Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2015 Part 19-138-Caliphate- The State of al-Qaeda-2

By Capt (Ret) C de Waart, feel free to share: in Confidence

Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2015 Part 19-138-Caliphate- The State of al-Qaeda-2

In 2014 al-Qa’ida-type groups are numerous and powerful… In other words, the ‘war on terror’ has demonstrably failed

• A global war for relevance: can al-Qaeda reclaim the jihadi crown? • Al-Qa’ida is an idea rather than an organisation, and this has long been so.• The spectacular resurgence of al-Qa’ida and its offshoots has happened despite the

huge expansion of American and British intelligence services and their budgets after 9/11.

• Despite controversial security measures, the movements against which they are aimed have not only not been defeated but have grown stronger

• Following a brief retreat, it took advantage of the turmoil created by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and, later, by the Arab uprisings of 2011, to expand explosively.

• The resurgence of these jihadis is most striking on the ground in Iraq and Syria, but is evident in Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia and, in recent months, Lebanon and Egypt

• The decisions that enabled al-Qa’ida to avoid elimination, and later to expand, were made in the hours immediately after 9/11.

• These days, there is a decreasing difference in the beliefs of jihadis, regardless of whether or not they are formally linked to al-Qa’ida central, now headed by Ayman al-Zawahiri.

• Al-Qa’ida-type organisations, with beliefs and methods of operating similar to those who carried out the 9/11 attacks, have become a lethally powerful force from the Tigris to the Mediterranean in the past three years.

• At the centre of this doctrine for making war is an emphasis on self-sacrifice and martyrdom as a symbol of religious faith and commitment.

Politicians were happy to use the threat of al-Qa’ida to persuade people that their civil liberties should be restricted and state power expanded, but they spent surprisingly little time calculating the most effective practical means to combat the movement.

• Jihadi groups ideologically identical to al-Qa’ida are relabelled as moderate if their actions are deemed supportive of US policy aims.

• The “war on terror” has failed because it did not target the jihadi movement as a whole and, above all, was not aimed at Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the two countries that had fostered jihadism as a creed and a movement.

• The US is increasingly fearful that support for the Syrian rebels by the West and the Sunni monarchies of the Gulf has created a similar situation to that in Afghanistan in the 1980s, when indiscriminate backing for insurgents ultimately produced al-Qa’ida, the Taliban and jihadi warlords.

The US Under-Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, David Cohen, warned that “terrorist” movements, such as JAN and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis), were not only destabilising Syria but “these well-funded and well-equipped groups may soon turn their attention to attacks outside of Syria, particularly as scores of newly radicalised and freshly trained foreign recruits return from Syria to their home countries”.

The idea is to repeat the US success in 2006-07 in supporting the Sunni “Awakening Movement” which weakened, though it never destroyed, al-Qaeda in Iraq, the predecessor of Isis.

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• Where Isis is beaten back, the Sunni may hold on to their strongholds where they are the great majority, but where populations are mixed they are likely to be losers. A final ethnic and sectarian shake-out in Iraq seems to be under way.

• Is the defeat of Isis, and with it the Sunni, inevitable? In the long term it is difficult to see any alternative outcome in Iraq because they make up only a fifth of the population and their more numerous enemies are backed by the US and Iran. The land mass held by Isis may be large, but it was always poor and is becoming more impoverished. The so-called Islamic State will not go down without fierce resistance and, if it does fall, the Sunni community will be caught up in its destruction

Perhaps more damning was the lack of progression in the vision conceptualised by al-Qaeda’s Islamist intelligentsia. While it made a international nuisance of itself with sporadic terrorist attacks, al-Qaeda never transitioned to the territorialisation necessary for creating the Islamic state it purported to pursue.

• However, al-Qaeda’s inability to foment global Islamic revolution in such a manner – while offering no alternative – has proved less than inspiring for those who support the idea of an Islamist state.

• The perception for many supporters of jihad is that while al-Qaeda barks, IS bites. This is far from the reality.

• With a combination of progress, prowess and a healthy appreciation for the power of modern technology, IS currently appears to be stealing much of the oxygen used to keep the al-Qaeda flame alight.

• al-Qaeda appears to be in a state of contraction, typified most starkly by its inability to reign in IS. Whether this is an emergent trend – or just a historical aberration – remains to be seen.

What seems assured is that al-Qaeda and IS will continue to struggle over the same pool of resources that comes with being seen to wear the global jihad crown.

The Muslim countries of North Africa and the Middle East are currently in chaos and al Qaeda’s deadly strategy is solely responsible for the woes of their masses. As a result, Mauritania, Somalia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Iraq and Syria are in political and social ruins.

Defeating the Islamic State group won’t be easy, but limiting the extremists’ ability to recruit new members will help, former U.S. diplomat Rick Roberts said

• The rise of Daesh Roberts referred to the Islamic State as Daesh, which is an acronym of the group’s full Arabic name, al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi al-Iraq wa al-Sham. He said he favored Daesh over the terms “Islamic State” or “The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant” because the group hates the phrase.

• “They really don’t like being called Daesh because they want to brand themselves as the Islamic State,” he said. “They want people to think Islam when you talk about them and what they’re doing. That is their protective covering. That is their identity.”

• Roberts said Daesh’s primary goal is to establish a caliphate — a government ruled by a caliph — in the Middle East.

“They were pushed back against,” Roberts said. “(Ayman) al-Zawahiri, who replaced Osama bin Laden when he was killed, objected to their techniques. Even at that time, they were already starting to show what we now know as the Daesh techniques of extreme violence.”

• A true caliph must also be able to force people to comply with the law — or his interpretation of the law — which is why Abu Bakr needs to establish a caliphate,

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Roberts said.“That’s why this is really important that they get and hold territory,” he said.

• Roberts said Daesh is trying to establish Islamic law, also known as Sharia law, in the Middle East. But he added that most Muslims do not support the organization.

“The only Muslims who support Daesh are the members of Daesh,” he said. “To the rest of the Islamic world, this is anathema.”

