An activist opposed to both IS and the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, who is well-known to the British business broadsheet, said he had “verified 100 executions” of foreign IS fighters trying to leave the jihadist group’s de facto capital.

IS fighters in Raqqa said the group has created a military police to clamp down on foreign fighters who do not report for duty. Dozens of homes have been raided and many jihadists have been arrested, the FT reported.

Some jihadists have become disillusioned with the realities of fighting in Syria, reports have said.

According to the British press in October, five Britons, three French, two Germans and two Belgians wanted to return home after complaining that they ended up fighting against other rebel groups rather than Assad’s regime. They were being held prisoner by IS.

In total, between 30 and 50 Britons want to return but fear they face jail, according to researchers at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization at King’s College London, which had been contacted by one of the jihadists speaking on their behalf.

Since a US-led coalition began a campaign of airstrikes against IS in August, the extremist group has lost ground to local forces and seen the number of its fighters killed rise significantly.

There have been a string of apparent setbacks for IS in recent weeks.

Iraqi Kurds claimed Thursday to have broken a siege on a mountain where Yazidi civilians and fighters have long been trapped.

The Kurdish advances came during a two-day blitz in the Sinjar region involving 8,000 peshmerga fighters and some of the heaviest airstrikes since a US-led coalition started an air campaign four months ago.

Meanwhile Thursday, the Pentagon said several IS leaders had been killed in US airstrikes.

In 40 days across October and November, some 2,000 air raids killed more than 500 people, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, which relies on a network of sources on the ground.

On Wednesday fierce battles took place between the Islamic State (IS) armed group and the Al-Nusra front in the Qalamoun region of Syria, close to the Lebanese border.The outcome could affect the hostage crisis that has gripped Lebanon since August when an estimated 30 servicemen were captured by the two groups.

After months of reports of growing numbers of armed Christian and Druze militias aligned to the Shia faction, the Future Movement told Hezbollah that Lebanon should push for unity and a unified state

The groups, known as the “Resistance Brigades”, are reported to be cropping up across Lebanon as Hezbollah looks to strengthen its numbers against the threat of Sunni jihadists.

The request from the Future Movement follows clashes in the town of Sidon between a Resistance Brigade and the Lebanese Internal Security Forces at the weekend.

On Wednesday the Daily Star newspaper reported fighting between jihadist groups close to the Lebanese border with Syria.

IS and Al-Nusra Front fighters reportedly clashed, following months of alleged cooperation between the groups.

Meanwhile, Syrian government air strikes struck at the Islamists close to the Lebanese border town of Arsal, reportedly killing at least 11 people.

Fractured relations between Al-Nusra and IS militants look to impact ongoing negotiations for an estimated 25 Lebanese servicemen captured in Arsal in August.

Earlier this week a Sheikh appointed by Al-Nusra to represent the captives’ families threatened to withdraw as a negotiator as the Lebanese government failed to officially recognise his position.

The families have agreed to meet all political parties, including Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and name who has obstructed talks in a bid to move things forward.

Source: RFI

Before Hamas expressed its thanks to Iran, a high-level visit to Tehran was made by a Hamas delegation on Dec. 8. The visit was headed by Hamas political bureau member Mohammed Nasr, head of its international affairs, Osama Hamdan, Maher Obeid, Jamal Issa and Hamas representative in Tehran Khalid al-Qaddumi. The delegation met with Iranian parliament Speaker Ali Larijani in an attempt to restore Iran’s military and financial support for the movement.On Dec. 15, Hamdan described the visit as fruitful and that the relationship between both sides was better than many could imagine and that the visit was made to promote the 24-year-old ties.

Nasr, the head of the delegation, told Al-Monitor, “Hamas is keen to promote ties with Iran, to overcome the sensitive and critical circumstances in the region to serve the Palestinian cause.”

This prompted, on Dec. 8, Iranian circles to consider the visit as a new page between the two parties, as it has settled most differences between Hamas and Iran.

Qaddumi told Al-Monitor, “The visit is positive and the meetings with the Iranians were warm. Hamas is concerned with Iran’s role as a pivotal country in the region with a long history of supporting the resistance. Hamas does not have to reveal the mechanism and details of the support it receives from any party, or the nature of ties it has with the parties it deals with.”

A senior Hamas official abroad, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Al-Monitor, “Hamas is aware that Iran is under a harsh economic blockade and its financial expenses are enormous in neighboring countries. We may not have great hopes that financial support will be generous as it was before, but the military support for the movement may not be harmed much, which is sufficient for us at this stage.”

