Thread: What Will It Take To Get Rid Of ISIS?

That's a very shrewd move by Putin, considering half of Turkey thinks Erdogan is a thieving bastard.

What will it take to get rid of ISIS? This:-

While crashing into the third Arab country since 9/11 may titillate the Churchillian sensibilities of the British ruling class, it will do little when it comes to defeating ISIS and ending the conflict. Indeed, given the recent incident of a Russian jet being shot down by Turkish F16s the risks involved in throwing British aircraft into the mix are self evident. If the Americans, who’ve been bombing ISIS (at least so they’ve been telling us) in Syria for the best part of a year, have failed to make any appreciable difference, what makes David Cameron and his Labour supporters believe Britain’s handful of fighter-bombers will or can?

There is a glaring need for the West to coordinate its efforts with the Russians and the Syrians, who are engaged in the very joint air and ground campaign every military expert agrees is the only way to crush ISIS/Daesh. However miltary action is not by itself enough. Confronting the murky relationship that exists between ISIS and Western allies in the region is also now non-negotiable.

Turkey and Saudi Arabia in particular have been at the heart of supporting the medieval fanatacism that recently exploded onto the streets of Paris. In the case of the former, without Turkey’s Syrian border being tantamount to a revolving door for ISIS fighters, materiel, and arms to pass through, we wouldn’t be where we are now. Nor is it anymore a wild claim to make that Turkey, elements within Turkey, have actively facilitated the trade in stolen Iraqi and Syrian oil that has funded their operations and so-called caliphate. Here we are entitled to ponder the question of whether Turkey’s real motive in taking the extraordinary step of shooting down a Russian jet was because Russian airstrikes had begun targeting the huge convoys of trucks transporting this oil towards Turkey’s border?

As for the Saudis, the fanatacism and medievalism which underpins ISIS/Daesh in Iraq and Syria is indistinguishable from the Wahhabi Sunni doctrine that bears the imprimatur of state religion in Riyadh. A major crux of this issue has been the Wahhabisation of Sunni Islam that has led to the normalisation and legitimisation of sectarianism. The Saudis have used their oil money to fund the building of mosques and other projects across the Muslim world, all with the aim of asserting the dominance of this particularly extreme literalist form of Sunni Islam. This influence must also be challenged.

Until Britain, the United States, and other Western governments are willing to deal with the role of both Turkey and Saudi Arabia in fomenting this crisis, they are not serious when it comes to defeating ISIS and the wider issue of the perverse ideology that drives it.

As for those 70,000 moderates fighting in Syria, the only place they are to be found is in the ranks of the non sectarian Syrian Arab Army, made up of Alawites, Sunnis, Druze, and Christians fighting for their homes, their people, and their country.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/12/...ing-a-debacle/

US Banks on Special Ops, Intelligence to Accelerate Anti-IS Efforts

PENTAGON—
Some crucial details have yet to be worked out as the U.S. prepares to send a new force of special operators to Iraq, but a clearer picture began to emerge Wednesday of a recalibrated strategy designed to slowly but surely destroy the Islamic State terror group in its heartland.

A day after U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced the creation of a "specialized expeditionary targeting force," military officials said that despite earlier, larger estimates, the force would consist of about 100 people, with fewer "trigger pullers" based on the ground in Iraq.

Their primary mission will be to find and capture key Islamic State militants to try to get what one official described as "actionable intelligence" that could lead to additional operations.

more here US Banks on Special Ops, Intelligence to Accelerate Anti-IS Efforts

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced the creation of a "specialized expeditionary targeting force," .... of about 100 people ..

Their primary mission will be to find and capture key Islamic State militants

Boots on ground ... mission creep

Originally Posted by Neverna

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced the creation of a "specialized expeditionary targeting force," .... of about 100 people ..

Their primary mission will be to find and capture key Islamic State militants

Boots on ground ... mission creep

Indeed. You can bet your life that there's been special operatives in Syria from the US and UK for some considerable time offering training and intelligence, this marks the arrival of more pro active teams entering the fray working independently and using offensive tactics.

Originally Posted by Neo

Originally Posted by OhOh

What's the betting odds that their first target will be Al Raqqa.

The Kurds are offering to be the 'boots on the ground' and the BBC are clearly putting the meme out there on behalf of the vested interests in the UK. Couple of sticking points though.. the Kurds want more heavy weapons and ammunition, which shouldn't be a problem eh..

Do you think Turkey would agree to that?

And then there is the "interesting" US position on the PKK ...

The PKK and its Syrian affiliate have emerged as Washington’s most effective battlefield partners against Islamic State, also known as ISIS, even though the U.S. and its allies have for decades listed the PKK as a terrorist group. The movement in the past has been accused of kidnappings, murder and narcotics trafficking ...

America?s Marxist Allies Against ISIS - WSJ

best way is to leave to Arabs to slug it out amongst each other ,that will chop the numbers down for a start and mean less come to UK

Originally Posted by Neverna

Do you think Turkey would agree to that?