Al-Qa’ida, the second act: Why the global 'war on terror' went wrong Sunday 16 March 2014 . In 2014 al-Qa’ida-type groups are numerous and powerful… In other words, the ‘war on terror’ has demonstrably failed; It is now 12-and-a-half years since the September 11 attacks that put al-Qa’ida firmly on the map of global terrorism. The US has spent billions of dollars on its ‘war on terror’ to counter the threat and succeeded in killing Osama bin Laden three years ago. And yet al-Qa’ida-type groups are arguably stronger than ever now, especially in Syria and Iraq where they control an area the size of Britain, but also in Libya, Lebanon, Egypt and beyond. In a groundbreaking five-part series, The Independent’s award-winning foreign correspondent, Patrick Cockburn, investigates the

resurgence of the terrorist organisation.

Today, he asks: why did the ‘war on terror’ go wrong? Al-Qa’ida-type organisations, with beliefs and methods of operating similar to those who carried out the 9/11 attacks, have become a lethally

powerful force from the Tigris to the Mediterranean in the past three years. Since the start of 2014, they have held Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, much of the upper Euphrates valley, and exert increasing control over the Sunni heartlands of northern Iraq. In Syria, their fighters occupy villages and towns from the outskirts of Damascus to the border with Turkey, including the oilfields in the north-east of the country. Overall, they are now the most powerful military force in an area the size of Britain. The spectacular resurgence of al-Qa’ida and its offshoots has happened despite the huge expansion of American and British intelligence services and their budgets after 9/11. Since then, the US, closely followed by Britain, has fought wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and adopted procedures formerly associated with police states, such as imprisonment without trial, rendition, torture and domestic espionage. Governments justify this as necessary to wage the “war on terror”, claiming that the rights of individual citizens must be sacrificed to secure the safety of all.Despite these controversial security measures, the movements against which they are aimed have not only not been defeated but have grown stronger. At the time of 9/11, al-Qa’ida was a very small organisation, but in 2014 al-Qa’ida-type groups are numerous and powerful. In other words, the “war on terror”, the waging of which determined the politics of so much of the world since 2001, has demonstrably failed.

How this failure happened is perhaps the most extraordinary development of the 21st century. Politicians were happy to use the threat of al-Qa’ida to persuade people that their civil liberties should be restricted and state power expanded, but they spent surprisingly little time calculating the most effective practical means to combat the movement. They have been

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able to get away with this by giving a misleading definition of al-Qa’ida, which varied according to what was politically convenient at the time.

Jihadi groups ideologically identical to al-Qa’ida are relabelled as moderate if their actions are deemed supportive of US policy aims. In Syria, the US is backing a plan by Saudi Arabia to build up a “Southern Front” based in Jordan against the Assad government in Damascus, but also hostile to al-Qa’ida-type rebels in the north and east. The powerful but supposedly “moderate” Yarmouk Brigade, which is reportedly to receive anti-aircraft missiles from Saudi Arabia, will be the leading element in this new formation. But numerous videos show that the Yarmouk Brigade has frequently fought in collaboration with Jabhat al-Nusra (JAN), the official al-Qa’ida affiliate. Since it is likely that, in the midst of battle, these two groups will share their munitions, Washington will be permitting advanced weaponry to be handed over to its deadliest enemy.

This episode helps explain why al-Qa’ida and its offshoots have been able to survive and flourish. The “war on terror” has failed because it did not target the jihadi movement as a whole and, above all, was not aimed at Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the two countries that had fostered jihadism as a creed and a movement. The US did not do so because they were important American allies whom it did not want to offend. Saudi Arabia is an enormous market for American arms, and the Saudis have cultivated and, on occasion bought up, influential members of the American political establishment. A measure of the seriousness of the present situation is that, in recent weeks, Saudi Arabia has for the first time been urgently seeking to stop jihadi fighters, whom it previously allowed to join the war in Syria, from returning home and turning their weapons against the rulers of the Saudi kingdom. This is an abrupt reversal of previous Saudi policy, which tolerated or privately encouraged Saudi citizens going to Syria to take part in a holy war to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad and combat Shia Muslims on behalf of Sunni Islam.

The now deposed Saudi Intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan In recent weeks, Saudi Arabia has called on all foreign fighters to leave Syria, and King Abdullah has decreed it a crime for Saudis to fight in foreign conflicts. The Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who had been in charge of organising, funding and supplying jihadi groups fighting in Syria, has been unexpectedly removed from overseeing Saudi policy towards

Syria, and replaced by a prince who has led a security clampdown against al-Qa’ida inside Saudi Arabia.The US is increasingly fearful that support for the Syrian rebels by the West and the Sunni monarchies of the Gulf has created a similar situation to that in Afghanistan in the 1980s, when indiscriminate backing for insurgents ultimately produced al-Qa’ida, the Taliban and jihadi warlords. The US Under-Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, David Cohen, warned this month that “terrorist” movements, such as JAN and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis), were not only destabilising Syria but “these well-funded and well-equipped groups may soon turn their attention to attacks outside of Syria, particularly as scores of newly radicalised and freshly trained foreign recruits return from Syria to their home countries”. The number of foreign fighters that Mr Cohen gives is a significant underestimate, since the head of US intelligence, James Clapper, estimates foreign fighters in Syria to number about 7,000, mostly from the Arab world, but also from countries such as Chechnya, France and Britain.

Al-Qa’ida has always been a convenient enemy. In Iraq, in 2003 and 2004, as armed Iraqi opposition to the American and British-led occupation mounted, US spokesmen attributed most attacks to al-Qa’ida, though many were carried out by nationalist and Baathist

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groups. According to a poll by the Pew Group, this persuaded 57 per cent of US voters before the Iraq invasion to believe that there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and those responsible for 9/11, despite a complete absence of evidence for this. In Iraq itself, indeed the whole Muslim world, these accusations benefited al-Qa’ida by exaggerating its role in the resistance to the US and British occupation.

Precisely the opposite PR tactics were employed by Western governments in 2011 in Libya, where they played down any similarity between al-Qa’ida and the Nato-backed rebels fighting to overthrow the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi. This was done by describing as dangerous only those jihadis who had a direct operational link to the al-Qa’ida “core” of Osama bin Laden. The falsity of the pretence that the anti-Gaddafi jihadis in Libya were less threatening than those in contact with al-Qa’ida was forcefully, if tragically, exposed when US ambassador Chris Stevens was killed by jihadi fighters in Benghazi in September 2012. These were the same fighters lauded by governments and media for their role in the anti-Gaddafi uprising.

