Pan-Islamic merged mega thread

[CougarKing]

The Saudis show their intolerance for the Shias in their country:

Reuters

Saudi Arabia sentences outspoken Shi'ite cleric to death: brother
Reuters

By Angus McDowall


RIYADH (Reuters) - A Saudi judge sentenced to death a prominent cleric on Wednesday who has called for greater rights for the kingdom's Shi'ites, the cleric's brother said, two years after his arrest prompted deadly protests in the oil-producing east of the country.

Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr was detained in July 2012 following demonstrations that erupted in February 2011 in Qatif district, home to many of the Sunni-ruled country's Shi'ite minority.

His brother, Mohammed al-Nimr, reported Wednesday's sentencing on his Twitter account.

The sentence could raise tensions in Qatif, which has historically been the focal point of anti-government demonstrations demanding an end to discrimination, but where the frequency of protests has died down over the past year.

(...SNIPPED)

 

[a_majoor]

Interesting if somewhat bizarre counter response to the growth of ISIS: Westerners going to the Middle East to fight them. Now this is more on the scale of individual adventurers going off to fight for their cause de jour, but if there was some sort of organizing principle we may see the growth of something like the "International Brigades" in the 1930's (but who will play the part of the Communist International in this case?):

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/10/15/bikers-volunteers-dutch-isis/17295699/

Westerners volunteer to take on the Islamic State
Gregg Zoroya, USA TODAY 8:23 p.m. EDT October 15, 2014

As an estimated 2,000 expatriates from the United States and other Western nations join the Islamic State to fulfill a passion for conflict or jihad, a much smaller number of Westerners have signed up to fight against the militants. The latest: members of a biker gang from Holland.

The head of Never Surrender, Klaas Otto, told a Dutch radio station that three of its members went to Iraq to join Kurdish fighters battling the Islamic State, also known as ISIL or ISIS.

The gang touts a quote from Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel on its Facebook page: "I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides."

The story was first reported Wednesday by NPR.

The bikers join others outraged over the brutality displayed by Islamic State fighters, who have seized wide swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria. A former U.S. soldier from Racine, Wis., joined Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq and was wounded in a mortar attack.

"I couldn't just sit and watch Christians being slaughtered anymore," Jordan Matson, 28, told USA TODAY last week from a hospital bed in Derike, Syria. "These people are fighting for their homes, for everything they have."

Matson said he met one other American fighting the militants.

An Air Force veteran from Ohio, Brian Wilson, 43, said he fought in Syria with the Kurds, adding that a few other Americans have done the same, NBC News reported.

"They're nice, very accommodating, hospitable," Wilson said of the Kurds.

Al Jazeera reported that a few hundred Kurds from Europe also headed into the fight against the Islamic State.

President Barack Obama and military chiefs from more than 20 nations gathered in Washington on Tuesday in a show of unity against the Islamic State group. The president also talked about how "the world is not doing enough" to fight Ebola. (Oct. 14) AP

The U.S. government said about 100 Americans have traveled to, or tried to reach, the Middle East to join the Islamic State. A small number have died in the conflict. Some 2,000 Westerners from 80 countries have gone to Syria to fight with the Islamic State, according to government estimates, raising fears many could return to commit terrorist acts at home.

There was no government information offered Wednesday on how many Westerners have gone into the area seeking to fight against the militants.

A U.S.-led coalition is attacking the militants with airstrikes, but the U.S. has ruled out committing ground forces, prompting talk of other fighters taking on the Islamic State.

Fox News' Bill O'Reilly recommended in recent weeks that President Obama raise 25,000 mercenaries to battle the Islamic State. The use of such forces has been banned by the United Nations General Assembly.

 

[CougarKing]

The kind of violence between Sunni and Shia that will continue beyond our lifetimes? Even the enmity between Catholics and other Christian (Protestant) sects, for a time, outlasted the Thirty Years' War in the 1600s.

Reuters

Suicide bomber kills 19, wounds 28 outside Baghdad Shi'ite mosque
Sun Oct 19, 2014 1:09pm EDT

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A suicide bomber killed 19 people and wounded 28 others on Sunday outside a Shi'ite Muslim mosque in western Baghdad, where mourners were attending a funeral, a police officer and medical official said.

"The attacker approached the entrance of the mosque and blew himself up among the crowd," the police officer said, declining to be named.

