Claire Davisfalsehttp://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/27/world/middleeast/with-isis-in-crosshairs-us-ho...

American intelligence analysts have identified seven buildings in downtown Raqqa in eastern Syria as the main headquarters of the Islamic State. But the buildings have gone untouched during the 10-month allied air campaign.

And just last week, convoys of heavily armed Islamic State fighters paraded triumphantly through the streets of the provincial capital Ramadi in western Iraq after forcing Iraqi troops to flee. They rolled on unscathed by coalition fighter-bombers.

American and allied warplanes are equipped with the most precise aerial arsenal ever fielded. But American officials say they are not striking significant, and obvious, Islamic State targets out of fear that the attacks will accidentally kill civilians. Killing such innocents could hand the militants a major propaganda coup and alienate the local Sunni tribesmen, whose support is critical to ousting the militants, and Sunni Arab countries that are part of the fragile American-led coalition.

But many Iraqi commanders and some American officers say that exercising such prudence with airstrikes is a major reason the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or Daesh, has been able to seize vast territory in recent months in Iraq and Syria. That caution — coupled with President Obama’s reluctance to commit significant American firepower to a war the White House declared over in 2011, when the last United States combat troops withdrew from Iraq — has led to persistent complaints from Iraqi officials that the United States has been too cautious in its air campaign.

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Iraqi officials say the limited American airstrikes have allowed columns of Islamic State fighters essentially free movement on the battlefield.

“The international alliance is not providing enough support compared with ISIS’ capabilities on the ground in Anbar,” said Maj. Muhammed al-Dulaimi, an Iraqi officer in Anbar Province, which contains Ramadi. “The U.S. airstrikes in Anbar didn’t enable our security forces to resist and confront the ISIS attacks,” he added. “We lost large territories in Anbar because of the inefficiency of the U.S.-led coalition airstrikes.”

Much of the American caution comes from experience. Civilian deaths from American airstrikes during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were sometimes unacknowledged or understated by the military and caused a great deal of anger, which is a reason for the United States’ current skittishness and what commanders say is their overriding goal to prevent those deaths now.

The military’s Central Command on Thursday announced the results of an inquiry into the deaths of two children in Syria in November, saying they were probably killed by an American airstrike. It was the first time the Pentagon had acknowledged civilian casualties since it began the air campaign. A handful of other attacks are under investigation.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group based in Britain that tracks the conflict through a network of contacts in Syria, more than 120 civilians have been killed by coalition strikes inside Syria.

By far the largest episode was in the remote northeastern village of Bir Mahli, where more than 60 people, including numerous women and children, were reported killed this month in a series of strikes. Military officials acknowledged that the coalition had struck the village but said that those killed were Islamic State fighters.

Human rights advocates say that it remains unclear how many civilian lives the restrictions on airstrikes have saved.

“The U.S. has indeed put in place rigorous policies and procedures to minimize civilian harm, but with no combat troops on the ground, it is hard to evaluate how successful these policies have been,” said Federico Borello, the executive director of the Center for Civilians in Conflict, an advocacy group.

Islamic State troops, however, appear to be taking advantage of the restrictions, as the militants increasingly fight from within civilian populations to deter attacks.

In Iraq, more than 80 percent of the allied airstrikes are supporting Iraqi troops in hotly contested areas like Ramadi and Baiji, the home of a major oil refinery. Many of the other strikes focus on so-called pop-up targets — small convoys of militants or heavy weaponry on the move. These have been a top priority of the campaign, even though only about one of every four air missions sent to attack the extremists have dropped bombs. The rest of the missions have returned to the base after failing to find a target they were permitted to hit under strict rules of engagement designed to avoid civilian casualties.

In Syria, the United States has a limited ability to gather intelligence to help generate targets, although the commando raid there this month that killed a financial leader of the Islamic State may signal a breakthrough. Many Islamic State training compounds, headquarters, storage facilities and other fixed sites were struck in the early days of the bombing, but the military’s deliberate process for approving other targets has frustrated several commanders.

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Graphic

How ISIS Expands

The Islamic State aims to build a broad colonial empire across many countries.

