Anbar Sunnis ask for help
Sunni tribes in Anbar province west of Baghdad say a final showdown with ISIS is inevitable and that success depends on government support. Provincial council head Sabah Karhout says 25 Sunni tribes are ready to fight but they want weapons, ammunition and money, and guarantees from Baghdad that they won’t face reprisals:
If [the government] does not equip the tribes and form a local armed force in [the Sunni areas controlled by Islamic State fighters], the battle will not end.
ISIS is making gains in the province after government forces are drawn down, and taking Ramadi would give it complete control. A senior local official:
Ramadi now is totally surrounded by the militants. The insurgents are nibbling the areas, one by one, like a scorpion. They are crawling towards the centre of Ramadi.
A security advisor to al-Maliki says federal troops stationed at the centre of Ramadi and the nearby town of Haditha are under-trained and under-equipped, and a third of those around Ramadi have been withdrawn to Baghdad:
Our regular troops which are deployed now in Anbar are not trained to be involved in guerilla fighting. They are able to [hold their positions on] the ground and defend themselves, no more.
Amerli siege ‘broken’
Iraqi Shiite fighters say they have broken the ISIS siege of the town of Amerli, where 15,000 ethnic Shiite Turkmen are trapped with dwindling food and water and under threat of massacre. Lieutenant General Qassem Atta:
Our forces entered Amerli and broke the siege
Iraqi air and ground forces, Shiite militiamen and Kurdish peshmerga are supported by U.S. airstrikes on ISIS targets as well as international airdrops of weapons and humanitarian supplies, in what is described as the first major success for the federal government in the conflict.
Australia to airlift weapons
The Royal Australian Air Force will deliver weapons to Kurdish fighters battling ISIS. Abbott says the decision to join Canada, Italy, the U.S., France and Britain is made to address a worsening ‘humanitarian crisis.’
Australia will join international partners to help the [anti-IS] forces in Iraq
The RAAF will provide C-130J Hercules and C-17A Globemaster aircraft. It has previously limited its air operations to humanitarian drops.
Sells Yazidi women
ISIS has ‘distributed‘ as many as 300 Yazidi women to rank-and-file members in the past few weeks. The Syrian Observatory on Human Rights confirms at least 27 cases in which women have been sold for around $1,000 each to fighters in Aleppo and Raqqa suburbs and Al-Hassakah, while others have been given away. SOHR says the women were kidnapped in Iraq and transported to Syria and that some have converted to Islam so that ISIS fighters can marry them. ISIS views them as:
captives of the spoils of war with the infidels
Starts airstrikes, aid drops in northern town
The U.S. begins airstrikes and humanitarian drops in the northern town of Amerli, backing up a combined local force of Iraqi military, Shiite militia and Kurdish peshmerga fighters that is seeking to break the ISIS siege of the town and free 15,000 trapped Shiite Turkmen. Australia, France and the UK also participate in the aid drop. Rear Admiral John Kirby says operations will be limited in scope and duration, as required to protect civilians trapped in Amerli.
‘ISIS wants Lebanon’
Sheikh Nabil Kaouk, the deputy head of Hezbollah’s executive council, says ignoring the threat of ISIS could allow the group to seize Lebanon:
The terrorist threat on Lebanon is actual, real and continuous. And whoever doubts or underestimates [this threat] is either ignorant or negligent, and he harms the high national interest of Lebanon … ISIS’s decision has been announced. Their pretended slogan is to create the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria, which includes Lebanon.
He proposes a “tripartite” force to protect the country consisting of the military, the public and the “resistance”:
Whoever denies Hezbollah’s role in protecting [Lebanon is] oblivious to the truth.
‘Death before capture’
Shiite Turkmen in Amerli town say they will choose death over capture by ISIS, which considers them apostates. A government employee named Mehdi:
In every three to four houses we have dug graves. If the Islamic State storms our town everyone will be killing their wives and children and they will bury them.
He says the minority’s wives agree to death rather than being used as spoils of war, as ISIS have done with Yazidi minority women:
They say ‘we don’t want to end up in the hands of the Islamic State, being enslaved like those in Sinjar mountain….We don’t want the Islamic State to lay their hands on us.’
Beauty salon owner Fatima Qassim, who has been airlifted to Baghdad:
All the women will kill themselves – either shoot themselves or use kerosene and burn themselves to death.
She says her brother is fighting to defend the town and has remained behind with his wife and six children.
He put eight bullets in his rifle and he said if ISIS enters the town then I will kill my children one by one and then I will kill my wife and myself.
