Azadeh Moaveni has written a powerful, indispensable book on a challenging subject: the inner lives and motivations of women who joined or supported the Islamic State militant group. It is a great read, digestible and almost novelistic, but it is much more than that., like reported by nytimes.com.

“Guest House for Young Widows: Among the Women of ISIS” tackles many taboos that have hampered cleareyed discussion of Islamist extremism in general and ISIS in particular. The book provides an illuminating, much-needed corrective to stock narratives, not only about the group that deliberately and deftly terrified officials and publics across the world, but also about the larger “war on terror” and the often ineffective, even counterproductive policies of Western and Middle Eastern governments.

Moaveni follows 13 women and girls — Tunisian, British, Syrian and German — creating three-dimensional portraits of their worlds, their logic, the choices available and unavailable to them. She made me hang on every turn to find out what would happen to them. This approach will likely infuriate some audiences, especially after years of media coverage that portrayed such women as uniquely evil, bloodthirsty extremists, or as brainwashed fetishists hot for jihadi men.

Moaveni anticipates such objections, acknowledging “the extraordinary horror and centrality” of the suffering of women victimized by Islamic State, like the Yazidis whose enslavement and rape have received enormous, sometimes prurient, coverage. “But along the way,” she writes, “we have been perhaps too caught up in revulsion to fully appreciate the conditions that gave rise to the group’s female adherents.” To truly understand these conditions, Moaveni argues, we must look at these women “with more nuance and compassion.”

Her call is urgent now, as hundreds of female ISIS members, or former members, and their children languish in camps and detention centers across the Middle East, subject to summary trials, the stripping of citizenship and indefinite incarceration in dangerously filthy conditions. Governments, including the United States and the United Kingdom, are dumping the problem of their own citizens who joined ISIS on ill-equipped authorities in Iraq and Syria.

Moaveni’s central observation, a theme that surfaces again and again in her detailed accounts, is that the decisions of female ISIS recruits — some of them young girls — made sense to them on their own terms. But almost no one bothered to address them on those terms when it mattered. The book highlights the failures of families, communities and governments to listen to the real and legitimate concerns of the women and girls, concerns that ISIS exploited, and address them in ways that could have made better sense to them than the call of the caliphate.

As Moaveni writes, one challenge was, and is, that such discussions can come perilously close to sounding like sympathizing with ISIS. From the United States and Europe to the Arab states, counterterrorism dragnets too often equate any degree of Islam-infused politics with support for Islamic State or Al Qaeda. Worse, in this atmosphere, any political discussion among young Muslims about the geopolitical or social issues most pressing to them increasingly risks being labeled “jihadist.”

Moaveni pulls no punches about what has helped to get us here. As ISIS carved out its so-called caliphate amid larger, politically driven conflicts in Syria and Iraq, she writes, it used “highly manipulative and effective” tools to draw recruits, subjugate populations and eliminate “the gray zone” of coexistence for Muslims in the West. But by playing on the world’s fears of Islam, they provided “cheap kindling for reporting that took the militants’ religious claims at face value.”

Thus, Moaveni writes, “ISIS became, in the Western imagination, a satanic force unlike anything civilization had encountered since it began recording histories of combat with the Trojan Wars.” It was seen as somehow uniquely incomprehensible, requiring a whole new class of “demonologists,” as Moaveni slyly labels them, to inspect just how rooted ISIS was, or wasn’t, in mainstream Islam. Less attention was given to the group’s origins in “American policies and wars,” or to the lived experiences of Muslims in the West and elsewhere, or to the “cold calculation” of many in the West that Syria’s violently repressive president, Bashar al-Assad, was preferable to any likely religious alternative.

As Moaveni shows, Islamic texts may provide clues about some ISIS leaders and theologians, but they were rather beside the point for thousands of foot soldiers, administrators and go-along-to-get-along caliphate residents who mostly lacked religious expertise and were driven by a varied mix of politics, faith, economics and self-preservation.

The particular individuals Moaveni concentrates on have page-turning life stories that make the book’s analysis go down easy. Their starting points are diverse: Nour, a Tunisian teenager, was stifled by an authoritarian secular government, inspired by the peaceful revolution that toppled it and disillusioned when the revolt’s promise faded. Emma, a lonely young German, converted because she loved the warm Muslim community of her German-Turkish friends. Lina, a Lebanese-German, left her abusive husband and found solace in increased observance, only to be rejected by her secular Lebanese father. Asma, Aws and Dua were not-particularly-religious residents of Raqqa, Syria, forced to game out survival when ISIS took over their city.

