BAGHDAD (AP) — The dimly-lit, dust-caked stacks of the Baghdad National Library hide a treasure of the ages: crinkled, yellowing papers holding the true stories of sultans and kings; imperialists and socialists; occupation and liberation; war and peace.

These are the original chronicles of Iraq's rich and tumultuous history — and now librarians and academics in Baghdad are working feverishly to preserve what's left after thousands of documents were lost or damaged at the height of the U.S.-led invasion.

As Islamic State militants set out to destroy Iraq's history and culture, including irreplaceable books and manuscripts kept in the militant-held city of Mosul, a major preservation and digitization project is underway in the capital to safeguard a millennium worth of history.

In darkrooms in the library's back offices, employees use specialized lighting to photograph some of the most-precious manuscripts. Mazin Ibrahim Ismail, the head of the microfilm department, said they're testing the process with documents from the Interior Ministry under Iraq's last monarch, Faisal II, who ruled from 1939 to 1958.

"Once restoration for some of the older documents from the Ottoman era, 200 to 250 years ago, is completed, we will begin to photograph those onto microfilm," Ismail said. He said the digital archives, which will not be made available immediately to the public, is more to ensure their content survive any future threat.

The restoration process is nothing short of microsurgery, and the type damage to each document is a story — and a puzzle — on its own. Some manuscripts are torn from overuse and aging; others are burned or stained from attack or sabotage. And then there are some that were completely fossilized over time — the combined result of moisture and scorching temperatures — looking instead like large rocks dug up from the earth.

"Those are the most difficult books to restore," said Fatma Khudair, the senior employee in the restoration department. "We apply steam using a specialized tool to try to loosen and separate the pages.

"Sometimes, we are able to save those books and then apply other restoration techniques, but with others, the damage is irreversible," she added.

Technicians sterilize manuscripts and documents for 48 hours, washing them of dust and other impurities that accumulated over time. Then, they go page by page using Japanese tissue, specialized paper for book conservation and restoration, to either fill in torn edges or layer the more-delicate documents with a sheer coating to make them more durable.

The Baghdad National Library, established by the British in 1920 on donations and first overseen by a Catholic priest, has weathered violent upheaval before. At the start of the 2003 U.S.-led occupation, when chaos gripped the capital, arsonists set fire to the library, destroying 25 percent of its books and some 60 percent of its archives, including priceless Ottoman records. Archives from 1977 to 2003 burned to ashes. Earlier archives from 1920 to 1977, including sensitive Interior Ministry documents, had been stored in rice bags and survived the blaze.

During "the invasion of Iraq, we had an alternative site for the most important books and documents at the Department of Tourism," said Jamal Abdel-Majeed Abdulkareem, acting director of Baghdad libraries and archives. "Then books and the important documents were exposed to water because the American tanks destroyed the water pipes and water leaked onto these important cultural materials."

Around 400,000 pages of documents — some dating back to the Ottoman period — and 4,000 rare books were damaged when the pipes broke. They included the library's precious Hebrew archives, most of which later were moved to Washington.

A team of experts from the Library of Congress visited Baghdad to help assess the damage and recommended building a new national library. More than a decade later, a state-of-the-art, 45,000-square-meter (484,380-square-foot) replacement by London-based AMBS Architects is scheduled to open next year.

Until then, the Baghdad National Library is looking to help those in conflict-ridden areas enjoy and appreciate Iraqi culture. Library officials say that sharing Iraqi art and literature is key to combatting terrorism. In recent months, the library donated some 2,500 books to libraries in Iraq's Diyala province after Iraqi forces recaptured towns there from Islamic State militants.

The militants "want history to reflect their own views instead of the way it actually happened," Abdulkareem said. "So when an area is liberated, we send them books to replenish whatever was stolen or destroyed, but also, so that Iraqis in this area have access to these materials so they can always feel proud of their rich history."

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Follow Vivian Salama on Twitter at www.twitter.com/vmsalama .

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ANKARA (Reuters) - Eighteen Turkish journalists have been charged with spreading terrorist propaganda for publishing a photo of a legal official held at gunpoint by far-left militants in March, local media said, heightening concerns about Turkey's press freedom record.

Prosecutors have asked for jail terms of up to 7 1/2 years each for staff from nine newspapers, accusing them in an indictment of trying to portray a terrorist organization "strong and capable enough for any action," according to the reports.

The picture of militants holding a gun to the head of Istanbul prosecutor Mehmet Selim Kiraz, who was later killed in a shoot-out, spread widely online.

Turkish authorities initially ordered Facebook, Google and other sites to remove it, triggering accusations by academics and rights groups of an authoritarian crackdown.

Can Dündar, editor-in-chief of the daily Cumhuriyet newspaper and one of the journalists charged, has said he had intended the photo to portray the dark and ugly face of terrorism.

Journalists and editors from dailies Millet, Sok, Posta, Yurt, Bugun, Ozgur Gundem, Aydinlik and Birgun were also named in the indictment, and all had pleaded not guilty, media reported on Wednesday.

Prosecutors asked for prison sentences ranging from 18 months to 7 1/2 years in the indictment issued on Tuesday, according to the reports.

President Tayyip Erdogan said in January that Turkish journalists were freer than any in Europe.

But authorities have frequently used broadly defined anti-terrorism laws to prosecute reporters, and dozens still face legal action for referring to a corruption scandal which erupted around Erdogan's inner circle in December 2013.

Turkey languishes near the bottom of international press freedom tables. The European Union, which Turkey aspires to join, has said harassment of the press violates its human rights criteria.

The photo was initially released by the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) that said it took Kiraz hostage.

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Israel has detained the first Jewish extremist under tough new regulations allowing Jews suspected of terrorism to be imprisoned without trial.

Mordechai Meyer, 18, from the East Jerusalem settlement of Maale Adumim, has been subjected to six-months administrative detention, reportedly for suspected involvement in an arson attack on an iconic Christian church in Galilee in June.

The order detaining him was signed by Moshe Ya'alon, the defence minister, after the Israeli attorney general, Yehuda Weinstein, approved the use of administrative detention following a fire-bomb attack last Friday on a Palestinian home in the West Bank that killed a one-year-old child and left his parents and brother fighting for their lives.

Administrative detention has previously only been widely applied to suspected Palestinian militants. The Israeli security cabinet agreed to extend it to Jewish suspects amid widespread outrage over last week's arson in the West Bank village of Duma.

Police said on Wednesday that they had still had no leads identifying the culprits for the Duma attack and issued an appeal for information along with a mobile phone number for members of the public to call.

Israeli officials did not specify the reason for Mr Meyer's detention, which will initially last six months and came two days after he had been placed under house arrest. But Israeli media reported that it related to an alleged involvement in the June 18 fire attack that badly damaged the Church of the Multiplication of Loaves and Fishes on Lake Kinneret, marking the site where Jesus is believed to have performed a miracle of feeding 5,000 people.

Mr Meyer is also suspected of arson attacks on other Palestinian and Christian properties, including the Dormition Abbey on Jerusalem's Mount Zion, according to media reports.

He is one of three hardline activists to be arrested in recent days. Another, Meir Ettinger, 23, said to have been the Israeli police's most-wanted extremist suspect, was arrested on Tuesday.

A lawyer for Mr Ettinger, the grandson of Meir Kahane, a notorious militant rabbi who was assassinated by a Palestinian in 1990, complained that his client had been subjected to "illegal" harsh interrogation methods, including being shaken, previously only used against Palestinians.

A third suspect, Eviatar Slonim, was arrested by police near the Israel town of Beit Shemesh on Wednesday. He was previously charged in 2011 with a mass stone throwing incident at the home of a Palestinian family.

Reuven Rivlin - the Israeli president, who called in the police after receiving on-line hate mail in response to his condemnation of the Duma attack - issued a plea for restraint on the internet as well as within the security forces on Tuesday.

"In the moment before you send that cutting article, share that vitriolic post, before carrying out an on-line lynch – consider for a moment, on the other side is a human being," Mr Rivlin said at a memorial service for a former deputy police commissioner, who committed suicide after a public smear campaign. "So too, in the moment before you disperse an angry protest, before going out to make an arrest, before the use of force and authority – let us remember that on the other side there is a human being."

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The former head of one of the US government's leading intelligence divisions says that the US believed that religious extremists could carve out a sizable safe-haven in Syria as early as 2012 — but that the US did little to stop this from happening.

In an interview with Mehdi Hasan for Al Jazeera, retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, who lead the Defense Intelligence Agency from 2012 to 2014, called out the administration on its alleged inaction during the first year of the Syrian civil war. 

Hasan quotes what he describes as a "secret" DIA analysis from August 2012 warning that the chaos in Syria could allow for the creation of a Salafist enclave in the country's desert east. Hasan asked Flynn whether this meant the US actually predicted the rise of the ISIS caliphate and did nothing to stop it.

Flynn agrees, arguing that it shows the US should have had a smarter policy of cooperation with Syria's secular rebels.

"I think where we missed the point, where we totally blew it was in the very beginning, I mean we’re talking four years now into this effort in Syria ... the Free Syrian Army, that movement, I mean where are they today? Al Nusra, where are they today? How much have they changed?" Flynn asked. "When you don't get in and help somebody they’re going to find other means to achieve their goals."

Flynn suggests that the US's failure to assist the rebels earlier in the conflict created an opening for extremist groups. Mehdi pushed back, quoting the 2012 DIA assessment as saying that “The Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda in Iraq are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria" before accusing the US of "coordinating arms transfer to those same groups."

Flynn says he paid "very close attention" to reports like the DIA assessment and implies that he actually opposed forms of assistance that could benefit extremist groups. But Flynn disputed Mehdi's characterization of the administration turning a "blind eye" to the DIA's analysis and explained that US policymaking on Syria has always been convoluted.

"You have to really ask the President, what is it that he actually is doing with the policy that is in place, because it is very very confusing." Flynn said. 

The jihadist group began as Al Qaeda in Iraq, which fought the US military and the Iraqi state during last decade's US campaign in the country. ISIS was expelled from Al Qaeda in February 2014 because of the group's overly-brutal sectarian violence and refusal to listen to the group's Afghanistan and Pakistan-based global leadership. 

Although Al Qaeda in Iraq was hobbled when the US military pulled out of Iraq in 2011, the collapse of Syria provided AQI with a safe-haven.

The rule of a sectarian Shi'ite government in Baghdad, and the Baghdad government's failure to integrate anti-Al Qaeda Sunni militants into the security forces, provided further impetus for the group's growth.

During the Al Jazeera interview, Flynn also conceded that the US's military policies in the Middle East were at least partly to blame for the crisis in Syria and that the US had made a number of strategic errors that made the conflict more likely. 

He also conceded that US prisons in Iraq were responsible for the radicalization of thousands of young Iraqis, many of whom are now fighting with ISIS.

SEE ALSO: Syrian Kurds are using tablets to call in airstrikes against ISIS

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BEIRUT (Reuters) - Islamic State has released 22 of the dozens of Assyrian Christians it abducted from villages in northeastern Syria earlier this year, a monitoring group said on Tuesday.

It was not clear how many Assyrians remain in the hands of the ultra-hardline Islamist militants, but Rami Abdulrahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said they continued to hold more than 150.

The group seized more than 200 Assyrians in February when its fighters overran more than a dozen villages inhabited by the ancient Christian minority near Hasaka, a northeastern city mainly inhabited by Kurds.

The head of a Syrian Assyrian group in Sweden, Afram Yakoub, confirmed the release and said all of the freed captives were elderly men and women.

Abdulrahman said a ransom has been paid but Yakoub denied it.

"Some have health issues, so we believe they released them because of health issues and because they are old," Yakoub, chairman of the Assyrian Federation of Sweden, told Reuters by telephone.