“We have not taken the fight to these guys,” the pilot of an American A-10 attack plane said in a recent email. “We haven’t targeted their centers of gravity in Raqqa. All the roads between Syria and Iraq are still intact with trucks flowing freely.”

These critics describe an often cumbersome process to approve targets, and they say there are too few warplanes carrying out too few missions under too many restrictions.

“In most cases, unless a general officer can look at a video picture from a U.A.V., over a satellite link, I cannot get authority to engage,” the A-10 pilot said, referring to an unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone, and speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid punishment from his superiors.

To be sure, the air campaign has achieved several successes in conducting about 4,200 strikes that have dropped about 14,000 bombs and other weapons. The campaign has killed an estimated 12,500 fighters and helped Iraqi forces regain about 25 percent of the territory seized in Iraq by the Islamic State, according to American military figures.

It has blunted the advance of Islamic State fighters in most areas by forcing them to disperse and conceal themselves. Allied warplanes have attacked oil refineries, weapons depots, command bunkers and communications centers in Syria as part of a plan to hamper the Islamic State’s ability to sustain its operations in Iraq and to disrupt communications among its senior leaders.

But American officials acknowledge that the Islamic State has remained resilient and adaptive. Fighters mingle with civilians more than ever. Islamic State commanders routinely change their methods of communication to avoid detection. Militants used a sandstorm, which made it more difficult for the Iraqis to identify targets, to seize an advantage in the recent Ramadi attack.

“We have always said this fight will be difficult, and there will be some setbacks,” Lt. Gen. John Hesterman III, the top allied air commander, said in a statement from his headquarters in Qatar. “Coalition air power has dramatically degraded Daesh’s ability to organize, project and sustain combat power while taking exceptional care to limit collateral damage and civilian casualties.”

The air campaign has averaged a combined total of about 15 strikes a day in Iraq and Syria. In contrast, the NATO air war against Libya in 2011 carried out about 50 strikes a day in its first two months. The campaign in Afghanistan in 2001 averaged 85 daily airstrikes, and the Iraq war in 2003 about 800 a day. American officials say targeting is more precise than in the past, so fewer flights are needed. A major constraint on the air campaign’s effectiveness, critics say, has been the White House’s refusal to authorize American troops to act as spotters on the battlefield, designating targets for allied bombing attacks.

Some members of Congress, including Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, have advocated this idea.

The absence of air controllers is a particular complication for battles in urban places like Ramadi, where Islamic State units cannot always be readily identified by American pilots flying overhead.

The administration is considering training a cadre of Iraqi troops to designate airstrike targets from allied fighter jets.

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Graphic

How ISIS Captured Ramadi

Just days after seizing Ramadi, ISIS captures Palmyra, Syria.

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Canadian special forces advising Iraqi troops are designating targets “on a case-by-case basis,” said Ashley Lemire, a spokeswoman for the Canadian defense ministry.

The American-led coalition has imposed other conditions on its use of airstrikes. During the operation in March and April to liberate Tikrit, the United States initially refrained from bombing runs because of the involvement of Iranian-backed Shiite militias in the fighting who were not under Iraqi government control. Once those militias failed to retake the city, they pulled back, and the Americans began bombing before Iraqi security forces and the militias advanced.

Iraqi officials have praised those airstrikes as an important component in the liberation of Tikrit. But many of the Iraqis involved in that operation complain that the Americans refused to strike targets that they had provided.

One army commander in Salahuddin Province, of which Tikrit is the capital, said he had passed along a long list of potential targets, including weapons caches, training centers and the homes of local Islamic State leaders.

“The least important 5 percent of them were targeted,” said the officer, who was not authorized to speak publicly and did not want to be identified as criticizing Iraq’s ally. “We also asked the U.S. coalition to attack ISIS convoys while they were moving from one place to another, but they either neglected our requests or responded very late.”

These same Iraqi commanders drew criticism on Sunday from Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter, who said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that Iraq’s troops had shown no will to fight in Ramadi and had abandoned the city.

Civilians from Raqqa, who were interviewed in Turkey and often go back and forth across the border, said the Islamic State offices were well known around the city and had not been targeted by coalition airstrikes. Locals assume that this is because the Islamic State holds civilian prisoners in each location to deter the coalition.

