IS threat grows as 'caliphate' enters second year

IS threat grows as 'caliphate' enters second year By Rita Daou Beirut June 29, 2015

A year of the Islamic State group's 'caliphate' Beirut (AFP) June 29, 2015 - Main dates in the history of the Islamic State jihadist group's "caliphate" in Iraq and Syria, which it declared in late June 2014.

IS began as an Al-Qaeda offshoot, before disavowing the authority of that group's leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in 2013.

Jihadists from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), declare an "Islamic caliphate" across territory they have seized in Iraq and Syria.

They rebrand themselves the Islamic State (IS) and declare their chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi "caliph" and "leader for Muslims everywhere".

In Syria, the group has controlled Raqa province since January, the first provincial capital to fall from regime control, which becomes its stronghold.

In Iraq in June, the jihadists launch a lightning offensive in the northwest, seizing second city Mosul before sweeping across much of the Sunni Arab heartland bordering autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan. Tens of thousands of members of the Christian and Yazidi sect flee.

In a video released on social media, the hitherto elusive Baghdadi orders all Muslims to obey him.

US jets strike IS positions in northern Iraq, the first American military operation in the country since troops withdrew in late 2011.

In early September President Barack Obama vows to build "a broad, international coalition" to defeat IS.

IS says it has beheaded American journalist James Foley, who was seized in northern Syria in 2012, releasing a video of the incident, and saying it is in retaliation for the US air strikes in Iraq.

The group is accused of a reign of terror in its strongholds where it carries out arrests, beheadings and stonings.

IS is driven out of Kobane, Syria's third-largest Kurdish town on the border with Turkey, after more than four months of fierce fighting led by Kurdish forces backed by coalition air strikes.

This IS failure comes on the same day an Iraqi official says that country's eastern province of Diyala has been freed of the extremist group.

Iraqi authorities announce the "liberation" of Tikrit, the stronghold of former strongman Saddam Hussein, from IS after a weeks-long operation led by Iraqi soldiers and police and paramilitaries dominated by Shiite militias.

The battle for Tikrit was made easier by the fact that most of its 200,000 inhabitants had fled.

The jihadist group seizes full control of Syria's ancient city of Palmyra, putting the World Heritage site at risk of destruction.

IS suffers its biggest setback in Syria when Kurdish militia, backed by Syrian rebel forces, seize back full control of Tal Abyad, a key border town with Turkey and a crucial point in the jihadist supply lines.

Syrian Kurds and allied rebels capture the strategic town of Ain Issa after capturing the nearby Brigade 93 base.

The jihadists launch a surprise foray in and around Kobane, killing more than 200 civilians before Kurdish forces repel the attack three days later.

The Islamic State group's "caliphate" enters its second year Monday with the jihadists expanding their territory in Syria and Iraq and their global reach by claiming attacks in Tunisia and Kuwait.

The extremist group headed by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced on June 29, 2014 that it was reviving a form of Islamic government known as the "caliphate", pledging it would "remain and expand".

In the year since, it has gained more territory in Syria and Iraq despite an attempted fightback supported by a US-led coalition air campaign.

It has also attracted a string of affiliates -- in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan and elsewhere -- and sought to project fear on an international scale.

Last week, the group claimed responsibility for the attack in Tunisia in which 38 people, mostly foreign tourists, were killed at a seaside resort.

And it said it was behind a suicide bomb attack against a Shiite mosque in Kuwait that killed 26 people.

IS also appeared to be the inspiration for an attack in France in which a man rammed his van into a gas factory and beheaded his boss.

"It's not clear that these actions are centrally planned or coordinated by IS," said Yezid Sayegh, a senior associate at the Carnegie Middle East Centre think tank.

"That said, we may be seeing the start of a long campaign conducted by IS members or sympathisers who have been trained and then sent back home to their countries to take their own initiative in planning and conducting attacks, depending on their abilities, resources, and opportunities."

The three attacks came days after IS spokesman Abu Mohamed al-Adnani urged supporters to seek "martyrdom" during the holy fasting month of Ramadan.

IS has inspired fear and horror with its rule over territory in Syria and Iraq, where mass killings and brutal executions have become its hallmarks.

The group controls about 50 percent of Syria's territory, though much of it is uninhabited, and perhaps a third of Iraq.