Fatwa
0 CommentsBritish Muslim leaders issue a fatwa condemning ISIS and urging UK and European believers to support the people of Iraq ‘without betraying their own societies.’
IS is a heretical, extremist organisation and it is religiously prohibited (haram) to support or join it; furthermore, it is an obligation on British Muslims to actively oppose its poisonous ideology, especially when this is promoted within Britain.
Sheik Usama Hasan, a former imam from east London, and six senior Islamic scholars across the country, say that the group’s violations of international law are forbidden:
… ISIS has violated international agreements such as the Geneva Conventions and conventions on slavery that everyone, including Muslims, have signed up to. God says in the Qur’an, “Believers, fulfil your covenants!”
‘Waterboarded’
Foley was among at least four Western hostages waterboarded by ISIS. A source says the militants have mastered the ‘enhanced interrogation’ technique used by the US on some terror suspects after Sept. 11, 2001:
They knew exactly how it was done
‘Dead letter box’ system
British nationals use a sophisticated ‘dead letter’ email system to smuggle their way into Iraq and Syria to join ISIS, with terrorist handlers employing ‘silent’ email addresses that do not actually send messages, but contain instructions in the Draft folder. Militants are then moved secretly across Europe and smuggled across the Turkish border to training camps in Syria. As many as 20 British nationals are believed to be waiting in safe houses or hotels for the all-clear to cross the border.
New York Times commentary
Kerry calls for a global coalition against ISIS in a New York Times op-ed:
No decent country can support the horrors perpetrated by ISIS, and no civilized country should shirk its responsibility to help stamp out this disease. Coalition building is hard work, but it is the best way to tackle a common enemy.
The group’s foreign recruits pose an international threat:
ISIS’ cadre of foreign fighters are a rising threat not just in the region, but anywhere they could manage to travel undetected — including to America […] They have already demonstrated the ability to seize and hold more territory than any other terrorist organization, in a strategic region that borders Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey and is perilously close to Israel.
The U.S., which takes over the UN Security Council presidency in September, should lead the coalition but its contributions – including airstrikes – are not enough on their own:
In this battle, there is a role for almost every country. Some will provide military assistance, direct and indirect. Some will provide desperately needed humanitarian assistance for the millions who have been displaced and victimized across the region. Others will help restore not just shattered economies but broken trust among neighbors. This effort is underway in Iraq, where other countries have joined us in providing humanitarian aid, military assistance and support for an inclusive government.
‘Could reach America in two months’
King Abdullah says terrorists could reach America within months if left unchecked:
If neglected, I am certain that after a month they will reach Europe and, after another month, America. Terror knows no borders and its danger could affect several countries outside the Middle East.
He adds that ISIS’s beliefs are against Islam and must be opposed:
I do ask you to transmit this message to your leaders: Fight terrorism with force, reason and speed. These terrorists do not know the name of humanity, and you have witnessed them severing heads and giving them to children to walk with in the street.
Operation to free northern town
The Iraqi Army, Shiite militias and Kurdish peshmerga launch operations to free the northern town of Amerli, where 15,000 minority Shia Turkmen have been under siege by ISIS for two months. The combined forces are reported to be mounting an assault on two fronts in the Salahuddin Kurdish area, with peshmerga fighters said to be west of Tuz Khurmatu, just north of Amerli, and Iraqi army units and Shia militia are approaching Amerli from the south. The Iraqi Air Force is providing some cover on the southern approach. The operation is reported to have two objectives: to break the siege of Amerli and to reopen the main highway leading north from Baghdad.
Beheads Lebanese soldier
ISIS beheads a Lebanese soldier, one of 19 captured in an assault on the border town of Arsal aimed at freeing captured Syrian rebel commander Imad Ahmad Jomaa. The soldier, recognizable as Ali al-Sayyed, a Sunni Muslim from north Lebanon, is shown blindfolded with his hands tied behind his back, writhing and kicking the dusty ground while a militant announces he will be killed. Another militant then beheads him.
Child training camps
0 CommentsISIS has created training camps where boys are taught to assemble, handle and use firearms, as well as being show stonings, beheadings and crucifixions. In a video, a very young boy specifically takes an oath pledging allegiance to the Islamic State and reveals what he would do to an infidel:
Infidels…you are to be killed.
A 13-year old boy and his family fed to to Turkey.
When we go to the mosque, they order us to come the next day at a specific time and place to [watch] heads cut off, lashings or stonings. We saw a young man who did not fast for Ramadan, so they crucified him for three days, and we saw a woman being stoned [to death] because she committed adultery.