The Islamic State’s primary security office is known as Point 11 and is inside a soccer stadium, where its central prison is also believed to be. The extremists’ Islamic court is in a building that used to belong to the Syrian Finance Ministry; it, too, holds prisoners, residents say. The office of the militant group’s so-called Islamic police is also near Point 11 and contains a small jail.

An American military spokeswoman declined to comment on specific targets in Raqqa.

Civilians who now rely on the Islamic State for services often come and go from the offices, according to a middle-aged real estate agent who lives in Raqqa and spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of the extremists.

“The civilians like the coalition because it doesn’t hit civilians, but ISIS hates it because it targets their fighters,” he said.

But even residents who oppose the Islamic State said they could not imagine the group’s leaving Raqqa at this time, because it has learned to deal with the airstrikes and there is no force on the ground to challenge it.

“If they had acted when ISIS was small, they could have stopped them, but now it has settled and grown, and people have gotten used to it,” said an aid worker from Raqqa who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he travels in areas controlled by the Islamic State. “As long as there is no plan to get rid of them, they are staying, and it is clear that there is no plan.”

Wed, 2015-05-27NYT Islamic State (IS) / Islamic State of Iraq and ash Sham (ISIS) / Islamic State of Iraq (ISIS or ISIL, IS)Iraq

Claire Davisfalsehttp://www.trackingterrorism.org/chatter/pdf-ttp-stance-caliphate-baghdadiWed, 2015-05-27TRACIslamic State (ISIS) : The Islamic Caliphate, An Invisible Shura and A New Slate for JihadistTerrorist Group ExpansionismTehreek-e-Taliban Islami Pakistan (TTIP / TTP)PakistanIraq

Claire Davisfalsehttp://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/16/us/sentence-reached-for-dzhokar-tsarnaev-in-bo...

The jury has reached a decision on a life-or-death sentence for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the bombing at the 2013 Boston Marathon, the worst terrorist attack on American soil since Sept. 11, 2001.

The decision — whether Mr. Tsarnaev receives the death penalty or life in prison — will be announced shortly; the jury is making its way back to the courtroom.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been given Death Penalty in Boston Marathon Bombing.

Fri, 2015-05-15NYTDeterring Terrorism United States

Laith Alkhourifalsehttps://twitter.com/menaanalyst/status/598848620226551808?refsrc=email&s=11

Thu, 2015-05-14Laith AlkhouriIslamic State (ISIS) : The Islamic Caliphate, An Invisible Shura and A New Slate for JihadistBelmokhtar’s Lastest Bayat is a Statement of the Power shift within Al Qaeda Central from sympathy for the Islamic State (ISIS) to Nusra Front and al-Zawahiri Islamic State (IS) / Islamic State of Iraq and ash Sham (ISIS) / Islamic State of Iraq (ISIS or ISIL, IS)SyriaMali

Claire DavisMost Usefulhttp://www.firstpost.com/world/45-shia-ismaili-muslims-massacred-karachi-islamic...

Kalashnikov-wielding militants in police uniforms today gunned down 45 Shia Ismaili Muslims, including 16 women, shooting them in the head as they attacked their bus in Pakistan's volatile Karachi city in the latest sectarian violence claimed by the dreaded ISIS terror group.

Six to eight motorbike-borne assailants opened fire indiscriminately at the pink bus ferrying over 60 people to a Shia community centre to stop it, police said.

They first opened fire on the bus just near the Dow Medical College and then entered the bus when it stopped at Safoora Chorangi, Gulistan-e-Johar, a relatively deserted area on the outskirts of the city.

The attackers killed 45 people, including 16 women, and wounded more than 20 others before fleeing from the scene, police said.

"It was a targeted attack," Sindh Police Inspector General Ghulam Haider Jamali told reporters.

The death toll could further rise as some persons are seriously injured. The injured and dead were shifted to various hospitals by rescue workers.

A senior police official said the attackers entered the bus and shot the passengers in the head.

A blood-stained pamphlet of terrorist group Islamic State was recovered from the scene, according to a police official. Balochistan-based militant group Jundullah, a splinter group of the Pakistani Taliban that has vowed allegiance to the ISIS, claimed responsibility for the attack.