Ahmed Youssef, a senior political adviser to former Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, told Al-Monitor, “Hamas seeks to improve its relationship with Iran in light of the imposed siege and isolation. These require that the movement breaks through its isolation and siege and be present in the regional political scene, through its reconciliation with Iran.”

A former Iranian member of parliament, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Al-Monitor, “Hamas’ visit to Iran at such a high level, and the al-Qassam Brigades expressing its thanks to Tehran publicly in front of millions of people are certainly not for free, but rather in exchange for a price that Hamas has received from Iran.”

In a telephone interview from Tehran, he added, “The remaining question, to which no one has an answer except for Hamas and Iran, is whether Hamas’ visit and thanks to Tehran was preceded by the transfer of financial aid or was it an Iranian condition to resume support?” The member of parliament expected that a few weeks will pass before the question was answered.

Remarkably, reactions were raised within the movement in support and rejection of the Hamas-Iranian rapprochement on social networking sites. There were also heated arguments between Hamas supporters as some accuse Tehran of killing Syrians and Iraqis. However, they all expressed their need to return to Iran, in the hope that financial aid and military support would be resumed.

What is interesting regarding the Hamas-Iranian rapprochement is that it coincides with the harsh attack Syrian President Bashar al-Assad launched against the movement on Dec. 15. He accused it of involvement in the Syrian war and bias in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood at the expense of Syria.

This was denied by Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for Hamas. He told Al-Monitor, “The movement did not interfere in Syrian affairs and left the country so as not to be considered in favor of one party at the expense of another. The quotes attributed to Assad are not true, although Hamas did benefit from its presence in Syria.”

On Dec. 11, Raafat Marra, a political official within Hamas, confirmed that Hamas’ visit to Iran does not mean that its policy has changed, its positions regarding issues in the region have changed or that it made a mistake and apologized for a position, in reference to the position regarding Syria.

However, a local news agency in Gaza that is close to Hamas reported on Dec. 15 that there were calls between the Saudi intelligence and Hamas leadership in which Riyadh expressed its outrage at the rapprochement with Tehran. The Saudis reportedly called on Hamas to halt its communication with Iran in exchange for exerting greater pressure to lift the siege on Gaza. The report added that Hamas received the Saudi demand without replying to it, but they promised to consider it.

A prominent Hamas leader, who spoke on condition of anonymity, denied the report. He told Al-Monitor, “There was no contact between Saudi Arabia and the movement, what has been circulated about the dissatisfaction of one of the region’s state with the rapprochement between Hamas and Iran is inaccurate.”
The visit of the Hamas delegation to Iran is a prelude to the visit of Hamas head of political bureau Khaled Meshaal, which is long overdue.

Qaddumi told Al-Monitor, “Iran does not oppose the visit, but the preparations need to be completed. When that is ready, Meshaal will meet with senior Iranian officials, most notably Ayatollah [Ali] Khamenei, the supreme leader of the Islamic Revolution, and President Hassan Rouhani.”

In his Dec. 15 interview with Al-Monitor, Meshaal contented himself with saying, “My own visit to Iran will happen in due time, once preparations are completed. There is no rupture of relations between Hamas and Iran. Our shared history is long. Its support to us has extended over many years.”

Hamdan did not deny on Dec. 15 the news regarding a pending visit by Meshaal’s to Tehran. Yet, he stressed that Hamas would not announce its date for security considerations in the first place and, when the visit takes place, it will be announced as usual.

It is clear that there is a new page in the Hamas-Iranian ties, which may be different from the previous attempts to restore them. But there are significant obstacles for Hamas, namely that regional powers that are not on good terms with Iran might become hostile to Hamas as a result of the rapprochement. However, the question remains: Will Hamas reap the profits coming from this visit without having to pay a costly price?

Before the battle of Aleppo in July 2012, I worked with a number of local aid groups that had been providing food and basics to the many displaced who had arrived in Aleppo from other war-ravaged areas in the country. This is when I first met Mahmoud, a gentle and soft-spoken opposition activist in his late 20s.He struck me as being knowledgeable about Islam as well as being moderate and accepting of other faiths.
I recently caught up with Mahmoud, and he recounted how radicalization first started seeping into Aleppan society. Himself a devout Muslim, he explained the allure those ultraradical preachers had. “They filled not only a spiritual gap that was there, but they manipulated the fears of the people. They promised them their fears would soon turn into joy in this world and the next if they followed their word. They glorified ‘shahada’ [martyrdom] and ‘sabr’ [patience while suffering] as the holiest and divinest of Islamic virtues, which is completely wrong,” he said.