Al-Qa’ida is an idea rather than an organisation, and this has long been so. For a five-year period after 1996, it did have cadres, resources and camps in Afghanistan, but these were eliminated after the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001. Subsequently, al-Qa’ida’s name was a rallying cry, a set of Islamic beliefs such as the creation of an Islamic state, the imposition of sharia, a return to Islamic customs, the subjugation of women and waging holy war against other Muslims, notably the Shia, as heretics worthy of death. At the centre of this doctrine for making war is an emphasis on self-sacrifice and martyrdom as a symbol of religious faith and commitment. This has turned out to be a way of using untrained but fanatical believers to devastating effect as suicide bombers.

It has always been in the interests of the US and other governments that al-Qa’ida should be viewed as having a command-and-control structure like a mini-Pentagon, or the Mafia in America as shown in the Godfather films. This is a comforting image for the public because organised groups, however demonic, can be tracked down and eliminated through imprisonment or death. More alarming is the reality of a movement whose adherents are self-recruited and may spring up anywhere.

Osama bin Laden’s gathering of militants, which he did not call al-Qa’ida until after 9/11, was just one of many jihadi groups 12 years ago. But today its ideas and methods are predominant among jihadis because of the prestige and publicity it gained through the destruction of the twin towers, the war in Iraq and its demonisation by Washington as the source of all anti-American evil.

These days, there is a decreasing difference in the beliefs of jihadis, regardless of whether or not they are formally linked to al-Qa’ida central, now headed by Ayman al-Zawahiri. An observer in southern Turkey discussing 9/11 with a range of Syrian jihadi rebels earlier this year found that “without exception they all expressed enthusiasm for the 9/11 attacks and hoped the same thing would happen in Europe as well as the US”.

"Osama bin Laden’s death had no impact on al-Qa’ida-type jihadi groups, whose greatest expansion has been since 2011"Unsurprisingly, governments prefer the fantasy picture of al-Qa’ida because it enables them to claim a se ries of victories by killing its better-known members and allies. Often, those eliminated are given quasi-military ranks, such as “head of operations”, to enhance the significance of their demise. The culmination of this most publicised but largely irrelevant aspect of the “war on terror” was the killing of Bin Laden in Abbottabad in Pakistan in 2011. This enabled President Obama to grandstand before the American public as the man who had presided over the hunting down of al-Qa’ida’s leader. In practice, his death had no impact on al-Qa’ida-type jihadi groups, whose greatest expansion has been since 2011.

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The resurgence of these jihadis is most striking on the ground in Iraq and Syria, but is evident in Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia and, in recent months, Lebanon and Egypt . In Iraq, it was a final humiliation for the US, after losing 4,500 soldiers, that al-Qa’ida’s black flag should once again fly in Fallujah, captured with much self-congratulatory rhetoric by US Marines in 2004. Aside from Fallujah, Isis, the premier jihadi movement in the country, has rapidly expanded its influence in all parts of Sunni Iraq in the past three years. It levies local taxes and protection money in Mosul, Iraq’s third largest city, estimated to bring in $8m (£4.8m) a month.

It has been able to capitalise on two factors: the Sunni revolt in Syria and the alienation of the Iraqi Sunni by a Shia-led government. Peaceful protests by Sunni started in December 2012, but a lack of concessions by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and a massacre at a peace camp at Hawijah last April is transmuting peaceful protest into armed resistance.Last summer, Isis freed hundreds of its leaders and experienced militants in a spectacular raid on Abu Ghraib prison. Its stepped-up bombing campaign killed 9,500 people, mostly Shia civilians, in the course of last year, the heaviest casualties since 2008. But there is a crucial difference between then and now. Even at the previous peak of its influence in 2004-06, al-Qa’ida in Iraq did not enjoy as strong a position in the Sunni armed opposition as it does today.

Jessica D Lewis, of the Institute for the Study of War, commented in a study of the movement at the end of 2013 that al-Qa’ida in Iraq “is an extremely vigorous, resilient and capable organisation that can operate from Basra to coastal Syria”.

In Syria, Isis was the original founder in early 2012 of JAN, sending it money, arms and experienced fighters. A year later, it tried to reassert its authority over JAN by folding it into a broader organisation covering both Syria and Iraq. The two are now involved in a complicated intra-jihadi civil war that began at the start of the year, pitting Isis, notorious for its cruelty and determination to monopolise power, against the other jihadi groups. The more secular Free Syrian Army (FSA), once designated along with its political wing by the West as the next rulers of Syria, has collapsed and been marginalised.

The armed opposition is now dominated by jihadis who wish to establish an Islamic state, accept foreign fighters, and have a vicious record of massacring Syria’s minorities, notably the Alawites and the Christians. The Islamic Front, for instance, a newly established and powerful alliance of opposition brigades backed by Turkey and Qatar, is fighting Isis. But that does not mean that it is not complicit in sectarian killings, and it insists on strict imposition of sharia, including the public flogging of those who do not attend Friday prayers. The Syrian jihadis rule most of north-east Syria aside from that part of it held by the Kurds. The government clings to a few outposts in this vast area, but does not have the forces to recapture it.

The decisions that enabled al-Qa’ida to avoid elimination, and later to expand, were made in the hours immediately after 9/11. Almost every significant element in the project to crash planes into the twin towers and other iconic American buildings led back to Saudi Arabia. Bin laden was a member of the Saudi elite, whose father had been a close associate of the Saudi monarch. Of the 19 hijackers on 9/11, 15 were Saudi nationals. Citing a CIA report of 2002, the official 9/11 report says that al-Qa’ida relied for its financing on “a variety of donors and fundraisers, primarily in the Gulf countries and particularly in Saudi Arabia”. The report’s investigators repeatedly found their access limited or denied when seeking information in Saudi Arabia. Yet President George W Bush never considered holding the Saudis in any way responsible for what had happened. The exit of senior Saudis, including Bin Laden relatives, from the US was facilitated by the government in the days after 9/11. Most significantly, 28 pages of the 9/11 Commission Report about the relationship between the attackers and Saudi Arabia was cut and never published – despite a promise by President

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Obama to do so – on the grounds of national security. Nothing much changed in Saudi Arabia until recent months. In 2009, eight years after 9/11, a cable from the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, revealed by WikiLeaks, complains that “donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide”.