"The release is a small sign of hope. It gives us some hope that some day those remaining will be released."

In March, the group released 19 of the captives.

(Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

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Just a few months into his tenure as the head of the al Qaeda-linked Islamic Caucasus Emirate (ICE), Magomed Suleimanov, also known as Abu Usman Gimrinsky, has been killed by Russian security forces.

The news was first circulated by jihadists on social media earlier this week, with some Twitter feeds posting a picture purportedly showing Abu Usman after his “martyrdom.” The web site for Vilayat Dagestan, which is one of ICE’s so-called provinces, then released a statement announcing that Abu Usman and other ICE officials had been killed.

Russia’s Anti-Terrorism Committee has also told the press that its forces killed Gimrinsky and three others during a counterterrorism raid in Dagestan.

Abu Usman’s role as ICE’s emir was publicly announced on July 1. However, his appointment to that role was suspected before then. He succeeded Aliaskhab Kebekov, more commonly known as Ali Abu Muhammad al Dagestani, who was killed by Russian forces in April. Kebekov rose to ICE’s top leadership position after his predecessor, Doku Umarov, perished sometime in either late 2013 or early 2014.

Therefore, ICE has lost three emirs in just over a year and a half. The losses are testing ICE’s chain-of-succession, especially at a time when Abu Bakr al Baghdadi’s Islamic State is vying to win the loyalty of jihadists in the Caucasus region.

In June, Islamic State spokesman Abu Muhammad al Adnani accepted the bayat (oath of allegiance) sworn by a number of Caucasus jihadists to Baghdadi. Adnani announced that the Islamic State had formed a new Vilayat (or province) in the area and that it was headed by “the noble sheikh Abu Muhammad al Qadarī.” Adnani demanded that all Muslims in the region answer to al Qadari, who appears to be a man named Rustam Asilderov, the former head of ICE’s Vilayat Dagestan.

Abu Usman and Ali Abu Muhammad worked together in an attempt to stem the tide of defections from ICE to the Islamic State. They received assistance from sharia officials in two al Qaeda branches, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the Al Nusrah Front, as well as other prominent pro-al Qaeda jihadists, but their collective efforts failed to stop some high-profile betrayals.

In December 2014, a major controversy ensued when Asilderov announced his allegiance to the Islamic State. Earlier that same month, Abu Usman lashed out at the ICE commanders and fighters who had switched allegiance. Abu Usman explained that Ali Abu Muhammad had “not allowed anyone to swear allegiance to the Islamic State as far as they accuse Muslims of disbelief, accept killing of Muslims and do not listen to scholars.” [See LWJ report, Dagestani jihadist swears allegiance to Islamic State, invoking backlash.]

After Asilderov’s defection, Abu Usman released an even more scathing audio message, claiming that neither he, nor Ali Abu Muhammad, had been consulted before Asilderov announced his allegiance to Baghdadi. Abu Usman also criticized Asilderov’s lack of knowledge of sharia (or Islamic law), saying it was Asilderov’s ignorance that led him down the path to the Islamic State.

“As a result,” Abu Usman claimed, Asilderov’s “decision was adopted at Satan’s instigation and this is nothing but following one’s passion.”

Ali Abu Muhammad himself weighed in, trying to convince the wayward ICE leaders to stay in his ranks. But ICE’s call for unity failed, as the defections continued throughout the first half of 2015.

ICE waited more than two months to name Abu Usman as Ali Abu Muhammad’s successor. The group finally made the announcement a little more than a week after Adnani announced the Islamic State’s expansion into ICE’s home turf. ICE’s announcement was accompanied by an image trumpeting the fact that Said Arakanskiy, the new head of Vilayat Dagestan, had sworn allegiance to Abu Usman. Some accounts say Arakanskiy himself was killed in the Russians’ raid.

ICE was able to appoint new leaders in various “sectors” of its so-called Dagestan province in recent weeks. But the Islamic State’s challenge to ICE’s authority has clearly caused major problems for the organization. And these problems have been compounded by ICE’s leadership losses.

The competition between the Islamic State and al Qaeda has impacted the jihadists from the Caucasus who are fighting in Syria as well. Some prominent Chechen commanders have joined the Islamic State, but other groups that draw fighters from the region have remained part of al Qaeda’s network.

Jaish al Muhajireen wal Ansar (JMA), which was led by Chechens, failed to join to the Islamic State and has continued to fight alongside the Al Nusrah Front, al Qaeda’s official branch in Syria. Recently, Salahuddin Shishani, who led the JMA before being forced out, formed his own arm of the Caucasus Emirate in Syria and swore allegiance to Abu Usman. Another Chechen-led group, Junud al Sham, is closely allied with the Al Nusrah Front in Syria as well.

Thomas Joscelyn is a Senior Fellow at Foundation for Defense of Democracy and the Senior Editor for The Long War Journal.

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We're about to see how successful US troop training has been in Iraq.

Iraqi security forces, trained and backed by the US, are preparing a final assault on the Sunni city of Ramadi, a senior coalition official told Jim Michaels of USA Today.

The newspaper called it "the first significant test of American-trained forces against the Islamic State" terror group (also known as ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh).

A Pentagon spokeswoman described the operation as "a slow, methodical, deliberate advance on the city" about 80 miles west of Baghdad.

About 10,000 troops, 3,000 of whom were trained by the US, will participate in the operation, according to USA Today. It's likely that Iraqi forces will outnumber ISIS fighters, but it's unclear exactly how many militants are in the city.

ISIS forces captured Ramadi in May and the militants have been entrenched in the city, located about 80 miles from Baghdad, since then. Shia militias backed by Iran planned to take back Ramadi soon after the city fell, but ISIS still has a hold on the city.

Ramadi fell after ISIS militants overran the city with suicide car bombs. Even though ISIS was outnumbered by Iraqi soldiers, the Sunni terror group was still able to seize control of the city when troops protecting it fled.

Now that ISIS has spread out throughout Ramadi, it might be hard to rout them.

"Despite being outnumbered, the militants' defensive posture provides an advantage: They can fire from bunkers and other concealed locations, and it will be difficult for the coalition to bombard the militants, who can hide in an urban setting," USA Today noted.

The loss of Ramadi to the terrorists has had ripple effects throughout Iraq — many Sunni residents of Ramadi who have tried to flee the city have been turned away as they reach Baghdad, and some Sunnis are reluctantly supporting ISIS for their own survival because they feel like they've run out of other viable options.

Success in Ramadi — and Iraq as a whole — is far from guaranteed.

Michael Knights, an Iraq analyst, wrote in Foreign Policy this week that the war against ISIS in Iraq has been "slowing down."

"The best that can be reasonably expected in 2015 is the stabilization of the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah," Knights wrote. "No one even talks about liberating Iraq’s second-most populous city, Mosul, anymore.

Mosul is a major stronghold for ISIS in Iraq that used to be a top priority for the US' plan to defeat ISIS.

"At this rate, the United States will still be in Iraq when U.S. President Barack Obama leaves office — an outcome no one, especially the president, wants," Knights wrote.

With a diminished US presence in Iraq and tight restrictions on what US forces are allowed to do, it will be hard for troops to make quick progress against ISIS. The US train-and-equip program has been slow going and air strikes have had a limited effect because of a lack of spotters on the ground and strict rules of engagement, Knights wrote.

Brookings Institute fellow Charles Lister recently wrote a similarly negative assessment of the war on ISIS. Lister noted that "progress thus far can best be described as a series of loosely linked tactical gains, rather than a significant strategic advance."

"The stated coalition objective is to 'degrade and destroy' IS as a militant organization, but it remains a potent armed force capable of capturing valuable territory and inflicting considerable material damage on its adversaries," Lister wrote. "... IS is clearly a determined enemy and poses a potent threat that the current coalition strategy is failing to effectively 'degrade and defeat.'"

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One of the most brutal jihadi militants on Earth has reportedly been replaced.

On August 12, Idris Deby, Chad's autocratic president, announced that Abubakr Shekau, the leader of Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram, had been deposed and replaced by a new leader more open to compromise.

It should be noted that Deby is hardly the most reliable source of information on the fight against terrorism in West Africa.

In March 2014, the Chadian government claimed the army had killed Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an assertion that was later disproved. And information on Boko Haram's inner workings is notably scarce, even compared to other, oftentimes secretive jihadi militant groups.

But there's at least some reason to take this claim seriously. Shekau has not appeared in public or put out an audio or video message since March, and he did not appear in the group's latest propaganda video in early August.

He's famously obsessive about safety and operational security, behaving in ways that suggest an acute sense of imminent danger even within Boko Haram's remote safe haven in northern Nigeria.

As Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Business Insider, Shakau was practically unique among major jihadi figures for using multiple body doubles in his video messages. And Boko Haram's March 2015 alliance with ISIS provided a potential motive for pushing out Shekau.

Gartenstein-Ross said there's insufficient information to determine whether Shekau has actually been removed from the group's leadership. But he said that if there were an internal move against him, it would signal a shift in factional leadership, rather than a change in Boko Haram's overall strategy or direction.

"It wouldn't really be a replacement of him as leader," Gartenstein-Ross speculated, while cautioning that the internal dynamics of the groups are incredibly difficult to discern. "It would instead be a faction, whether bigger or smaller, that's peeling off in the wake of the decision to pledge to ISIS."

Numerous regional jihadi leaders have gained some kind of global profile over the past decade, and Shekau stands out from this group for his sheer viciousness. Shekau took over Boko Haram in 2009, at a time when the group had lost much of its top-level leadership.

By 2014, Boko Haram controlled nearly all of Borno state, with the exception of the major population center of Maidurgri. And it was murdering at an appalling clip. Boko Haram killed 6,000 people in 2014 alone and has killed 11,000 since 2011.

A January attack on the town of Baga, near Lake Chad, left several hundred people dead. The group also galvanized international opposition by abducting over 200 young girls from a school in northeastern Nigeria in April 2014, sparking the global #BringBackOurGirls campaign.

This brutality, along with the seeming indifference of a Nigerian state that barely contested some of Boko Haram's gains in the country's remote northeastern border region, created ripe conditions for the group to seize large expanses of territory.

Shekau exhibited a total absence of moral scruples or respect for human life in carving out his group's terrorist enclave and turning Boko Haram into a player in international jihadism. But if Shekau has actually lost even nominal control of Boko Haram, it could be this outsized ambition that's causing the rift.

Boko Haram pledged its allegiance to ISIS in March, a notable development considering the group's past ties with Al Qaeda. It's possible that the Baga massacre was appalling enough to alienate Boko Haram from its supporters in Al Qaeda's hierarchy; it's also possible that the Nigerian group wanted to associate itself with what then seemed to be the rising force in global jihadism.

Either way, the ISIS partnership came just before Boko Haram experienced a series of setbacks at the hands of the Chadian, Cameroonian, and Nigerien militaries — and around the same time the security-minded former general Mohammadu Buhari was elected president in Nigeria.

If Shekau was actually deposed, the shrinking of Boko Haram's domain along with resentments from more pro-Al Qaeda elements inside the group might have led to his ouster.

If he actually were removed, the upheaval could signal an internal conflict pitting ISIS-leaning elements within the group against pushback from a more Al Qaeda-aligned faction.

This would dispel the once prevalent sense of ISIS' inevitable spread throughout the jihadi world, and its victory in the fight for extremist hearts and minds. The rise of a pro-Al Qaeda faction within ISIS' primary sub-Saharan African affiliate would cast doubt on ISIS' ability to contend as a global extremist force.

But there's currently no way of knowing if that's what's really going on.

"Boko Haram is one of the more inscrutable groups in terms of its inner workings," says Gartenstein-Ross.

There might be significant infighting, or even the removal of one of this era's most brutal jihadi leaders. But it's Boko Haram, and the truth might not be known until a document cache or declassified US intelligence assessment emerges — assuming it will ever be known at all.