And then there are the three Bethnal Green girls, from a well-regarded London high school. They were friends of Shamima Begum, and all four absconded to ISIS when they were in their teens. Begum, whose parents are from Bangladesh, recently resurfaced in a camp and was stripped of her British citizenship after being judged insufficiently apologetic. She had given birth to three children, one in the camp. All of them had died.

As Moaveni acknowledges, some of her sources may have had incentives to play down involvement and emphasize dissent. However, her portrayals dovetail with what my colleagues and I learned in years of reporting, and she goes deep into her sources’ experiences to provide convincing answers to crucial puzzles. For one, why was Tunisia, the relative success story of the Arab revolts, a top supplier of recruits? (She points to failed reforms and the dashed hopes of newly galvanized observant youth.) For another: Why were some academically successful second-generation Britons drawn to the group, and how could their parents not have known, or stopped them?

Here, Moaveni is particularly poignant and incisive. If these poor, sometimes non-English-speaking immigrant parents had time to notice daughters spending more time at mosques, they saw that as a sign of good values and safety. She brings to life the children’s chafing between their freewheeling London environment, pressure to succeed and conservative family strictures.

And she homes in on a prickly subject. The pain and anger over the West’s treatment of Muslims, while exploited by ISIS, are entirely mainstream in Muslim households, including the vast majority that deplore any violence against civilians. But children alienated from their parents, like converts with no family context, were vulnerable to extremists.

Even more disturbing, Moaveni reports that the Bethnal Green parents were not informed directly by the school, or the police, that one of their daughters’ friends had run off to join ISIS. The British police, she writes, knew one girl was in Turkey on her way to ISIS but failed to have Turkish authorities stop her. Did they treat young teenagers as counterterrorism pawns, Moaveni and the girls’ families wonder, rather than victims needing urgent rescue? For me, these questions raised another: Would they have treated white British girls the same way?

Finally, for all its compelling material, one of the book’s lasting accomplishments is its form. It is a master class in illustrating the big picture through small stories. And it uses women’s experiences — still so often framed as a subplot — to reach the heart of ISIS. Centering a narrative on women leads, here, to a superior analysis of the overall subject, and this is a lesson with applications far beyond ISIS.

In an effort to remain relevant, al-Qaeda has shifted its strategic focus from Yemen to Syria but continues to pursue a globalist agenda by seeking ways to attack Western targets, according to an expert report, like reported by intelnews.org.

Following the meteoric rise of the Islamic State in 2014, al-Qaeda found it difficult to retain its title as the main representative of the worldwide Sunni insurgency. But in an argue published last week on the website of the RAND Corporation, two al-Qaeda experts argue that the militant group is rebounding.

The authors, Middle East Institute senior fellow Charles Listeris and RAND senior political scientist Colin Clarke, editorial that al-Qaeda followed a pragmatic and patient strategy after 2014. Specifically, the group remained on the margins and “deliberately let the Islamic State bear the brunt of the West’s counterterrorism campaign” they argue. At the same time, al-Qaeda has sought to remain relevant by shifting the center of its activity from Yemen to Syria. That decision appears to have been taken in 2014, when the group began to systematically transport assets and resources from its traditional strongholds of Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Levant, the authors argue.

Observers are still evaluating the implications of al-Qaeda’s strategic shift. Listeris and Clarke note that counterterrorism experts have yet to fully understand them. What appears certain is that al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria, the al-Nusra Front, “proved to be the most potent military actor on the battlefield” in the Levant. It did so by operating largely independently from al-Qaeda central, which allowed it to act with speed in pursuit of a strictly localized agenda that attracted many locals. At the same time, however, al-Nusra’s independence effectively separated it from its parent organization. Many al-Qaeda loyalists accused the group of abandoning al-Qaeda’s principles and left it when it rebranded itself to Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (Levantine Conquest Front) in 2016 and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (Organization for the Liberation of the Levant) in 2017.

Al-Qaeda itself denounced Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in 2018 and today supports a number of smaller militias that operate on the ground in Syria. These smaller groups appear to be extremely professional and experienced, and are staffed by “veterans with decades of experience at al Qaeda’s highest levels”. What does this mean about al-Qaeda’s strategic priorities? Listeris and Clarke argue that Syria remains al-Qaeda’s priority. But the group remains focused on attacking the West while also pursuing guerrilla warfare in Syria, they say. This reflects al-Qaeda’s overarching narrative, namely to fight in local conflicts while pursuing the “far enemy” (the West), which it sees as a mortal enemy of Islam.