Moreover, the US and the west Europeans showed themselves indifferent to Saudi preachers, their message spread to millions by satellite TV, YouTube and Twitter, calling for the killing of Shia as heretics. These calls came as al-Qa’ida bombs were slaughtering people in Shia neighbourhoods in Iraq. A sub-headline in another State Department cable in the same year reads: “Saudi Arabia: Anti-Shi’ism As Foreign Policy?” Five years later, Saudi-supported groups have a record of extreme sectarianism against non-Sunni Muslims.

Pakistan, or rather Pakistani military intelligence in the shape of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was the other parent of al-Qa’ida, the Taliban and jihadi movements in general. When the Taliban was disintegrating under the weight of US bombing in 2001, its forces in northern Afghanistan were trapped by anti-Taliban forces. Before they surrendered, hundreds of ISI members, military trainers and advisers were hastily evacuated by air. Despite the clearest evidence of ISI’s sponsorship of the Taliban and jihadis in general, Washington refused to confront Pakistan, and thereby opened the way for the resurgence of the Taliban after 2003, which neither the US nor Nato has been able to reverse.

Al-Qa’ida, the Taliban and other jihadi groups are the offspring of America’s strange alliance with Saudi Arabia, a theocratic absolute monarchy, and Pakistani military intelligence. If this alliance had not existed, then 9/11 would not have happened. And because the US, with Britain never far behind, refused to break with these two Sunni powers, jihadism survived and prospered after 9/11. Following a brief retreat, it took advantage of the turmoil created by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and, later, by the Arab uprisings of 2011, to expand explosively. Twelve years after the “war on terror” was launched it has visibly failed and al-Qa’ida-type jihadis, once confined to a few camps in Afghanistan, today rule whole provinces in the heart of the Middle East.

March 19, 2015 Is the Defeat of ISIS in Iraq Inevitable?by PATRICK COCKBURN Mahmoud Omar, a young Sunni photographer, is angered though not entirely surprised by the way in which the Baghdad government continues to mistreat his fellow Sunnis. Political leaders inside and outside Iraq all agree that the best, and possibly the only, way to defeat Isis is to turn at least part of the Sunni Arab community against it.The idea is to repeat the US success in 2006-07 in supporting the Sunni “Awakening Movement” which weakened, though it never destroyed, al-Qaeda in Iraq, the predecessor of Isis. Now as then, many Sunnis hate the extremists for their merciless violence and enforcement of outlandish and arbitrary rules on personal behaviour that have no connection to even the strictest interpretation of sharia.

The fact that so many Sunnis are alienated from or terrified by Isis should present an opportunity for Baghdad, since Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s government is meant to be more inclusive than that of his predecessor, Nouri al-Maliki. Increasingly aggressive sectarian policies pursued by Mr Maliki during his eight years in power are now blamed for turning peaceful protests by Sunnis into armed resistance and pushing the Sunni community into the arms of Isis. This is an over-simplified version of recent history, but with the new government lauded internationally for its non-sectarian stance, the Sunni hoped they

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would face less day-to-day repression. “Isis has shocked many Sunni by its actions,” says Mahmoud. “But instead of the government treating us better to win us over, they are treating us even worse.”As an example of this he cites the behaviour of police in Ramadi, the capital of the vast and overwhelmingly Sunni province of Anbar. His family comes from the city, which used to have a population of 600,000. Now 80 per cent have fled the fighting as Isis and government forces battle for control. Isis launched seven almost simultaneous suicide bomb attacks last week and was already holding 80 per cent of Ramadi.

The situation inside the government-held enclave is desperate, with shortages of food, fuel and electricity. Trucks bringing in supplies have to run the gauntlet of Isis checkpoints and ambushes. Food prices have risen sharply and in outlying cities, like al-Qaim and al-Baghdadi, Mahmoud says that “the people are reduced to eating fodder.”Schools are closed to pupils because they are full of refugees. But in the midst of this crisis, Mahmoud – who asked for his real name not to be published – says the local police are as predatory and corrupt as ever when it comes to dealing with the Sunni.He says that in one police station in the government-held part of Ramadi “the police go on arresting Sunni, torturing them and refusing to release them until their families come up with a bribe. I know one man who was in there for a week before his family paid the police $5,000 to get him released.”

All the old methods of surveillance remain in place with shopkeepers forced to spy on their customers and hand in daily reports to the police. Predictably, Mahmoud dismisses as “promises and words” the pledges of the new Abadi government to be more even-handed – intentions the Americans and Europeans apparently take at face value.As a photographer and educated member of a politically moderate, well-off family, Mahmoud would be seen by Isis as a natural enemy. is family have lost much because of the jihadist group’s takeover of Anbar. His father only stayed in Ramadi until recently because he wanted to safeguard two houses he owned. A third house in Fallujah has been taken over by Isis and the family doesn’t know what has happened to it; Isis sends officials door to door and, if the owner of a house has fled, they give him 10 days to return or they confiscate the property.

But for all his dislike of Isis, Mahmoud would have great difficulty trusting the Baghdad government. This is because a relative, Muad Mohammed Abed, who was a teacher and has a wife and daughter, has been in prison since 2012, under sentence of death for murder.It is a crime he and his family vehemently deny he committed, saying that the only evidence against him is a confession obtained after torture. They have photographs of Muad taken after his interrogation, showing him covered in bruises and burns. His sentence was ultimately quashed, but he remains in jail. A promised retrial may be a long time coming because there are 1,500 similar cases to be heard by a court before his turn comes. His wife, who visits him in prison, says that he is kept in a cell four metres square with seven other prisoners. They are forbidden to have a radio or television.

