in order to preserve its sovereignty to a greater extent than would have been possible had it been part of the organization,” referring to the French withdrawal from NATO in the 1960s. France fully returned to the military bloc only in 2009. Putin stressed that “it is not our business to analyze the foreign policy of European countries. But you must admit that if we have to discuss inter-European affairs with European partners in Washington, this is not very interesting.”He also mentioned that the US has been “pursuing an imperial policy for a long time.” In addition, he cited the opinion of some American political analysts who “believe that this imperial angle hurts the US.”Putin explained that Russia’s stance on US foreign policy “has nothing to do with anti-Americanism,” adding that Russians “have respect and great love for the USA, and especially for the American people.” Europe fighting terrorism: ‘Better late than never’ When answering a question about Russia’s earlier efforts to fight terrorism and the lack of Western support at the time, Putin said that European governments had ignored abundant evidence of terrorist activity, such as Al-Qaeda affiliates fighting in the Russian North Caucasus.“When I asked my colleagues, including Europeans: ‘You see what is happening?’ they used to respond: ‘Yes, we do, but due to various domestic, international circumstances, we cannot support you.’ I would tell them then: ‘If you cannot support us – at least don’t hinder our efforts.’” Putin, however, noted that the situation has substantially changed. “Europe and the United States have realized the real dangers of extreme manifestations of radicalism and joined in the fight. As the Russian people say – it is better late than never.”

Syria is coming apart and there are millions of Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. ISIS threatens Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq—the latter of which is also coming apart.The new Iran nuclear deal would deliver $150 billion in cash to the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the removal of sanctions would bring even more money to the Revolutionary Guards. ISIS and other jihadis are increasingly active in Sinai. Hamas has a firm grip on Gaza. What is the European Union’s reaction to all these threats? To focus on the single aspect of Middle Eastern affairs that is right now calm, and to intervene in ways likely to reduce the calm and create more turbulence. The growth of terrorist groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda makes an Israeli military withdrawal from the West Bank even more dangerous to Israel and Jordan—and to the Palestinians

The Threat of Radical Islam In the US and Abroad (Author Interview: Brad Taylor; I’d encourage them to quit talking in sound bites. The Islamic State is a complex, multi-faceted problem set with no single solution. “The Iraqi army ran, and the Kurds are fighting. We should arm the Kurds to defeat


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ISIS.” Our goal of destroying the Islamic State is not the Kurd’s goal. In the end, the problem of the Islamic State requires a holistic strategy, not just tactical sound bites, I find it puzzling that this has generated so much controversy. First, ISIS is usually mispronounced as the Islamic State of Iraq and SYRIA, but what it really stands for is the Islamic State of Iraq and al SHAM, with al Sham meaning “greater Syria”, going down through Lebanon and encompassing most of Jordan. ISIL stands for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, with the Levant meaning roughly the same thing as al Sham – greater Syria. It just depended on who did the translation from Arabic, with one simply including the Arabic term al-Sham, and another actually translating al-Sham into English by using the term “Levant” – the closest English term to al Sham – but they both mean basically the same thing.ISIL is the acronym that was placed on the State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organization list, and thus has stuck with the US Government, while ISIS received greater play in the media. It’s no different than Osama bin Laden. When I first started chasing him, he was called Usama bin Laden, or UBL for short. By the time he was killed, he had become OBL, but it meant the same person.In the end, we should have just stuck with the English phonetic acronym of the Islamic State’s own Arabic term – DAESH, or al-Dawla al–Islamiya al-Iraq al-Sham. After all, we call Hezbollah, Hezbollah, not the translation “Party of God”, and we use AQ for al Qaida, not “TB” for “The Base”. ) Christopher N. Malagisi | Jul 22 In my mind, radical Islam is the most significant threat the United States faces today, and out of all of the different groups, the Islamic State is the most dangerous. Not just in the threat of another 9/11 type terrorist event, but also in its capacity to destabilize entire state systems and cause repercussions that may initiate overt hostilities between

nation-states. Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia, you name it, radical Islamists have created chaos and death.I understand they aren’t the only threat – China is currently building and weaponizing artificial islands, and Russia and the Ukraine make the news on a daily basis – but there is a distinct difference in the makeup of the threat. There is no deterrence to radical Islam. No sanctions or saber rattling is going to make them quit, and they have a fanatical worldview that glorifies violence. China may hack our computers, and Russia may invade its neighbors, but neither would flat out encourage and enable horrific attacks

in the western world as a strategy. At the end of the day, both of those countries value something greater than simply death, and we can use those levers, short of actual conflict, to manage them.During the Cold War we had two competing theories dealing with the USSR, called counter force and counter value. Basically, should we target the USSR war making machine – ballistic missiles, airfields, etc – or should we target what the USSR valued – leadership, etc. Counter value proponents stated that taking out the leadership would render the USSR unable to launch a counter-strike, while opponents said the opposite: It would lead to a breakdown whereby missiles would be launched willy-nilly with no controls and no way to stop the violence.That, in a nutshell, is the threat posed by the Islamic State. It encourages leaderless chaos, urging attacks worldwide without any control over the outcome, or any restraint on the level of violence. There is no negotiating or deterrence with the Islamic State. Its only solution is eradication.

