Crusader Corner: America’s Anti-ISIL Fighters in Syria

TRANSNATIONAL “VOLUNTEERS”: AMERICA’S ANTI-ISIL FIGHTERS

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Not a bad read on some of the American Civilians that are over there fighting and dying against ISIL.

I had a thought this morning: In another few years will they be doing news reports on American Civilian Operators fighting ISIS HERE IN AMERICA? If things keep going like they are, I think so. Of course it will most likely be an underground newspaper that does the report, since Free Speech will most likely have been done away with by then due to sharia law, but still, an interesting thought none the less.

 

Stay Alert, Stay Armed and Stay Dnagerous!

Military Defense News: “Train and Equip” Program in Syria = Full Metal Retard, Part Deux

When you start reading this, you will begin shaking your head in disbelief. When you have finished reading this, you will be looking for a bottle of advil because your head will be pounding.-SF

It would be difficult to find a program that better exemplifies the word “failure” than the Pentagon’s “train and equip” effort in Syria.

Last May, US Central Command issued a hilariously absurd press release outlining what was quite obviously going to be a disastrous effort to arm rebel fighters. “The US military and partner forces have begun training the initial class of appropriately vetted Syrian opposition recruits this week to support the effort to degrade and ultimately defeat ISIL in Syria,” the PR read.

The idea was to field a contingent of more than 5,000 fearsome warriors by the end of the year.

Long story short, the effort was a fiasco – a complete debacle – a hilarious screwup. First, Colonel Nadim al-Hassan and an unknown number of other fighters from “Division 30” were kidnapped in the Aleppo countryside in July. “A senior U.S. defense official confirmed the snatched fighters had gone through the initial vetting process to receive training in Turkey,” The Daily Beast wrote at the time. “But then, for reasons that remain unclear, they traveled to Syria before they were ready to do battle with ISIS.” Subsequently, al-Nusra simply arrested them at a checkpoint near Zahart al-Malkia.

“We warn soldiers of (Division 30) against proceeding in the American project,” the al-Qaeda affiliate said in a statement distributed online. “We, and the Sunni people in Syria, will not allow their sacrifices to be offered on a golden platter to the American side.

As humiliating as that most certainly was, it got far, far worse. In late September, rumors circulated that Division 30 commander Anas Ibrahim Obaid had defected to al-Nusra after he disappeared in Aleppo.

Apparently, Obaid entered Syria from Turkey the day before with some 70 new graduates of the US program and a dozen or so four-wheel vehicles equipped with machine guns and ammunition. Although there are competing accounts as to what exactly happened next, Division 30 ultimately handed over all of the ammunition and the pickup trucks to al-Nusra in exchange for “safe passage.”

“They handed over a very large amount of ammunition and medium weaponry and a number of pick-ups,” one Abu Fahd al-Tunisi, an al-Nusra member, said on Twitter. “A strong slap for America… the new group from Division 30 that entered yesterday hands over all of its weapons to Jabhat al-Nusra after being granted safe passage,” he added.

Yes, “a strong slap for America” that came just days after “a strong slap” for taxpayers who on September 16 learned that only “four or five” graduates of the $500 million program were still fighting in Syria.

The program was understandably mothballed a few weeks later, but that doesn’t mean US-trained forces didn’t continue to rack up embarrassing battlefield losses to al-Nusra. In fact, it was exactly two weeks ago that al-Nusra took over Maarat Numan from Division 13 (one of the first rebel groups to receive US-made TOWs), confiscating anti-tank missiles, armored vehicles, a tank, and other arms in the process. “We congratulate [al-Nusra chief Mohammad] al-Jolani on this conquest!” Division 13’s leadership exclaimed, sarcastically on Twitter.