Originally Posted by Neverna

And then there is the "interesting" US position on the PKK

Well I'd have to say that the conflicts of the last 15 years have had little to do with the desires of nation states and far more to do with the profits of corporations. Their thirst for compounding one clusterfuck by sowing the seeds for the next seems unquenchable.

A shift in France’s position on Bashar Al-Assad?

British jets carry out second wave of airstrikes on Isis in Syria | Politics | The Guardian

... French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, suggested on Saturday that removing Bashar al-Assad as president of Syria may no longer necessary ahead of a successful political transition in the country.

“A united Syria implies a political transition. That does not mean that Bashar al-Assad must leave even before the transition, but there must be assurances for the future,” he told regional newspaper Le Progrès.

The comments mark a change in France’s position on the Syrian president, as it has previously demanded the removal of Assad, describing him as a “butcher” of his own people.

There had been signs Paris might moderate its position as its priority shifted to tackling Islamic State, which carried out the Paris attacks last month in which 130 people were killed.

Originally Posted by Neverna

French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius

he is getting kicked out of the government, under Russian pressure

Originally Posted by Dragonfly

Originally Posted by Neverna

French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius

he is getting kicked out of the government, under Russian pressure

Russian pressure or maybe too much of ...?.... can destroy you.




vs.

Laytonstone is the next target for our brave RAF boys.

"Terrorist" With Machete In London Subway Slashes Man's Throat Screaming "This Is For Syria" | Zero Hedge

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...terrorism.html

how long till a mass shooting in UK?

Originally Posted by Toby451

best way is to leave to Arabs to slug it out amongst each other ,that will chop the numbers down for a start and mean less come to UK

Nearly all the regional conflicts doesn't involve Arabs...

err...hello, Syria, Iraq , Libya, they are arabs are they not, certainly look like that to me

Professor speaking on the extremest mindset . . .


https://www.facebook.com/prageru/vid...7194363656754/

Originally Posted by Toby451

err...hello, Syria, Iraq , Libya, they are arabs are they not, certainly look like that to me

They're not Arabs..

if it quacks like a duck it's a duck, or something like that anyway - basically these guys are as good as Arabs regardless of pseudo lib avoidance tactics

Looks like they're getting entrenched with a long term plan which doesn't include being got rid of any time soon.

The Isis papers: leaked documents show how Isis is building its state
Blueprint lays bare new contours of Islamic state, complete with civil service, regional government and Soviet levels of economic control
The leaked document sets out a blueprint for a building a state.

Monday 7 December 2015 06.08 EST Last modified on Monday 7 December 2015 17.39 ES
A leaked internal Islamic State manual shows how the terrorist group has set about building a state in Iraq and Syria complete with government departments, a treasury and an economic programme for self-sufficiency, the Guardian can reveal.

The 24-page document, obtained by the Guardian, sets out a blueprint for establishing foreign relations, a fully fledged propaganda operation, and centralised control over oil, gas and the other vital parts of the economy.

Analysis The Isis papers: behind 'death cult' image lies a methodical bureaucracy
From control of oil and land to rules governing leisure, internal memos seen by the Guardian show how deliberate Isis’s state-building exercise has been.
The manual, written last year and entitled Principles in the administration of the Islamic State, lays bare Isis’s state-building aspirations and the ways in which it has managed to set itself apart as the richest and most destabilising jihadi group of the past 50 years.


Together with other documents obtained by the Guardian, it builds up a picture of a group that, although sworn to a founding principle of brutal violence, is equally set on more mundane matters such as health, education, commerce, communications and jobs. In short, it is building a state.

As western aircraft step up their aerial war on Isis targets in Syria, the implication is that the military task is not simply one of battlefield arithmetic. Isis is already far more than the sum of its fighters.

The document – written as a foundation text to train “cadres of administrators” in the months after Isis’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, declared a “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria on 28 June 2014 – sketches out how to organise government departments including education, natural resources, industry, foreign relations, public relations and military camps.


The Isis papers: a masterplan for consolidating power.
Dated some time between July and October 2014, it details how Isis will build separate training camps for regular troops and veteran fighters. Veterans, it says, should go on a fortnight’s refresher course each year to receive instruction in the “latest arts of using weapons, military planning and military technologies”.

It says they will also be given a “detailed commentary on the technologies” of the enemy and “how the soldiers of the state can take advantage of them”.


The statecraft manual recommends a department for administering the military camps, a complex arrangement that, as described, goes well beyond the capabilities of al-Qaida in Afghanistan during the time it plotted the 9/11 attacks.

The document reveals for the first time that Isis always intended to train children in the arts of war. Isis propaganda from this year has clearly shown children being drilled, and even made to shoot captives.