(...SNIPPED)

 

[CougarKing]

Another front of this perennial Sunni-Shia conflict is in Yemen, where the Shia Houthi rebels taken on local Al Qaeda branch:

Reuters

Yemen's Houthis dismantle Sanaa airport road camp, gunmen remain
Sun Oct 19, 2014 1:24pm EDT

By Mohammed Ghobari

SANAA (Reuters) - Yemen's Shi'ite Houthi group dismantled a protest camp blocking the country's main airport in Sanaa on Sunday, authorities said, but was keeping its fighters on the streets of the recently seized capital.

The dismantling of the encampment, which allowed traffic to move unobstructed between the airport and the capital for the first time in weeks, came as newly appointed Prime Minister Khaled Bahah, Yemen's ambassador to the United Nations, flew back home to take up his post as part of an agreement aimed at stabilizing the conflict-prone country.

The Houthis captured Sanaa on Sept. 21 after weeks of anti-government protests centering on fuel price rises. The group signed a power-sharing agreement with other political parties soon afterwards, a deal that was sanctioned by President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, but this has not deterred them from pushing in to other parts of the country.

(...SNIPPED)

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Interesting if somewhat bizarre counter response to the growth of ISIS: Westerners going to the Middle East to fight them. Now this is more on the scale of individual adventurers going off to fight for their cause de jour, but if there was some sort of organizing principle we may see the growth of something like the "International Brigades" in the 1930's (but who will play the part of the Communist International in this case?):

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/10/15/bikers-volunteers-dutch-isis/17295699/

I think a lack of a common theme will limit it, many going back have a personal link. I don't see a "Crusader force" of angry Christians getting much love or support over there.

 

[a_majoor]

I think a lack of a common theme will limit it, many going back have a personal link. I don't see a "Crusader force" of angry Christians getting much love or support over there.

Perhaps not over there, but I can imagine "Crusader Forces" springing up in Europe and North America to fight radicalized Islam in their own midst. I also suspect that many of the smaller minority groups like the Kurds, Baloch and so on might be more flexible about having such auxiliary forces operating out of their territories, at least until they get some breathing room of their own.

 

[George Wallace]

For some this may be great news; for others, it is really bad news to hear:

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.

Isis threatens to kill British jihadis wanting to come home

‘At least 30’ Britons seek to flee Islamic State as it is revealed that a fourth young Muslim from Portsmouth has died in Syria

Mark Townsend
The Observer, Saturday 25 October 2014 16.30 EDT

British jihadi fighters desperate to return home from Syria and Iraq are being issued with death threats by the leadership of Islamic State (Isis), the Observer has learned.

A source with extensive contacts among Syrian rebel groups said senior Isis figures were threatening Britons who were attempting to travel home. He said: “There are Britons who upon wanting to leave have been threatened with death, either directly or indirectly.”

The news comes after it was revealed that another young Muslim from Portsmouth had been killed on the frontline in Syria, the fourth to die from a group of six men known as the “Pompey lads” who travelled together to fight for Isis.

Meanwhile, the former Guantánamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg confirmed that he was also aware of dozens of British men keen to return to the UK but who were trapped in Syria and Iraq, in effect held by a group they wanted to leave. Begg said he knew of more than 30 who wanted to come back. They had travelled to join rebels fighting the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad but had subsequently become embroiled with Isis, some for language reasons – Isis had more English-speaking members.

In Syria, Muhammad Mehdi Hassan, 19, from Portsmouth was killed in fighting on Friday. He is understood to have died during the Isis offensive to capture the Syrian border city of Kobani, which is continuing.

The chairman of Portsmouth’s Jami mosque, Abdul Jalil, said: “It has been confirmed with the family that he has died. Right now they are very upset. I am saddened and again shocked for the community about this news.” During Friday prayers at the mosque, young Muslims were urged not to travel to Syria.

Begg, whose offer to help secure the release of British hostage Alan Henning from Isis was rejected by the British government months before the Briton was killed, and who has extensive contacts in Syria, said: “When it becomes solidified as an Islamic State, a caliph, and you swear allegiance, thereafter if you do something disobedient you are now disobeying the caliph and could be subject to disciplinary measures which could include threats of death or death.”

Begg, 46, from Birmingham, called for Britain to introduce an amnesty for returnees from Syria and Iraq and to replicate the rehabilitation programmes of countries such as Denmark which help those who come back to get their lives back on track without the threat of prosecution. Begg said that groups had approached him to try to put pressure on the government to show leniency to disillusioned fighters returning. Recently, the government suggested British jihadis who went to fight in Iraq or Syria could be tried for treason.

