The Arab Spring and "the War on Terror"

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

 Im sure there are 10,000's more from this country that have or will join IS

 

 

if only someone in charge would round them up or something.

 

someone should start some sort of Not-Very-British & Downright Bad Form Activities Committee to sort it out.

[ismail-villa]

At this rate I'm gonna move to a cabin in the highlands to ensure I survive the next 70 years. Whether that's west v me, ww3, cyber stuff or whatever. The world is plodding towards self destruction and if its ok with everyone else, I'd like to politely disappear and sit it out please.

I'll be a snitch and give away your location

[Ingram85]

I meant alvechurch.

[Xann]

The enemy within and its truly the most terrifying prospect this country has ever faced.

 

I think the terrifying prospect index peaked around the Cuban missile crisis.

[maqroll]

^ Yep. We were within one lucky phone call away from obliteration.

[MakemineVanilla]

^ Yep. We were within one lucky phone call away from obliteration.

 

I always liked Christopher Hitchens' famous line: I will always remember where I was when Kennedy nearly killed me.

[omariqy]

Some interesting reading:

http://www.5pillarz.com/2014/11/24/exclusive-10-home-truths-from-isis-controlled-al-hawija/

Al Hawija

I had a long phone conversation with a member of my family in Hawija.

Hawija is the centre of Al Hawija district in the province of Kirkurk

Hawija is the centre of Al Hawija district in the province of Kirkuk

Hawija is a small town near the northern province of Kirkuk in Iraq, however most of the surrounding agricultural area is also known by the same name.

It is populated by, mainly the Al-Obaydi clan, which is one of the largest settled Bedouin tribes in Iraq, although there are other smaller tribes and families living there.

In fact, it is locally known as “Hawija Al Obayd”, translated as “The Al-Obaydi enclosure”. It is a Sunni area that is currently controlled by ISIS.

ISIS: Foreign fighters, Ba’athists and corruption

When I asked my relative about the situation there, this is the information they gave about the reality of ISIS on the ground:

1. The ISIS leadership is no longer in control of the Iraqi recruits. The organisation has turned into a franchise, with un-vetted individuals being given franchises to operate with very loose links to the main leadership. The result of which is widespread confiscation of properties and meting out revenge for old vendettas. It has also led to these franchises being controlled by people who have little or no knowledge in even the basics of Islam, let alone Shariah.

2. ISIS is extremely well funded and well supplied, beyond mere war booty. The average wage for a fighter is $1500 a month, and even more for commanders. They also have brand new cars and the latest weaponry. As a result they have managed to bribe most of the other groups into joining them. This has led to them absorbing most of the other groups. However, due their lack of local knowledge and contacts, the money has led to an organic amalgamation of the Islamist and Ba’athist elements that have far more experience in controlling the Iraqi population. In short the ISIS that is controlling Al Hawija, Bayji and Fallujah, which is near to Al Hawija and is populated by a large number of Al-Obaydi’s, are nothing more than ex low ranking Ba’athists.

3. As there is a lot of money to be made and ISIS pays generous bonuses to those who recruit people, bay’ah (oath of alliance) is being forced. They are adopting the Ba’athist methodology of “If you are not with us you are against us”.

Sheikh Anwar Al Asi Al-Obeydi, the most senior tribal elder of the Al-Obeydi clan

Sheikh Anwar Al Asi Al-Obeydi, the most senior tribal elder of the Al-Obeydi clan

4. The main Sunni scholars from places like Fallujah, Haditha and Al Hawija have fled to Kurdistan as they do not support the Shia regime in Baghdad and they have been threatened with beheadings in the event of failure to give bay’ah. The Al-Obaydi clan with its various tribes and families have born the brunt of the localisation of the ISIS franchise as old resentments have been brought forward in the guise of ISIS. The traditional leaders of the clan have been forced to leave their homes and meeting places to the safety of Kirkuk, Erbil and Sulaimania, in Kurdistan. With their houses being used a barracks for ISIS fighters, who are local anyway, but prefer to play out old resentments towards the sheikhs by living in the confiscated houses and brewing coffee in the meeting houses.

5. The new local leaders are living flamboyantly which is causing resentment towards them. For example, most of them, who are ex Ba’athists, have become overnight millionaires flaunting their newly acquired wealth with multiple marriages, vehicles and bodyguards. Punishing people for smoking with a punishment of a broken finger, while smoking shisha themselves.

