Chinese officials visited Baghdad this weekend to vow cooperation with the Iraqi government in eradicating the Islamic State and rebuilding the oil-rich Iraqi economy. Outlets differ on the sparse details, though the message of resolve to participate in the fight against ISIS appears throughout.

Chinese media published photos Monday of a meeting between Yang Jiechi—a high-ranking communist official who has held many titles but is currently a member of the State Council Leading Party Members’ Group—and Iraqi officials.

“China firmly supports Iraq’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, and the country’s efforts to safeguard its national security, stability and reconciliation,” the official state report reads, “And Beijing will continue providing humanitarian aid to Iraq.”

World Bulletin, a Turkish outlet, places Vice President Li Yuanchao in Baghdad on Sunday, meeting with Iraqi President Fuad Masum to discuss “the economy, security, and trade” as well as a potential meeting with Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi.

The publication notes that details of the meeting were not discussed in public, though it is estimated that 10,000 Chinese nationals are currently working in Iraq, which makes the increasing tensions with the Islamic State jihadist terror group a growing threat against China.

Cuban outlet Prensa Latina also reports on the meeting between Masum and Yang Jiechi. The Cuban outlet claims that Iraq is seeking to offer China a bigger role in its stability, quoting Masum as stating, “Terrorism did not come to Iraq supported by any specific community, but it is attacking all the communities of Iraq, including the Sunnis.” The Prensa Latina report mentions “military, economic, and security” support, echoing that of World Bulletin.

Another Turkish outlet, the Türkmeleni Cooperation and Cultural Foundation, differs with the official Chinese state report in claiming that Yang specifically mentioned the Islamic State as a target the Chinese government is interested in helping the Iraqi government destroy. “People’s Republic of China is ready to provide support to Iraq in its fight against Daesh in the fields of security, military and politics,” the report states Yang as saying.

Murky as the details of the meeting appear, a Chinese presence in Iraq follows months of the administration of President Xi Jinping expressing heightened concern surrounding the growth of Islamic extremism, both in China and abroad. China has gone to great lengths to curb the practice of Islam in western Xinjiang province, where much of the population is of Muslim Uyghur extraction.

After explicitly banning religion in general, state government placed restrictions on the public display of long beards, “Islamic garb,” and burqas specifically. Reports have identified Chinese Uyghur recruits among the ranks of the Islamic State.

In January, state outlet Xinhua published a column renaming the War on Terror the “People’s War” and calling for the Chinese to crush terrorists “like rats.” 2014 was a year particularly rife with Chinese government anti-terrorist activity, including the execution of 13 Uyghur alleged terrorists in June for up to seven counts of terrorist activity.

Libyan pro-government forces said Monday they had targeted a weapons depot belonging to an Islamist-backed militia, as peace talks continued in Morocco.

Benghazi’s militant leader Mohamed Al-Araibi, more commonly known as Bouka, has been killed in fighting today in the city’s Gwarsha district. The death was announced by Al-Nabaa TV, seen as sympathetic to the Benghazi Revolutionaries’ Shoura Council, of which Bouka’s Brega Martyr’s Brigade was a part.

A former mechanic, Bouka was a controversial character and as a result of his bizarre rants on television was considered by some to be mentally unstable.

Last September, there were reports that he had been badly wounded in an Operation Dignity airstrike against his home district of Sidi Khalifa. At the time, a source close to his family told the Libya Herald that he had been hit by shrapnel in the leg during a bombing raid.

The next month the home was attacked and burned by Operation Dignity forces following which Bouka released a video in which he swore revenge saying that he would destroy Genral Khalifa Hafter and his forces.

The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) in Syria killed 54 Kurdish civilians, including 35 women and children, as they celebrated the Kurdish new year’s eve, a monitor group reports.

Suicide bombers killed the civilians and wounded many others in the mainly Kurdish city of Hasakhh in northeastern Syria as they celebrated the eve of Nowruz, according to the latest death toll from the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The death toll may increase due to serious injuries, notes the Observatory.

Nowruz refers to the Persian New Year, which began on March 21.

Citing state media, Al Jazeera reported on March 21 that there were two car bombs involved in the attack, which also left 70 Kurds injured.

Backed by U.S.-led airstrikes, Kurdish security forces have been battling ISIS on the ground.