14-year-old ‘jihadi’ girl arrested
French authorities arrest a 14-year-old girl in the western city of Quimper on suspicion that she is planning to conduct jihad in Syria. She is moved to Paris to be questioned by an anti-terror judge on possible connections to the disappearance of another 14-year-old girl from the Paris area in June, as part of an enquiry that has also led to the arrests of a 15-year-old and 17-year old girl a week earlier.
‘It would be an honor to join ISIS’
Nidal Hasan, the Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people in the 2009 Fort Hood shootings, sends a letter to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi asking to be made a ‘citizen soldier’ of the self-described caliphate:
I formally and humbly request to be made a citizen of the Islamic State … It would be an honor for any believer to be an obedient citizen soldier to a people and its leader who don’t compromise the religion of All-Mighty Allah to get along with the disbelievers.
Acquires anti-aircraft weapons
ISIS has acquired an arsenal that includes state-of-the-art anti-aircraft guns that can shoot down modern warplanes and poses a significant threat to civilian flights. Prior to the group’s weekend capture of the Taqba airport, it had already seized a large amount of weapons from the Assad regime and fleeing Iraqi forces that includes top-shelf mortars, APCs and even several M1A1 Abrams main battlefield tanks, but its surface-to-air capability was limited to ageing, subpar equipment. However, more recent propaganda photos show militants holding standard-issue carbines and Russian-made Kalashnikov AK-47 replicas, a staple of Middle Eastern armed groups for decades, alongside Russian SA-24 Grinch manpads (man-portable air defence system) captured from the airfield. An American diplomat involved in monitoring Islamist groups:
There is a need to assess the air-defence capabilities of ISIS and also the capabilities of President Assad’s forces. But, I would like to stress that no decision has yet been made on whether to extend the operations in Iraq to Syria
The group is known to have Soviet, Polish and Bulgarian ZU23-2 and ZU23-4 anti-aircraft guns and American low altitude FIM92 Stinger manpads, and has used GSHK heavy-machine guns against the Assad regime’s attack helicopters to great effect, although they are not much use against high-flying fast jets. These are now thought to be augmented by Chinese FN-6 manpads that can hit targets at 11,000 feet and SA-16 Gimlet manpads, with effective range of 16,000 feet which were supplied in large quantities to the regime.
IS fighters have captured SA-16 MANPADS, AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles & MiG-21B jets in #Tabaqa Airbase, #Raqqa. #Syria pic.twitter.com/c33TB56XdL
— Charles Lister (@Charles_Lister) August 24, 2014
Beheading video of Kurdish fighter
ISIS releases a video apparently showing the beheading of a Kurdish fighter, as a warning to Kurds. Titled ‘A Message In Blood,’ it begins by showing what appear to be a group of 15 Kurdish peshmerga fighters captured in Iraq. The men are sitting and standing in front of an ISIS flag inside a small room with makeshift walls and blue mats lining the floor. An earlier shot shows the captured men still in uniform and peshmerga fighter Hassan Mohammed Hashin reads a prepared statement to Kurdish leaders:
You have made a huge mistake by joining hands with America.
The footage then cuts to a sandy roadside. The Great Mosque of Mosul is visible in the background as three armed, black-clad militants stand behind a kneeling captive. A fighter delivers a speech:
In the name of God, peace be upon him. I have two messages: the first one is for the dog of Roman, the jerk Obama, how did you send your nation and soldiers again to Iraq, did you forget the thousands of dead Americans who you gave them as a sacrifice for wars? Did you forget thousands of images of corpses, deformed and those people who still suffer? Did the economy of America recovered from its crises to get into a new one? But the second message is for the servant of the Jewish Mas’od, this is the destiny of one of the militants, and others who you sent to Muslims unless you finish your work with the Jewish and your alliance with the Crusaders.
The militant then unsheathes a knife from his belt, tilts the capitve’s head back, and begins to decapitate him. The video shows only a brief shot of the execution. It ends with ISIS fighters parading in APCs in Mosul, brandishing flags and weapons.
RememberingJim.org
Peter Bouckart creates RememberingJim.org to honor the memory of Foley. The site includes photos of supporters holding up written messages and testimonies from people who knew Foley directly or were affected by his story. The New Yorker‘s Jon Lee Anderson recalls meeting Foley:
In the basement press room of the Benghazi courthouse where the Libya revolution began in February 2011. I had noticed him, a good-looking, fair-haired man in his thirties, and his sidekick and fellow freelancer, Clare Morgana Gillis, ever since I had arrived
This is how I want 2 remember my brave and dear friend #JamesFoley, fight evil with love. Join #rememberingjim pic.twitter.com/HZ05kRo1Ll
— Peter Bouckaert (@bouckap) August 26, 2014