SEE ALSO: Boko Haram is weaker than it was a year ago — but the fate of the girls it kidnapped may never be known

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On August 12, 2015, unidentified armed men opened fire on a police station near the Sogoniko bus station in Bamako, Mali's capital. 

“Two turbaned gunmen targeted the station near the bus terminal. First they started issuing warnings. Since it’s a very busy place, people started panicking and dispersed. It’s then that the attackers started firing shots at the police station," according toa police source from the 7th arrondissement, contacted by Sahelien.com. 

The source added that one policeman was injured but that the wounds are not life-threatening.

While northern Mali has been the site of a jihadist insurgency, Bamako is far south of extremist groups' typical areas of operation, making attacks in the capital particular cause for concern. Since the start of the year, more than five armed attacks like the one on the police station have been recorded in Bamako.

According to a witness Sahelien interviewed at the scene of the attack, “the turbaned individuals were wearing gloves and arms. They were in a vehicle and were followed by a motorcycle.”

As of now, the attackers are still on the run. “All we can say for now, is that their goal is to spread terror,” the police source added.

SEE ALSO: A former rebel leader explains Mali's landmark peace agreement

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Arab Bank Plc has agreed to settle litigation brought by hundreds of Americans who accused it of facilitating militant attacks in Israel, nearly a year after a U.S. jury found the bank liable.

The settlement was confirmed on Friday by Michael Elsner, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, and a spokesman for Arab Bank. The terms were not disclosed.

Elsner said the framework of the deal would be finalized over the next few months.

A trial had been scheduled to start Monday to begin determining how much the bank would have to pay the victims and their families.

Approximately 500 U.S. citizens had sued Arab Bank under the U.S Anti-Terrorism Act, which permits U.S. citizens to pursue claims arising from international terrorism. The plaintiffs included both victims of attacks carried out by Hamas and other groups, as well as family members of the victims.

In September 2014, a U.S. jury in Brooklyn, New York, found the Jordan-based bank liable for two dozen Hamas attacks that took place more than a decade ago in and around Israel, the first time a bank was held liable in U.S. court for violating the act.

Several other banks are facing similar claims in U.S. courts under the Anti-Terrorism Act, including Bank of China , Credit Lyonnais SA , HSBC Holdings Plc and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc , among others.

Last year's verdict covered 310 plaintiffs, but a source familiar with the litigation said the settlement would include all 500 plaintiffs who brought claims under the Anti-Terrorism Act.

At trial, lawyers for the plaintiffs said Arab Bank knowingly maintained accounts for Hamas operatives and facilitated payments to families of suicide bombers and those imprisoned or injured during a Palestinian uprising beginning in 2000.

Arab Bank argued that it had followed proper screening procedures to checked accounts and transactions against lists of designated terrorist organizations.

The bank had vowed to appeal, saying U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan issued flawed rulings that prevented it from mounting a full defense.

Arab Bank said after last year's trial that the verdict could expose financial institutions to "enormous liability" for providing routine banking services.

Monday's trial, which was to include 17 plaintiffs, had been akin to so-called bellwether trials that are common in mass tort cases. The trial was expected to allow both sides to assess the damages for a few plaintiffs in order to gauge the potential overall amount of money at stake for the bank.

It was not clear how much in potential damages Arab Bank had faced.

Elsner, the plaintiffs' lawyer, had previously said that a verdict could have been for millions of dollars.

The case is Linde et al. v. Arab Bank, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, No. 04-2799.

(Editing by Andrew Hay, Noeleen Walder and Leslie Adler)

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While many supporters of the Islamic State are depicted as isolated loners, the terror group has been stunningly efficient at radicalizing seemingly smart and well-adjusted young people online.

Two recent articles in The New York Times highlight how successful the strategy used by the Islamic State (also known as ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh) of luring young people to the Middle East through social media and online radicalization has been.

People who knew a young Mississippi couple were shocked when the two students were arrested on suspicion of planning to travel to Syria to join ISIS.

Jaelyn Young, 19, was a cheerleader and honor student who was studying to become a doctor, and Muhammad Dakhlalla, 22, was a psychology student and the son of a popular Muslim figure in town. They both attended Mississippi State University.

They are now in federal custody, accused of planning to travel to Syria to join ISIS.

Elizabeth Treloar, an 18-year-old friend of Young, told The Times: "Something must have happened to her. She's too levelheaded, too smart to do this."

Not only was Young intelligent and studious, but she was also popular and seemed to fit in with other typical American teenagers.

The Times notes that Young was a member of her high-school homecoming court, and her Twitter feed (which was last active in 2013) is full of references to patriotism, Christianity, and hip-hop.

Young's father was reportedly a police officer who previously served in the US military:

She was raised Christian and went to church:

And tweeted often about how much she loved music:

Young changed dramatically in the years since she sent those tweets. She shed her Christian beliefs after she met college friends who introduced her to Islam, and she eventually started plotting to leave the US to go live in ISIS territory, according to The Times.

It's unlikely that her love for hip-hop artists carried over — ISIS militants ban music, calling it sinful.

Dakhlalla came from a Muslim background, but his family was known for being examples of tolerance and peace, sources told The Times.

Students called Dakhlalla's father Oda "Yoda" because he was seen as a "miracle-working" math tutor, and his mother, Lisa, was known as "the hummus lady" because she sold the snack at a local farmers' market, according to The Times, which reported that the family ran a Middle Eastern cafe and often gave out food to people in the community free.

Young and Dakhlalla's specific path to radicalization is unclear, but authorities caught on to their plans once undercover FBI agents posing as ISIS supporters started talking to them online, The Times reported.

Another story in The Times, about three girls from London who traveled to Syria to join ISIS, shows how the same phenomenon is hitting Europe.

Experts identified the trend to The Times as "a jihadi, girl-power subculture" that has lured upward of 550 women and girls to ISIS-held territory in the Middle East.

Parents and teachers have misinterpreted warning signs of radicalization — like changing behavior and deteriorating grades — as signs of typical teenage difficulties.

"They were smart, popular girls from a world in which teenage rebellion is expressed through a radical religiosity that questions everything around them," Katrin Bennhold wrote for The Times. "In this world, the counterculture is conservative. Islam is punk rock. The head scarf is liberating. Beards are sexy."

Social media and smartphone apps make it even easier for ISIS recruiters to reach girls living far away from ISIS territory. Part of what makes ISIS' recruiting strategy so effective is the fact that some of the recruiters are very similar to the young women they seek to reel in — Westerners who became radicalized online.

A 20-year-old from Scotland has become one of ISIS' biggest recruiters of young British women. Aqsa Mahmood is thought to have had contact with at least one of the London girls the Times story focuses on.

Mahmood fits the same profile as the other girls — her family has characterized her as a bright, popular girl who liked typical teenage-girl stuff, including Harry Potter and Coldplay.

At some point, she started to wear a hijab and vocalize her anger about what was happening in Syria, The Times notes.

Still, her family didn't see it as anything that was extremely out of the ordinary. This matches what sources told The Times about Young, the teenager from Mississippi; her friend, Treloar, said Young expressed views that ISIS was unfairly depicted in the West.

And like Young, Mahmood once wanted to be a doctor or a pharmacist. Mahmood is now married to a radical and acts as the "den mother" of those who seek to leave their home countries to join ISIS, according to The Times.

Mahmood herself was most likely radicalized online. Authorities told CNN she watched sermons online and communicated with people who persuaded her to join the extremists in Syria.

She now her own Tumblr blog and writes under a Muslim pseudonym. Western women can find the blogs and Twitter accounts run by these ISIS recruiters and then reach out to them on apps such as WhatsApp and Kik to inquire about traveling to Syria, where ISIS has its de facto capital.

Young people are important to ISIS' long-term strategy. The young men are needed to fight, and the young women are needed to give birth to the next generation of jihadists, who are indoctrinated from a young age in ISIS territory.

SEE ALSO: A 20-year-old Alabama woman joined ISIS after receiving an innocent graduation gift

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In the months leading up to his death in early May 2011, Osama bin Laden was worried about the fate of his son Hamzah.

Files recovered in the terror master’s Abbottabad compound show that he repeatedly discussed ways to prevent Hamzah from falling into the hands of al Qaeda’s enemies. Osama wanted his son to avoid Waziristan, where the drones buzzed overhead, at all costs. And he suggested that Hamzah flee to Qatar, where he could lie low for a time.

Last week, more than four years after Osama’s death, al Qaeda released a lengthy audio message by Hamzah.

Osama’s son does not show his face in the al Qaeda production. This is most likely for security purposes. Most of the videos and pictures circulated online show Hamzah as a young boy, before he could possibly understand the true extent of his father’s mission. But it is clear from his new statement to the world that Hamzah has taken up his father’s business. Hamzah’s lengthy speech has been translated by the SITE Intelligence Group.

Ayman al Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s emir, offers a brief introduction for Hamzah, describing him as “a lion from the den of [al Qaeda].” A screen shot of the still image used during Zawahiri’s speech can be seen on the right.

Before turning over the mic to Hamzah, Zawahiri apparently alludes to the massacre at Charlie Hebdo’s offices in Paris in January. Zawahiri asks Allah to “reward our brothers in” al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) “for they have fulfilled his promise and healed the chests of the believers.” This language is a reference to al Qaeda’s current campaign against alleged blasphemers, who have supposedly wounded “believers” with their words and images. AQAP claimed responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo assault, saying it was carried out according to Zawahiri’s orders.

Hamzah then begins to speak about current affairs. However, an Arabic transcript posted with the message indicates his audio was recorded in May or June of this year, meaning it is somewhat dated. Indeed, Hamzah praises Taliban emir Mullah Omar, saying he is the “hidden, pious sheikh” and “the firm mountain of jihad.” Hamzah asks Allah to “preserve” Omar, indicating that he thought the Taliban chieftain was alive when his audio was recorded.

Hamzah also renews his bayat (oath of allegiance) to Omar.

“From here, in following my father, may Allah have mercy on him, I renew my pledge of allegiance to Emir of the Believers Mullah Muhammad Omar, and I say to him: I pledge to you to listen and obey, in promoting virtue and waging jihad in the cause of Allah the Great and Almighty,” Hamzah says, according to SITE’s translation.

According to some sources, including Afghan intelligence, Omar passed away in April 2013, or more than two years before the Taliban officially announced his death. If true, then this means that Hamzah and al Qaeda’s senior leadership reaffirmed their loyalty to a corpse.

It is possible that Omar did die in 2013 and al Qaeda somehow did not know this. Given al Qaeda’s close relationship with the Taliban’s new leadership, including Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, who served as Omar’s deputy and is now his successor, this would more than a little surprising. It is also possible that al Qaeda’s leaders knew Omar was dead and decided to pretend that he was alive for their own sake, as part of an attempt to unite the ranks in the jihadist community. Or, it could be the case that Omar finally perished more recently than the Afghan government and other sources have said.

In any event, Hamzah clearly refers to Omar as if he was alive just a few months ago.

While praising Zawahiri as a jihadist leader, Hamzah does not swear allegiance directly to him. This is different from the leaders of each regional branch of al Qaeda, all whom have sworn their fealty to Zawahiri.

While al Qaeda’s branches respected Mullah Omar as the “Emir of the Faithful,” their loyalty has always been to al Qaeda’s overall emir, who, in turn, has pledged his allegiance to Omar. Zawahiri first pledged himself to Omar and, earlier this month, to Mansour. Therefore, al Qaeda’s regional operations are loyal to Mansour through Zawahiri.

Hamzah honors the leader of each al Qaeda branch. He begins with Nasir al Wuhayshi, who led AQAP until he was killed in a US drone strike in June, just weeks after Hamzah’s recording session. Wuhayshi was succeeded by Qasim al Raymi, who quickly reaffirmed his own allegiance to Zawahiri. Interestingly, Hamzah refers to Wuhayshi as al Qaeda’s “deputy emir,” indicating that he held the same position that Zawahiri himself once did under Osama bin Laden.