"These killed people were Ismaili and we consider them 'kafir' (non-Muslim)... In the coming days, we will attack Ismailis, Shias and Christians," Jundullah spokesman Ahmed Marwat was quoted as saying by a media report.

However, government has not so far named any group for the attack.

The bus was disfigured with bullet holes and blood dripped out of its doors on to the concrete on the road.

A rescue official quoted a victim as saying that the attackers were dressed in police uniforms.

Jamali said initial investigations showed that the armed men used 9mm pistols in the massacre. Empty bullet shells of pistols and Kalashnikovs were found at the scene.

The spiritual leader of the Ismaili community The Aga Khan expressed shock and sorrow over the attack.

"This attack represents a senseless act of violence against a peaceful community. My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and the families of those killed and wounded in the attack," he said.

The Aga Khan noted that the Ismailis are a peaceful global community living in harmony with other religious and ethnic groups in many countries across the world, including in the Muslim world.

This was the worst attack targeting the members of the minority community after a suicide bomber in January blew himself up in a Shia mosque in Shikarpur in the Sindh province killing 61 worshippers and bystanders.

Thu, 2015-05-14First PostArmed AssaultAttacks on Soft TargetsUrban TerrorismIslamic State (ISIS) : The Islamic Caliphate, An Invisible Shura and A New Slate for Jihadist Islamic State (IS) / Islamic State of Iraq and ash Sham (ISIS) / Islamic State of Iraq (ISIS or ISIL, IS)Islamic State Khurasan (IS, ISK, ISISK) -- Pakistan, Afghanistan & UzbekistanPakistanPakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan & Islamic State -- Wilayat Khurasan

Claire Davisfalsehttp://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/denmark-combating-islamic-radicalization/

JUDY WOODRUFF: Finally tonight: combating extremism in Europe.

Denmark is often referred to as the happiest place on earth, but its sense of peace and serenity was shell-shocked earlier this year when an Islamic extremist shot and killed two people in Copenhagen. The country, like other European nations, is struggling to stop its citizens from joining the Islamic State group and other terrorist organizations in Syria.

NewsHour special correspondent Malcolm Brabant caught up with one devastated mother who is urging the government to do more to stop the tide of extremism.

Right now, I’m just looking for more videos to see if I can get any knowledge about my boy.

MALCOLM BRABANT, Special Correspondent: Karolina Dam’s worst fear came true in the cruelest way. An Islamic State death notice on Facebook alerted her to news that her eighteen-year-old son, Lukas, had been killed in an American airstrike on the Syria-Turkey border.

KAROLINA DAM, Mother of Lukas Dam: I need peace and quiet now. I need to get on. I need — I don’t want him dead. But I need — I need to know things. And I don’t know if he’s alive. I don’t know if he’s in jail or if ISIS has killed him. I don’t know anything. It’s hard. You can’t sleep. I wake up with nightmares everywhere.

MALCOLM BRABANT: But you don’t believe he’s alive, do you?

KAROLINA DAM: No.

MALCOLM BRABANT: How strong was the evidence that he was killed?

KAROLINA DAM: There’s no evidence.

MALCOLM BRABANT: Lukas had attention-deficit disorder, and, according to his mother, suffered from relatively serious autism.

After dabbling in petty crime, he was put in a home for vulnerable teenagers. He became a Muslim a year after this video was taken.

KAROLINA DAM: I don’t want to classify my son as a terrorist, because he’s not. My boy is the victim in all this. He has been manipulated. He has been abused and pushed into this fight that he and others have won.

MALCOLM BRABANT: Lukas fell under the spell of hard-line groups like Hizb ut Tahrir, an international party that campaigns for Sharia law and a worldwide caliphate.

MAN: So, first of all, I would like to tell the enemy to look very closely at this flag, at the black flag, not the white flag, but the black flag, because this is the black flag that the U.S. will see. This is the black flag that the U.S. will see coming over the horizon. This is the black flag they will see coming across the Atlantic in front of an army that loves the prophet, that loves Islam.