6. There have been some executions among the ISIS members as they accuse each other of embezzlement, looting and corruption. This has not changed the way the area is run as the executions were carried out with pretence of cleaning up corruption. In reality they were nothing more than manoeuvres for power where certain leaders eliminate others – Ba’athist style.

7. The foreign fighters are being exploited and put on the front line for any fighting or carrying out of executions as the Iraqis are more experienced in population control and have the local knowledge. Therefore they have manipulated the situation to make sure that the foreign fighters bear the brunt of combat and local blame. Those foreign fighters who have expressed disapproval of the Ba’athist method of recruitment, confiscation and corporal punishment without due process, have quickly disappeared, their bodies found later.

Sheikh Anwar Al Asi Al-Obeydi's guest house was destroyed after refusing to give bayah to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

Sheikh Anwar Al Asi Al-Obeydi’s guest house was destroyed after refusing to give bayah to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

8. Even the Naqshabandi Army, who were the strongest and most numerous of the Islamic groups, have merged with ISIS, the lower ranking for the wages, the middle ranking have gone into hiding and the higher ranks, who are also ex Ba’athists, are content with the situation as they believe that the job can get done under the ISIS banner.

9. There is no truth to media allegations of there being a trade in slaves in the Iraqi side of the ISIS controlled territories.

10. Although many of the Sunnis in Al Hawija, Fallujah and the surrounding areas are unhappy with ISIS, there is a consensus that the alternative .i.e. Iranian backed Shia rule would be catastrophic. Therefore they are tolerating the lesser of two evils.

Fact and fiction

These are the facts from the ground, and I trust my family more than the BBC, NBC or FOX News. And I certainly trust them more than ISIS supporters who are either sitting comfortably in the West behind a laptop, or on the ground being manipulated by old hands in local politics who have lived an entire life of violence and brutality, either as victims, perpetrators or both.

Dividing Iraq along sectarian/ethnic lines was George.W.Bush's exit strategy

Dividing Iraq along sectarian/ethnic lines was George.W.Bush’s exit strategy

Having asked for the facts, I then asked about the speculation. The overwhelming consensus among the people I talk to almost daily is that, and I quote a person with a PhD in Politics: “It feels like a play, a bit like a wrestling show. Both sides are in the same boat. The Sunni ex Ba’athists manipulating ISIS here and the Shia ex Ba’athists manipulating the other side, with the foolish and the poor getting killed. Division is the goal, why don’t they just get on with it? Instead of this play?”

Geopolitics and natural resources has a tendency to mix in with religion. ISIS in my opinion started off with sincere intentions but quickly transformed to another puppet for the puppet masters to manipulate either through actual conspiracy or just clever manipulation.

ISIS are defiantly, in practice, more Newtonian than Islamic.

Abu Hind Mohanned Al-Obaydi was born In London and taken by his family to Iraq in the late 1960s. He was brought up in Al Hawija, went to school in Kirkuk and completed his Linguistics degree at the University of Baghdad. He settled in the UK in 1993 after he predicted the end of Iraq, as he knew it. Abu Hind Mohanned Al-Obaydi is a professional translator currently in the last stages of reading for a degree in religious studies.

[Awol]

The bit in the above piece about there not being a slave trade in IS occupied Iraq is a bald lie. A Brit friend works as a medic in Sulamaniya. He has personally treated women who were captured by IS terrorists, sold and subsequently escaped into Kurdistan - and safety.

[chrisp65]

I suspect there are as many truths as there are villages, factions, families and days of the week.

It's clearly chaotic so I can't see how there can be any one definitive version of the truth other than to say it's murderous chaos.

[snowychap]

The enemy within and its truly the most terrifying prospect this country has ever faced.

 

I think the terrifying prospect index peaked around the Cuban missile crisis.

No no, Dave.

This surely has to be - truly.

Otherwise how else would there be justification for the next new lot of terrorism laws or 'enhanced security measures' or whatever load of crap the government of the day puts forward.

May on Tory party policy come the election:

link

We are going to have to wait until after the general election to address fully this increasingly urgent problem.

Also, from that article:

She spelled out the scale of the threat to the UK, specifying that 40 planned terror attacks had been foiled since the 7 July bombings in London in 2005

And yet Bernie Hogan Howe said:

link

Four or five terror plots have been stopped this year, the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police has said.

Police have previously prevented on average one plot a year, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe told the BBC.

[Awol]

The police stopped an average of 1 per year, the security services are averaging about 5 per year (major plots that is), allegedly.

It is only a matter of time until something very nasty slips through the net in UK and a mass casualty incident occurs.