In addition to being the head of AQAP, Wuhayshi’s role as al Qaeda’s global general manager from 2013 onward has been widely reported. But under bin Laden that job was separate from the deputy emir’s slot. Al Qaeda’s general manager at the time of bin Laden’s death was Atiyah Abd al Rahman, who was subsequently killed in a US drone strike. Wuhayshi’s status as deputy emir of al Qaeda was never publicly announced by the group.

Osama’s heir continues with a roll call of other al Qaeda regional emirs, including al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb’s (AQIM) Abdulmalek Droukdel, al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent’s (AQIS) Asim Umar, Shabaab’s Abu Obaidah Ahmed Omar, and Al Nusrah Front’s Abu Muhammad al Julani. Hamzah does not mention Abu Bakr al Baghdadi’s al Qaeda offshoot, the Islamic State, but he clearly had Baghdadi’s men in mind when addressing Julani, whom he describes as the “bold commander.”

“We thank your jihad, your firmness, and your great, unique sacrifices through which you have revived the feats of the ancestors of Islam,” Hamzah says to Julani, according to SITE. “But we were pained and saddened…due to the sedition that pervaded your field, and there is no power or strength but with Allah. We advise you to stay away as far as possible from this sedition.” Here, Hamzah is clearly referring to the infighting between the jihadists in Syria. The conflict has repeatedly pitted Julani’s Nusrah against Baghdadi’s Islamic State.

A standard motif in al Qaeda’s productions is to call for influential and well-known jihadists to be freed from their imprisonment. Thus, Hamzah tips his hat to  Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman (a.k.a. the “Blind Sheikh,” who is imprisoned in the US on terrorism charges), Sheikh Suleiman al Alwan (a famous al Qaeda-affiliated cleric detained in Saudi Arabia), and 9/11 planner Khalid Sheikh Muhammad (held by the US at Guantanamo).

Hamzah spent a number of years in detention in Iran. And he calls for some of the al Qaeda leaders he was detained with there to be freed.

“And from among my sheikhs through whose hands I was educated: Sheikh Ahmed Hassan Abu al Kheir, Sheikh Abu Muhammad al Masri, Sheikh Saif al Adl, and Sheikh Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, may Allah release them all,” Hamzah says. His mention of Saif al Adl, one of al Qaeda’s most senior military commanders, is especially intriguing. Hamzah indicates that al Adl is imprisoned. Various reports have claimed that al Adl was freed from Iranian custody, but his status at any given time has always been murky. Abu Ghaith, a former al Qaeda spokesman, is imprisoned in the US, but was also detained inside Iran for a time.

Much of the rest of Hamzah’s talk is devoted to the supposed Zionist-Crusader alliance that al Qaeda has made the centerpiece of its mythology. Hamzah’s words contain echoes of his father’s speeches from nearly two decades ago, when al Qaeda’s founder first declared war on America and the West. Like his father, Hamzah calls for continued attacks in the West. And he encourages so-called “lone wolf” attackers to strike.

“One operation from a loyal knight from your knights who chose his target and did well in his selection, and did his job and did well in his job, it would shake the policy of a great nation in a dire fashion,” Hamzah says. “So then, what would tens of operations do?”

Towards the end of the video, al Qaeda includes footage of various protests from throughout the Middle East. The protesters, many of whom are young men, can be heard chanting, “Obama, Obama, We are all Osama!” (A screen shot of this video footage can be seen on the right.)

Al Qaeda clearly hopes that Hamzah will help represent this new generation of al Qaeda followers.

Thomas Joscelyn is a Senior Fellow at Foundation for Defense of Democracy and the Senior Editor for The Long War Journal.

SEE ALSO: Al Qaeda's leader resurfaces in a video message

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In a significant leap toward harsher authoritarian rule, Egypt has enacted a draconian new anti-terrorism law that sets a sweeping definition for who and what could face a harsh set of punishments, including journalists who don't toe the government line.

The far-reaching new law adds provisions to protect security forces from prosecution, establishes stiffer prison sentences for terror-related offenses, as well as heavy fines for those who publish "false news" and a special judicial circuit for terrorism cases.

Authorities claim the measures will halt attacks by Islamic militants and stop the spread of their ideology, but the new restrictions have prompted concern from lawyers, rights groups, the opposition and even some Egyptian politicians and senior judges.

The 54-article bill, signed into law late Sunday by President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi and announced Monday, establishes an extremely broad definition of terrorism, describing it in one article as any act that disturbs public order with force. Some charges, such as leading or organizing a terrorist group, carry the death penalty.

The law also prescribes heavy prison sentences for a range of crimes, including promoting or encouraging any "terrorist offense," as well as damaging state institutions or infrastructure, such as military or government buildings, courthouses, power and gas lines, and archaeological sites.

Egyptians lived under so-called "emergency laws" for decades that gave police extensive powers, encouraging a culture of excess and brutality among security forces, something that partially inspired the 2011 uprising against longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak. The law was suspended after his overthrow.

Constitutional law expert Nour Farahat, who helped set up guidelines for the first post-Mubarak constitutional amendments, said the government had ignored all advice concerning the new law's constitutional flaws.

"This is because the Interior Ministry wants that, and the Interior Ministry is now ruling Egypt," he wrote on his official Facebook page. "Emergency laws were in place in Egypt during Mubarak times for 30 years. Did it eradicate terrorism? I fear for a nation where truth is lost."

Rights activists say the new anti-terrorism law is even more draconian than the earlier emergency laws and that police under el-Sissi have already begun to act with the impunity of the Mubarak days, torturing detainees and denying them basic medical services in overcrowded prisons and police holding cells.

The government denies the allegations, insisting that offenders do not go unpunished, though policemen rarely face prosecution and even fewer serve time.

Mohammed Zaree, Egypt program manager at the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, said the government has already been acting without restraint in its crackdown on dissent. He described the new law as "a covert emergency law."

"Now they can go after anyone. The law will have an effect on the public sphere and peaceful opposition activities more than terrorists and violent groups, who don't care anyway and disregard the laws," he said.

El-Sissi has led a harsh crackdown on Islamists and other opponents since 2013, when he led the military overthrow of Islamist Mohammed Morsi, the country's first freely elected president, during mass protests against his rule.

Following Morsi's ouster, a long-running insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula surged, with stepped-up attacks targeting the military there and on the mainland, while an affiliate of the Islamic State group established an Egyptbranch.

The April 6 group, a leading force behind the 2011 uprising against Mubarak that was outlawed last year over accusations of tainting the state's image and espionage, blasted the new law on its Twitter account, saying it "legalizes the dictatorship of the ruling regime and obscures the truth."

"It criminalizes all peaceful forms of organization and freedom of expression and aims to muzzle the mouth of Egyptians and terrorize them," the group said.

The new law to some extent absolves security forces from prosecution, with an article stipulating that no criminal inquiries will be brought against those who use force to implement its statutes or protect themselves or property from imminent danger. The law does, however, say the use of force must be "necessary and proportionate."

"In the past, they (security forces) had huge authority with almost no accountability," said Zaree, the head of the rights group. "Now, for the first time we have a specific article that will guarantee impunity."

The law also sets heavy fines of 200,000 to 500,000 Egyptian pounds ($26,000 to $64,000) for publishing "false news or statements" about terrorist acts, or news that contradicts the Defense Ministry's reports. It also sanctions, with a minimum of five years imprisonment, the "promotion, directly or indirectly, of any perpetration of terrorist crimes, verbally or in writing or by any other means."

It was not immediately clear what the government or the judiciary would consider "false news," or if the new law would criminalize the publication of statements from militant groups or facts that contradict the government's narrative. Previous drafts of the law had stipulated prison terms for journalists.

The new law provoked criticism from abroad, with the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists calling it "a new, repressive move that would erode the rule of law and brush aside fundamental legal and human rights guarantees."

Egypt has not had an elected legislature for over three years, and legislative authority rests with el-Sissi, who has passed dozens of laws in his 14 months in office.

Debate over them, if any, takes place in an almost unanimously compliant media or behind closed doors. El-Sissi has promised parliamentary elections before the end of this year, and currently enjoys a media-driven wave of support.

The Cabinet approved the draft law last month, two days after a car bomb in an upscale Cairo neighborhood killed the country's prosecutor general, Hisham Barakat. On the day it was approved, Islamic militants launched a multi-pronged attack attempting to seize a northern Sinai town, hitting the military with suicide attacks and battling soldiers for hours.

At Barakat's funeral, a visibly angry el-Sissi shouted that courts must act faster, and his ire was matched by TV reporters calling for the quick implementation of death sentences issued against Islamists, including Morsi and leaders of his now-banned Muslim Brotherhood. Authorities have already branded the group a terrorist organization.

The government has also pushed back aggressively against the foreign media, which officials and pro-government media frequently accuse of bias against the government or exaggerating the scale of militant attacks. The military spokesman has warned local media against using foreign media reports.

The attack on the northern Sinai town, Sheikh Zuweid, is a recent case where the Defense Ministry's account of the violence differed from many reports. While it said that at least 17 soldiers were killed in the sustained fighting, officials from multiple branches of the security forces told journalists that the attack killed dozens more.

The new law also gives stronger powers to prosecutors, and orders existing courts to set up special circuits for handling terrorism-related felonies and misdemeanors — a potentially ominous step that echoes the Mubarak-era State Security Court system. Under Mubarak, a parallel court system with hand-picked judges handled a wide array of cases ranging from mass trials of alleged Muslim Brotherhood members to academics whose research was judged to be defaming Egypt's international reputation. Authorities maintain the new judicial circuit will help speed up prosecutions.

The law also grants the president the right to take "extraordinary measures" to confront terrorism, including evacuating areas or enacting curfews.

SEE ALSO: The long-lost tomb of Egyptian queen Nefertiti could be hiding behind this secret door

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ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Islamic State militants have called Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan a traitor for allowing the U.S. to use air bases for strikes against the group, and urged Muslims in Turkey to support the extremist group and fight the "crusaders, atheists and tyrants."

An IS video message released on Twitter on Monday shows a Turkish-speaking fighter, flanked by two others, accusing Erdogan of permitting the U.S. to "bombard the people of Islam."

Six F-16 fighter jets arrived at a Turkish air base last week and began flying missions against the IS group over Syria.

The Associated Press couldn't independently verify the footage, but it was shared widely by IS supporters on social media and resembled other propaganda distributed by the extremists.

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Turkish police detained two suspects with automatic weapons after a shooting on Wednesday near the entrance to Istanbul's Dolmabahce palace, popular with tourists and home to the prime minister's Istanbul offices, the Dogan news agency said.

Ambulances were sent to the area around the building and roads were sealed off by police, but there were no reports of casualties. Dogan said the attackers had targeted police officers stationed at the entrance to the palace.

Some local media reports suggested there had also been an explosion but there was no independent confirmation of this.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutolgu was in the capital, Ankara, as reports of the attack emerged and did not interrupt a speech being broadcast on live television.

Turkey has been in a heightened state of alert since launching a "synchronized war on terror" last month, which included air strikes against Islamic State fighters in Syria and Kurdish militants in northern Iraq.

A fighter proclaiming allegiance to Islamic State appeared in a video this week urging Turks to rebel against "infidel" President Tayyip Erdogan and help conquer Istanbul, highlighting the threat to the NATO member state.

Turkey also faces a threat from far-leftist militants.

The leftist Revolutionary People's Liberation Army-Front (DHKP-C) claimed responsibility earlier this month for an attack on the US consulate in Istanbul, in which two women shot at the building. One of the attackers was hurt in an exchange of fire, but there were no other casualties.