He said that a lot of Britons were currently “stuck between a rock and a hard place”. He added: “There are a large number of people out there who want to come back. The number in January was around 30, that was the number given to me. That number has definitely increased since.”

Begg, outreach director for pressure group Cage, recently spent more than seven months in custody in Belmarsh prison after being arrested and questioned over a trip he had made to Syria in 2013 before being released earlier this month after it emerged secret intelligence material had been withheld from police and prosecutors.

He said that many of those who had gone to Syria to fight government forces and returned because they did not want to become embroiled in the rebel infighting were jailed despite being ideologically opposed to Isis.

“Some of the guys I met in Belmarsh had gone to Syria to help in a humanitarian defensive role, stayed for a few weeks and, crucially, didn’t want to get involved with the infighting between rebel groups yet the British government imprisoned them. If you come back because of the infighting it means that you are not ideologically attached to groups like Isis.”

Hassan’s Twitter account has been quiet since 17 October, the last entry documenting the frequency of US air strikes which have been targeting Isis positions near Kobani for weeks. Images of the teenager’s dead body with fellow fighters calling him a martyr emerged

Last Tuesday it was confirmed that another of the so-called “ Pompey lads”, Manunur Roshid, 24, was also killed in fighting on the Syrian frontline with reports suggesting he also died in the battle to seize Kobani, which borders Turkey. Reports of their death follow that of two other Portsmouth men, Ifthekar Jaman, 23, last December and Muhammad Hamidur Rahman, 25, in August.

Hassan’s death leaves Assad Uzzaman, 25, fighting in Syria with Isis while the other member of the group, Mashadur Choudhury, 31, returned to the UK shortly after arriving in Syria and is currently in jail.

The group are among an estimated 500 Britons who have travelled to fight in Iraq and Syria. Overall, 24 Britons are believed to have died after travelling to fight in the bloody civil war, says King’s College London’s International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR), meaning that British jihadis are being killed in the conflict in Syria and Iraq at a rate of one every three weeks, according to the most thorough documentation of the death toll to date.

Hassan was part of a group of five calling themselves the Britani Brigade Bangladeshi Bad Boys. The fanatics, all from Portsmouth, had been seduced by glamorous tales of martyrdom to join Isis in establishing a Muslim caliphate in the Middle East.

Shiraz Maher, from ICSR, said: “Now, of the six men who went from Portsmouth to fight jihad in Syria, four have now died and one is in prison.

“We know that Hassan was fighting for the battle of Kobani, likely alongside Manunur Rohsid, who was reported killed a few days ago.”

More on LINK.

 

[The Bread Guy]

Live by the sword ....  Funny how sometimes the grass isn't ALWAYS greener, like the jihad peddlers lead one to believe.

Mind you, great "anti-ambassadors" once back?

 

[jollyjacktar]

TS for them.  They've made their bed and will have to lie in it.  Hopefully it's for a dirt nap.

 

[a_majoor]

The aftermath. Once this "30 years war" ends, most of the historic borders we grew up with will be erased. Natural cantonments like the Anatolian highlands, "Kurdistan" and the Iranian plateau will remain as bastions for the people's living within, but otherwise much of the region will have dissolved into something else. In the more distant past, the "something else" was a series of city states astride the trade routes and in control of resources like water and whatever arable land existed. Not sure what the future version of that will look like:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/blog/2014/10/25/the-imaginary-borders-of-the-middle-east/

The Erased Borders of the Middle East
Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon gave a wide-ranging and provocative interview to NPR earlier this week. Of particular interest was his recognition that the national borders that were created after World War I are dissolving:

The borders of many Arab states were drawn up by Westerners a century ago, and wars in recent years show that a number of them are doomed to break apart, according to Ya’alon, a career soldier who became Israel’s defense minister last year.

“We have to distinguish between countries like Egypt, with their history. Egypt will stay Egypt,” Ya’alon, who is on a visit to Washington, tells Morning Edition’s Steve Inskeep.

In contrast, Ya’alon says, “Libya was a new creation, a Western creation as a result of World War I. Syria, Iraq, the same — artificial nation-states — and what we see now is a collapse of this Western idea.”

Asked if Middle Eastern borders are likely to change in the coming years, Ya’alon says: “Yes, absolutely. It has been changed already. Can you unify Syria? [President] Bashar al-Assad is controlling only 25 percent of the Syrian territory. We have to deal with it.”