Muad’s experience is fairly common. Many of the young Sunni men from villages near Fallujah are in prison awaiting execution because they have been tortured into confessing to capital crimes. The only way for them to be freed is through a large bribe to the right official. Mahmoud recalls that in 2012 he investigated 12 cases in which people were tortured to death, “including a pharmacist who was arrested when he refused to supply drugs to soldiers and police at checkpoint near his pharmacy”. Most of Mahmoud’s family have now fled to Kurdistan. He sees their misfortunes as mirroring the suffering of the Sunni community as a whole. He fears that the Iraqi Sunnis will be ground to pieces in the struggle between Isis and the government and that, as Isis is pushed back, the Sunni community will

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share in its defeat so “we will end up like the Christians who are being forced out of the country”. Yet for all Mahmoud’s passionate sense of injustice, his belief that the government is irredeemably anti-Sunni is only part of the story. Sunni and Shia have both used mass violence against one another’s communities in the past 50 years, but the Sunni have most often been the perpetrators. The explosive growth of sectarian killings in 2012 to 2014, when 31,414 civilians were killed according to Iraqi Body Count, very much reflects the growth of Isis.

The group carried out massacres of Shias and Yazidis as a matter of policy, and then broadcast videos of the murders. Isis bombers targeted bus queues, funerals, religious processions and anywhere else where Shia gathered and could be killed. The obvious motive was anti-Shia and a desire to destabilise the government, but there was also a carefully calculated policy at work of provoking Shia into retaliation against Sunni.Isis knew that this would leave the Sunni with no alternative but to fight and die alongside them.As Isis’s columns advanced last year, its fighters carried out massacres to spread fear just as Saddam Hussein had done against the Kurds and Shia a quarter of a century earlier. When the government’s Badush prison, near Mosul, was captured by Isis, its fighters slaughtered 670 Shia prisoners. At Camp Speicher, outside Tikrit, 800 Shia cadets were lined up in front of trenches and machine-gunned. Pictures of the scene resemble those of atrocities carried out by the German army in Russia in 1941. In August, when Isis fighters stormed into Kurdish-held regions, they targeted the Yazidis as “pagans” to be murdered, raped and enslaved.The Isis advance in Iraq had largely ended by last October. Since then it has retreated, though not very far. Where Shia militias or Kurdish Peshmerga have successfully counter-attacked, the Sunni have generally fled before their towns and villages were recaptured – or they have been subsequently expelled. It is not surprising that the Shia and Kurdish commanders fighting back are not in a forgiving mood. There is an almost universal belief among last year’s victims – be they Shia, Yazidis, Christians or Kurds – that their Sunni Arab neighbours collaborated with Isis.

Where Isis is beaten back, the Sunni may hold on to their strongholds where they are the great majority, but where populations are mixed they are likely to be losers. A final ethnic and sectarian shake-out in Iraq seems to be under way.

Is the defeat of Isis, and with it the Sunni, inevitable? In the long term it is difficult to see any alternative outcome in Iraq because they make up only a fifth of the population and their more numerous enemies are backed by the US and Iran. The land mass held by Isis may be large, but it was always poor and is becoming more impoverished.There is little electricity. In Mosul, Ahmad, a shopkeeper in the Bab al-Saray area, says: “We are getting only two hours of electricity every four days.” There are private generators, he says, “but since there are no jobs, people have no money to pay their electricity bills or for generator supply services”.This has had the effect of reducing some prices because there is no power for fridges and freezers, meaning food cannot be stored for long. Deteriorating living conditions mean that many want to leave Mosul, but they are prevented by Isis, which does not want to find that its greatest conquest has become a ghost town. In any case, it is not clear where the one million people still in Mosul would go.As the fighting intensifies across Iraq this spring, the Sunni cities and towns are likely to be devastated. Mahmoud may well be right in thinking that the Sunni will be forced to take flight or become a vulnerable minority like the Christians. Even if the government in Baghdad wanted to share power with the Sunni, Isis has ensured through its atrocities that this will be near impossible. For its part, Isis has been raising tens of thousands more fighters – they may

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now number well over 100,000 in Iraq and Syria. The so-called Islamic State will not go down without fierce resistance and, if it does fall, the Sunni community will be caught up in its destruction. Patrick Cockburn is the author of The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution.

A global war for relevance: can al-Qaeda reclaim the jihadi crown? Islamic State's rapid successes in Syria and Iraq stand in stark contrast to al-Qaeda's efforts at global jihad over the past decade. 16 April 2015, Ben Rich PhD Candidate in Middle East Politics at the School of Social Sciences at Monash University. Under the leadership of both Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda has failed to reproduce an event that has shaken the international order since 9/11. EPA

With a new, vibrant generation of jihadist groups such as Islamic State (IS) emerging, al-Qaeda – which once forged the path for global Islamist militancy – is struggling to maintain its relevance and support base. Why? al-Qaeda: a one-hit wonder?Following the 9/11 attacks, al-Qaeda became the incontestable embodiment of global jihad. The “War on Terror” and the corresponding scramble by many Western states to proof themselves against this “new” brand of terrorism was stark testament to this status.Since 9/11, al-Qaeda and its affiliates have failed to reproduce an event that shook the international order in a similar manner. Despite assassinating prominent political figures, killing Westerners en masse in Muslim countries and occasionally inflicting a bloody nose on the US military, al-Qaeda was impotent when it came to striking the Western “far enemy” on its home turf. During this time, al-Qaeda’s propaganda output was hit and miss. While it was able to produce E-zines like the infamous Inspire, it never really comfortably transitioned to the new generation of social networking and media technology emerging in the late 2000s. al-Qaeda videos were often either tedious, droning academic sermons on esoteric Islamic legalisms, or cheaply produced attempts at machismo.Perhaps more damning was the lack of progression in the vision conceptualised by al-Qaeda’s Islamist intelligentsia. While it made a international nuisance of itself with sporadic terrorist attacks, al-Qaeda never transitioned to the territorialisation necessary for creating the Islamic state it purported to pursue.

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This was actually hard-coded into the basic concept of al-Qaeda’s self-image. It never saw itself as an instrument of governance. Instead, it took on the role of an “inciter in chief” whose actions would inspire the global Muslim community to rise up and form a state based on the tenets of the pious ancestors and the first community.However, al-Qaeda’s inability to foment global Islamic revolution in such a manner – while offering no alternative – has proved less than inspiring for those who support the idea of an Islamist state.