MALCOLM BRABANT: Mrs. Dam said she did everything in her power to prevent her son from traveling to Syria. She took away his passport and alerted his social workers.

KAROLINA DAM: It’s not the easiest task for a parent to keep on calling the authorities. But it is the right thing. The wrong thing is them not doing anything about it.

MALCOLM BRABANT: Mrs. Dam went to Copenhagen’s city hall to try to get some answers from one of the deputy mayors. No officials were prepared to talk on camera.

Mrs. Dam had received an apology from city hall for the failings of the system. Official admitted that social workers should have alerted Copenhagen’s de-radicalization program to fact that Lukas Dam was in danger of going to Syria, so that he could have been stopped at the airport. But the program wasn’t informed until four months after Lukas left the country.

Sources within city hall tried to shift the blame on to Denmark’s intelligence agency, claiming it was twice tipped off about the Lukas Dam case. The agency has refused to comment.

But Professor Magnus Ranstorp was willing to discuss the issue. He heads the Copenhagen Anti-Radicalization Task Force, which is due to deliver an action plan in August.

MAGNUS RANSTORP, Head of Copenhagen deradicalization task force: We were looking at, how can we improve the system? How can we involve civil society more? How can we can we involve parents as well? So we are looking over the system to see how we can — how we can be more efficient.

MALCOLM BRABANT: This is a recruiting video for the so-called Islamic State, and the key figure is the 21-year Dane to the right of the picture. Like Lukas Dam, he was a Christian convert with learning difficulties named Victor Kristensen.

After appealing to his Danish brothers and sisters to join jihad, Victor blew himself up in a suicide attack. He was radicalized at this mosque.

As part of the nationwide effort to neutralize extreme Islamic rhetoric, this Muslim lawmaker, Fatma Oktem, wants to ban certain radical preachers.

FATMA OKTEM, Denmark Parliament Member: We know that the young people are visiting the mosques and they are listening to the religious leaders. So it’s very important that people who are talking about religion can talk about peace and harmony and integration, not about hate.

MALCOLM BRABANT: Lawmakers are deeply concerned about the rising influence of groups like Hizb ut Tahrir and are disappointed that Danish prosecutors have just ruled that it can’t be outlawed, as it is in countries like Germany and Russia.

SOREN ESPERSEN, Foreign Affairs spokesman, Danish People’s Party: We ought to make sure that Hizb ut Tahrir is forbidden in this country, as they are in many other countries. And I think that the various ministers of justice have failed, because, in our relation, in our constitution, it says that those kind of groups that work for violence and in a way push for violence should be closed.

MALCOLM BRABANT: Hizb ut Tahrir insists it is not breaking any laws, and attributes its rising popularity amongst young Muslims to what it describes as Denmark’s anti-Islamic policies.

ELIAS LAMRABET, Spokesman, Hizb ut-Tahrir Islamic party: It’s a clear sign of intellectual bankruptcy in the Danish Parliament, because they cannot withstand thoughts with thoughts. They cannot counter arguments with argument. This is really what we are used to in dictatorships and the like.

MALCOLM BRABANT: Denmark has changed dramatically since the Valentine’s Day shootings that killed filmmaker Finn Norgaard at a free speech forum and security guard Dan Uzan at Copenhagen’s synagogue.

There is a sense the country has lost its innocence. Before the attacks, security used to be very discreet. Now the police are overstretched on full alert in case of a new atrocity. These officers were deployed to protect a Jewish deli close to a mainly Muslim district after it was vandalized.

The Valentine’s Day shooter, Omar El-Hussein, killed by police in a brief exchange of fire, was a hero for a significant number of Muslims. The government here is investing tens of millions of dollars in various de-radicalization programs to try to dampen enthusiasm for extreme Islam displayed at his funeral.

If they return to Western Denmark and the police fail to find evidence that they committed crimes in the Middle East, they will be offered a place on a rehabilitation program.

JORGEN ILUM, Commissioner, East Jutland Police: We don’t roll out the red carpet. But we are there to try to help them reintegrate into the society, because we believe that is the most secure thing we can do in order to protect society from these young people becoming even more radicalized.