 

Read the Remainder at Zero Hedge

Espionage Files: Syrian Rebel Spy Chief Claims CIA Ignored Intelligence On Rise of ISIS

Free Syrian Army agent says his agents have been providing the US agency with GPS positions of its leaders and headquarters but the US has failed to act

The “spymaster” of a key moderate Syrian rebel group has accused the CIA of failing to act on reams of detailed intelligence his network has been supplying the US on Isil since 2013 – including GPS coordinates of its leaders and headquarters.

The Free Syrian Army’s spy chief insisted proper use of the intelligence his agents provided from within Isil’s ranks, and often at grave risk to their life, could have critically damaged the jihadist group on several occasions.

Speaking to Le Monde in Turkey, “M”, as the French newspaper dubbed the man for security reasons, said: “From the moment Daesh (the Arab acronym for Isil) had 20 members to when it had 20,000, we have shown everything to the Americans. When we asked them what they did with this information, they always gave evasive answers, saying it was up to their decision-makers”.

The Free Syrian Army, or FSA, was founded by a group of defected Syrian Armed Forces officers and soldiers in July 2011, and received backing from Britain and the US for its moderate line.

Le Monde was shown photographs of a training camp in the northern province of Latakia frequented by foreign Isil fighters. “Naturally I transmitted this to my Western contacts with the GPS coordinates but had not response,” he is cited as saying. “Agents of mine also managed to get hold of phone numbers of Isil officials, serial numbers of satellite equipment and IP addresses. But once again, zero response.”

In 2014, FSA fighters under the banner Hazzm Movement were supplied anti-tank missiles in a covert CIA programme and received US military training in Qatar on their use.

In the summer of 2014, while Isil besieged Mossul in Iraq, “M” helped devise a secret plan presented to the Americans to rout Isil from northern Syria on the Azaz-Alep line. The plan was detailed street by street, hour by hour, and included the precise itinerary of fighters and their refuelling points. “In every village held by Daesh, knew the number of armed men, where their offices and hideouts were. We had located snipers and mines, we knew where the local emir slept, the colour of his car and even the brand. From a tactical and strategic point of view, we were ready,” he said.

However, the Americans failed to give the green light, he said.

“They were reluctant to provide us satellite images. They said their planes couldn’t help once the fighting with Isil started. All they offered us was to get rid of a few obstacles before the start of the offensive,” he said.

He then provided the US with details of the Isil command structure in Raqqa, from the emir to those in charge of checkpoints and pages of GPS coordinates. “That was a year and a half ago and Raqqa is still the capital of Daesh,” he said.

Read the Original Article at Telgraph

The Rise of the Hybrid Warriors: From Ukraine to the Middle East

The Iraqi Army defenders of Ramadi had held their dusty, stony ground for over a year and become familiar with the increasing adeptness of their opponents waving black flags. At first, these Iraqi Army units simply faced sprayed rifle fire, but then it was well-placed sniper rounds that forced these weary units to keep under cover whenever possible or risk a death that only their comrades — but never the victim — would hear. Tired, beleaguered, and cut off from reinforcements from Baghdad, they nonetheless continued to repulse attack after attack.

The last months witnessed a new weapon — car bombs. The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and its predecessor, al-Qaeda in Iraq, had long been the masters of using car bombs, but almost always against isolated checkpoints or undefended civilians. But an old tactic found a new situation. Car bombs, now parked against outer walls and driven by suicide bombers, were thrown against the Iraqi Army’s defenses in Ramadi.

The defenders were professional soldiers, and the last decade of war had taught them a great deal about the use of concrete barriers to defend against explosives of all kinds. So while the car bombs created a great deal of sound and fury, they availed little.

Then one bright day in May 2015, the defenders awoke to a new sound. Crawling forward slowly toward the heavily barricaded road was a bulldozer followed by several large cargo and dump trucks. The soldiers began to fire as the bulldozer entered the range of their machine guns and rifles, but it was armored by overlapping welded steel plates. The bullets bounced off the advancing earthmover. The defenders lacked one key weapon system — an anti-tank missile that could penetrate the armor of the tracked vehicle.