‘While terror funding allowed, West will be fighting losing battle against ISIS’

Catherine Shakdam is a political analyst, writer and commentator for the Middle East with a special focus on radical movements and Yemen. Her writings have been published in world-renowned publications such as Foreign Policy Journal, Mintpress News, the Guardian, Your Middle East, Middle East Monitor, Middle East Eye, Open Democracy, Eurasia Review and many more. A regular pundit on RT, she has also contributed her analyses to Etejah TV, IRIB radio, Press TV and NewsMax TV. A leading analyst for the Beirut Center for Middle East Studies and consultant for Anderson


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Consulting, her research and work on Yemen were used by the UN Security Council in relation to Yemen looted funds in 2015.Published time: 27 Jul, 2015 12:54

©ISIS and its affiliates will spread like cancer across the world if the West doesn’t wake up to the threat of terrorism and stop funding the ideology and using terror as a weapon, says Catherine Shakdam, of the Beirut Center for Middle East Studies.RT: The UK spent 13 times more to bomb Libya, than to rebuild it. Does this undermine claims that the aim was to create a stable Libya?Catherine Shakdam: Absolutely, and I think that Libya is just a tip of the iceberg. The fact that the British public now has this information available is going to fuel again this conversation that the great public has had with the government in general, not just in the UK but I would say across Western nations. The wars that have been going on for the past decade have been fueled by this desire to build democracy. ... We know that that wasn’t the case at all. And proof is that very little money has been allocated to rebuilding infrastructure after they were destroyed by Western nations. I think the fact that Libya is not coming back again onto the forefront of the media will fuel this conversation and lead a lot of people to question the real intentions behind those wars.RT: It's been four years since the Western-backed overthrow of Gaddafi and the country is still in chaos. What does that say about the approach chosen by the Western nations back then?

CS: The main problem is that the public is still under the impression that the UK and their allies- America and other Western nations- went to war in Libya and other places in the Middle East to help those nations, and to help their democracy. We know that is not the case - the reason is if there is chaos now it is because of the way the war has been conducted. We know that the Western nations have very often - to score and forward their own

agenda – help funded those very radicals that they now found themselves at war with. That is the great paradox of Western foreign policy, not just the UK here.…The UK and their allies again have help fund unrest because they wanted to overthrow Colonel Gaddafi at the time. They themselves created the problem that we are facing now- the radicalism; and this fragmentation of all those militia within Libya which are leading to a lot of unrest, a lot of violence, and the impossibility to build peace because everything has been so chaotic…RT: Wasn't the chaos we're seeing in Libya now completely predictable? CS: Absolutely. I think a lot of experts at that time warned that this would happen. We have had experience by now with Iraq for example. We know what happened with the fall of Saddam Hussein. We realize that the democracy that we were sold didn’t happen overnight, and that you cannot impose democracy by waging war on nations. Libya - after a decade of war in Afghanistan and Iraq - was just a confirmation that those policies do not absolutely work.… If you look at why those wars were waged - which was essentially to grab, hold and control all the natural resources and geopolitical points in the Middle East - Libya geographically is a very important point for Western nations because they can have control of the African continent. The same thing for Syria and Iraq.If we look at those conflicts with this idea that democracy building was the end game of course it’s not working. But now if we look why really those powers went to war in Libya and other places in the


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Middle East, and we realize that it was all about the natural resources, all about control of certain areas in the world, then the conversation is changing and the dynamic is changing. And of course if you change the context of those wars than the understanding of those wars become more evident I would say. So it was a failure in terms of the public expectation. When it comes to the UK expectation and Western expectation towards what they wanted to see happen in those countries- that is still open to debate. They are benefiting greatly from unrest because of course weapons are selling. A lot of people are making a lot of money.RT: With ISIS also operating in Libya, is a peace process there even possible?CS: I honestly don’t think so. But again, we cannot just decide to end diplomacy, and we need to keep trying to install peace and have the Libyan people take control over their own political destiny. But until we address this ideology of terror and until we stop funding this ideology of terror or at least allowing those funds to reach those people, then I think we’re fighting a losing battle. I think that ISIS and its affiliates will continue to spread like cancer across not just the Middle East, but Africa and potentially Asia and even Europe and America. People need to really wake up to this threat, because we talk a lot about how we need to fight ISIS on the ground and how we need to stop them. But I don’t think they have been making efforts to stop the ideology so far. And I’m not talking about pinpointing the blame towards Muslims, and saying that it’s their fault that radicalism is spreading. It is not their fault- it is the fault of the people who are funding this ideology and using terror as a weapon of mass destruction against the world.The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

