Syria reported to have use Chemical Warfare

[Cain]

I believe I may have expressed some scepticism as to how Turkey got their hostages freed a couple of pages back.

Admittedly, I didn't think a 3-1 ratio prisoner swap would be part of the deal....but I can't say I'm entirely surprised that this occured.

[Junkenstein]

The more I think about it, the more I think that the reason it's been done at over 3-1 is that they must have plenty more prisoners left to trade. It's easy to be generous in such things when you've still got dozens locked up waiting.

Would it be reasonable to assume that some of the traded prisoners will be essentially acting as spies or the like for Turkey and others? I would have assumed so from what we've seen with the Gitmo releases, but I may be giving people too much credit here.

[Cain]

I don't know how many prisoners they have, but that's a very reasonable assumption, yes.

In other news, ISIS is poised to take the Syrian-Turkish border town of Kobane. 

[Junkenstein]

Hey Cain,

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2014/09/07/the_redheaded_dane_who_became_a_jihadi_and_then_a_cia_spy.html

This guy mean anything to you? It's not particularly shocking that there's double/triple/more agents kicking around as how vocal this guy is apparently being about it. I'm leaning towards bullshit but there's far too much detail to just discount all of it in that way.

Storm's stories about cozying up to terrorists are only eclipsed by his dealings with the CIA, Britain's MI5 and MI6, and PET, the Danish intelligence service. They provide a window into the operations of an otherwise secret world that former U.S. vice-president Dick Cheney famously called the "dark side," and the portrayal is indeed dark.
He admired the British agents the most, as he claims they told him not to trust the Americans and refused to be part of the drone operation to kill Awlaki. They also disagreed with the plan to send Awlaki his third wife.
In his role as matchmaker, Storm hooked up Irena Horak, an unwitting Croatian woman who converted to Islam, with Awlaki and helped arrange her move to Yemen in 2010. The CIA bugged her belongings. Her whereabouts today are unknown.
Storm still has much of their correspondence and the video Horak sent to Awlaki, which is part of a huge electronic file that helps give his story credibility.
"What was key in terms of our confidence in his story was the overwhelming amount of corroborating evidence he presented us from his hard drive, from his phone, from his passport, from his bank transfers ... there are gigabytes of this stuff," says Paul Cruickshank, CNN's terrorism analyst, who co-wrote the book with Storm and journalist Tim Lister. "His story fit this huge amount of audiovisual material."
Storm eventually feared the CIA was trying to get rid of him as "collateral damage" in targeting Wuhayshi and felt telling his story was his only way out. Of course by going public, first in 2012 to Denmark's newspaper Jyllands-Posten, he burnt his bridges with the intelligence agencies.

He seems to link into pretty much every major name in the game. It's impressively constructed if it's fantasy and it's borderline unbelievable if true.

[Cain]

He sounds like exactly the kind of unreliable fantasist and minor criminal the intelligence services would use as an intelligence source.

Which is not to say most of his story doesn't stink of bullshit.  It does, and badly so.  He may have been employed in some minor fashion, and inflated his importance and connections tremendously, like certain Iran-Contra "players" I could name.

Besides, jihadis don't trust westerners, especially white converts.  They're such an obvious risk of being an intelligence plant, and usually have shitty tradecraft and skills besides.

[Junkenstein]

Thanks, that makes quite a bit of sense.

[Cain]

Kobane's gonna fall.  The UK and USA are warning about "the limits of air-power"...which you'll notice was never mentioned at all last month, while we were debating getting involved with our air forces.  So, they're managing expectations which means they expect a clusterfuck which will decimate the PKK.

That and ISIS has already entered the city.  Reports of heavy fighting inside the town mean they've established a hold somewhere in the town itself and are moving fighters in via the breach.

Turkish military are still sat on their hands, waiting for ISIS and the Kurds to kill each other off, presumably.  What I don't get is "why now?"  ISIS previously besieged the town in July, not to any great amount of success.  Suddenly, they've flipped around from the Iraqi theatre back to Syria...I can see the strategic importance of the town, controlling a border crossing with rail access will give them the means to acquire a lot more men, money and material from within Turkey (not to mention control the black market in goods heading out of Syria - never forget, ISIS funds itself via criminal means which include antiquities and oil smuggling)...but I don't see why now.

And that bothers me.  ISIS are very unpredictable in their overall strategy, despite having what I would otherwise characterise as a very controlled military council and chain of command.  Meaning, it's not just happenstance and coincidence when they do something, it means they had a plan and this works as part of the next stage.  Just like when they took Fallujah and, apparently, sat on their hands for six months...they weren't doing nothing, they were building up a collection of western hostages, they were moving troops and material into Anbar for the move on Mosul, they were securing alliances with local tribes and other militant groups.  But you wouldn't know that to look at them.