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The US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on August 5 against two Qatari nationals accused of providing funding to al Qaeda in Pakistan, as well as to Al Nusrah Front in Syria and extremists in Sudan.

The Treasury Department described the two men as “major facilitators” and “financiers responsible for supporting terrorists throughout the Middle East.”

This follows indications that Qatar shut down a fundraising network linked to one of the two men, Sa’d bin Sa’d al-Ka’bi, last year.

However, a closer examination of how Qatar dealt with the case of Ka’bi and the other individual, ‘Abd al-Latif bin ‘Abdallah al-Kawari, provides new confirmation that Doha has been inexcusably negligent when it comes to cracking down on private terror finance. For example, a senior Obama administration official reportedly indicated this month that “Qatar has not arrested the two men.”

Additional sanctions on Qataris

The US government asserted in its announcement that Ka’bi, also known as Umar al-Afghani, “has provided support” to al Qaeda’s Syrian branch, Al Nusrah Front, since 2012, and set up donation campaigns in Qatar through 2014 in response a fundraising request from an Al Qaeda associate for weapons and food. Further, he allegedly was involved in facilitating ransom payments for hostages held by Nusrah.

Qatar has played a prominent role in Al Nusrah Front’s hostage releases and is alleged to have paid several such ransoms.

The US also stated that Ka’bi “worked closely” with Hamid bin Hamad al-‘Ali, a Kuwaiti preacher now under US and UN sanctions who declared himself an “al Qaeda commando.”

The second individual, Kawari, is accused by the US government of serving as an al Qaeda security official and collecting financial support for the group. The Treasury Department alleged that in recent years Kawari was involved in coordinating the delivery of funds to al Qaeda and the collection of receipts from the terrorist group, as well as facilitating travel for a courier with tens of thousands of dollars for al Qaeda.

The US asserted that Kawari’s involvement in terrorist finance goes back over a decade, indicating that he worked to fund al Qaeda in Pakistan in partnership with two US and UN-designated financiers, Qatari national Ibrahim ‘Isa al-Bakr and a Saudi national nicknamed Hassan Ghul.

Ghul served as Osama bin Laden’s envoy to Iraq-based jihadi leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and provided intelligence that later led to bin Laden’s killing. Ghul did so in while in the custody of the US and its Kurdish allies, but was repatriated to another erstwhile US ally, Pakistan, which let him go in under a year.

Kawari is also accused of arranging “a fraudulent passport” for Ghul, which Ghul later used to visit Qatar in Kawari’s company along with al-Bakr.

Recent developments

The Treasury Department’s announcement follows reports that a fundraising network linked to Ka’bi was shut down by Qatari authorities in 2014.

The State Department’s latest Country Reports on Terrorism revealed in June that “Qatari authorities shut down the Madad Ahl al-Sham online fundraising campaign that was suspected of sending funds to violent extremist elements in Syria.” In February, the Wall Street Journal reported that US and Qatari officials said Doha had “shut a social-media website the US believed was used in raising money for al-Qaeda-linked militants in Syria.”

Sa’d bin Sa’d al-Ka’bi, whom the US alleges “set up donation campaigns” in Qatar linked to the Nusrah Front, played a pivotal role in Madad Ahl al-Sham that was mentioned in several news reports. His name and phone number appear to be included on everysingleflyer that hasbeenattributed to thecampaign, typically as the first name listed. One of the ads can be seen on the right. Numerous social media posts and some of these flyers also identified him as the “supervisor” of the campaign.

If that was where the story ended, one could arguably interpret Ka’bi and Kawari’s cases as a success story for Qatar in the fight against terror finance. One might paint these individuals as relatively isolated extremists and characterize the Qatari government’s enforcement efforts as proactive, effective, and vigilant. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case.

Warning signs

In December 2013, the Washington Postrevealed that a Qatari campaign called “Madid [sic] Ahl al-Sham” had been “cited by [Al Nusrah] in August as one of the preferred conduits for donations intended for the group.” Yet neither Al Qaeda’s reported endorsement that August nor the Post’s December allegation – which it repeated several days later in a story republished by a paper inside the GCC – prompted Qatar to take action.

Six months later, CNN anchor Erin Burnett traveled to Qatar to investigate, contacting Ka’bi by phone through a translator. Ka’bi denied knowledge that his profile on the social media platform WhatsApp called for donations equivalent to $1,500 USD to arm, feed, and treat fighters in Syria. Burnett also asked him why his Twitter posts included an image of planes hitting the World Trade Center on 9/11, which he dismissed as insignificant because those images are widely available online. The campaign stopped operating soon afterward.

Yet these US reports were not the only warning signs that the charitable network might be hijacked for extremist ends.

Taimur Khan reported for the UAE’s The National on August 6 that a senior US administration official said Kawari “was also involved with the online fundraising platform, Madad Ahl Al Sham.” Given ‘Abd al-Latif al-Kawari’s alleged history, Qatari officials should have been concerned when they learned that he was also involved in the campaign.

In addition to Kawari’s alleged work for al Qaeda in the early 2000s described in the Treasury Department’s public announcement, he should have been a known quantity in Qatar for several other reasons as well. He was tried twice and found innocent both times of aiding a coup attempt by former Emir Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani against his son Hamad, who took power in 1995.

An individual also named ‘Abd al-Latif bin ‘Abdullah al-Kawari was mentioned in a 2004 list by a human rights NGO of detainees Qatar was holding without charges or access to counsel. Also listed was Kawari’s alleged co-conspirator Ibrahim ‘Isa al-Bakr, whom the US says was freed “after he promised not to conduct terrorist activity in Qatar,” a pledge it claims Bakr repeatedly violated. Kawari was subsequently identified in 2011 as an irresponsible government employee by an article in Qatar’s official gazette.

Supporters and coordinators of Madad Ahl al-Sham described an ‘Abd al-Latif al-Kawari on social media as a point of contact for the campaign, listing local phone numbers for him and Ka’bi and indicating that Ka’bi was supervising the campaign with Kawari’s help.

A broader network

It is important to recognize that Madad Ahl al-Sham was not simply a one-off effort by one or two radical extremists to fundraise for jihadi fighters in Syria. Rather, the organization was at one point arguably the most visible public fundraising campaign for Syrian relief in Qatar.

Ka’bi’s prominent use of social media to allegedly collect funds in public for al Qaeda is evidence that the terrorist group has modernized much like its rival the Islamic State, harnessing innovative electronic tools to bolster its fundraising apparatus in the Gulf. According to the Treasury Department’s designation of the two men, the Nusrah Front and Al Qaeda “have resorted to increasingly complicated schemes” to maintain funding streams for terrorist activities.

A representative of the campaign told the Qatari paper al-Watan that it involved over 50 young volunteers from Qatari society who were gathering donations for Syria. Another figure presented by the group, including on its now-deleted Twitter account, stated that efforts supervised by Ka’bi had raised more than 5 million Qatari riyals as of two years ago ($1.37 million USD).

Al-Watan reported in its March 2013 article that the campaign “works under the umbrella” of the Qatar Centre for Voluntary Work, an entity identified on Facebook as a “government organization” founded in 2001 by state decree.

Its board is appointed by the Qatari Minister of Youth and Sports, and CNN’s Burnett reported in June 2014 that the Centre was also “supervised by the Qatari government’s Ministry of Culture,” although “the minister declined [a] request for an interview.” An early 2013 article on the Culture Ministry’s website described in-kind humanitarian assistance transported to Syria by the Volunteer Centre. The article cited an official from the Centre who said work of this sort was gathered “through the Qatar Centre for Voluntary Work with participation of the volunteers from Madad Ahl al-Sham who were eager to gather a greater quantity.”

Other prominent supporters

Ka’bi and Kawari were by no means the only individuals involved in fundraising or speaking out for Madad Ahl al-Sham’s campaign.

Muhammad ‘Isa al-Bakr is a Qatari national who was detained without charges in 2013 after sending a threatening letter to the French Embassy in Doha. Amnesty International reported that he was subject to a Qatari travel ban upon release. However, he is evidently featured in an early 2014 video promoting Madad Ahl al-Sham from Turkey and posted other social media materials promoting the campaign, itsfliers, and showingitscollections or deliveries for Syria. (A screenshot from the video can be seen on the right.) A post on his Twitter account promoting phone numbers for Ka’bi and Kawari was visible at the time of Treasury’s announcement, but then erased before seventy-two hours had passed.

Mohammed Helwan al-Seqatri was described by the Qatari paper al-Watan as Madad Ahl al-Sham’s media coordinator. Seqatri stated in 2013 that “there are more than 50 Qatari young people with the campaign, gathering donations and sending it to the [Volunteer] Centre to organize and send to both the Turkish and Jordanian borders.” He added that these youths were even giving from their own pockets.

Yet users on Twitter apparently retweeted messages attributed to Seqatri that Madad Ahl al-Sham “supports the mujahideen with weapons and ammunition” and “gathers your donations to cleanse the rafidhis [derogatory term for Shi’a] from Syria.” Though his posts related to the campaign were deleted after it closed down, he later posted Tweets promoting Hamas’s military wing and promoting a welcome home party for former al Qaeda sleeper agent Ali Saleh al-Marri, who had been imprisoned in the US. Seqatri’s Twitter account was then fully shuttered within 48 hours of Ka’bi and Kawari’s US designation.

Additionally, Madad Ahl al-Sham boasted a number of prominent endorsers, some of whom are still based in Qatar.

Ka’bi’s and Kawari’s phone numbers were promoted as contacts for the fundraising campaign by Twitter accounts belonging to former Guantanamo detainees. Among them is an account evidently attributed to al-Marri’s brother Jarallah, an alleged terror financier whom the Qatari government allowed to leave the country twice after his repatriation, a violation of Doha’s written pledges to Washington.

The campaign was blessed by al Qaeda-linked clerics Abdullah al-Muhaysini and Hamid Hamad al-‘Ali of Kuwait. The campaign was also praised by the extremist Egyptian preacher Wagdy Ghoneim, whom the US previouslysuspected of involvement in terrorist fundraising.

Ghoneim visited and endorsed the campaign’s headquarters in February 2013 and praised the campaign in a video uploaded in June 2013, evidently flanked on one side by Ka’bi and on the other by Qatari nationals Abdulaziz al-Attiyah and Saleh bin Ahmed al-Ghanem. (A screenshot from the video can be seen on the right.) Twitter accounts attributed to both of the latter Qataris directed Internet users to phone numbers for Ka’bi and Kawari in support of Madad Ahl al-Sham.

Attiyah is a cousin of Qatar’s foreign minister. He was convicted last year on terror finance charges by a court in Lebanon. He was previously released from Lebanese custody in 2012 after diplomatic pressure allegedly applied by Doha. After returning from Lebanon, Attiyah received a lifetime achievement award from the Qatar Olympic Committee for leading Qatar’s Billiards and Snooker Union; the QOC was chaired at the time by Qatar’s current Emir.

A Twitter account attributed to Ghanem has called for “jihad… to cleanse Palestine” and praised Osama bin Laden as a sheikh and a “martyr mujahid.” Ghanem previously served on the board of Qatar’s al-Rayyan soccer team. The club, chaired by a brother of Qatar’s Emir, honored Ghanem in 2012 for contributions to its legacy.

Within twenty-four hours of the US sanctions on Ka’bi and Kawari, the Twitter account attributed to Ghanem added posts condemning “Western terrorism” and “American terrorism.” Attiyah and Ghanem have not been designated by the Treasury Department.

Continued negligence

Kawari is physically in Qatar, according to biographical information released by Treasury on August 5 – in the same district of Doha as the US Embassy, no less. Thus, it is particularly noteworthy that a senior US official revealed“Qatar has not arrested the two men.” This comes a year after the group’s public operations stopped and two years since its endorsement by al Qaeda described by the Washington Post.