The borders aren't anywhere near secure and no one is (yet) prepared to take the necessary action to prevent IS fighters on sabbatical from re-entering the UK.

Once back in (not counting the home growns who haven't done the expeditionary bit but are still frothing at the gash to go all choppy choppy) the numbers are so large MI5 do not have the resources to physically monitor them all. Hence the huge comms/cyber effort at surveillance because it's such a force multiplier.

There is only one sure way to deal with the problem. Anyone who goes to join IS is ID'd, then intercepted and killed on the return journey. No trial, no publicity, just dead. The alternative is another Mumbai/Westgate/Beslan on Britain's streets.

[snowychap]

The only sure way that the UK has to deal with a problem is extrajudicial execution of its own citizens?

[bickster]

Its also against International law to make someone stateless

[snowychap]

The police stopped an average of 1 per year, the security services are averaging about 5 per year (major plots that is), allegedly.

Riiight. Fair enough if those are the separate claims.

I wonder why Bernie didn't put it that way on sunday considering this is all part of a concerted week long campaign by the authorities?

[snowychap]

Its also against International law to make someone stateless

There's an interesting blog on here where Carl Gardner makes the argument that they are not actually making someone stateless but rather attaching conditions to the return to the UK:

...

This Channel 4 report for instance gives the impression British citizens would be “banned” from entering the UK, and this piece in the Independent suggests they’d be barred for two years, as does the headline on this Newsweek piece. These confusions may arise from the government’s attempts to make the new powers sound as tough and exclusionary as possible.

If that were the plan, it might indeed fall foul both of international law on statelessness, and on our own domestic law: British citizens have a right of abode in the UK, which includes the right to return here from abroad. I think this confusion that may be driving some early criticisms of the proposal.

But I don’t think it is the plan at all. Like Dominic Grieve, I understand the proposal as involving no “ban” on return at all – merely a ban on what might be called an unarranged return. Those UK citizens subject to “temporary exclusion orders” would be free to come home at any time, by arrangement with British authorities. A Downing Street spokesman confirmed my understanding this afternoon. This is how the plan is meant to work.

If the Home Secretary reasonably suspected someone of involvement in terrorist activity abroad, she could make a temporary exclusion order against him. That would cancel his passport, and put him on a “no-fly” list. As a result it would difficult for him to return to the UK under his own steam. He might be able to cross borders in the Middle East, but could not board a flight to London from Ankara or Istanbul. The order would last for two years.

But if I lost my passport abroad, I’d go to the British consulate – and so could the “excluded” person, if he wanted to go home during the two-year period. He’d be free to come back, by arrangement: perhaps under a restricted travel document allowing him only to board a pre-arranged flight; in all likelihood being escorted by officials of a more or less shadowy sort; and no doubt having a kind of official reception on landing. Once here, he could be arrested for a suspected offence or be subject to a “TPIM” (a terrorism prevention and investigation measure). Or the temporary exclusion order itself might impose separate conditions on him.

...

more on link

Of course, as he goes on to say, there may be devil in the detail but as we don't have that yet we don't know.

[Awol]

The only sure way that the UK has to deal with a problem is extrajudicial execution of its own citizens?

Yep. These people officially gave up on British values the day they went to join IS, they carry a UK passport but they are no more British than a man from Mars.

They are the enemy, plain and simple. That's why this trite shite from government about re-engaging jihadis with British society is so pathetic. They hate us, our democracy and everything about our way of life. There is and can never be a compromise with them, and frankly we shouldn't have to.

If they want to go and engage in genocide that is their call. In doing so they explicitly reject civilization in favour of chaos and slaughter. This isn't the IRA, they don't have rules.

Once they cross that line they are irredeemable in my view. Far better them dead than some poor innocent on a British street.

[rendelc]

Can you be dead and stateless ?

[bickster]

Can you be dead and stateless ?

No, you'd still have the right to be buried in the UK

[Xela]

Can you be dead and stateless ?

 

Bin Laden? Pretty sure Saudi Arabia didn't want him when he died

[snowychap]

The only sure way that the UK has to deal with a problem is extrajudicial execution of its own citizens?

Yep. These people officially gave up on British values the day they went to join IS, they carry a UK passport but they are no more British than a man from Mars.

So we decide how 'British' someone is (and whether or not it's okay for the state to execute them without any sort of due process or legal oversight or whatever) due to some subjective test of whether they've 'given up' on a rather nebulous concept such as British values.

In my warped mind, I have things like the desire for due process, legal oversight and not allowing the state such carte blanche under this banner of 'British values'.