While the entire attention of the international community is on ‘final deal’ between the United States (US) and the Taliban, the Islamic State (IS, also Daesh) continues with its deadly progression in Afghanistan, like reported by eurasiareview.com.

On August 17, 2019, Daesh executed a suicide bombing inside a wedding hall in Kabul city, the national capital, killing at least 64 civilians and injuring another 182. The death toll later increased to 80. This was the worst attack targeting civilians recorded in Afghanistan since January 27, 2018, when the Taliban carried out a suicide attack near the old Ministry of Interior building in Kabul City, killing 103 persons and injuring 235.

Since January 27, 2018, Afghanistan has recorded at least four incidents where civilian fatalities exceeded 50, and two these were claimed by the Islamic State (including the August 17 attack). The other incident claimed by the Islamic State occurred on April 22, 2018, when 57 people were killed and 119 were injured in a suicide attack on a voter registration centre in the Dasht-i-Barchi area of Kabul City. The 57 killed included 21 women and five children.

The other two incidents during this period with over 50 fatalities were:

September 11, 2018: 68 civilians were killed and 165 were injured in a suicide bombing in the Dak area of Momand Dara District in Nangarhar Province.

November 20, 2018: 55 people were killed and 94 were injured in a suicide bombing conducted inside the Uranus Wedding Hall in Kabul City.

Though no group claimed responsibility for these two incidents, reports indicate that the Islamic State was behind both these attacks as well.

According to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), Daesh has been targeting more and more civilians across Afghanistan, mainly in Kabul, Kunar and Nangarhar Provinces. In the current year Daesh has already killed at least 98 civilians out of a total of 432 civilians killed in the country in terrorism-linked incidents, accounting for 22.68 per cent of total civilian fatalities (data till August 25, 2019). During the corresponding period of 2018, this proportion stood at 14.55 per cent (IS accounted for 117 out of a total of 804 civilian fatalities). Through 2018, the proportion stood at 11.37 per cent (IS accounted for 146 of a total of 1,284 civilian fatalities).

The United Nations Assistance Mission (UNAMA) in its Annual Report 2018, released in February 2019 noted that civilian casualties from Daesh attacks deliberately targeting civilians more than doubled, from 843 in 2017 to 1,871 in 2018. In its mid-year report released in July 2019, UNAMA attributed 52 per cent of all civilian casualties between January 1 to June 30, 2019, to Anti-Government Elements, with 38 per cent attributed to Taliban, 11 per cent to Daesh, and three per cent to unidentified Anti Government Elements. According to the report, anti-Government Elements caused 1,968 civilian casualties (531 deaths and 1,437 injured) during this period. In its 2018 mid-year report, released in July 2018, UNAMA had attributed 67 per cent of all civilian casualties to Anti-Government Elements, with 42 per cent attributed to Taliban, 18 per cent to Daesh, and seven per cent to unidentified Anti-Government Elements (including less than one per cent to self-proclaimed Daesh attacks).

The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR)’s 43rd Quarterly Report released on April 30, 2019, noted,

Although U.S. officials have consistently asserted that Islamic State Khorasan, the Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan, has been degraded on multiple fronts, the group poses a greater security threat to the Afghan people and security forces than it did in 2016. As the terrorist group has not been defeated, is not a party to peace negotiations, and continues to execute high-casualty attacks in major Afghan population centers, it remains potent.
Later, the US Department of Defense (DoD) in a report submitted to the US Congress, which covered the period between December 1, 2018 and May 31, 2019, observed,

During this reporting period, ISIS-K [Islamic State in Iraq and Syria-Khorasan] made territorial gains in eastern Afghanistan. Regionally the group continues to evade, counter, and resist sustained CT [Counter Terrorism] pressure. While ISIS-K remains operationally limited to South and Central Asia, the group harbors intentions to attack international targets…
An August 20, 2019, Washington Post report quoted Salim Mohammed Salim, a former legislator in Konar Province, as saying,

The Islamic State had established bases in his region, forced villagers to flee, recruited some men by force and killed others who resisted. They are dug in in these rugged areas, and nobody can dislodge them. The Taliban tried and failed. The Americans used to send drones, but they stopped. The Afghan government is incompetent.
The Islamic State in Afghanistan, which had an estimated active cadre strength of around 1,000 in 2017, is currently believed to have between 2,500 and 5,000 active cadres. The cadre strength is expected to grow, as many experts believe that battle hardened Taliban militants who are opposed to the deal between the Taliban and the US may join the Islamic State.

