Eye on Extremism - February 26, 2016

Eye on Extremism February 26, 2016 Fiscal Times: ISIS Marches Towards Libya’s Oil Crescent, Despite US Air Strikes “The Islamic State (ISIS) is taking on recruits faster than anyone can keep up with, and it’s heading towards Libya’s oil crescent, eyeing billions of barrels that a country at war with itself cannot protect—even with U.S. air strikes. In mid-December, the United Nations brokered a power-sharing agreement between Libya’s rival factions, but there is no chance of implementing this. That means there is no chance that the Libyan government can fight back the advance of ISIS. Things are about to get messy, and U.S. air strikes will put only a small dent in a big problem.” AFP: Syria Facing 'Crucial Day' As Ceasefire Deadline Looms “The UN's Syria envoy said the war-battered country is facing a ‘crucial day’ ahead of a deadline of midnight Friday for a partial truce brokered by Moscow and Washington. President Bashar al-Assad's regime and Syria's top opposition grouping have said they will abide by the ceasefire plan, but it has been plagued by doubts after the failure of previous peace efforts. The deal -- which excludes the Islamic State jihadist group and other extremists -- marks the biggest diplomatic push yet to help end Syria's violence.” CNN: Why The Most Dangerous Group In Syria Isn't ISIS “Hardly a day goes by without news of the progress being made in the war on ISIS in Iraq and Syria. In recent months, American-backed forces have secured much of the Syrian-Turkish border, recaptured Ramadi, and stemmed the flow of fighters and supplies to the terror group's capital cities of Raqqa and Mosul. But momentum is not the same as winning, and the U.S. has fallen into a number of traps in Iraq and Syria -- the most deadly of which has been set by al Qaeda. Jabhat al-Nusra, al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, is more dangerous than ISIS -- and while the two groups share the common goal of establishing a global caliphate, they are using different means to achieve it.” Reuters: Turkey Says Syria Ceasefire Is Not Binding If It Threatens Security “Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Thursday that Turkey would not be bound by the Syrian ceasefire plan if its security was threatened, and would take "necessary measures" against the Syrian Kurdish YPG and Islamic State if needed. The ceasefire process, initiated by Russia and the United States, could be complicated by NATO member Turkey's deep distrust of the Washington-backed Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, which controls territory in northern Syria near the Turkish border.” Reuters: U.S. Sees Capture Of Syria Town Key To Destroying ISIS “U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter told Congress on Thursday that the expected capture of the Syrian town of al-Shadadi would represent a key step toward dismantling ISIS in Syria. ‘By encircling and taking this town, we are seeking to sever the last major northern artery between Raqqa and Mosul, and ultimately dissect the parent tumor into two parts,’ Carter said in prepared remarks to the House Appropriations Committee.” Fox News: Israel Blasts Iran's New Cash-For-Terrorists Scheme Aimed At Rewarding Families Of 'Martyrs' “Iran’s new cash-incentive plan for ‘martyrs’ who strike in Jerusalem is proof the Islamic Republic intends to spend billions reaped in the recent nuclear deal on terrorism, Israeli officials told FoxNews.com Thursday. Already identified as the world’s top state sponsor of terrorism, Iran will now pay the equivalent of $7,000 ‘to every family of a martyr of the intifada in Jerusalem,’ Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon said Wednesday at a news conference in Beirut.” Al Jazeera: Syria: Under Russia's Fist “Since September 30, 2015, Russia has been carrying out air strikes in Syria in support of its ally President Bashar al-Assad. The campaign has been relentless and growing in intensity, with Russian jets flying 444 combat sorties against more than 1,500 targets between February 10 and 16 alone. Moscow insists these attacks have been aimed only at fighters from ISIL and other ‘terrorist groups’ such as al-Nusra Front.” Voice Of America: Israel: Security Guard 'Seriously Injured' In Palestinian Stabbing Attack “Israeli police say a security guard at a shopping center was ‘seriously injured’ in a stabbing incident suspected to be a Palestinian attack. Police said in a statement Friday they were called to a shopping center in the West Bank Maaleh Adumim settlement where they found a guard lying on the ground with multiple stab wounds. The statement said it appears the incident was a Palestinian "nationalist-motivated attack." Police said the attacker fled the scene and a search is under way.” New York Times: U.S. Plans To Put Advisers On Front Lines Of Nigeria’s War On Boko Haram “The Pentagon is poised to send dozens of Special Operations advisers to the front lines of Nigeria’s fight against the West African militant group Boko Haram, according to military officials, the latest deployment in conflicts with the Islamic State and its allies. Their deployment would push American troops hundreds of miles closer to the battle that Nigerian forces are waging against an insurgency that has killed thousands of civilians in the country’s northeast as well as in neighboring Niger, Chad and Cameroon. By some measures, Boko Haram is the world’s deadliest terrorist group.” New York Times: Apple Goes To Court, And F.B.I. Presses Congress To Settle Iphone Privacy Fight “The legal wrangling over a federal court order requiring Apple to help law enforcement break into an iPhone intensified Thursday, with the company filing its formal response and asking the court to drop its demand. Other technology companies — Microsoft, Google, Twitter, Facebook and Yahoo — also moved to throw their weight behind Apple in court. The companies said they planned to file one or more briefs backing Apple next week in federal court in California.” BuzzFeed News: Inside The Obama Administration’s Attempt To Bring Tech Companies Into The Fight Against ISIS “They flew in from New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles to hole up in a windowless DC conference room for nearly five hours on Wednesday — representatives of the country’s top tech and entertainment companies brainstorming with U.S. counterterrorism officials to tackle one tough question: how to stop the spread of ISIS online. The goal is a relatively uncontroversial one. The militant Islamist group has developed a keen propaganda machine and tech companies like Twitter have been going after accounts run by their supporters.” ABC News: Experts Skeptical Of 'ISIS' Threats To Facebook, Twitter Founders “A group of pro-ISIS hackers this week threatened the founders of the world's largest social