So what's the plan here?  My guess is to strike hard against the Kurdish Supreme Committee.  Taking Kobane allows them to move troops into the region more freely, and harass and attack Kurdish fighters in the area.  Turkey will tacitly go along with such a plan, as we're seeing, and it allows ISIS to eliminate "Euphrates Volcano" - the PKK/FSA alliance against ISIS, who would presumably be a lynchpin in US plans to combat ISIS on the ground.

[Junkenstein]

I've seen the statement from turkey which is pretty much "You can't expect us to deal with this shit". No mention of that prisoner exchange which I would guess is a part of this in some way. For Kobane, I would have guessed that the intent is to secure another solid entrance/egress point for arms/support/illicit goods etc. They apparently have a decent war chest but that can empty quickly and needs to be replenished. I would say that there's probably no immediate financial issue but by securing places like this it helps ensure there won't be any money woes in the near/mid future.

The other development of note seems to be this:

http://www.rferl.org/content/iraq-yazidi-vian-dakhil-politkovskaya-award-islamic-state/26627843.html

"Only Yazidi women are kidnapped. We don't know, actually, why exactly the Yazidi women [are targeted]," she said. 

Dakhil says that of the more than 500,000 Yazidis in Iraq, some 25,000 Yazidi girls have been abducted by IS militants. 

"We don't know exactly [where all of them are], but some are [kept] at [various] prisons here, still in Iraq, and some have been taken to Syria, and some are in Mosul," she said. "They are taken to be raped, and they are selling them -- $150 for a girl."

As we've seen from the Boko Haram clusterfuck, there's very little urgency to deal with a situation of this nature. I have no idea how accurate those numbers are but even if they're off by an order of magnitude it's still huge.

There's a link at the end of the article to this which also seems relevant:

http://time.com/3276567/how-isis-is-recruiting-women-from-around-the-world/

The exact number of women who have joined jihadist groups in Syria is impossible to ascertain, but terrorism analysts at London's International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation estimate there are some 30 European women in Iraq and Syria who either accompanied their jihadist husbands or have gone with the intention to marry members of ISIS and other militant groups. That may be less than 10% of the number of Western men currently estimated to be fighting in Syria and Iraq, but the fear is that the number of women involved may grow more quickly. A recently established French hotline for reporting signs of jihadist radicalization has seen 45% of its inquiries involve women, according to the Interior Ministry, and there have been several cases of women, one as young as 16, arrested at France's airports under suspicion of trying to travel Syria to join Islamist rebels.

Again, while hardly solid numbers it's an indication of a potentially huge problem ahead. Iraq/Afgahnistan has struggled for years to deal with female suicide bombers and such, and they've had minimal success in stopping kids trying the same shit. I can't help but think that similar tactics are going to be used fairly soon on a wide range of areas. Shock and Awe, IS style.

[Cain]

ICSR tends to conservative baselines in their estimates, in my experience.

Interesting that women are catching up in Islamist circles.  As a rule, female terrorists are well represented except in those groups, for obvious reasons.  Of course, in those circles there also may be the possibility that male terrorists are purposefully putting female supporters in more passive roles, for obvious reasons.

[Junkenstein]

The inevitable occurs:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-29591916

Turkey has agreed to let the US use its military bases in the campaign against Islamic State militants, US National Security Adviser Susan Rice says.

Ms Rice said the US welcomed the new agreement, which included use of the Incirlik air base in Turkey's south.

I can only assume that "Incirlik" will shortly join the list. You know the list. It's the one that goes also has Gitmo and Abu Graib on it.

In other news, the US and Turkey are talking to each other about IS with straight faces. I would again assume that the intel from that prisoner  transfer has been at least a part of this move too. In the "You're not pulling that shit again until our boys get a turn with the pliers first" sense.

[Junkenstein]

Additional:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-29599902

More than £250,000 of suspected Islamic State (IS) funds have been seized at Manchester Airport and other north-west ports in the past year, anti-terrorist officers said.

The NW Counter Terrorism Unit used civil powers under the Terrorism Act to confiscate cash found hidden in luggage or under clothing.

Most was seized from passengers flying from Manchester to Turkey, said police.

"At the Turkish border with Syria there are shops where you can buy guns, boots, rations and if you are going out there to fight you need money and you want equipment."

It goes without saying that £250K is a pittance when you look at the overall level of likely funding and cash-equivalents that are flowing in and out on a regular basis. I'm guessing that the true figure will be substantially higher. The main questions I have at the moment relate to the source of the funding. I doubt it's millionaire jihad sympathisers raiding the mattress. It also seems unlikely that begging for change from the potentially sympathetic is occurring too. It'd be tabloid headlines for one thing.

