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UN: Unprecedented Number of Foreign Jihadists Flock to Iraq, Syria


Rayzur
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Foreign jihadists flocking to Iraq and Syria on 'unprecedented scale' – UN

30 Oct 2014

UN report suggests decline of al-Qaida has yielded an explosion of jihadist enthusiasm for its even mightier successor organisations, chiefly Isis

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An image grab taken from a video released by Islamic State group's official Al-Raqqa site via YouTube. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Spencer Ackerman in New York

 

Thursday 30 October 2014 17.13 EDT

The United Nations has warned that foreign jihadists are swarming into the twin conflicts in Iraq and Syria on “an unprecedented scale” and from countries that had not previously contributed combatants to global terrorism.

A report by the UN security council, obtained by the Guardian, finds that 15,000 people have travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight alongside the Islamic State (Isis) and similar extremist groups. They come from more than 80 countries, the report states, “including a tail of countries that have not previously faced challenges relating to al-Qaida”.

The UN said it was uncertain whether al-Qaida would benefit from the surge. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaida who booted Isis out of his organisation, “appears to be maneuvering for relevance”, the report says.

The UN’s numbers bolster recent estimates from US intelligence about the scope of the foreign fighter problem, which the UN report finds to have spread despite the Obama administration’s aggressive counter-terrorism strikes and global surveillance dragnets.

“Numbers since 2010 are now many times the size of the cumulative numbers of foreign terrorist fighters between 1990 and 2010 – and are growing,” says the report, produced by a security council committee that monitors al-Qaida.

The UN report did not list the 80-plus countries that it said were the source of fighters flowing fighters into Iraq and Syria. But in recent months, Isis supporters have appeared in places as unlikely as the Maldives, and its videos proudly display jihadists with Chilean-Norwegian and other diverse backgrounds.

“There are instances of foreign terrorist fighters from France, the Russian Federation and and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland operating together,” it states. More than 500 British citizens are believed to have travelled to the region since 2011.

The UN report, an update on the spread of transnational terrorism and efforts to staunch it, validates the Obama administration’s claim that “core al-Qaida remains weak”. But it suggests that the decline of al-Qaida has yielded an explosion of jihadist enthusiasm for its even mightier successor organizations, chiefly Isis.

Those organisations are less interested in assaults outside their frontiers: “Truly cross-border attacks – or attacks against international targets – remain a minority,” the report assesses. But the report indicates that more nations than ever will face the challenge of experienced fighters returning home from the Syria-Iraq conflict.

Wading into a debate with legal implications for Barack Obama’s new war against Isis, the UN considers Isis “a splinter group” from al-Qaida. It considers an ideological congruence between the two groups sufficient to categorise them as part a broader movement, notwithstanding al-Qaida’s formal excommunication of Isis last February.

“Al-Qaida core and Isil pursue similar strategic goals, albeit with tactical differences regarding sequencing and substantive differences about personal leadership,” the UN writes, using a different acronym for Isis.

Leadership disputes between the organisations are reflected in the shape of their propaganda, the UN finds. A “cosmopolitan” embrace of social media platforms andinternet culture by Isis (“as when extremists post kitten photographs”) has displaced the “long and turgid messaging” from al-Qaida. Zawahiri’s most recent video lasted 55 minutes, while Isis members incessantly use Twitter, Snapchat, Kik, Ask.fm, a communications apparatus “unhindered by organisational structures”.

A “lack of social media message discipline” in Isis points to a leadership “that recognizes the terror and recruitment value of multichannel, multi-language social and other media messaging,” reflecting a younger and “more international” membership than al-Qaida’s various affiliates.

With revenues just from its oil smuggling operations now estimated at $1m daily, Isis controls territory in Iraq and Syria home to between five and six million people, a population the size of Finland’s. Bolstering Isis’s treasury is up to $45m in money from kidnapping for ransom, the UN report finds. Family members of Isis victim James Foley, an American journalist, have questioned the policy of refusing to pay ransoms, which US officials argue would encourage more kidnappings.

Two months of outright US-led war against Isis has suffered from a lack of proxy ground forces to take territory from Isis, as Obama has formally ruled out direct US ground combat. On Thursday at the Pentagon, General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the US has yet to even begin vetting Syrian rebels for potential inclusion in an anti-Isis army it seeks to muster in Syria. Dempsey encouraged the Iraqi government to directly arm Sunni tribes to withstand Isis’s advances through the western Anbar Province.