But the text, authored by an Egyptian called Abu Abdullah, is explicit about the intention to do so from mid- to late 2014. Children, it says, will be receive “training on bearing light arms” and “outstanding individuals” will be “selected from them for security portfolio assignments, including checkpoints, patrols”.

The text highlights the need for Isis to achieve a unified culture encompassing foreigners and natives and sets out the need for self-sufficiency by establishing its own independent “factories for local military and food production” and creating “isolated safe zones” for providing for local needs.

The document came from a businessman working within Isis via the academic researcher Aymenn al-Tamimi, who has worked over the past year to compile the most thorough log of Isis documents available to the public.

For safety reasons, the Guardian cannot reveal further information about the businessman but he has leaked nearly 30 documents in all, including a financial statement from one of Isis’s largest provinces.

Isis is a project that strives to govern. It's not just a case of their sole end being endless battle
Aymenn al-Tamimi
Isis has suffered military setbacks in recent weeks, and some Sunni Arabs from Raqqa have indicated that its statecraft might be better on paper than it is in practice.

But Tamimi said the playbook, along with a further 300 Isis documents he has obtained over the past year, showed that building a viable country rooted in fundamentalist theology was the central aim. “[Isis] is a project that strives to govern. It’s not just a case of their sole end being endless battle.”

Gen Stanley McChrystal (retired), who led the military units that helped destroy Isis’s predecessor organisation (ISI) in Iraq from 2006 to 2008, said: “If it is indeed genuine, it is fascinating and should be read by everyone – particularly policymakers in the west.

Gen Stanley McChrystal: ‘If the west sees Isis as an almost stereotypical band of psychopathic killers, we risk dramatically underestimating them.’
“If the west sees Isis as an almost stereotypical band of psychopathic killers, we risk dramatically underestimating them.

“In the Principles in the administration of the Islamic State, you see a focus on education (really indoctrination) beginning with children but progressing through their ranks, a recognition that effective governance is essential, thoughts on their use of technology to master information (propaganda), and a willingness to learn from the mistakes of earlier movements.

“It’s not a big departure from the works of Mao, the practices of the Viet Minh in Indochina, or other movements for whom high-profile actions were really just the tip of a far more nuanced iceberg of organising activity.

Charlie Winter, a senior researcher for Georgia State University who has seen the document, said it demonstrated Isis’s high capacity for premeditation.

“Far from being an army of irrational, bloodthirsty fanatics, IS [Isis] is a deeply calculating political organisation with an extremely complex, well-planned infrastructure behind it.”

Lt Gen Graeme Lamb, former head of UK special forces, said the playbook carried a warning for current military strategy.
How Isis reshaped the Middle East in a year – video explainer
Referring to sections of the statecraft text in which Isis repeatedly claims it is the only true representatives of Sunni Arab Muslims in the region, Lamb said it was all the more important to ensure wider Sunni leadership in the fight with Isis, or risk “fuelling this monster”.

“Seeing Daesh [Isis] and the caliphate as simply a target to be systematically broken by forces other than Middle Eastern Sunnis … is to fail to understand this fight.

“It must be led by the Sunni Arab leadership and its many tribes across the region, with us in the west and the other religious factions in the Middle East acting in support.

“It is not currently how we are shaping the present counter-Isis campaign, thereby setting ourselves up for potential failure.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...ng-state-syria

"I am an American Muslim. I have spent my adult life teaching and advising senior military leaders in the fight against terror. On Wednesday night, as I watched representatives of the American Muslim community in San Bernardino, Calif., denounce the shooters who had just killed 14 people in their city, I recognized in their bearing and words their feelings of humiliation, horror and loyalty to the United States — alongside a great fear that a new round of Islamophobia will now follow.

I know from my own experience that more Islamophobia would be the worst outcome for American efforts to defeat the Islamic State.

As a naval officer I’ve taken an oath to defend the American Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I’ve trained members of the Navy SEAL teams, and my mentors include the former head of the National Rifle Association, the supreme allied commander of NATO, and the commanding general of the war in Afghanistan.

I have been deeply troubled by the anti-Muslim vitriol in our country since Islamist fanatics wreaked havoc in Paris. Fearmongers have already called for registering Muslims and closing mosques. The F.B.I. has warned Muslims about possible attacks from white supremacist militias.

If we don’t want to play into the hands of Islamic State propaganda that America is at war with Islam, we must stand up against Islamophobia. We should separate the few extremists from the vast majority of law-abiding patriotic American Muslims by working with the moderates, not against them".

Continue reading the main story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/04/op...=fb-share&_r=0

^But would he welcomed at TD?

Originally Posted by thaimeme

Originally Posted by Toby451

err...hello, Syria, Iraq , Libya, they are arabs are they not, certainly look like that to me

They're not Arabs..

Yes, they are.

Al jazeera on the complex picture of the ISIS oil trade. Turkey was making good money from it when oil prices were high, less so now, but a very complex jig saw of interlocking and paradoxical interests.

ISIS in many ways is too useful to too many sides.