So while the soldiers kept up a steady volume of fire, they were helpless as the dozer began to remove the concrete barriers that blocked the road between their positions and the row of large armored trucks. One layer of concrete was removed after another until the road was clear.

And so the trucks begin to pour through. While creating vehicle-borne bombs is an ISIL specialty, the technology is actually remarkably simple, as each truck carried in its five-ton bed the same basic formula used two decades ago by Timothy McVeigh at Oklahoma City — ammonium nitrate fertilizer soaked in gasoline. As each truck closed on the defenses, its suicide bomber detonated the payload, shocking beyond reason those who were not killed outright. As truck after truck delivered its lethal payload, black-clad fighters poured from behind the trucks to exploit the newly created hole in the defenses. The survivors fell back and tried to maintain some semblance of order, but it was far too late to have any hope of saving this day. Ramadi had fallen.

The explosion of ISIL onto the international scene in June 2014 informed the world that a new type of force had arrived. In some ways, this should have been less of a surprise. ISIL had seized Fallujah the previous January, and there were also several clear precursors of this type of force. The Israelis had experienced a near-defeat in their fightagainst the non-state actor Hezbollah years earlier. And only a month after the fall of Mosul, Russian-backed separatist forces in Ukraine would shoot down Malaysian Airlines flight MH17.

None of these actors — ISIL, Hezbollah, or the Ukrainian separatists — can be classified as traditional insurgent groups, guerrillas, or terrorists. All three groups possess capabilities that take them beyond more familiar non-state actors without qualifying them as full-fledged armies. Whether the bulldozers and social media savvy of ISIL, the missiles and electronic warfare of Hezbollah, or the high-altitude air defense of the Ukrainian rebels, all these forces have deployed capabilities traditionally associated with nation-states. The hybrid warriors have merged these capabilities with traditional insurgent tactics in their fight against nation-state forces.

While the debate rages on about the utility of the concepts of “hybrid warfare” and “gray zone conflict,” this article is not about these debates. This article is agnostic as to whether these types of warfare are best called “hybrid wars” or “political warfare.” It is similarly agnostic as to whether the “gray zone” concept is “hopelessly muddled “or “real and identifiable.” These debates, while important, are not what this piece attempts to settle. Rather than discuss the strategies and operations conducted in these ambiguous physical and legal spaces, this paper is concerned with the new actors emerging in said spaces. This essay maintains that there is something interesting and new occurring, as it relates to the actors operating in this space. While calling them “hybrid warriors” when the larger concept of “hybrid warfare” is still deeply contested may be linguistically problematic, there is no necessary linkage between the terms. That these fighters are a “hybrid” of insurgent and state-sponsored strains seems very clear, and therefore appropriate, regardless of distinct and separate debates over the characteristics of the environment.

Hybrid warriors are new (or at least new to us). These non-state hybrid warriors have adopted significant capabilities of an industrial or post-industrial nation-state army that allow them to contest the security forces of nation-states with varying degrees of success. Retaining ties to the population and a devotion to the “propaganda of the deed” that characterizes their insurgent and terrorist cousins, these non-state hybrid warriors present a challenge unfamiliar to most modern security analysts (though those who fought against either America’s 19th-century native tribes or the medieval Knights Templar, might see similarities).

Hybrid warriors specialize in the ambiguity of the “gray zone,” a term this essay will continue to use despite its definitional issues. While they can both administer territory (at the low end of the spectrum) and fight conventional war (at the high end), it is in the spaces in between that they truly excel. Girded by their relative safety from police forces, immunity from international norms (characteristic of all places where the state and rule of law are weak), and the active or passive support of the population, these hybrid warriors enjoy a low degree of risk, at least when compared to open warfare against Western interests. Within their sanctuaries — so long as they survive the occasional airstrike or commando raid — hybrid warriors face few security concerns, save when local armies probe the boundaries of their loosely controlled terrain. And yet — as the United States clearly learned on 9/11 — non-state groups possess a new ability to launch attacks against the integrated state system. These hybrid warriors live among the insurgents and counter-insurgents, terrorists and counter-terrorists, spies, saboteurs, propagandists, organized criminals, and money launderers — but while they may participate in any number of these activities, they are not limited by them.