In Syria alone, it has executed more than 3,000 people in the year since announcing its "caliphate," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said on Sunday.

They include more than 200 people killed in the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobane during an IS attack last week, and over 900 members of the Sunni Muslim Shaitat tribe who were killed in 2014 after opposing the jihadist group.

There are no reliable figures in Iraq, but the group is believed to have executed thousands there, including as many as 1,700 mostly Shiite recruits at the Speicher military base near Tikrit.

Thousands more have died battling IS in Syria and Iraq, including Syrian rebels and government forces, Kurdish fighters in both countries, and Iraqi government troops and Shiite militias.

But few of those forces have had much success against the group, with the Iraqi army in particular facing criticism for abandoning territory to IS during a push by the jihadist group in mid-2014.

Iraqi government forces have "no clear command structure," said Zaid al-Ali, author of "The Struggle For Iraq's Future".

"Clearly Baghdad should have enough forces at its disposal to control territory, but not all the anti-IS forces take their instructions from Baghdad," he added.

In Syria, only Kurdish forces backed by the US-led coalition have been able to effectively tackle the group, with analysts saying opposition forces and the regime appear to lack the weapons or the resolve to fight the jihadists.

Even the anti-IS coalition, which is carrying out air strikes in Syria and Iraq and training Iraqi troops on the ground, has had limited success.

It has helped ground forces push IS from Kobane and Tal Abyad in Syria, and Tikrit and Diyala province in Iraq.

But the group has continued to score shocking victories, including the recent capture of Syria's ancient town of Palmyra and the taking of the Iraqi city of Ramadi in mid-May.

"The international mobilisation against Daesh has been minimal," said Sayegh, using the Arabic acronym for the group.

"But it may be that they cannot do more, because the return of 150,000 US troops to the battlefield is out of the question."

Ultimately analysts say IS's success is as much the result of political problems as it is military shortcomings.

IS has emerged because of "the failure of Syria and Iraq and the sectarian divisions in them, as well as corruption and decades of authoritarian rule," Sayegh said.

UNESCO condemns 'barbaric' IS attacks on heritage sites Berlin (AFP) June 29, 2015 - The UN cultural organisation Monday condemned the "barbaric assaults" the Islamic State group has launched on World Heritage sites in Iraq and Syria, saying they may amount to war crimes.

Meeting in Bonn, Germany, UNESCO delegates said the IS attacks on sites such as Iraq's ancient city of Hatra recalled the "mindless destruction" by other Islamist extremists in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, in Mali's Timbuktu and elsewhere.

The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization said "intentional attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes and historic monuments may amount to war crimes".

In April, the IS group released a video in which militants can be seen using rifles and sledgehammers to destroy artefacts at Hatra. Earlier the militants also damaged the site of Iraq's ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud and destroyed dozens of pieces from the museum in Mosul.

The UN body also expressed its "deep concern" that IS militants could destroy the World Heritage site of Palmyra in Syria, which they captured in May and have extensively mined.

UNESCO said that World Heritage sites in conflict-torn Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Syria and Yemen also faced heightened threats through "illegal excavations, organised looting and trafficking of cultural objects".

UNESCO stressed it denounces the destruction and looting of cultural objects "used as a tactic of war and as a source to fund terrorism", calling for steps against the illegal trade of antiquities and heritage objects from conflict areas.

UNESCO is meeting in Bonn for its 39th committee session until July 8 and will consider at least 36 natural and cultural sites vying to get World Heritage status.

ø having a party.

Not bad for a JV Team........................

3 posted on 06/30/2015 10:08:26 AM PDT by Red Badger (Man builds a ship in a bottle. God builds a universe in the palm of His hand.............)

IS took ground quickly and dramatically killed a number of people. But holding ground and running a caliphate among a population who would rather have you dead is their next challenge. They’re losing personnel, ground and hardware in many areas.

According to Dr. Bill Warner, it took only too 25 years for Mohammad to conquer Christian Egypt, Syria and Turkey.

The Islamification of any area happens quickly because they do not mind using force, death and other means to gain their ends.

They don’t care because they are suicidal obviously, but tons of them have died, when recruits go there from the former USSR, USA, China or where ever, they are cannon fodder.

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