MALCOLM BRABANT: One person with an insight into the minds of the jihadis is Morten Storm, a former Islamic radical who claims to have worked as a double agent for the CIA and helped them target al-Qaida leaders in Yemen.

MORTEN STORM, Former Islamic Extremist: I think the authorities have been naive. At the same time, I think it’s a disgrace. I think that they are underestimating the ideology and the motivation of these people.

MALCOLM BRABANT: After her city hall meeting, Karolina Dam talked to one of the officials involved in Copenhagen’s de-radicalization program. She curses the Islamic extremists who brainwashed her son and hopes that others can be saved.

KAROLINA DAM: I can’t do anything about it now. I can do whatever I can to help them prevent it happening again. And that would be in the spirit of my son. That’s what I need to do.

MALCOLM BRABANT: In the meantime, Mrs. Dam has little alternative but to continue her lonely search among the Islamic State videos online, despite ISIS’ announcement that Lukas was killed.

Mon, 2015-05-11PBSRadical Islam and Anti GlobalizationTwenty Important Journal Articles and Reports on Terrorist RadicalizationRecruitment TacticsHASH TAG (#) JIHAD: Islamic State (ISIS) Online Recruitment Islamic State (IS) / Islamic State of Iraq and ash Sham (ISIS) / Islamic State of Iraq (ISIS or ISIL, IS)Denmark

Claire DavisMost Usefulhttp://www.trackingterrorism.org/chatter/mandate-north-baghdad-execution-spies

At 2pm on 8 May 2015 the following pictures surfaced on Twitter, showing the "Establishment of the Limit, Killing of Spies" in the Islamic State province "Northern Baghdad."

Fri, 2015-05-08TRACHASH TAG (#) JIHAD: Islamic State (ISIS) Online Recruitment Islamic State (IS) / Islamic State of Iraq and ash Sham (ISIS) / Islamic State of Iraq (ISIS or ISIL, IS)Iraq

Claire Davisfalsehttp://www.trackingterrorism.org/chatter/explaing-nsa-patriot-act-and-telephony-...

ايها المناصر ..... لا تستهين بامنك الالكتروني علي الشبكة العنكبوتية ولعل هذا المقال يوضح لك حجم الخطر الذي انت فيه ومعظم المناصرين الا مارحم ربيونصيحتي اليك
عدم استخدام الانترنت مطلقا من نظام ويندوز واستخدم الانترنت فقط من نظام تايلزاضغط هنا لرؤية الشرحلتشفير ملفاتك الجهادية VERA CRYPT واستخدم برنامج
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اضغط هنا واعلم ان كل هذه الاجراءات الامنية تجعل الوصول اليك صعبا لكن لا تجعله مستحيلا
(Dear pro ..... do not underestimate your security website on the World Wide Web Perhaps this article shows you that you are in danger and most of the supporters, but the size of my Lord Marhm

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واخر دعوانا ان الحمدلله رب العالمينلاتنسونا من صالح دعائكم [ antihacker5 ]

Created: 2 days 13 hours 52 minutes ago Views: 3180 Comments: 4

 

Tue, 2015-05-05TRACRise of the Cyberjihadist: Exploring al Qaeda’s Online World Terrorism and the Information Age (Cyberterrorism)Terrorism and Governmental Policy HASH TAG (#) JIHAD: Islamic State (ISIS) Online Recruitment Islamic State (IS) / Islamic State of Iraq and ash Sham (ISIS) / Islamic State of Iraq (ISIS or ISIL, IS)United StatesSyriaIraqCyberspaceCyberspace - MENOG (Middle East)Cyberspace - ARIN (North America)

Claire DavisMost Usefulhttp://www.trackingterrorism.org/chatter/islamic-state-%E2%80%9Cmessage-our-brot...

 8 April 2015: “Message to Our Brothers in Tunisia – Wilayat Ṭarabulus”

This is the first video that shows clearly the THERMO FORM logo seen on countless jihadists' headgear (called balaclavas throughout TRAC). It may have originated as a practical fashion trend with the Chechen foreign fighters in Syria, (among them Omar Shishani). However, they are chiefly available through Turkish online retailers, listed as " thermoform kar maskesi" (ski masks). In Novebmber 2014, they were part of the standard issue uniform of the beheaders in the first mass-beheading video, Even if the Disbelievers Despise Such. They are ubiquitous in ISIS propaganda videos, seen throughout the "Caliphate" from fighters accross the globe.