Mahmoud described to me how one Friday shortly after the rebels took over many of Aleppo’s southern and eastern neighborhoods in the summer of 2012, foreign-looking armed militants joined the congregation in his local mosque in Sha’ar in full combat gear with their rifles. As the imam stood up to give the sermon, one of them rushed forward and took his place on the pulpit and started giving his own fiery sermon, much to everyone’s surprise and shock. He even took his rifle up with him. They had never seen anything like this in their lives, as previously all mosques were tightly regulated by the Syrian regime and sermons were scrutinized and vetted to weed out anything subversive or critical of the status quo.

“He started quoting from the Quran and hadiths, but imperfectly because he made mistakes about fighting the kufar [infidels] whom he said were the Syrian regime and those who supported it as well as the West,” Mahmoud said, adding: “The jihadist fighter, who spoke with an accent I thought was from the Arabian Gulf, then told us about how they are rebuilding the glory of the Islamic caliphate and that it would be the greatest one yet. He said, ‘I swear to you my brothers, I saw the banner of Islam on the White House in a ‘ro’ya’ (revelation), our victory is very near. It starts here in Bilad al-Sham [Greater Syria] and will spread the world over through our jihad. Which is why we call you to jihad, brothers, and it is demanded upon you by religion to join it.’”

Mahmoud said that after the long sermon was over, people were bemused. The older men seemed mortified and mostly unconvinced, but sensed that a new and far more extremist phase in their country’s civil war was about to unfold. But some young men were enthusiastic and taken by fervor, shouting “Allahu akbar” (God is great) after the gun-toting imam had stood down from the pulpit.

The local moderate rebel groups, including the powerful Liwa al-Tawhid Brigades, seemed unperturbed and uninterested in this startling new phenomenon. They did nothing to stop the jihadist preachers, even after some elders conveyed to them their fears about young men joining. “Let them join, we are all fighting on the same side,” was the common response, according to Mahmoud.

The radicalization did not stop at the pulpit, Mahmoud explained, and the jihadists were later superseded by radical clerics — proper ideological holy men who were better versed in Islamic scripture, more coherent and more capable of convincing the skeptics and would-be recruits of their fanatical interpretation of Islam. Many of them were foreign, from all sorts of nationalities, some spoke with a thick foreign accent and clearly did not look Arab, and were possibly from the Caucasus.

This seemed to be quite an organized affair, as these clerics would set up shop in mosques after sundown prayers and ran special classes. All were welcome to attend, and those who did were given vouchers for aid and food was handed out by special distribution centers that had started to spring up across east Aleppo. They were attempting to win over the people and more fighters to their cause through a clever campaign of providing much-needed aid to the poorest of areas, and free classes mostly focusing on religious education, but also including basics such as Arabic reading, writing and grammar. The emphasis, however, was on Quran recital and there were monetary prizes for those who would memorize chapters by heart. This would be mixed with radicalization as there would always be stories glorifying the martyrs of global jihad, including the freedom fighters of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Mahmoud described to me his horror at what was going on. “I knew what they were doing, but I was helpless to stop it. We simply didn’t have the resources to take them on, they were well supplied and financed. We couldn’t provide all the aid they could, they must have spent millions.” This went on for quite a while until relations with the nascent Islamic State in Aleppo soured and internecine war broke out in January 2014. “Suddenly, those jihadists were now turning their guns on each other. They had shown their true face, they were not fighting the kufar, but each other. People saw this and began to be disgusted at their deception,” he said.

Unfortunately, this still did not convince those local recruits who had already joined, and instead they simply switched factions, most according to who their holy mentor followed. Many would become cannon fodder for the upcoming jihadist fratricide, as their grand aspiration of fighting and defeating the kufar was cynically twisted. But this also provided an opportunity for Mahmoud and people like him, who wanted to win back the souls of the believers from the extremists.

“As soon as this inter-rebel fighting broke out, people became disillusioned. ‘Why are Muslims killing each other?‘ they would ask. None of the answers the jihadists gave them were convincing. This is where I would try to explain to everyone I could, while working at the soup kitchens or aid centers, that those people were “daleen” [had lost their way] and their type of jihad was wrong as it distorted the values of our religion and made us seem like just savages and butchers. Thank God, I was successful of convincing many that they were wrong, and I felt happy that I was winning my people back,” Mahmoud said.

What Mahmoud told me was a grim tale of radicalization in the chaos and turmoil of war and lays bare the real dangers Syria faces even if the war ends, but it also provides hope that there is a way to win back people from the brink.

Source: Al Monitor