The Observatory blamed ISIS for the attack, and Redur Xelil, a spokesman for the security forces of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in northeastern Syria, also accused ISIS of carrying out the attack, reports Al Jazeera.

YPG fighters were killed, as well.

Al Jazeera adds that tweets from ISIS-linked “Raqqa Media Center” accounts have also claimed responsibility for the attacks.

On March 21, Ekrem Hass, an official in northeastern Syria’s Kurdish region who also blamed ISIS for the heinous attack, told the Associated Press that hospitals in Hasakah were “flooded with casualties,” adding that “Kurdish forces are on high alert in much of northern Syria for fear of more attacks.”

The Observatory also reported that on March 20, ISIS killed 70 members of the Bashar al-Assad regime forces.

ISIS is fighting the Kurds and the Assad troops at the same time in Syria.

A group of Tajik militants who claim to be fighting with the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria has posted a new video in which it threatens to transfer its activities from the Middle East and fight in Tajikistan, RFE/RL’s Tajik Service, Radio Ozodi, has reported.

The 16-minute video was shared on the Russian-language Odnoklassniki social network on March 19 and shows a group of 16 masked militants, most of whom appear to be Tajiks. It is not possible to independently verify the date or the exact location in which the video was shot.

Tajikistan’s security authorities have yet to comment on the video, Radio Ozodi reported.

One masked militant said that the video was the militants’ final address from Syria and Iraq and that their next video could be filmed “from the mountains of Tavildara in central Tajikistan, or the Tajik capital, Dushanbe — or even from the Kremlin.”

One of the men in the video appears to be a notorious Tajik militant, known as Nusrat Nazarov or Abu Kholodi Kulobi, who says he is 38 years old and hails from the village of Charmagon in the Kulob district of Tajikistan. Nazarov claims to be now living in a suburb of Raqqa, an IS stronghold in Syria.

Nazarov addressed the Tajik government and pro-government religious leaders, saying that they would be “held accountable” for actions carried out against militants in the Central Asian state.

In a recent interview with Radio Ozodi, Nazarov said that his goal is to introduce Shari’ah law throughout the world, including among Native Americans.

Nazarov has also claimed that there are as many as 2,000 Tajiks fighting in IS, and that around 500 have been killed, figures that are almost certainly highly exaggerated.

The State Committee for the National Security of Tajikistan said in November that as many as 300 Tajiks have gone to join the fighting in Syria and Iraq. Edward Lemon from the U.K.’s University of Exeter, who researches and tracks Tajik militants in Iraq and Syria, has found evidence of over 60 documented Tajiks in Syria.

Would IS Send Its Tajiks To Fight In Tajikistan?
Nazarov’s boasts that he and his fellow IS militants will soon be fighting to impose their version of Shari’ah law in Tajikistan is also likely hyperbole.

There is no evidence that the IS leadership in Syria and Iraq is planning to send militants home to fight for the group.

A video released by Tajik IS militants in January explained that several Tajiks had asked permission from IS’s senior leadership to wage “jihad” in Tajikistan with the extremist group Jamaat Ansarullah, but had been refused.

The militant in that video, who gave his nom de guerre as Abu Umariyon, said that IS commander Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi told the Tajik group that they would “have to wait.”

That the IS leadership is not keen to allow its militants to leave Syria and Iraq and fight elsewhere is not surprising. IS cannot afford to risk losing its rank-and-file militants as it faces ongoing military pressure and sustained losses in both Syria and Iraq.

In Syria, the militants have taken heavy losses from the U.S.-led coalition and Kurdish militias, while forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad are also targeting IS militants. IS in Iraq is facing air strikes from the United States and its allies, as well as ground assaults and opposition from the Kurdish peshmerga and Iran-backed Shi’ite militias.

Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan said on March 21 that IS had been weakened in Iraq and Syria.

IS Is Expanding
Though IS is reluctant to allow its militants to leave for “jihad” elsewhere, as the group comes under increased military pressure in Syria and Iraq its leadership has welcomed the expansion of its influence into new parts of the world.

The IS leadership has purportedly accepted the pledges of allegiance made to it by militant groups outside of Syria and Iraq. In November, IS leader Baghdadi issued an audio recording accepting pledges of allegiance from groups in “The Haramayn [Saudi Arabia], Yemen, Egypt, Libya and Algeria.”