Nor is the debacle of Madad Ahl al-Sham an isolated episode.

According to the Christian Science Monitor, Doha detained and swiftly released two financiers for the terrorist group Hamas in December 2014. This February, the Wall Street Journal confirmed Doha still had not filed charges against two Qataris the US has said enjoy “legal impunity” there despite US and UN sanctions alleging that they sent millions of dollars to the Iraqi al Qaeda branch now known as the Islamic State and even funded the mastermind of 9/11.

Muthanna Harith al-Dhari, another individual sanctioned by the US and UN on charges of funding the group now known as the Islamic State, was hugged and kissed by the Father Emir of Qatar in March and evidently let into the country this summer in violation of a UN travel ban. The State Department reported in June that local authorities deported a “terrorist financier resident in Doha who had been employed by a Qatari charity” rather than jailing him and filing charges.

Despite the fact that Qatar has the world’s third richest natural gas reserves to spend on regulating a territory smaller than Connecticut, American officials confirmed this month that “there continues to be concerns about terrorist financing going on in Qatar” and that “more needs to be done.” According to Al Arabiya, the officials also “refused to answer a question on whether the Qatari government itself may have contributed to the financing of ransoms for any kidnapped persons” in light of the Treasury Department’s assertion that Ka’bi worked to facilitate ransom payments for Al Nusrah.

Even if Ka’bi or Kawari were to be detained by Qatar, the country has a record of releasing individuals designated by the US or UN as terror financiers after a relatively short period behind bars without ever filing pertinent charges. It is therefore not uncommon for such individuals to become repeat offenders. The lack of effective and visible punishment through the judicial system means that other potential terror financiers are undeterred from committing crimes in the future.

Based on a review of publicly-available information, there is not a single case in which Qatar has detained, pressed charges against, and convicted a Qatari national on charges of terror finance after being designated by the US as a specially designated global terrorist. This is despite the fact that Qatar has laws criminalizing terror finance and banning the abuse of charities. The laws were passed in response to outside pressure.

Consequently, there is no persuasive reason to believe that Qatar has somehow turned over a new leaf since being labeled a “permissive terrorist financing environment” by Treasury’s then-Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David Cohen last year. Rather, Qatar seems to have violated its pledge from the latest anniversary of 9/11, when it committed to “countering financing of [the Islamic State] and other violent extremists” and “ending impunity and bringing perpetrators to justice” as the price for joining the anti-Islamic State coalition.

Doha seems to have taken all the wrong lessons from its bad press last year on terror finance, some of which was precipitated by an Emirati-funded US lobbying campaign that has been borne out by the facts in numerous cases. Instead of systematically tackling terror finance, Doha announced plans to invest $35 billion in the US over five years and hired four of its own US lobbying firms as new foreign agents. Al-Monitor revealed this month that one of these firms was “keeping close tabs” on the selection process for Cohen’s successor at Treasury.

President Obama’s nominee to replace Cohen as America’s top official for fighting terror finance, Adam Szubin, was quoted in the Treasury Department’s statement on August 5, calling Ka’bi and Kawari “major facilitators” in Al Qaeda’s regional network.

The US government is right to treat their case as a big deal. It should treat Qatar’s continued negligence as a big deal, too. 

David Andrew Weinberg is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and author of a three-part monograph on Qatar-based terror finance. Volume one was released in December, and this article was adapted from part of the forthcoming second volume.

SEE ALSO: Qatar's rulers are still surrounding themselves with some of the most hateful clerics in the Persian Gulf

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On August 17, the daily evening rush hour routine of Bangkok residents was tragically interrupted by a devastating bomb blast that tore through a segment of downtown Ratchaprasong junction, a major tourist thoroughfare.

The improvised explosive device—a 3 kilogram pipe bomb—was detonated via a remote. At the time of writing, the blast has claimed the lives of 20 people and injured more than 100. It was, by all accounts, the worst single act of political violence in the country’s history.

In terms of the location of the attack, the timing of the detonation, and the yield of the bomb, it is also patently clear that the attack was designed for maximum casualties, and also maximum visibility.

Bombings are not unknown in Thailand. In the southern provinces of the country, where a low-level insurgency continues to rage, bomb attacks have been a frequent occurrence.

In recent years, too, there have been a number of bombings and grenade attacks in Bangkok itself, as an expression of political conflict and rivalry between the traditional aristocratic elite and elements of the military on one hand, and opposition groups that include supporters of exiled former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra on the other.

That said, the August 17 attack is unprecedented not only in its magnitude, but also in its choice of a religious site as a target. 

With investigations ongoing, much of the discussion—and speculation—has been on the identity of the perpetrator(s) and motivations. The first suspects on the list are insurgents active in political violence in Thailand’s restive southern border provinces.

That low-level insurgency has been raging for more than a decade (longer, if one considers its earlier iterations) and while the violence associated with it has mostly been confined to the region, some are hypothesizing that it might have spilled over into Bangkok (although a May 2013 bombing in Ramkhamhaeng did involve perpetrators who originate from the southern provinces, albeit purportedly “hired” to do the job, according to government sources).

 In fact, the matter of whether insurgents would eventually target the capital has been a subject of debate for a number of years now. In response to this hypothesis, the obvious question that begs is: why now? Moreover, targeting Bangkok would be a tactical risk that might well prove detrimental to the cause of the insurgency, assuming they are rational strategic actors.

If the insurgents’ logic holds that they are engaged in a legitimate struggle for the rights of the Malay-Muslim communities in southern Thailand who for decades have been at the receiving end of strong-armed integration policies of the central government, then it follows that an expansion of the conflict zone to Bangkok via such an indiscriminate act of violence would all but discredit—certainly in the eyes of many hitherto sympathetic local and international NGOs and civil society groups—any claim to such a moral high ground.

In fact, this was the precise reason why many insurgent groups rejected overtures by the Jemaah Islamiyah regional terrorist group previously. Having said that, while those who embarked on this current cycle of insurgency more than a decade ago may subscribe to this logic, it remains to be seen if the same can be said of a new generation of insurgents who have come along since, socialized by the heavy-handed military presence of the Thai government in the region.

Predictably, attention has also fallen on international, religiously-motivated terrorist groups, of which the Islamic State is only the most recent high profile manifestation. The fact that the blast took place at a religious site, the Erawan Shrine, a Hindu shrine that nevertheless is frequently visited by Buddhists, and that another explosive device was allegedly found and diffused within the shrine itself, only lends further to this speculation.

If indeed it was the work of jihadi terrorists, the effect it would have on relations between Thailand’s devout Buddhist majority and the small but consequential Muslim minority could be cause for concern. There are, however, a few things to bear in mind as this hypothesis is unpacked.

First, the attack does not bear the trademark of the main modus operandi of contemporary international urban terrorism—the use of presumptive martyrs to conduct suicide operations.

Second, groups such as al-Qaida and the Islamic State seldom pass on an opportunity for publicity and self-aggrandizement, yet there have so far not been any claims of responsibility for this high-profile attack.

Third, there has been no indication that any international terrorist group has cast its eye on Thailand. Al-Qaida and the Islamic State, the chief suspects, remain embroiled in conflicts in their primary theater of operations in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia. That said, the possibility that this could be a “lone wolf” attack—with no links whatsoever to the main jihadi protagonists—cannot at this point be discounted either.

The third suspects are, invariably, disgruntled political elements opposed to the military establishment. Thailand has been in the throes of political conflict for almost a decade as the military and traditional aristocratic elite tussle for power with supporters of the billionaire populist former prime minister intent on altering the traditional power structure.

Since staging its most recent coup in May 2014, the military government has insisted that it has managed to disarm the pro-Thaksin “red shirt” faction and returned calm to Bangkok. It is nevertheless reasonable to surmise, however, that tensions continue to brew beneath this veneer. In any event, even if the “red shirt” faction has to large extents been disarmed, the existence of rogue elements cannot be discounted especially given access to resources available to leaders of that faction.

By this account, the audacity of the bombing would underscore intent to not only fundamentally discredit junta claims to have returned Bangkok—and Thailand—to normalcy, but to undermine the legitimacy of the government as a whole. If indeed the bombing is linked to this political conflict, it will doubtless deepen the already alarming polarization that now dominates the Thai political scene, rendering the conflict all but intractable.   

All said, we still have little but to go by at this point beyond informed speculation. But in a deeper sense, whatever the identity or motive of the perpetrator(s), the reality is that a threshold has been crossed, and Thai politics and society will likely take a radically different course in the months, and possibly years, to come.

As for the military junta, which would doubtless be tempted to pin the blame on political opponents, it is all but certain that they will circle the wagons and tighten security reins even further.

SEE ALSO: Trail goes cold in hunt for Bangkok shrine bomber

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NOW WATCH: New aerial footage shows aftermath of explosion in China

Gunmen fired on police outside an Istanbul palace, and a bomb killed eight soldiers in the southeast on Wednesday, heightening a sense of crisis as Turkey's leaders struggled to form a new government.

The Istanbul governor's office said two members of a "terrorist group" armed with hand grenades and an automatic rifle were caught after attacking the Dolmabahce palace, popular with tourists and home to the prime minister's Istanbul offices.

There were no reports of casualties.

Militants from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) meanwhile killed eight soldiers with a roadside bomb in the southeastern province of Siirt, the military said, intensifying a conflict there after the breakdown of a two-year ceasefire last month.

The unrest in the NATO member state comes weeks after it declared a "war on terror," opening up its air bases to the US-led coalition against Islamic State, launching air strikes on Kurdish militants, and detaining more than 2,500 suspected members of radical Kurdish, far-leftist, and Islamist groups.

The latest attacks also come a day after Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu gave up on efforts to form a new government after weeks of coalition talks with the opposition failed, possibly paving the way for another election within months.

"Because of the failure to form a government, we have to seek a solution with the will of the people ... so we are heading rapidly toward an election again," President Tayyip Erdogan said in a televised speech.

The lira slid to a new low against the dollar as investors took fright at what some have dubbed a "perfect storm" of political uncertainty, slowing growth, and deepening violence.

The currency has seen its steepest five-day decline this week since May 2010, making it one of the world's worst-performing emerging-markets currencies.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack at Dolmabahce palace, where the assailants opened fire on police guarding the entrance. The building has been targeted before by leftist militants.

Davutoglu was in the capital, Ankara, as reports of the shooting emerged and did not interrupt a speech he was giving live on television.

In response to the PKK attack, a nationalist opposition party called for an extraordinary meeting of the National Security Council and the declaration of "martial law" measures in parts of the country in line with constitutional provisions.

"Security must be established with martial-law measures in a section of the country, covering provinces and districts where there are scenes of violence and horror," MHP leader Devlet Bahceli said in a written statement.

Turkey has been on a heightened state alert since launching what Davutoglu described a "synchronized war on terror" in July, exposing it to reprisals from Islamic State sympathizers, Kurdish militants and leftist radicals alike.

A fighter proclaiming allegiance to Islamic State appeared in a video this week urging Turks to rebel against "infidel" Erdogan and help conquer Istanbul.

The leftist Revolutionary People's Liberation Army-Front (DHKP-C) meanwhile claimed responsibility earlier this month for an attack on the US consulate in Istanbul, in which two women shot at the building. One of the attackers was hurt in an exchange of fire but there were no other casualties. 

GOVERNMENT PARALYSIS

The ruling AK Party, which Erdogan founded, in June suffered its biggest election setback since coming to power in 2002, failing to win a single-party majority for the first time and plunging Turkey into uncertainty not seen since the fragile coalition governments of the 1990s.

The failure of Davutoglu's efforts to find a junior coalition partner led him to hand the mandate to form the next government back to Erdogan late on Tuesday. Presidential sources said Erdogan would consult with the speaker of parliament later on Wednesday on how to agree the next cabinet.