Read the Remainder at War on the Rocks

 

Killing Anwar: Targeting Jihadi Propagandist is Only Part of the Solution

Like dozens of others, the husband and wife team who shot up a San Bernardino community center were inspired by U.S. born al-Qaeda propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in Yemen by a drone strike in September 2011. The San Bernardino shooting should serve as a reminder that killing propagandists can be an important tactical victory, but is not sufficient to fully disable their effectiveness or to counter their message. Beyond targeted strikes against individuals, the United States government needs to address two distinct tasks. First, it needs to better explain its kill-capture operations to earn greater legitimacy through transparency. Second, it must conduct a truly effective covert strategic communication effort that delivers an attractive alternative to the sophisticated efforts of violent Islamic extremists.

Awlaki’s skill at propaganda connects San Bernardino with Hassan Nidal at Fort Hood, Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez in Chattanooga Tennessee, and Faisal Shahzad in Times Square. Awlaki is known to have been admired by many other terrorists, to include the “underwear bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and the Boston Marathonbomber brothers Tsarnaev. Since Awlaki was killed by a Hellfire missile fired from a Predator in 2011, two views of his assassination have developed. First, killing him made him a martyr, increasing his stock-value, which in turn made his widely available material even more sought-after and respected. Second, killing him was something that needed to happen. Even though we cannot get rid of what he’s already said, at least a dead man can tell no more tales. Besides, Awlaki was an operational leader in addition to a persuasive ideologue and spokesman.

It would be easy to be convinced of the first argument. Awlaki was killed in 2011, but most of the long list of terrorist acts he inspired occurred later. Therefore his death was inconsequential, or worse, made him stronger. Indeed Awlaki’s poison is still readily available to anyone who wishes to hear him opine on everything from obesity to bomb-making. Martyrdom is valued in the jihadist worldview, so it makes perfect sense that in death, he still commands respect. Similarly, it would be easy to be convinced of the second argument: Being a U.S. citizen, having lived and worked in the United States, and being natively fluent in English made Awlaki a uniquely insidious messenger to spread violent Islamic extremism to Americans and the wider English-speaking world. He was, after all, the Joseph Goebbels of the global jihad.

However, both of these arguments miss the mark. The first misses the unpleasant fact that killing one’s opponent is sometimes necessary. Destroying assets removes them from future effective use. Killing men like Awlaki may inspire some, but it demoralizes and disables others. The second misses the point that while it is true that Awlaki was particularly dangerous, reaching Western audiences with great skill, killing the messenger is not sufficient to defeat the message. Killing propagandists is important if and only if it is combined with an appealing counter-message that can change minds and plausibly change political behavior. Terrorism is a political act. Terrorists desire to remake the political world in which they find themselves; the deaths and destruction they cause are intended as a means to some other end. As a tactic employed to obtain a political objective, effectively countering the tactic means effectively countering the political message communicated through the violence.

Some suggest that the attractiveness of Western culture should be powerful enough to counter the dark vision of violent Islamic radicals. This was the intent of the U.S. State Department’s short-lived “Shared Values Initiative,” launched in 2001. Such initiatives struggled to employ what Joseph Nye called “soft power,” the ability to shape the preferences of others without material coercion, but instead relying the power of attraction. Indeed, the attractive power of Western concepts such as liberal democracy, free speech, and freedom of worship can only be useful if these are communicated effectively — in the right language, to the right population, using familiar cultural forms — and if people are convinced enough and capable of effecting political change. As Daniel Byman writes in his new book, since negative opinions against the United States are so powerfully held among Muslims in the Middle East, “a more successful approach would focus on Al Qaeda, its ideology and its many mistakes … [and] make the debate about how bad the jihadists are, not how wonderful America is.” It is questionable if any message originating in the United States could ever be effective at countering the political messages promulgated by people like Awlaki and his successors, not to mention the sophisticated media arms of the Islamic State.