 

 

April 2014.

The picture above-left comes from the most recent and clear video showing Thermoform headgear in Islamic State propaganda, Harvest of Spies #6. In keeping with the series, the video features a child-executioner.

Video available from TRAC [here]

January 2016.

Similarly, ISIS propaganda video "Message to Benghazi -- Wilayat Tarabulus" featured branded coveralls from Prime Captain. These coveralls are made in China and available on Alibaba.

14 March 2016. Label on victim's coverall reads "Prime Captain."

Sun, 2015-03-15TRACIslamic State (ISIS) : The Islamic Caliphate, An Invisible Shura and A New Slate for JihadistHASH TAG (#) JIHAD: Islamic State (ISIS) Online RecruitmentTerrorism and Governmental Policy Attacks on Soft Targets Islamic State (IS) / Islamic State of Iraq and ash Sham (ISIS) / Islamic State of Iraq (ISIS or ISIL, IS)TurkeyRussia - Chechen RepublicLibyaSyriaIraq

Claire Davisfalsehttp://uk.businessinsider.com/the-assad-regime-is-in-huge-trouble-2015-4

The Syrian civil war's bloody stalemate is over. For the first time in years, it looks as if the regime of Bashar Assad is facing a crisis that's serious enough to trigger its collapse.

The regime has suffered recent defeats in Idlib and Jisr al-Shegour, representing the first major rebel gains in nearly two years.

As Emile Hokayem, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told The Washington Post, the Assad regime's problems "are becoming extremely obvious, and the magnitude of his losses are now too big to hide."

Former US ambassador to Syria Robert Ford, once a strong proponent of US aid to the secular rebel movement, wrote that "recent developments may in fact be indicators of the beginning of the end" for Assad's regime.

And according to The Guardian, the rebels are now within "striking distance of the Mediterranean coast," one of the last remaining bastions of the regime's power.

This spate of regime defeats is one of the biggest developments in a war that's lasted four years, displaced over 11 million people and claimed well over 200,000 lives.

The stalemate

Ever since August 2013, the Syrian civil war has tilted decidedly in the ruling Assad regime's favor — but not enough to end the conflict on the Assad family's terms.

The US-brokered chemical weapons deal that emerged after the Assad regime's August 23, 2013, sarin-gas attack in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta eliminated any possibility of direct Western military intervention on the armed opposition's behalf.

A demoralized secular opposition suffered a string of post-Ghouta defeats, most notably in Homs, a former rebel hotbed that fell to regime forces in May of 2014. For a time it seemed like the rebels in Aleppo were in imminent danger of defeat, a development that could have been capable of ending the secular opposition for good.

After the rise of ISIS and the beginning of US operations against the group on Syrian soil in later 2014, Assad was comfortable enough in his position — and in his government's moderately increasing prestige as a potential counterweight to the jihadists — to give a string of defiant and even triumphalist interviews to Western outlets.

In a March 2015 interview on "60 Minutes," Assad improbably claimed that a majority of Syrians supported his government. But Assad hasn't been able to win Syria's civil war.

arabthomness

After August 2013, Syria was split between four zones of control.

Assad ruled over Damascus, the Mediterranean coast, and some of the major cities around the capital, an area that covered most of the country's Alawite population (the minority religious group from which the Assad regime's top leadership hails) and includes urban population centers, power stations, and natural gas infrastructure. The secular rebels controlled an ever-imperiled domain consisting of parts of Aleppo and Damascus, as well as some of the countryside around major cities.

ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra controlled the southern and eastern countryside and the northern desert, although lines of authority between these groups, and between the jihadists and the secularists, remains vague. The Kurds had their own pocket of control along the borders with Iraq and Syria.

While the regime gained from the rise of ISIS, the group also handed the army some of its worst defeats of the entire conflict, including a battle at the Sha'ar natural gas fields in July 2014, when hundreds of regime soldiers were killed in 48 hours.