The concern is real. The US DoD in its report to Congress, noted,

Even if a successful political settlement with the Taliban emerges from ongoing talks, AQ, ISIS-K, and some unknown number of Taliban hardliners will constitute a substantial threat to the Afghan government and its citizens, as well as to the United States and its Coalition partners. This enduring terrorist threat will require the United States, the international community, and the ANDSF to maintain a robust CT capability for the foreseeable future.
The danger of Daesh making further inroads is increasing with the group recovering some strength in its ‘homeland’ regions of Syria and Iraq. The Lead Inspector General Report to the US Congress, which covered the period between April 1, 2019, to June 30, 2019, released in August 2019, observed,

Despite losing its territorial “caliphate,” the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) solidified its insurgent capabilities in Iraq and was resurging in Syria this quarter… CJTF-OIR [Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR)] said that ISIS in Iraq was able to establish a more stable command and control node and a logistics node for coordination of attacks… In Syria, USCENTCOM [U.S. Central Command] reported to the DoD OIG [Office of the Inspector General] that ISIS has activated resurgent cells in areas controlled by the SDF [Syrian Democratic Forces] … CJTF-OIR reported based on open source data that ISIS likely has between 14,000 and 18,000 “members,” including “fighters,” in Iraq and Syria, including up to 3,000 foreigners
Under the prevailing situation, Fawad Aman, a spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry, on August 20, 2019, claimed, “We have eliminated their bases in the east, and they are concentrated in very small areas. They cannot fight our forces face-to-face.” This appears to be little more than wishful thinking and attempt to deny the stark reality of an augmenting threat.

It is for the United States which, for last almost 18 years devastated Afghanistan in the name of establishing peace and tranquility in the region, to ensure that the Islamic State is stopped from gaining further ground inside Afghanistan. If the US decides otherwise, which seems more than likely, given the US hurry to flee the country, Afghanistan in all likelihood will plunge deeper into crisis in the immediate aftermath of the US withdrawal.

The series of incidents that occurred across the Middle East over the last 24 hours represents a significant escalation in Israel’s battle with Iran. Judging by media reports, this conflict – most of which is still being waged covertly – now encompasses three other countries: Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, like reported by haaretz.com.

Over the past day, three attacks in these three countries have been attributed to Israel, all against targets connected to Iran. In two of them, in Syria and Iraq, casualties were reported. And since Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah has explicitly threatened vengeance for the death of his people in the Syrian incident, the unusually high alert in Israel is expected to continue for some time.

At about midnight Saturday night, the Israel Defense Forces announced that it had thwarted an Iranian plan that included launching attack drones at military targets and civilian infrastructure in northern Israel. The first attempt by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force was thwarted on Thursday, when the Iranians, accompanied by Shi’ite militiamen, approached the Israeli border in the Golan Heights. The IDF hasn’t elaborated on how this plan was thwarted, but it did publish photos that showed the operatives near the border.

Yet the Iranians evidently didn’t give up. Saturday night, Israel’s air force struck a building in Aqraba, southeast of Damascus, from which the drone attack was slated to be launched, apparently a few hours later. The IDF says the building served the Quds Force and Shi’ite militiamen and housed drones and explosives that had been sent from Iran via the Damascus airport.

IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi accused the Quds Force commander, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, of having financed and planned the operation. Syrian reports said two Hezbollah members were killed in the Israeli strike.

Israel provided unusual detail about the attack. Both the IDF spokesman and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued statements. Netanyahu’s office even said he spent the night at air force headquarters together with Kochavi.

Israel thereby broke with the policy of ambiguity it has employed toward most incidents in Syria in recent years, albeit not for the first time. Perhaps it did so because this was a preemptive strike, moments before an Iranian attack. But obviously, electoral considerations may have played a role as well.

Less than three hours later, there was an incident in Beirut. Nasrallah said in his speech that residents of Dahiyyeh, Beirut’s Shi’ite quarter, spotted Israeli drones flying above the neighborhood at low altitude. One was downed by youths throwing stones, he said. Another apparently hit a Hezbollah office in the neighborhood, causing minor damage.

If Israel was behind this attack, it’s not clear what it hoped to achieve, aside from sending Hezbollah a warning. The damage seen in the photos from Dahiyyeh doesn’t justify such an unusual strike. But it’s very possible there are aspects to this incident that we don’t yet know about.

The third incident took place Sunday afternoon, near the Abu Kamal border crossing between Iraq and Syria. A drone reportedly struck a convoy on the Iraqi side of the border that included Shi’ite militia commanders. Iraqi reports said nine people were killed, including a relatively senior local commander.