A swing and a miss Al-Qaeda’s fortunes appeared to be changing in 2012. A secular-nationalist uprising in Mali’s north by disaffected Tuaregs was quickly hijacked by an Islamist coalition. Among its strongest members were al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and its splinter group, the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO).Together with the local Islamist group, Ansar Dine, this motley crew quickly imposed sharia law and began governing a new Islamic state. It seemed as if Osama bin Laden’s vision might be taking shape, albeit in a rather different geographical locale than was predicted.But Operation Serval quickly reversed this success. The decisive French intervention in Mali in January 2013 routed AQIM and its allies. It pushed the survivors into Mali’s remote northeastern Ifoghas mountain range. Brief calls on various jihadist internet forums to mobilise in support of the collapsing Islamic state petered out within days. No-one wanted to fight on a losing side.

Problem child, prodigal son After its messy public split from al-Qaeda in 2014, IS quickly established itself as its own entity with its own style. Its rapid successes in Syria and Iraq stood in stark contrast to al-Qaeda’s efforts at global jihad over the previous decade.IS’s progress grasped the imagination of many onlookers and drew tens of thousands of local and foreign recruits, as well as considerable private donations from regions like the Gulf.IS’s declaration of a caliphate in June 2014 showed a resolve to see its vision to fruition. While Ayman al-Zawahiri and al-Qaeda’s leadership waxed intellectual over the future of Islamic statehood, IS was getting down to the nitty gritty of governing.

The perception for many supporters of jihad is that while al-Qaeda barks, IS bites.This is far from the reality. While the Afghan-Pakistan centre of the al-Qaeda franchise seems increasingly inactive, affiliates like Syria’s Jabhat al-Nusra and Yemen’s al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) have long been engaged in brutal parochial struggles under the pretence of establishing an Islamic state. But while often showing prowess on the battlefield, neither has been able to market their struggles as effectively as IS.

Explaining Islamic State’s success IS has been incredibly savvy in its use of technology to broadcast a compelling narrative that simultaneously serves to motivate supporters and intimidate opponents. IS’s media is slickly produced and shot in high definition. Cuts and pacing are often reminiscent of modern, gritty action movies. It also places great emphasis on the emotional appeal of its media, rather than presenting arguments rationalised primarily through long lectures of Islamic jurisprudence. Given the typically young age of most of its recruits, this is a logical choice. Like many traditional military recruitment advertisements, which also tend to target youth, IS promises excitement and glory, stroking the egos of would-be jihadists with the prospect of adventure, camaraderie and social status.

IS’s recruitment ethos, relative to al-Qaeda, also highlights its comparative efficacy. Traditionally, admission to al-Qaeda has often been a long, drawn-out process that requires knowing the right people at the right time to open the right doors.In contrast, IS has embraced a far more egalitarian, open-door strategy. It uses social media extensively to provide pathways for those seeking to join up, as well as to groom other potential neophytes. IS’s social media platforms include widespread use of Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and Snapchat – to name but a few. Governments worldwide have struggled to

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establish effective policies to combat this strategy. The results so far have been less than inspiring.With a combination of progress, prowess and a healthy appreciation for the power of modern technology, IS currently appears to be stealing much of the oxygen used to keep the al-Qaeda flame alight. IS has rapidly gained affiliates in Libya, Egypt and even Nigeria. al-Qaeda appears to be in a state of contraction, typified most starkly by its inability to reign in IS.Whether this is an emergent trend – or just a historical aberration – remains to be seen. The effect of the Charlie Hedbo attack in January 2015 was sudden but short-lived. With Yemen in meltdown, it is impossible to say what the future holds for the currently unleashed AQAP.What seems assured is that al-Qaeda and IS will continue to struggle over the same pool of resources that comes with being seen to wear the global jihad crown.

The corruption of militant leaders Al Qaeda not only provoked the wrath of western countries against Muslim states by perpetrating the attacks of 9/11 but also incited sectarian violence and political rebellions within them. by Iftikhar Hussain Jazib April 17, 2015 Al Qaeda’s assassinated chief, Osama bin Laden, and its current amir (head), Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, were not known as religious personalities before the Afghan jihad. Both had received their formal education at secular institutions. Bin Laden had studied economics, business administration and civil engineering while Dr Zawahiri had studied medicine to become an eye surgeon. This lack of religious education coupled with the schizophrenic impact of the Afghan jihad was responsible for the radical interpretation of jihad and the subsequent creation of al Qaeda. Unfortunately, careless media coverage of terrorist attacks perpetrated by al Qaeda, wrongly created a religious perception of bin Laden and Dr Zawahiri for many aggrieved Muslims. Thus, al Qaeda became a big challenge for Muslim states/societies and various extremist groups joined it.

When al Qaeda hijacked planes and brought down the twin towers of the World Trade Centre, the international media was simultaneously showing celebrations over this attack in Palestine. The grievances of Palestinians are a cause of pain for Muslims globally; many groups and leaders have exploited the Palestine cause for their own political interests. Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein created hype over the same conflict and attacked Kuwait in 1990. All Arab states and their rulers turned against Saddam over this aggression but, interestingly, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was carried away by Saddam’s rhetoric. Arafat’s posture alienated him in the Arab world and many troubles were created for the Palestinians. In this situation, bin Laden offered the services of his fighters to the Saudi king against Saddam Hussein and expressed strong opposition to the deployment of US forces in Saudi Arabia. However, the Kingdom did not accept his offer and US forces were deployed to defend Saudi Arabia despite his opposition.

Against this backdrop, bin Laden, who was trying to stay relevant after the end of the Afghan war, geared up to win the hearts of the Arab masses. He launched a severe propaganda against the Arab monarchs and western civilisation. First he based his campaign in Sudan and then he moved to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan where many former Arab fighters and extremist groups joined him but no renowned Muslim scholar became his follower. When al Qaeda’s ideology materialised in the form of the 9/11 attacks, grand muftis, imams and ulema became vocal against al Qaeda, bin Laden and Dr Zawahiri. Many fatwas were issued against terrorism and suicide bombing but al Qaeda rejected them adamantly. Its leadership did not pay heed to such learned scholars who devoted their lives to the learning and teaching of Islam and al Qaeda continued with its war hysteria and narrow minded interpretations of jihad.