So where has the cash come from? A few people throwing their life savings at a guy who's promising to give it to the right people half a world away?

A paranoid mind might start to suspect other sources as the provider of this wealth. For instance, the police and intelligence services. We've seen pretty much exactly this happen with the "Fast and Furious" bullshit in the US, and it seems depressingly likely that some nice MI chaps are handing sacks of cash to easily monitored/controlled idiots, "Catching" them and then using them for intel.

[Junkenstein]

Did we call this? It seems like something we should have called:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-29603272

Shia militias in Iraq have kidnapped and killed scores of Sunni civilians in recent months, a report by campaign group Amnesty International has said.

The killings were in apparent revenge for attacks by Islamic State (IS).

Amnesty said the militias had been supported and armed by the Iraqi government and operated with impunity.

...accusations against Shia militias in Iraq come two days after IS confirmed, in the latest issue of its propaganda magazine Dabiq, that it had captured and enslaved women and children from the Yazidi minority.

It said the women and children were seized around the town of Sinjar in northern Iraq and "were then divided according to the Sharia amongst the fighters of the Islamic State who participated in the... operations".

Some of the women were subsequently "sold", the magazine said.

The Amnesty report, based on interviews conducted in Iraq in August and September, provides details of what it says were sectarian attacks carried out by militiamen in the cities of Baghdad, Samarra and Kirkuk.

It says scores of unidentified bodies have been found, many still handcuffed and with gunshot wounds to the head, suggesting execution-style killings. Many others who disappeared remain unaccounted for.

I've no realisitic idea of the best approach to this whole shitheap now. Western governments seem to be pushing airstrikes as the solution. Historically, that's worked really well for getting the locals on side. The option of boots on ground is probably out too as the general populace is fairly war-weary and needs some time to build the required hate up.  Consider the reaction to the hostage murder videos in the past few months compared to the ones circa 2001-ish. 15 years ago this kind of thing had people screaming to send soliders. Now it's very much their problem and we don't want to be involved, thanks.

The thing is though, I have no idea if either of those approaches works at all in general. Israel has had soldiers all over the Gaza strip and they still can't get all the weapons under control. If a modern military can't lock down an area the size of Gaza on its own doorstep, what chance does it realistically have of controlling something like IS? Somewhat rambling, but there's a point there somewhere, I'm sure of it.

[Junkenstein]

Hey, there's a whole sack of shit still going on too:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-29609660

A terror suspect was considering an indiscriminate Mumbai-style attack and had an address for Tony Blair and his wife, Cherie, the Old Bailey has heard.

Erol Incedal plotted to attack a "significant individual" or killings similar to the 2008 Mumbai attacks, which left 174 dead, prosecutors said.

He also had a phone containing material supporting Islamic State, they added.

Mr Incedal, 26, from London, denies preparing for acts of terrorism. He is being tried partly in secret.

The jury heard Mr Incedal had no settled plan of attack. But the prosecution suggested the possession of the Blairs' address was significant.

Insert pithy comment regarding Blair and Terrorism and war crimes. ETA - Oh, I've got one - "Was he going for advice on how to do it right?" Fuck you, it's kinda weak but everything about Blair, Terror and war crimes has been beaten so thin it can slide under doors.

He is also accused of plotting with someone abroad and possessing a secure digital memory (SD) card "useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism."

Jurors were told on Monday that parts of the trial would never become public.

That's charmingly vague. The material in question could be anything from the Anarchists cookbook to propaganda leaflets. That's assuming it's even literature and not promotional videos or something like that. For fucks sake, for those inclined practically anything could be useful preparing to commit an act of terror.

ETA - Apparently it's a document called "Bomb making". Seriously people, rename your PDF's to something a little more innocent. Shove a few happy pictures at the start of it as well, you know, just make a bit of a fucking effort not to get easily caught.

The judge told the jury that "a limited number of journalists" would be able to attend to see and hear this evidence - but they would not be able to report what is said.

He added that there would be a third part of the trial where even those accredited journalists would be excluded from hearing the evidence.

"This is another reason why you must not talk about the private proceedings with anyone else outside of your number," said the judge.

So some will be open, some less so and some not at all. But justice will totally be done. I'm assuming the sentencing part will fall under the third section too.


Oh, and apparently a hill in Kobane is back under Kurdish control
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-29611673

For now, anyway.

[LMNO]

Perhaps this is way too blunt and simplistic for the level of conversation currently in the thread, but was all this inevitable, or would most of it not have happened without Desert Storm?

Part of me feels that eventually there would be some sort of power vacuum in the region that could start everything rolling, but W just kicked it off sooner.

[Junkenstein]

I have a feeling of inevitable, given the borders of various nation states and the conflicting groups within them.

This is the point where it's smart for me to shut up and wait for Cain.