Ya’alon is right. As our own Adam Garfinkle concluded in June about Iraq: “The Iraqi state in its historic territorial configuration is gone—solid gone, and it ain’t coming back.” The region’s other “artificial nation-states” aren’t going to return to the status quo ante bellum either. Whatever comes out of the current war, it won’t look like the old landscape, and we shouldn’t imagine that there are natural nations waiting to be created out of the ethno-tribal-religious anarchy that the Middle East is witnessing.

Yaalon’s entire interview is quite thought-provoking, particularly his analysis of the latest Gaza war and the Palestinian right of return. Read the whole thing here.

 

[Brasidas]

The aftermath. Once this "30 years war" ends, most of the historic borders we grew up with will be erased. Natural cantonments like the Anatolian highlands, "Kurdistan" and the Iranian plateau will remain as bastions for the people's living within, but otherwise much of the region will have dissolved into something else. In the more distant past, the "something else" was a series of city states astride the trade routes and in control of resources like water and whatever arable land existed. Not sure what the future version of that will look like:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/blog/2014/10/25/the-imaginary-borders-of-the-middle-east/

I'm not so sure I see Iran's borders being erased, or Turkey giving up its Kurdish territories.

 

[a_majoor]

Kurdistan extends beyond the current Turkish territory, including parts of Syria, Iraq and Iran. Parts of Iran is also inhabited by the Baloch people, who also inhabit parts of Pakistan.

Borders often change due to issues like demographics, changing climate/rainfall/arability or even different opportunities (people leaving one polity for another with lower taxes and regulatory burdens). Indeed, one of the reasons for the "Arab Spring" and subsequent instability is the impact of these sorts of changes pushing against the boundaries of brittle and authoritarian societies until they break.

I know Turkey and Iran will certainly fight to retain their current geographical boundaries, but in the end, even they may be swept by overwhelming changes.

 

[George Wallace]

Kurdistan extends beyond the current Turkish territory, including parts of Syria, Iraq and Iran. Parts of Iran is also inhabited by the Baloch people, who also inhabit parts of Pakistan.

Borders often change due to issues like demographics, changing climate/rainfall/arability or even different opportunities (people leaving one polity for another with lower taxes and regulatory burdens). Indeed, one of the reasons for the "Arab Spring" and subsequent instability is the impact of these sorts of changes pushing against the boundaries of brittle and authoritarian societies until they break.

I know Turkey and Iran will certainly fight to retain their current geographical boundaries, but in the end, even they may be swept by overwhelming changes.

Yes, and the Sykes–Picot Agreement between Britain, France and the assent of Russia drew those lines on the map in 1916.  Europeans building empires carved up the traditional boundaries of the inhabitants, making new ones with no consideration of the ethnicity and cultures they were breaking up.  Those are the latest 'conquerors' to partition those lands.  How many times the map has been redrawn in that region over the centuries can't be counted.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Considering those lines were drawn with the Ottoman provinces in mind and a trade of what worthy spoils they were, not exactly a new concept and certainly judging by population movements, the Palestinian Mandate was more popular than the old Ottoman Empire administration. Also England was used as arbitrator for the border dispute between the Ottoman Empire and the Persian Empire back the 1600's, which led to the modern border between Iran and Iraq. 

 

[cryco]

oh yes, and we know the current borders are so harmonious...

 

[Kirkhill]

Oh come on. Everybody knows the right way to deal with those worthy oriental gentlemen is to treat them exactly as they treated themselves: erase all the borders and declare them to be subjects of one empire stretching from the Hindu Kush to the Atlas Mountains.

It worked for the Ottomans, Muhammed, the Byzantines, the Romans and Sassanians.  Borders be buggered.

 

[cryco]

sure, but under who's iron fist?

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Give me the army to do my bidding says Assad and I will give you an Empire!!!  8)

 

[a_majoor]

Give me the army to do my bidding says Assad and I will give you an Empire!!!  8)

The Turks also have ideas along these lines (they tacitly support ISIS since the Jihadis can do Turkey's dirty work for them), and the Saudis have been working a different angle (funding radical Imams and schools to spread and promote Wahabbism) to the same end. Since Assad is Iran's tool, we know which "Empire" he is working towards. Getting out of the affairs of the Middle East is probably our best COA, we can flood the market with our oil (India is very interested in Energy East and getting access to the Oil Sands, for example) to hammer them with the economic weapons at our disposal, while they can spend their own blood and treasure playing "Game of Thrones". Park a few carrier battle groups off the coasts to keep the fighting contained and put on the popcorn takes care of about 80% of the problems.

 

[The Bread Guy]

If you like graphics, here's who's contributing what ....

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