As has already been mentioned, bin Laden and Zawahiri received a secular education. Their role and achievements in jihad did not qualify them as Islamic scholars. Therefore, their

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insistence on their own jihadi edicts was wrong. It is pertinent to mention the golden example set by Khalid bin Walid, who was a great warrior and general of the first Muslim army. He was known as the sword of Allah and was dismissed from service by Caliph Omer in the midst of a war. He obeyed his ruler and accepted this decision without protest. Terrorist leaders are always quoting Khalid bin Walid in their sermons but, unfortunately, they have learned nothing from him.

The Afghan jihad was waged under Muslim states. After the end of the jihad the rebellions against these states were religiously wrong but bin Laden misguided and exploited Arab fighters for his terrorist activities. Wrongly conceived and organised by bin Laden and Zawahiri, al Qaeda proved disastrous for Muslim countries.

The Muslim countries of North Africa and the Middle East are currently in chaos and al Qaeda’s deadly strategy is solely responsible for the woes of their masses. This organisation not only provoked the wrath of western countries against Muslim states by perpetrating the attacks of 9/11 but also incited sectarian violence and political rebellions within them. As a result, Mauritania, Somalia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Iraq and Syria are in political and social ruins. This state of affairs only marginalised Muslim countries in international politics further and Muslims have become weaker in terms of military power and capability.

This group brought only evil to Islam and Muslims and, unfortunately, some Muslim scholars have become victims of its apparent deception. Such sympathisers must open their eyes and realise that Zawahiri and his associates are not religious personalities and that al Qaeda, its franchises and affiliates are not an option to address the grievances of Muslims.To further clarify this point and strengthen the argument on the non-religious nature of terrorist movements, some facts are presented about the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is an al Qaeda affiliate in Pakistan. The term talib, plural Taliban, meaning student, was coined to indicate the incomplete education of these terrorists. Therefore, the TTP hardly had such persons in its ranks that had even completed the Dars-e-Nizami, the basic religious course taught at Deoband madrassas (seminaries). Its intellectual hollowness can be simply gauged from the fact that the TTP founder, Baitullah Mehsud, and his successor, Hakimullah Mehsud, did not use a religious title at all. TTP Chief Mullah Fazlullah is a matriculate and he was working as a lift operator in Swat before becoming a militant. He is using the title of mullah wrongly as he never finished his madrassa education. Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JA) chief Omer Khorasani is also a matriculate and previously worked as a blacksmith. He has not used a religious title so far, which speaks about his lack of Islamic education itself. Mangal Bagh, the commander of the Lashkar-e-Islam, received no Islamic education and he worked as a bus conductor formerly. This lack of religious education and corruption makes the TTP a syndicate of criminals, robbers and drug peddlers. It is involved in crimes like robbery, kidnapping for ransom, smuggling of weapons/ammunition and other commodities, narcotics trafficking, extortions from the business community, financial frauds and murder. The group does not spare even madrassas as it is collecting extortion from them, rendering them cash strapped. All of these activities are plain crimes but, ironically, TTP leaders justify themselves in the name of jihad and Islam. The TTP is not alone in this corruption and criminality. Al Qaeda’s other splinters, affiliates and offshoots are also involved in crimes. Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Boko Haram in Nigeria show the same criminal character. In the light of these facts and arguments, we must realise that al Qaeda, IS and TTP leaders are not religious personalities and scholars of Islam, and that their edicts about terrorism and suicide bombings are religiously wrong. Every Muslim should reject them without any hesitation and should only follow mainstream ulema and Islamic scholars, who oppose terrorist movements and project the real teachings of Islam. The writer is a freelance columnist and tweets at radiant_j_007

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Former diplomat details the rise of ISIS in lecture on Middle East Retired U.S. diplomat Rick Roberts addresses the audience Monday night at the First United Methodist Church. A specialist in the Middle East, Roberts gave an hourlong presentation titled "A Diplomatic Perspective on the Middle East." Posted: Thursday, April 16, 2015 4:00 am Former diplomat details the rise of ISIS in lecture on Middle East By Eric Swanson The Ada News theadanews.com Defeating the Islamic State group won’t be easy, but limiting the extremists’ ability to recruit new members will help, former U.S. diplomat Rick Roberts said Monday.“They’re trying to shut that down,” he said, referring to ISIS’ opponents. “The United States has been active in it. Other countries are being active in trying to shut down all those avenues so they can’t get that message out to people.” He said countries fighting the Islamic State, or ISIS, can hasten its collapse by cutting off the group’s access to money and social media, which would hurt the group’s ability to attract new members.

A specialist on the Middle East, Roberts provided an overview of the region and its problems during a presentation at the First United Methodist Church. More than 20 people attended the hourlong event, titled “A Diplomatic Perspective on the Middle East.”Roberts said the United States has long-standing business and cultural ties to the Middle East that date back to 1787, when Morocco was the first country to recognize the United States as an independent, sovereign nation. He added that the United States signed a treaty with Morocco in 1787 — the Treaty of Peace and Friendship — that is still in force today.“There’s not another country that can claim that,” he said. Roberts said American missionaries started visiting the Middle East in the 19th century, proselytizing and visiting the Holy Land. Archaeologists soon followed, further strengthening the bonds between the United States and the Middle East The Middle East’s status as an oil-rich region reinforced the United States’ business and political interests in the area.The rise of Daesh Roberts referred to the Islamic State as Daesh, which is an acronym of the group’s full Arabic name, al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi al-Iraq wa al-Sham. He said he favored Daesh over the terms “Islamic State” or “The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant” because the group hates the phrase.“They really don’t like being called Daesh because they want to brand themselves as the Islamic State,” he said. “They want people to think Islam when you talk about them and what they’re doing. That is their protective covering. That is their identity.”Roberts said Daesh’s primary goal is to establish a caliphate — a government ruled by a caliph — in the Middle East. The group is headed by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, an Iraqi native who led a fairly quiet life until the United States invaded Iraq in 2003 and overthrew Saddam Hussein. Following the invasion, al-Baghdadi joined the al-Qaida in Iraq terrorist group, where he was heavily influenced by the group’s leader, Osama bin Laden.Bin Laden was never in Iraq, and the task of leading al-Qaida in Iraq fell to a Jordanian man named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Roberts said. Al-Zarqawi was killed in an American airstrike in 2006, creating a vacancy in the group’s top ranks. Abu Bakr joined forces with a colleague, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, and tried to take over the reins of al-Qaida in Iraq.“They were pushed back against,” Roberts said. “(Ayman) al-Zawahiri, who replaced Osama bin Laden when he was killed, objected to their techniques. Even at that time, they were already starting to show what we now know as the Daesh techniques of extreme violence.”Al-Zawahiri succeeded in pushing Abu Bakr out of al-Qaida, but he later replaced Abu Omar as the leader of another organization known as the Islamic State of Iraq — part of an umbrella group of terrorist factions. The organization moved out of Iraq and into Syria, which was in the midst of civil war. Roberts said the Islamic State of Iraq tried to work with another