Wahhabism: Religious deviance and fountainhead of radicalism & extremism

Catherine Shakdam Published time: 28 Jun, 2015 16:08 Muslims are caught in the eye of a ferocious storm as Islamic State’s legions spread fear across three continents. But anger has been misplaced as the real face of terror lies not with Islam but hidden in Saudi Arabia, where Wahhabism reigns all powerful. If the world ever needed a reminder that terror truly stands as an enemy of civilization and of all people - beyond class, faiths, ethnicity and political affiliation - the triple attacks this week by extremists in Lyon (France), Sousse (Tunisia) and Kuwait should stand as testimony to the evil that has besieged us all. Western politicians will likely exploit France's attack to push forth their own security agenda, calling on the Western world to fear and abhor Muslims as they themselves plot to encroach further on civil


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liberties and trample over human rights. However, many will fail to recognize where the true monster really lies.

To reduce the world's terror crisis to Islam on account of a few twisted and psychotic individuals, who have decided to brand themselves Muslims, is as ridiculous as blaming the Bible or the whole of Christianity on the abuses of the Spanish Inquisition. There are over one billion Muslims in the world, of which less than half a percent have pledged themselves to the black flag of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL). Branding 23 percent of the world’s population as religious criminals is a rationale of discrimination and prejudice that terror ideologues have used to build their army - exclusion is an epidemic which has cost the world too much blood already for it to be allowed to perpetuate. Historically, men have long abused the name of God and religion to serve their own selfish goals, claiming holiness as a shield against criticism while perverting the Holy Scriptures to brainwash communities into absolute submission. Where religion offers freedom, bigotry has only ever enslaved and abused.

Islam, like Judaism and Christianity before it, carries a message of peace and compassion. How people choose to interpret it takes nothing away from its message; if anything it says more about our ability, or rather inability as a people to respect the sanctity of faith. If religions are a reflection of the divine, our practice of it has proven to be inherently flawed, which has led to fanatics using God to breed dogmatism. This terror we have labeled as Islamic radicalism could not be further remote from Islam. Everything IS and its infernal sisters perpetrate, from the promises of bloody retributions to its militants' heinous crimes against humanity, are an abomination and a negation of Islam’s tenets.As hatred and fear are fast replacing reason and logic, it is time we all learn of the roots and driving forces behind this monstrosity - Wahhabism. If indeed our goal is to eradicate terror, we might want to start where it is bred, instead of appointing blame where it is not warranted. This Islam the world has come to loathe is in fact a perversion, which was born in the desert of Nejd in Saudi Arabia back in the 18th century. This ideology Muslims and non-Muslims alike have to come to fear and despise is but an engineered religious deviance rooted in hatred.

Wahhabism is merely the misguided expression of one man’s political ambition - Mohammed Abdel-Wahhab, a bigot who was recruited by the British Empire to erode the fabric of Islam and crack the armor of the then-Ottoman Empire by breeding sectarianism and dissent. It is Abdel-Wahhab's alliance to the House of Saud that ultimately unleashed this now seemingly unstoppable evil we know today under the tag of Islamic radicalism. If not for the Al Saud Royals' billions and the silence of Western powers, Wahhabism would never have crossed the deserts of Saudi Arabia. If not for the kingdom's lavish sponsoring of the Wahhabi school of thought, extremism would never have come to be in the first place.></div>Although exact numbers are not known, it is thought that Saudi Arabia has spent over $100 billion on exporting fanatical Wahhabism to various, much poorer Muslim nations worldwide over the past three decades, notwithstanding its efforts in the West. Islamic State’s obscene savagery epitomizes the violence inherent and central to Wahhabism and Salafism, its other radical branch. Let us all remember how eagerly the kingdom carries out death sentences by beheading or stoning and how generously its officials hand out lashings and other barbaric corporal punishments to its citizens before theorizing on the source of Islamic State’s murderous streak. IS is simply a studious disciple of Wahhabism. It learned its craft and its hate within its schools; it was force-fed its poison by a clergy which idolizes death and torture in the name of a misplaced and misguided understanding of what constitutes the holy. Ascetic, reactionary, murderous and cruel, Wahhabism is a terror that needs to be named before it can be defeated.


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More than any other people and religious community, Muslims have suffered as a consequence of the pain and suffering IS has inflicted. Naturally, they do not recognize this evil as having anything to do with their faith. And yet, Muslims continue to be blamed for the misery these Wahhabi legions wreak on the world. Would it not be better to admit that Wahhabism is not of Islam and thus free over a billion people from carrying such

a collective burden of guilt? Ultimately, however drastic our security measures or violent our military interventions will be against radicals, it will all come to naught if we continue to allow Wahhabis to spew their poison through religious patronage?

Terror will only end with the death of its ideology.The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.


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al-qaida chief ayman al-zawahiri the coordinator 2015 part 19-142-caliphate-isis-18

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