So the United States appears to be stuck on the horns of a dilemma: Killing folks like Awlaki, though justified, cannot solve the problem on its own, but the United States also struggles with effectively communicating an attractive political vision that rivals what Awlaki and his successors disseminate. Ironically, the answer is to do more of both, and get better at it. Two distinct improvements are called for.

A More Transparent Targeted Killing Campaign

The U.S. government could do better at making its drone program more transparent by explaining its targeting process and efforts at reducing collateral damage immediately after a significant strike has occurred (such as those that killed Awlaki and the next most prominent American al-Qaeda leader, Adam Gadahn). This was one of the conclusions of the Stimson Center’s Commission on U.S. Drone Policy. There are two audiences for this effort, Western audiences and the wider Muslim world. By explaining its kill-capture missions better, Western audiences may be more inclined to accept their legitimacy. This will make it easier to sustain political support for these missions. For audiences in the wider Muslim world, the U.S. government should publicly acknowledge when civilian casualties occur, explain in part how targets are selected and missions are approved, and describe how precision weapons systems are designed to keep civilians out of harm’s way. Some audiences will never accept a message from the U.S. government as trustworthy; but greater transparency will allow the United States to fill the information vacuum presently exploited by jihadi propagandists. Governments allied with the United States will be able to point to something definitive that is being done to mitigate civilian losses, rather than decry those losses and protest violations of their sovereignty.

Unfortunately, transparency can provide important information to potential targets as well. This is a weakness of the drone program. The United States wants to kill jihadists where they are while limiting risk to U.S. personnel, but it must also contain the recruiting value of the collateral damage that inevitably occurs in a targeted killing campaign waged from the air. Practically, only the most important targets, under the best conditions will be found and killed. The United States needs to be better at explaining why the lives of some civilians were worth taking in order to kill men like Awlaki and Gadahn, and to explain the steps it takes to mitigate civilian losses. This will help ensure that the United States is not making more enemies than it kills on the battlefield.

A Better (Covert) Communications Strategy

America’s current overt communication strategies to counter jihadist movements have been derided as stilted, amateurish, and ridiculous. Since any message sponsored by the U.S. government will be immediately dismissed as propaganda by many in the Middle East, and more broadly among Muslim communities, an effective communication strategy must be entirely covert. The U.S. government must account for the fact that it is highly unpopular in theMiddle East. The implication is that no matter how sophisticated the medium appears, or how broadly the message is disseminated, if done overtly, the U.S. government will be ineffective at countering violent radical Islamic propaganda. Even if done covertly, any political message sent to counter radical jihadist messages must also be finely tuned to appeal to a variety of audiences — this requires considerable effort. U.S. intelligence agencies continue to suffer from insufficient cultural and linguistic assets. Effective communication is facilitated by knowing the right language — the vocabulary, the grammar, the stories, jokes, and slang — that can lend credibility and genuineness to a message. Unfortunately this knowledge is best learned through human assets developed only with considerable investment of time and effort.

Killing and Communicating to Victory

Killing Awlaki unfortunately did not prevent his propaganda from influencing the minds of people who killed innocent people after he was gone. One might conclude that killing propagandists is therefore ineffective and future efforts in aid of disrupting terrorist violence should be directed to more productive tasks, but this argument is only partially correct. Awlaki and Gadahn were uniquely effective at their work, and the world was improved with their demise. However, the work cannot end there.

People need to be reminded of why men like Awlaki and Gadahn need to be killed, even in the face of collateral losses. Perhaps more importantly, killing the propagandists must be accompanied by a truly effective campaign to counter their political messages.

All terrorism is politics; counter-terrorism must similarly be oriented toward shaping political preferences.

 Read the Original Article at The War on the Rocks