This month, IS accepted a pledge of allegiance from the Nigerian extremist group Boko Haram.
In another sign of the increasing military pressure IS is facing, the group has released a number of videos calling on Western Muslims to carry out attacks on their home soil — but only if they are unable to join IS in Syria and Iraq.

Indeed, CIA chief Brennan noted that — even though IS has been weakened in Syria and Iraq — the group’s reach is extending beyond Iraq and Syria and that it will take a combined and extended international effort over the next decade to repel the threat.

Military defeats in Syria and Iraq have persuaded extremists to launch attacks in other parts of the so-called ‘caliphate’

By launching attacks in Yemen and Tunisia, the Islamic State group aims to demonstrate its ability to expand in order to divert attention from setbacks in Syria and Iraq, experts say.

“Expansion is their strategy,” and the first IS attacks in Yemen and Tunisia allowed it to appear omnipresent, said JM Berger, analyst and co-author of ISIS: the State of Terror.

“Creating the perception of strength is a key part of IS’s recruiting and propaganda goals,” Berger said.

After announcing its self-styled ‘caliphate’ in 2014, “IS has made formal ventures into Egypt, Algeria, Nigeria, Libya, Tunisia, and now Yemen as part of its effort to broaden its reach around the region,” he said.

On Wednesday, IS claimed responsibility for an attack on the National Bardo Museum in the Tunisian capital in which 20 tourists and one policeman were killed. It was the group’s first attack in Tunisia, which despite isolated Islamist violence since 2011 had been spared the chaos of the aftermath of the Arab Spring.

Just two days later, its suicide bombers struck in Yemen, killing 142 people in mosques in a country already on the brink of civil war and where IS’s jihadist rival, al-Qaeda, is well-established.

According to Mathieu Guidere, professor of Islamic studies at the University of Toulouse in France, such attacks show IS is “capable of striking anywhere and at any time, as it has supporters everywhere, ready to die in order to achieve its objectives”.

“These attacks are simultaneously a show of force and a message to the international community that IS has become a global player,” he said.

But the image of invincibility that IS tries so hard to project is starting to fade.

In northern Iraq, IS has been chased out of a number of areas over the past few months and Tikrit, one of its major bastions, is under major assault by Iraqi armed forces.

In northeast Syria, the group suffered a resounding setback when Kurdish forces supported by US air strikes pushed it out of Kobane and several surrounding areas on the border with Turkey.

For the first time, Kurdish fighters have begun advancing on the Islamic State group’s main stronghold in the northern Syrian province of Raqa. IS jihadists have also been beaten back by rebel forces outside Damascus and by regime forces to the east in Deir Ezzor.

These defeats have cost the jihadists more than just territory. The battles have killed thousands of IS fighters, and air strikes have targeted lucrative oilfields that had been an important source of its funding.

Now, under pressure from the West, Turkey is tightening control of its border in a bid to stem the flow of jihadists into Syria.

Ankara says it has detained and deported hundreds of potential fighters. Faced with these setbacks, IS launched spectacular attacks in Tunisia and Yemen to cast its ‘caliphate’ in a more favourable light.

“There’s certainly a sense that they are compensating for the defeats they suffered in Iraq and Syria,” said Thomas Pierret, an expert in contemporary Islam at the University of Edinburgh.

“If there is an expansion, it’s of IS’s terrorist activities more than IS’s caliphate.”

In Yemen, the group is “trying to religiously outdo al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula” by attacking Houthi Shiite establishments.

The attackers in Tunis may have been trained in Libya, as Tunisia said, but other attacks could be locally planned and carried out, Berger said.

What was certain, he said, was that IS was focused on showing signs of expansion beyond Iraq and Syria and “on providing a new headline every week”.

An official with Libya’s internationally recognized government says its soldiers have shot down a warplane flown by the rival, Tripoli-based government that’s allied with Islamist militias.

International coalition jets have targeted Islamic State (IS) bases in Sinjar, northern Iraq, killing up to 40 insurgents.

Peshmerga Commander Issa Zewayi told BasNews from the Sinjar Frontline, “On Sunday evening, US-led coalition aircraft conducted heavy shelling on IS locations in the center of Sinjar, inflicting critical losses on IS.

“According to our information, 40 insurgents were killed in the operation.”

The jets hit four IS military vehicles and Peshmerga forces destroyed another.

