Posted on 04/20/2015 5:10:42 AM PDT by elhombrelibre
Aloof. Polite. Cajoling. Extremely attentive. Restrained. Dishonest. Inscrutable. Malicious. The rebels from northern Syria, remembering encounters with him months later, recall completely different facets of the man. But they agree on one thing: "We never knew exactly who we were sitting across from."
In fact, not even those who shot and killed him after a brief firefight in the town of Tal Rifaat on a January morning in 2014 knew the true identity of the tall man in his late fifties. They were unaware that they had killed the strategic head of the group calling itself "Islamic State" (IS). The fact that this could have happened at all was the result of a rare but fatal miscalculation by the brilliant planner. The local rebels placed the body into a refrigerator, in which they intended to bury him. Only later, when they realized how important the man was, did they lift his body out again.
Samir Abd Muhammad al-Khlifawi was the real name of the Iraqi, whose bony features were softened by a white beard. But no one knew him by that name. Even his best-known pseudonym, Haji Bakr, wasn't widely known. But that was precisely part of the plan. The former colonel in the intelligence service of Saddam Hussein's air defense force had been secretly pulling the strings at IS for years. Former members of the group had repeatedly mentioned him as one of its leading figures. Still, it was never clear what exactly his role was.
(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...
"In 2003, the Damascus regime was panicked that then-US President George W. Bush, after his victory over Saddam Hussein, would have his troops continue into Syria to topple Assad as well. Thus, in the ensuing years, Syrian intelligence officials organized the transfer of thousands of radicals from Libya, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia to al-Qaida in Iraq. Ninety percent of the suicide attackers entered Iraq via the Syrian route. A strange relationship developed between Syrian generals, international jihadists and former Iraqi officers who had been loyal to Saddam -- a joint venture of deadly enemies, who met repeatedly to the west of Damascus."
"At the time, the primary aim was to make the lives of the Americans in Iraq hell. Ten years later, Bashar Assad had a different motive to breathe new life into the alliance: He wanted to sell himself to the world as the lesser of several evils. Islamist terror, the more gruesome the better, was too important to leave it up to the terrorists. The regime's relationship with Islamic State is -- just as it was to its predecessor a decade prior -- marked by a completely tactical pragmatism. Both sides are trying to use the other in the assumption that it will emerge as the stronger power, able to defeat the discrete collaborator of yesterday. Conversely, IS leaders had no problem receiving assistance from Assad's air force, despite all of the group's pledges to annihilate the apostate Shiites. Starting in January 2014, Syrian jets would regularly -- and exclusively -- bomb rebel positions and headquarters during battles between IS and rebel groups."
They’re not interested in negotiating with you. They’re interested in killing you. That’s all.
While I agree with you, the article isn’t about negotiations. The article is worth reading for understanding ISIS background and how it emerged. It also reveals well enough Assad’s duplicity with ISIS and al Qaeda.
“Islam was spread from Spain to Persia in one century”? typo?
So Assad created ISIS so they would eventually overthrow him?
Aloof. Polite. Cajoling. Extremely attentive. Restrained. Dishonest. Inscrutable. Malicious.
I just thought those were words we shouldn’t use
about Hillary!.
OK, add them to the list.
No, he created them to kill Americans, which they and their allies, al Qaeda, did in Iraq. It’s really well known. Did you read the article? Oh, I know you didn’t. You just show up with your routine support for anti-American dictators like Putin and Assad.
No kidding. Wicked minds think alike.
Sounds like der.Bullshite.
ISIS has been even more effective (given the much shorter timeframe) than al-Qaeda at motivating jihadist jerkoffs to leave where they’re living and feed themselves to the guns in the Middle East and Africa. If it weren’t for ISIS, those crap-heads would be somewhere near many of us, seething and ticking down to detonation. Thanks GOPJ.
Nope. It took 800 years to eject them from Spain. The Reconquest was completed in 1492, making it feasible for Ysabel and Ferdinand to bankroll Columbus.
Exactly.
Sorry. Islam did NOT start in Spain.
Sounds like the level of intellect you operate at.
No one has said it did. Islam spread by conquest (stretching) from Spain to Persia in under a century.
No typo. It spread, commma, (from Spain to Persia), comma, in one century.
For the compressed text visual nature of a meme, I don’t feel long explanations are preferable. A certain level of knowledge of history is assumed.
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