He could now give the mandate to the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), although he has appeared reluctant to do so, and the CHP would in any case be unlikely to be able to form a working coalition by an August 23 deadline.

Erdogan told academics at a meeting on Wednesday that he favored forming an interim "election cabinet" before new polls in the autumn, according to the Hurriyet Daily News.

Such an arrangement would see power temporarily shared between four political parties with deep ideological divides, potentially paralyzing policymaking and further unraveling investor confidence.

The CHP said on Wednesday it was "unthinkable" that it would take part in such a government.

Parliament could in theory also vote to allow the current cabinet to continue working until a new election, but at least one of the opposition parties, the nationalist MHP, has already said it would vote against such a move.

Erdogan, who won Turkey's first popular presidential election in August 2014 and has since stretched the powers of a largely ceremonial post to their limits, has said the system of power has changed in Turkey.

He has championed a full presidential system akin to the US or France, a constitutional change that would be virtually impossible without a single-party AKP government, but has also insisted that even without that step, his election by the people has bestowed him with extra authority.

"There is now a president in the country not with symbolic power, but with literal power," he said last week.

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In August 2014 the United States joined the war against the Islamic State (IS).

The massacre and enslavement of the Yazidi population in the Sinjar district of Iraq’s Ninewa province prompted Washington to cobble together an international coalition and start air strikes on IS positions in Iraq and Syria.

That was one year ago. That has given plenty of time for people to form their opinions on how the war against the militants has progressed.

Collected together here are ten experts: Ahmed Ali of the American University of Iraq-Sulaimani, J.M. Berger of the Brookings Institution, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Dr. Michael Knights of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Aron Lund of Syria in Crisis, Alex Mello of Horizon Client Access, Douglas Ollivant of the New America Foundation, Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi of the Middle East Forum, Craig Whiteside of the Naval War College, and Aaron Zelin of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy all of which have been astute observers of the Islamic State, Syria and Iraq.

Here are their personal opinions on how they believe the war against the Islamic State has gone.

Ahmed Ali is a senior fellow at the Institute of Regional and International Studies at the American University of Iraq-Sulaimani. He can be followed on Twitter @IraqShamel.

The war against ISIS is at a critical juncture. ISIS is on defense and this is a change from a year ago. This outcome was not achieved easily. In 2014, ISIS took control of many cities in northern and western Iraq almost uncontested. Today, ISIS is not on the march, is contained in Iraq, and is being pressured in Syria.

These positive developments do not mean ISIS is about to be defeated and certainly should not result in accepting the status quo. The developments indicate there is a way forward to defeat ISIS that will include enhancing the military and political components. 

In Iraq, the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), Popular Mobilization Units (PMUs), Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga, and Iraqi Sunni tribes now know the enemy well.

They have been fighting for over a year with successes and setbacks. These anti-ISIS forces are pursuing a strategy that is characterized by patience and a realization that ISIS can slowly be defeated even if it's a difficult responsibility. These forces still need a great degree of support to include strategic planning and air support. The anti-ISIS forces should avoid the pitfall of internal rivalries and turf-war.

ISIS thrives in these conditions. Politically, Prime Minster Haider al-Abadi has launched an ambitious reform agenda. He should not exclusively focus on the political challenge while ignoring the immediate ISIS military challenge. In Syria, ISIS faces challenges on the ground and from the air. Last year, ISIS had complete freedom in Syria. 

The U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition is in a different posture at the moment. Airstrikes are more frequent and ISIS has had to adjust its operational tempo in response. The airstrikes will enjoy more success if they are accompanied by revised sets of the rules of engagement (ROE).

The current ROE have in some cases hampered ground forces from being more effective. The uber-restrictive ROE have in some cases allowed ISIS to achieve avoidable gains as we saw in Ramadi. The new Turkish role in targeting ISIS is a positive overall. Turkey can be even more serious and effective by ensuring it suffocates the ISIS fighter supply line that used to run through Turkish airports and borders.

However, Turkish targeting of the PKK can have an adverse effect on the fight against ISIS. The PKK and the PYD are fighting ISIS in both Iraq and Syria. Targeting them will undoubtedly shift their focus and likely some resources from fighting ISIS. Turkish-PKK tensions will continue and they certainly make their own decisions. Both sides have to be cognizant of timing and priorities. For now, the priority has to be fighting ISIS. 

ISIS remains a threat despite its weakened posture. Its regional presence in Egypt and Libya is concerning. The U.S. cannot be in all of these places to counter ISIS. It will have to depend on partners and local allies. This task is easier in Iraq and Egypt, but more difficult in Syria and Libya.

The U.S. should refrain from being a reactive actor. It should not wait for another Ramadi to be more aggressive with ISIS. The requirements and needs are clear on the battlefield. The U.S. and its partners do not have the luxury to contemplate decisions.

Quick action and deploying hard power can secure the U.S. influence now and in the long-term.

J.M. Berger is Nonresident Fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-author of ISIS: The State of Terror. He can be followed on Twitter @intelwire.

While the war against ISIS has been full of sound and fury, the coalition has been largely stalemated in its efforts to force a meaningful change on the ground in Iraq and Syria.

ISIS has lost some territory, but gained in other areas, particularly the international arena. With its annexation of Boko Haram in Nigeria, and its expanded terrorist operations in Yemen, Afghanistan, Tunisia and elsewhere, it’s difficult to make the case that ISIS is weaker today than it was a year ago.

The major question now is whether a continuing stalemate is better for ISIS or for the coalition. If ISIS is forced to consume resources faster than it can replenish them with new conquests, it could suffer escalating setbacks given time. But if the center holds, its ability to project internationally and spark secondary conflicts among coalition members may tilt the advantage in its favor. 

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He can be followed on Twitter@DaveedGR.

Doyle McManus demonstrated in a recent L.A. Timescolumn that the answer to how the war against the Islamic State (IS) is going depends in some small part on the metrics one uses.

On the one hand, IS has lost about 10% of the territory it once held; but on the other, IS still controls a vast expanse of territory and can mount offensives, such as the one that captured Anbar’s capital of Ramadi in May. The reason I stress that an assessment of coalition efforts will only vary in a small way based on the chosen metrics is because these competing evaluations are a bit of a diversion.

The overarching reality is that IS not only continues to control sizable territory after a year of fighting some of the world’s most powerful states, but also threatens to overrun even more ground. Given how difficult it is for violent non-state actors (VNSAs)—especially those with as many enemies as IS has—to control territory for sustained periods, it’s fair to assess IS as the winner thus far.

Even if its “caliphate” ultimately lacks staying power, IS has shown that VNSAs can capture and control broad swathes of territory in regions of the utmost strategic importance. It has shown that jihadist groups can sustain these gains despite implementing an extraordinarily brutal form of sharia law, systematizing sexual slavery, and pursuing openly genocidal policies against religious minorities.

While the United States was right to forego committing conventional ground forces, many coalition policies raise doubts about the current strategy. The strict rules of engagement imposed on U.S. air strikes have kept IS’s attrition rates lower than they might otherwise be. The coalition’s failure to meaningfully engage with Anbari tribes prior to Ramadi’s fall—the same tribes that successfully rebelled against IS’s predecessor—represents a missed opportunity. And Iraq’s decision to continue paying state employees who live in IS-controlled territory, while not altogether irrational, has certainly enriched IS.

This is not to say all is going swimmingly for IS, which faces internal divisions, loss of supply routes, and challenges from Kurdish groups in its own capital of Raqqa. But IS’s continued ability to credibly claim that it is “remaining and expanding” despite the coalition assembled against it means the group is in a far better position than anyone should feel comfortable with—and other VNSAs are certainly watching, and will learn from its example.

Dr. Michael Knights is a Lafer fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He can followed on Twitter@Mikeknightsiraq.

Speaking just about Iraq, which is clearly only one segment of the broader war, any assessment of the current level of progress has to take into account the perspective of the differing participants.

The Shia-led government in Iraq might be impatient but they will see the defense of Samarra, Baghdad and Karbala as major successes. The liberation of Jurf as-Sakr (which overlooks Shia pilgrim routes), Tikrit and other areas will likewise be viewed with pride.

There will be optimism about the unfolding battles in Ramadi and Haditha. In Baghdad's view, Iraq's military is recovering but it remains too reliant on autonomous Shia politicians with military forces of their own. Thus one of Baghdad's key concerns about the war is not necessarily how slowly it progresses but what non-governmental Shia rivals are being enabled by the war. It also pays to look at the recaptured territories through Shia Iraqi eyes: to a Westerner much of Iraq still needs to be liberated, but to a Shia Iraqi politician almost all the Shia areas have already been liberated and remaining ISIL-controlled areas far away from Baghdad are a lower priority.

Thus, from an Iraqi Shia perspective the war has seen an inspiring popular mobilization and secured most Shia areas from overrun, which looks like a qualified success.

The Iraqi Kurds share some similarities with the Shia-led federal government view. The defense of Erbil showed that America and the West cared a lot about Iraqi Kurdistan's survival, and subsequently an unprecedented level of international military support has been provided to the Kurds. This alone makes the war effort of the last year a diplomatic success of the first order.

The Kurds recaptured most of the places they cared about and have established a very strong defensive line that incorporates most of Kirkuk. From the Kurdish perspective the job is not done, however: ISIL is simply too close for comfort. So the Kurds will say the war against ISIL is going OK but that it would be a disaster if it now shuddered to a halt and left them with ISIL-controlled Mosul just a half-hour's drive from their capital Erbil.

Most of the Sunni Arabs of Iraq would undoubtedly view the war against ISIL as going very badly. Those in safer areas like Baghdad fear backlash if ISIL starts to launch more bombings of Shia areas close to them. Those in liberated areas face a mammoth reconstruction challenge and many are being constrained from returning to their towns and villages.

Those in ISIL-controlled areas or waiting to return to them from IDP camps are uncertain that anyone is really going to liberate the Sunni areas for them. If Sunni Hashd al-Sha'abi (Popular Mobilization) have to self-liberate the areas as the leading combat forces, a bloody road lies ahead for many of their sons. The war since 2014 has been a disaster of unprecedented scale and intensity for the Sunnis, even set against the Sunni Iraqi disasters of previous years.  

The international community, including the United States probably has a very varied view of whether the war is going well in Iraq. The U.S. leadership wanted to check ISIL's advance in Iraq without becoming an indispensable ground force provider again: it has succeeded in that narrow aim, which may give some satisfaction in the White House if not in many other places. The Iranians have gained a lot of influence at fairly low cost by being ungrudging and quick to act -- exactly what the U.S. could and should have done.

But they are probably not satisfied overall: Iran is increasingly paranoid that the war is not going fast enough in Iraq, that Western involvement is (very) slowly escalating and that ISIL may spread and pose a direct threat on and within Iran's borders.  

Though it is harder to get inside the mind of ISIL's leadership I suspect they are very content with the last year in Iraq on a number of levels. First, they have appeared virile and aggressive for much of that period, even if they struggled to move much beyond Sunni-populated areas. Over the last year global media has boosted them into 10 feet-tall supermen based on their achievements in Iraq and this has sparked a wealth of opportunities for expansion elsewhere. Iraq is where they made their brand over the last year.

But there have also been disappointments in Iraq: in particular running an oil industry and holding the requisite terrain and infrastructure proved to be too hard. But generally the ISIL view of the last year in Iraq can probably be summed up as: "I can't complain." 

Aron Lund, editor of Syria in Crisis, a website published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. @aron_ld.  

The short answer to questions like these should of course always be "I have no idea", but a slightly longer version could go something like this.

Numerically and in terms of sheer firepower, the Islamic State is vastly outgunned in Iraq. (Syria is a slightly different story.) They seem to have great problems holding ground once they come under concerted assault that includes both Iraqi ground troops and airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition. They're poorly equipped to rule and develop the areas under their control and will be forced to tune-up repression as this drags on, which can easily alienate the local population.