“Clashes are continuing between the Peshmerga and insurgents on the frontline,” said Zewayi.

“IS militants launch continuous attacks on our frontlines, but we repel them. Peshmerga morale is strong while IS are desperate for success against Kurdish forces,” he added.

 

Isis militants returning to the UK could launch a chlorine gas attack on trains, the London Underground or at a football match, according to a chemical weapons expert.

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former commanding officer at the Joint Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear Regiment, said the last two weeks in Syria and Iraq have seen the “most concentrated and deadly use of chemical weapons” since the 1980s Iran-Iraq war.

“It is very evident that Isis are putting much time and effort into training its jihadis in the use of chlorine as a terror weapon and in particular in IEDs (improvised explosive devices),” he wrote on 2Paragraphs.

“Virtually every foreign jihadi who returns to the US or UK will have been exposed to training of this sort and will have a reasonable idea on how to use chlorine and other toxic chemicals as a terror weapon.
“In the UK at least, up to 90 tonnes of chlorine can be purchased without any licences required.”

After returning from advising security forces in Baghdad last week, he told the Daily Mirror he feared a chlorine gas attack was “highly likely”, adding: “This could happen on a train or tube or even at a big football match.”

Mr de Bretton-Gordon examined the likelihood of such an atrocity on the 20-year anniversary of the Tokyo subway sarin attack, which killed 12 people and injured more than 1,000 more, causing chaos in the Japanese capital.

The Aum Shinrikyo movement used packets of the nerve agent, which they punctured with umbrella tips on the Tokyo subway during morning rush hour.

But Mr de Bretton-Gordon said less complicated methods would be needed for a deadly chlorine attack.
“The method of delivery of chlorine at the second Battle of Ypres in April 1915, 100 years ago, would be effective on the subway today,” he wrote. 

“That is, take the top off a chlorine canister and let is ‘vapourise’ aka ‘weaponise’.”

The expert, who has recently worked with UK-based charity Syria Relief advising civilians on what to do in a chlorine gas attack, founded chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) defence firm SecureBio and is a director at gas mask manufacturers Avon Protection.

His 23 years in the British Army included service as Commanding Officer of the UK’s CBRN Regiment and Nato’s Rapid Reaction CBRN Battalion.

Mr de Bretton-Gordon said that Isis had planted “hundreds” of chlorine IEDs in the defence of Tikrit and detonated chemical bombs north of Mosul against the Kurdish Peshmerga.

During the advance of the so-called Islamic State last year, militants gained control of a huge chlorine factory near Mosul as well as the Muthanna complex near Baghdad, where Saddam Hussein manufactured chemical weapons using mustard gas, sarin and VX.

The UN said 2,500 remaining rockets filled with nerve agents were degraded and could not be used to make working chemical weapons.

Mr de Bretton-Gordon said that even if returning Isis jihadists attempted to launch a chlorine attack in Britain, the effect “should be minimal” if security services are forewarned.

“Chlorine is not very toxic and the green and yellow clouds are easy to see and avoid, and it is very non-persistent only lasting for a few minutes,” he added.

“Undoubtedly, and hopefully, the CIA, FBI, MI 5 and 6 etc will be taking a very close look at returning jihadis and in particular anybody buying toxic chemicals.”

Earlier this month, Isis allegedly attacked Iraqi soldiers with roadside bombs containing chlorine gas as allied forces continued a huge assault against the group in Tikrit.

Footage captured by an Iraqi bomb disposal team showed plumes of thick orange gas emerging from a detonated IED.

Iraqi Kurds also claim to have evidence that Isis used chemical weapons against their fighters in January this year.

The use of chlorine, a choking agent that dates back to the First World War, is banned under the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, which prohibits the use of toxic agents in warfare.

Chlorine and other chemical weapons have been used “systematically” in the ongoing civil war in Syria, according to monitors, who accuse all parties of atrocities.

Bashar al-Assad’s forces allegedly used sarin in the 2013 Ghouta chemical attack that killed hundreds of Syrian civilians outside of Damascus and have reportedly dropped chlorine barrel bombs in recent weeks.

Iraqi Kurds were victims of the deadliest chemical attack in recent history when Saddam Hussein’s air force bombed the town of Halabja, where up to 5,000 people were gassed to death in 1988.