media sites, Facebook and Twitter, by posting a video online showing the faces of cyber CEOs Marc Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey riddled with computer-generated machine gun bullets, though experts and officials haven’t given too much weight such threats.” United States Business Insider: The Man Who Interviewed Bin Laden Explains Why Americans Join ISIS “ISIS, perhaps more than any other multinational terrorist group, has become known for its ability to attract Westerners away from their comfortable lives in prosperous countries and into the dangerous world of violent jihad. Peter Bergen, who was the first journalist to interview Osama bin Laden on television and has written five books on terrorism, explored what attracts Americans to radical Islam in his new book, ‘The United States of Jihad.’” CNN: House Intel Committee Blasts Pentagon Over ISIS Files “The Republican-led House intelligence committee wants the Pentagon to provide what it believes are illegally deleted intelligence files pertaining to the U.S. military campaign against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Committee Chairman Devin Nunes of California blasted the Pentagon, citing the allegations that classified intelligence files and emails about the war on ISIS were deleted.” Middle East Eye: Muslim Brotherhood Labelled 'Terrorist' By US Politicians “US politicians have taken the first step to outlaw the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation, after a Congressional committee passed a bill describing it as a ‘global threat’. The House of Representatives' judiciary committee passed the ‘Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act of 2015,’ which says the group's aim is to destroy Western civilisation ‘from within’. The bill's author, Republican congressman Mario Diaz-Balart, said: ‘The United States must recognise and sanction the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization as part of our national security strategy.’” Turkey Reuters: Kurdish Solidarity In Turkey's Restive Southeast Frustrates Its Syria Policy “In a public cemetery next to a military air base in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast, flags of a Syrian Kurdish militia are draped over many of the tombstones. Death notices posted online by the People's Protection Units (YPG), a key U.S. ally in the fight against Islamic State in north Syria, show about half of those killed on its front lines in the last three months alone were Turkish-born. Sertip Celik, a student in the Mediterranean town of Iskenderun, was one of thousands of Turkish Kurds to cross into Syria and join the fight against Islamic State, answering a call to arms by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged an insurgency against Turkey for three decades.” Iraq Voice Of America: 15 Killed In Twin Bombings At Shi'ite Mosque In Iraq “Two suicide bombers killed 15 people at a Shi'ite mosque in Baghdad Thursday, Iraqi security officials said. Four of the dead were members of the security forces and 48 more people were injured, authorities said. The first assailant detonated the bomb inside the mosque.  The second assailant blew himself up when security forces arrived at the site of the initial blast. No group has claimed responsibility for the bombing in the predominantly Shia neighborhood of Shula but the Islamic State group often targets Shi'ite Muslims.” Newsweek: How Iraqi Forces Drove ISIS From Ramadi “It was not easy. More than 40 special forces troops and several hundred regular Iraqi army soldiers were killed in this latest battle for Ramadi. Special forces commanders say they killed around 130 ISIS fighters in the city and that about 180 civilians were killed in retaking the city—most by ISIS snipers and explosives laid by the group. As Iraqi troops approached the city late last year, ISIS detonated trucks packed with tons of explosives on bridges across the Euphrates River to keep the troops from advancing.” Middle East Associated Press: Many ISIS Bombs Made From Commercially Available Parts, Report Finds “The Islamic State group relies on commercially available components for most of its bombs, with some parts coming from as far away as the United States and Japan, according to a report released Wednesday by a London-based arms research group. Conflict Armament Research says most components -- such as chemicals and detonators -- come from companies in Turkey and Iraq, which may not know the parts are being bought by the extremists. Many components are also used for civilian purposes, such as mining, making them relatively easy to get.” Business Insider: These Two ISIS Battles Could Change Everything In The Middle East “Two crucial battles against ISIS in the Middle East could change the balance of power in the region. Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, and Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, are both at risk. Exploiting the situation is America’s ally, Turkey, which is jeopardizing the US-led coalition in its fight against ISIS and creating further trouble between the West and Russia.” Libya Foreign Policy: Bombs Alone Won’t Beat The Islamic State In Libya “But such a limited military response is unlikely to achieve anything. Simply ramping up the intensity of Western military efforts won’t help either. Inflicting real damage on the Islamic State and restoring the government’s control over its territory will take a much more serious effort — but to succeed, it will need politics, not just bombs. The U.S. and the Europeans should develop a political strategy that involves the Libyans and answers the question of what will happen after the intervention ends.” BBC News: Libya Abuses: UN Report Documents Killings And Torture “Killings and torture are being committed with impunity by all sides in Libya, according to a UN report. Human rights violations carried out by armed groups battling for control of the country could amount to war crimes, the report says. Victims include detainees, journalists and human rights activists. Scores of people have been tortured and killed. Libya, fragmented since the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, now has rival militia-backed parliaments.” Nigeria International Business Times: Boko Haram Bombs Explode Accidentally At Nigeria Police Headquarters “A major explosion erupted at police headquarters in the northeastern Nigerian city of Yola in Adamawa state Thursday, killing four people and shattering windows blocks away. The bombs responsible for the blast belonged to Islamic militant group Boko Haram, but police said they detonated accidentally and were not planted, the Associated Press reported. ‘The bombs [that exploded] are among those retrieved from Boko Haram,’ Othman Abubakar, Adamawa State Police Command spokesman and deputy superintendent of police, told the news agency.”