But unless challenged decisively on their own turf and by Sunni rivals, they can probably remain indefinitely in many Sunni parts of Iraq as a Taliban style Quran-and-Kalashnikov warlord movement, bobbing up and down from subversive action to territorial control depending on the way their war is going at that moment and in that area. It's not the shiny new caliphate they've been dreaming of, but it's also not the Islamic State-free Iraq that the US is hoping for. It's certainly nowhere close to the ideology-addled hallucinations offered up by invasion proponents in 2003.

The fundamental problems that allowed the Islamic State to expand in the first place persist today and have in many ways hardened. The opponents of the jihadis are too badly divided -- along ethnic and religious and political lines, and also in terms of foreign allegiances and support -- to realize even a fraction of their collective might. It's an alliance that is much less than the sum of its parts.

For example, the Kurds should be able to blast the Islamic State out of Sinjar fairly easily, with US and Iraqi support. Instead, they have been stuck up there for months because the PKK and KDP are both more interested in pulling the rug from under the others' feet than in actually pushing back the Islamic State. The protests in Basra and elsewhere highlight the cracks in the Shia bloc and show how brittle the Baghdad government remains, particularly with the onset of economic difficulties after the oil price drop.

I think at this point, people looking at the Iraqi war need to start thinking more seriously about what the benchmarks are, or should be. How do you usefully quantify Coalition success against the Islamic State? Is it to halt, contain, and pressure them until we see some rollback and internal fissures opening up? If so, I guess things are going pretty well, despite some hickups like Ramadi.

But if the metrics are about building Sunni leadership able to displace the Islamic State more permanently, in alliance with Baghdad, there's been very little progress. I suppose a reasonable way of looking at it would be to accept the premise put forth by the US administration, that this is a multi-year engagement. If so, one could say that step one seems to have gone OK, but there's been no transit to step two yet and it's not clear that that's ever going to happen.

In the end, it's not obvious to me that this is a fixable problem, at least not given the level of resources that the US and others are willing and able to put in. Iraq is an incredible mess. Syria is beyond salvation. Action to affect the situation in these countries is constrained by real and serious costs, many other global and domestic priorities, by the public's war weariness, and much else.

A first step should be for policy debate to line up with reality and look at what is achievable given the political situation on both ends of these interventions, instead of measuring success against the impossible standard of "if only". The sooner the better. I'm not sure the world can handle this many whining wonks indefinitely.

Alex Mello is lead Iraq security analyst at energy advisory service Horizon Client Access. He can be followed on@Alex_de_M.

The Islamic State is now on the defensive in Iraq—but this doesn’t mean the Iraqi government is on the path to winning the war. Until April I think you could say pretty accurately that the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) were broadly on schedule to roll up insurgent gains.

Several important insurgent strongholds where security collapsed in June 2014 had already been cleared; the southern Baghdad belts, northern Diyala, Tikrit, and an assault on Mosul was mostly on track for late 2015. The fall of Ramadi in May 2015 upset the entire ISF and Coalition strategy. The ISF are now going have to clear Ramadi, and probably also Fallujah, and it’s not certain that they can.

As the fighting in Bayji and its refinery is showing, the ISF and Hashd have a fundamental problem with complex urban combat operations and clearing and holding urban terrain. Another point is that even with the Hashd al-Sha’abi providing a huge manpower reserve and backstopping security in cleared areas the ISF—especially the battle hardened “fire brigade” units, the Iraqi Special Operations Forces (ISOF), Emergency Response Brigades (ERB0, a few Federal Police units and Iraqi Army armored brigades—are badly attrited, exhausted and overstretched, with numerous brigades fixed in place or combat-ineffective.

The ISF simply doesn’t have the strength to undertake simultaneous, coordinated operations in multiple areas—like the US corps-level surge offensives in 2007-2008—so they end up “squeezing the balloon”.  Insurgents are cleared from one area only to pop up in another—this is what we’re seeing in Diyala now.

The worst case scenario is that if the ISF become bogged down in attritional urban fighting in Ramadi and Fallujah, the federal government may simply end up yielding control of large areas of Sunni Iraq—Mosul, the upper Tigris River Valley, Anbar—to the insurgents, and focus on holding areas that Baghdad considers vital to its security—the Baghdad belts, where most ISF strength is already tied up, Diyala province, and the Baghdad-Samarra corridor, and abandon the rest as permanent hunting ground for Coalition airstrikes and special forces raids.

This is what an Islamic State victory could look like.

Douglas Ollivant is a Senior National Security Studies Fellow at the New America Foundation, and is a managing partner at Mantid International. He can be followed on Twitter at @DouglasOllivant.

The war on ISIL, despite setbacks (yes--Ramadi was a huge disappointment) and sputterings, is moving apace in Iraq (no, no one has a plan for Syria), despite disappointing support from some neighboring countries.

Further, the arrival of U.S. equipment this summer, the emergence of fresh Iraqi troops from the U.S. training pipeline, the maturing of the U.S. intelligence effort in Iraq, and the opening of Incerlik as an air base, should magnify the effect of coalition assistance. 

Success in Ramadi and/or Fallujah this fall/winter will be the barometer of whether the effort is moving fast enough.  But more can be done to assist the Iraqis on the front lines of this effort--not more as in something different, but more as in better and faster along the currently efforts (training, equipping, intelligence, airpower). 

Further, providing monies to help the Iraqis (and others with front lines with or near ISIL--the Jordanians come to mind) defray the costs of fighting this transnational threat (and ameliorating the humanitarian crises it is creating) do not seem inappropriate.  The blood (lamentably) spilled to destroy ISIL must come from the region--but the treasure involved could be more broadly sourced.  

Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi is a Shillman-Ginsburg Fellow at the Middle East Forum. He can be followed on Twitter@ajaltamimi.

Overall, the war against the Islamic State has reached a stalemate with ebb and flow. Though the Islamic State may have lost substantial border holdings in northern Syria to the Kurdish YPG, it has continued to make advances in the Homs desert against the Assad regime, while fighting with the rebels in north Aleppo countryside remains deadlocked.

In Iraq a similar trend has emerged with the Islamic State's loss of Tikrit and all towns in Babil and Diyala provinces on the one hand but capturing important towns in Anbar such as Ramadi and Hit on the other. The stalemate aspect in Iraq is particularly evident with the continued fighting over Baiji district and the attempts to move on Ramadi and Fallujah in which government forces and Shi'a militias are taking heavy casualties, while Kurdish forces still cannot retake all of Sinjar town.

Indeed, the endless claims in local media outlets of killing X number of Islamic State members in an operation or airstrike here and there can really irritate an analyst. Meanwhile the cities of Mosul, Tel Afar and the towns of far western Anbar show no sign of facing any serious challenge to Islamic State rule for the foreseeable future, and revenue streams have not been seriously hurt because airstrikes cannot dismantle the bureaucratic structure that finds so many avenues for taxation and fees, unless one wants to break all humanitarian boundaries and go for wholesale destruction of the areas the Islamic State controls.

I think there is not enough honesty in policy discussion about what 'defeating' the Islamic State would require: namely, years of extensive ground troop deployments and nation-building projects of the kind no one is prepared to tolerate, limited as the confines of policy discussion are by the legacies of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as ever more polarized, partisan and dysfunctional politics.

For example, one can talk of giving a more proactive role for the U.S. troops currently stationed in Iraq and/or an increase in troop numbers by a few thousand but it will not tip the overall stalemate, leading instead to perceptions of mission creep and unnecessary troop casualties. So until one sees the willpower and consensus for what it would actually take to 'defeat/destroy' the Islamic State, the coalition should drop pretenses to realizing such objectives.

Craig Whiteside is an Associate Professor at the Naval War College, a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel, and a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He can be followed on Twitter @CraigAWhiteside.

A year has passed since the fall of Mosul, and yet the concerted forces arrayed against the Islamic State have had minimal impact.  It was in April 2007, around the advent of its darkest times, that emir Abu Omar al Baghdadi predicted that the “Islamic State will remain.”

Whatever else its failings, the IS movement has a clear strategy, visible determination, and a realistic appraisal of the costs to achieve its goals.  The same cannot be said of our side. Our fear, hesitancy, and fecklessness stand out in all of our public statements. We are afraid the elimination of IS will empower both Assad and the Iranian militias, and that these same militias will target our soldiers in Iraq. 

The reality is that IS must be defeated if the Syrian resistance is to defeat Assad, and only an IS loss can reduce Iranian influence in Iraq and create the trust necessary for national reconciliation. We are hesitant to help Iraqis and Syrians fight IS for fear of doing too much for them, yet our predecessors did the same for Europeans, Koreans, and Vietnamese once.

We claim to uphold the standard of human rights, yet look away when confronted with incontrovertible, even self-admitted, evidence of genocide and sexual slavery. We have performed due diligence in exhausting diplomatic, economic, and other measures to defeat IS – and they have proven to be insufficient means. The fantasies about negotiating with IS or allowing it to socialize into the international order are detached from reality and demonstrate a lack of understanding of this revolutionary movement – which has expansionistic mandates and a culture that views negotiation as surrender.

Finally, our preoccupation with terror attacks against our homeland as our only criteria for action blinds us to a slowly gathering threat which will undoubtedly and eventually bring war to us when the time favors their side. We must increase our efforts to destroy this nascent pseudo-state that poses an existential threat to our friends and allies in the region, before this cancer is untreatable.

Aaron Zelin is the Richard Borow fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He can be followed on Twitter@azelin.

One year since the military campaign started in Iraq there have been mixed results. For The Islamic State (IS), one of its main slogans is 'remaining and expanding.' While IS has taken over places such as Fallujah and Ramadi, it has seen its territory in Iraq on the whole shrink, especially in Salah al-Din, Diyala, and parts of Anbar governorates. That said, IS has further entrenched, consolidated, and advanced in its governance in its western provinces Wilayat Ninawa, Wilayat Dijlah, and Wilayat al-Jazirah in particular.

Beyond its hisba justice, just in the past week, IS has been involved with cleaning and repainting roads, working at the salt production factory, surveying the landscape for establishing new sidewalks and pathways, repairing sewage lines, running hospitals, running various markets in many cities and villages, running poultry farms, running sewing shops, providing zakat funds and food distribution to those eligible, repaving roads and sidewalks, decorating streets, running car dealerships, building a sports hall, resuming a water filtration plant, settling disputes and reconciling differences between clans, and starting the second round of tests in schools.

Of course, this is just a one week sample, illustrating the increasingly sophisticated nature of how IS runs the territory it controls, it goes well beyond the executions that most people only associate IS with. That said, there is still a major humanitarian disaster in areas IS controls and its governance still is not that impressive, it's just that compared to prior jihadi governance, this is the most advanced we have seen as well as the fact that expectations are so low and IS is indeed trying on some level and because of this it might get the benefit of the doubt by some.

Therefore, at least in the territories IS still controls and has a tighter grip on now, the military campaign should be viewed as a failure.

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A group of men that includes one American student and two US servicemembers are being applauded for their heroic action in stopping a gunman on a high-speed train traveling from Amsterdam to Paris.

US student Anthony Sadler, US National Guard member Alek Skarlatos, and British consultant, Chris Norman say they were all sitting in the same area of the Thalys train Friday when they saw an employee run through the carriage after the gunman opened fire.

Sadler and Skarlatos, spoke of their friend, Spencer Stone, also a US servicemember, who helped subdue the shooter. "Spencer ran a good ten meters to get to the guy," Skarlatos said. Spencer was reportedly among those sent to the hospital with injuries, but is expected to recover.

Norman summed it all up, saying had they not intervened, the ordeal may have ended in "carnage."

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