 

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As bombs start dropping in Syria and Iraq, the world is once again being asked to cower in fear of a shadowy terror group that most people hadn't heard of just a few months ago. But even the most cursory examination of ISIS's past, its connections, and the actors populating it reveal a very different story than the one we are being asked to believe in. Fake terrorists. Foreign backers. False flags. Meet the new boogeyman, same as the old boogeyman.

 

Who Is REALLY Behind ISIS?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LSIwvE0Nvo#t=3812

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Thanks Fly, looks interesting... I'll have to check it out more later...... If it goes where I think it will... I've no doubts that the (what I genuinely hope are) unintended consequences of past decisions made by those representing the US, led to fueling the fire and perhaps even creating ISIL for a specific purpose, with the intention they were under the control of whoever propagated  that purpose....

It almost seemed in the initial creation of the US led coalition, that many countries were basically saying in their absence, "you guys created this Frankenstein... you guys fix it... And thus the coalition of Arab countries led by the US was born....

 

However, it seems that early on, it occurred to many that Frankie is no longer under the control of anyone of the creators.. and has spun off into its own morphed purpose... of utter unmitigated  brutality that shocked even the creators... (well maybe the western ones... not so sure about some of the other players)... 

 

The coalition started to grow in support almost the same time, world leaders noticed that every sick whacko from their country as well as many impoverished countries, started showing up by the hundreds, absent any vetting, any process, any thing other than welcome here is a gun go forth and massacre because you can.

 

Whatever illusion of control "they" had or conspiracy peeps thought "they" had.... they no longer have... it has morphed as it would as anyone understanding the nature of what was created should have known... 

 

I think several other surprises landed in the laps of the "creators" of ISIS...

 

The world did not shrink in fear and instead stood up by the hundreds of thousands demanding that IF the agenda were to eliminate ISIS, then we should be targeting the thousands of them showing up in Kobane and Sinjar... The demand was so exceptional, that the once deemed not important or strategically significant city of Kobane has become now the showcase for US strikes of incredible symbolic significance.. as many of us knew it would...

 

The one thing I can not explain... or at least is very disappointing in implication..... is why the media is broadcasting critically significant information about the battle with ISIS all over the world EXCEPT in the US?!?!? Why?!?! Beyond conspiracy theories... what is the actual reason mainstream media... ANY media does not cover what is happening over there.... Why is there no mention of Turkey in US news?

Is the US really under that much control?? Cause if it is, we'd better be willing to accept that and then figure out what we want to do about that...and start standing up against whatever agenda it is that wants to control what we see or hear about the world such that we can be manipulated so easily.... Our entire news system is hostage to someone or something? Is the vast majority of those elected on both sides of the aisle paid off, or just stupid... I think it would be an interesting experiment for us to write out Senators and ask a very simple question: What is your position about Turkey's participation in Inherent Resolve.... and just see what kind of answers come back... Therein we could probably answer the question of bribe or stupid.....

 

In the meantime it might be interesting to start digging as to ownership of the major news broadcasters and see if that shines any light on what's going on....  .

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Rayzur, it has always been known that the news media in the USA is under government control. The days of real news reporting is basically over. Gone are the days when reporters told the story as it was and as it happened without having to be politically correct as not to offend anyone or any country or religious zealots of sorts.

I agree wholeheartedly that if the USA is to survive the citizens of the USA must ask the questions and not be satisfied with a canned answer. Just my two cents.

Thanks for the great news as always. :salute:

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Thanks Rayzur...I say just set back and let as many as these idiots as possible crowd in to get a visual of their movement and when ya get enough fat on the Hog, slaughter it...These individuals aint the sharpest knife in the drawer...everyone of them are two cans short of a six-pack...just ''Hide n Watch'' then react...

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You’re welcome I guess, sorry…the intent was not to pick sides, rather to draw away from the world’s distractions, in place to preoccupy the mind from a more important issue facing all mankind today. The Kings have had their day, their reward received in full, time to let go of poisonous deceptions overflowing the mind with corruption as to why we are here. Time now is to seek change, and not with a new thinking that the world needs to change, rather by honestly listening to ones heart, seek out loving guidance and learn to change the how we view the world.

 

Love’s not to be feared, it’s imagining Your life is beautiful knowing it will come to you.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yz_iEwOWj0A   

Edited by Fly
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