REUTERS/Hosam Katan A view shows damage at a mosque and surrounding buildings in the al-Myassar neighbourhood of Aleppo September 29, 2014.

The lack of Western assistance pushed remaining secular rebels into even more open cooperation with the Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, which has turned into perhaps the most effective anti-regime fighting force.

The regime faced manpower shortages and a brewing economic crisis. Reports surfaced of government raids to confiscate exchangeable foreign currency, while the regime banned males of military age from leaving the country and conscripted previously discharged soldiers for additional military service.

The killing intensified during the stalemate: Assad's barrel bombs demoralized opposition areas from the air while the ISIS blitz established a violent totalitarian religious enclave in Syria's east.

Courtesy of Stratfor

Things reached an unstable equilibrium where Syria had ceased to exist as a coherent entity and where the regime no longer had the ability or the aspiration to rule the entirety of its territory. But this balance had only increased the war's intensity as the sides fought to break the deadlock.

During this span, the conflict didn't even seem solvable on a national basis, and some observers, most prominently the former journalist Nir Rosen, argued that the conflict was best ended through a series of local ceasefires that could help Assad re-establish control over areas that were still contested. That's all changing now.

The rebel comeback

Google Maps screenshot

In March, a rebel coalition led by Jabhat al-Nusra defeated the regime in Idlib, the first instance of the rebels expelling Assad's army from a major population center since mid-2013.

A few days later, the rebels moved against nearby Jisr al-Shughor.

The regime's "rapid surrender" of the town, which is on the doorstop of the regime-controlled coastal enclave, is now "being seen as evidence that Bashar al-Assad’s hold on Syria may now be weaker than at any point during the civil war," according to The Guardian.

The regime's eastern holdings are in danger of being totally cut off, a development that would give the rebels a foothold near the heart of Assad's remaining territory:

The gains come after two failed regime offensives. A push against rebels to the north of Aleppo fizzled in February. The regime hoped it could cut off opposition supply lines into the contested city, but the offensive's failure only demonstrated how far the army's operational capabilities have degraded.

That same month, the regime and forces from both Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Gaurds Corps moved into the area along the Syrian-Israeli disengagement line in the Golan Heights. This offensive not only failed, but exposed the degree to which Hezbollah and Iran are running the regime's war effort: Several top-level Hezbollah operatives and an Iranian general were killed in a suspected Israeli airstrike on January 18.

There are also signs of chaos from within the regime. News emerged on April 24 that Assad's head of "political security" had apparently been beaten to death by a fellow regime official over disagreements concerning the extent of Iranian domination of the war effort. The regime's military intelligence chief has also been fired over the past month, according to The Washington Post.

Hosam Katan/ReutersMembers of Al Qaeda's Nusra Front prepare to fire a mortar toward forces loyal to Syria's President Assad in Al Mallah farms, north of Aleppo, February 18, 2015.

The question is whether Assad's recent losses will amount to a shift in the direction of the war.

The Post's various sources conclude that it's premature to talk about the impending end of the Assad regime, whose demise seemed imminent at points in 2012 and 2013. The regime survived the initial rebel surge early in the conflict, and evaded western retaliation for the Ghouta chemical weapons attack. His other flaws aside, Assad has gotten remarkably adept at weathering the Syrian civil war.

But it's clear that the regime is facing one of its biggest crises, forcing the conflict's other players into a potentially volatile inflection point. Iran, whose intervention has sustained the regime, will have to decide how far it's even capable of going in propping an embattled Assad.

And Western actors, including the US, will have to calculate how a regime defeat will effect the war against ISIS, and decide whether regime collapse is even desirable.

In any case, a break in a long and violent stalemate could be underway. “A military collapse on the regime side is not impossible,” one unnamed diplomat told The Post.

Tue, 2015-04-28Business Insider UKSyria After AssadTerrorism and Governmental Policy Policy Making within Transnational Terrorist Organizations Islamic State (IS) / Islamic State of Iraq and ash Sham (ISIS) / Islamic State of Iraq (ISIS or ISIL, IS)Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (JFS /Conquest of al-Sham Front) / Jabhat al-Nusra (JN) / Nusra Front SyriaIranUnited StatesIraq