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extremist group, but that didn’t work. Then the organization tried to launch al-Qaida in Syria, but al-Qaida didn’t want anything to do with the new group. That series of events led to the formation of Daesh. Roberts said Abu Bakr went further than most extremists in June 2014, when he declared himself a caliph — the spiritual and political leader of the Sunni Muslim world. “No one has ever had the temerity to do that,” Roberts said. “There has not been a true caliph in more than 1,000 years.”

He said Daesh wants to restore the old Umayyad caliphate from roughly 1,000 years ago, which was based in Damascus, Syria, and stretched from the Middle East into Europe and parts of central Asia. The Umayyad caliphate represented the height of Islamic civilization at the time. “There was no power in the world, frankly, at that time 1,000 years ago that could challenge the Muslims,” Roberts said. “This was their golden age. This is what they’re striving for, and this is what Abu Bakr thinks he’s going to re-establish.”A true caliph must belong to the prophet Muhammad’s tribe, be an adult male and demonstrate moral integrity, Roberts said. He said Abu Bakr meets the first two requirements, but his claims to moral and mental integrity are open to debate.A true caliph must also be able to force people to comply with the law — or his interpretation of the law — which is why Abu Bakr needs to establish a caliphate, Roberts said.“That’s why this is really important that they get and hold territory,” he said.Roberts said Daesh is trying to establish Islamic law, also known as Sharia law, in the Middle East. But he added that most Muslims do not support the organization.“The only Muslims who support Daesh are the members of Daesh,” he said. “To the rest of the Islamic world, this is anathema.”

Regards Cees: “You cannot defeat an enemy you do not admit exists,” Flynn Late Feb. The respected general tells Congress it’s time to launch—and fund—a war that will last generations. Authorize the use of military force against ISIS? “According to every metric of significance, Islamic extremism has grown over the last year,” said retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn Friday, in remarks submitted to the House Armed Services Committee which were obtained by The Daily Beast. “We are at war with violent and extreme Islamists (both Sunni and Shia) and we must accept and face this reality.”

Al-Qaida has grown exponentially in recent years, retired four-star Army Gen. Jack Keane said 1.On Fox News Sunday Feb. 1,2015 host Chris Wallace asked Keane if the administration has a strategy to combat Islamic extremism. Keane said, "We do not. Al-Qaida has grown fourfold in five years. ISIS, which began when we pulled out politically and military from Iraq, grew from an organization less than 3,000 to an organization over 30,000 in three years. Radical Islamists spread from Western Africa through the Middle East, all the way to South Asia to sub-Indian continent." Keane first mentioned the fact that al-Qaida has quadrupled since 2010 in testimony before the Senate Armed Services committee last week. We wondered if it was accurate. The short answer is maybe, depending on your definition. Under this broad definition, Johnson said Keane’s claim that al-Qaida has grown fourfold since 2010 -- while impossible to verify -- is probably accurate. "Fourfold is probably an underestimate," added Frederick Kagan, director of the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats project

1 http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/feb/01/jack-keane/retired-general-says-al-qaida-has-grown-fourfold-l/

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16 April 2015, Now we’ve seen, despite the vociferous assertions from the Obama administration that the war on terror is over, that Al-Qaida is on the run 2 — he said that I think 32 times during his election in 2012, even assuring us in the State of the Union that the shadow of crisis has passed and we’ve turned the page on terror, and that his expert military and diplomatic leadership has made the world a safer place. Secretary of State John Kerry said exactly the same thing, none of which is true. He was directly contradicted by his own Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. Clapper, who said when the final accounting is done, 2014 will have been the most lethal year for global terrorism in the 45 years such data has been compiled. Stephen Hayes, who you had speaking last night, broke that story, that the former Director of Defense Intelligence Agency, Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, said while the administration was saying Al-Qaida was on the run, the DIA was telling the President the exact opposite. Al-Qaida was growing. But that didn’t fit into the presidential campaign narrative, so they lied to the American public.

In the 14 years since the 9/11 attacks 3, we have gone a long way down the road of intellectually and morally disarming in order to appease the cultural jihadists, who are increasingly aggressive in asserting their right to define how the rest of us think and talk.Second, it is the case that, in an extraordinarily dangerous pattern, our intelligence system has been methodically limited and manipulated to sustain false narratives while suppressing or rejecting facts and analysis about those who would kill us. For example, there is clear evidence the American people have been given remarkably misleading analysis about al-Qaeda based on a very limited translation and publication of about 24 of the 1.5 million documents captured in the Bin Laden raid. A number of outside analysts have suggested that the selective release of a small number of documents was designed to make the case that al-Qaeda was weaker. These outside analysts assert that a broader reading of more documents would indicate al-Qaeda was doubling in size when our government claimed it was getting weaker -- an analysis also supported by obvious empirical facts on the ground. Furthermore, there has been what could only be deliberate foot-dragging in exploiting this extraordinary cache of material.Both Lieutenant General Mike Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and Colonel Derek Harvey, a leading analyst of terrorism, have described the deliberately misleading and restricted access to the Bin Laden documents.

Obama's "Mission Accomplished?" Al Qaeda, "Decimated" and "On the Run" Stronger than Ever

2 http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/frontpagemag-com/michael-ramirez-on-the-power-of-editorial-cartoons/3 http://www.aina.org/news/20150326140734.htm

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