Earlier on Sunday, Netanyahu and Kochavi toured the Golan Heights and assessed the situation with senior IDF officers. Netanyahu said during this visit that the thwarted attack from Syria was “an Iranian initiative, under Iranian command, in Iran’s service.” He added that Israel won’t tolerate attacks on its territory, and that any country which lets its territory be used to attack Israel will bear the consequences. “If someone rises up to kill you, kill him first,” he said.

Nasrallah responded with a long, aggressive speech in Beirut. He denied Israel’s claim that the strike in Syria targeted Iranian Revolutionary Guards personnel, saying the bombed building actually served Hezbollah operatives. He accused Israel of violating “the rules of the game” and threatened a harsh, immediate response, presumably from Lebanon. “I say to the Israeli soldiers on the border, you should fear our response, starting tonight,” he said.

The defense establishment takes Hezbollah’s threats seriously. Alert levels were raised at Iron Dome batteries in the north and at outposts along the Lebanese and Syrian borders.

Hezbollah has attacked soldiers following similar threats in the past. In 2015, for instance, it fired an antitank missile that killed an officer and a soldier on Har Dov in response to a strike attributed to Israel that killed senior Hezbollah official Jihad Mughniyeh and an Iranian general in the Syrian Golan.

Iran has also tried repeatedly – in April and May 2018 and January 2019 – to retaliate for Israeli attacks on its bases in Syria with missile launches from Syria. But those attempts were thwarted by the air force.

Hezbollah has previously termed Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon a red line, even as it refrained from responding to dozens of attacks attributed to Israel in Syria that targeted convoys ferrying weapons for the organization. Consequently, Israel chose to reveal Hezbollah’s efforts to build factories in Beirut to upgrade the accuracy of its missiles through a public speech at the United Nations rather than airstrikes.

Iranian revenge attempt

The weekend’s thwarted Iranian attack was apparently revenge for a July 19 attack in Iraq. That attack, which was attributed to Israel, targeted arms stockpiled by Iranian-supported Shi’ite militias. Tehran saw this as an Israeli attempt to widen the theater of battle.

America also objected to that strike, fearing it would disrupt its relations with the Iraqi government. Last weekend, U.S. officials leaked details of the operation and criticism of Israel to the New York Times.

Last Thursday, in a sharp deviation from normal information security practices, Tehran even hinted at its expected response. An analyst close to the Revolutionary Guards wrote in the Iranian newspaper Kayhan that Israel’s actions in Iraq and Syria would be answered with surprises such as drone strikes on sensitive military targets, ports and nuclear facilities. The attack the IDF said it thwarted is identical to the one this analyst forecast.

The repeated strikes on Iranian targets in Syria show the advantage the IDF enjoys when its conflict with Iran takes place close to the Israeli border. Israeli intelligence agencies monitor events in Syria closely, and this has so far enabled the air force to hit Iranian targets and thwart Iranian plans without much difficulty.

Nevertheless, Iran hasn’t abandoned its ambitions in Syria. After suffering repeated attacks last year, it altered its deployment (for instance, moving its center of operations from the Damascus airport to the T4 base near Homs, which is farther from Israel). But it didn’t stop trying to entrench itself militarily in Syria, nor did it ends its arms smuggling to Hezbollah.

All this is happening against the background of the tensions between America and Iran in the Persian Gulf and the advancing crisis over America’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal. The Trump administration has made clear that it isn’t interested in war with Iran, but the bilateral friction continues. And Iran can continue attacking oil industry targets in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, just as it works against Israel from Syria.

On Sunday, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif unexpectedly visited Biarritz, France where the G7 was meeting. This might be an effort to facilitate negotiations with Washington via European mediators. U.S. President Donald Trump, uncharacteristically, said he had “no comment” when asked about this.

Straw that broke Iranian camel’s back?

The attack in Syria and the incident in Lebanon cast a different light on criticism of Netanyahu over his inaction against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. As proved true last December, with the discovery and destruction of Hezbollah’s cross-border tunnels from Lebanon, it has belatedly emerged that there are other considerations behind Israel’s policy of restraint in Gaza that aren’t always known to the public in real time.

The tension in the north is rising as the election campaign enters the home stretch leading to September 17. Netanyahu is going into the election against the background of a rise in the number of deadly attacks in the West Bank and increasing friction with Hamas in Gaza that could lead to another round of fighting there.

But in the north, unlike in Gaza, Netanyahu currently feels comfortable from a political standpoint. He looks like someone who’s in control of the situation and is employing force relatively cautiously.

For now, residents of northern Israel aren’t feeling threatened or being hurt. Therefore, Netanyahu will presumably try to leverage the military strikes in Syria for electoral purposes, even as he tries insofar as possible to limit discussion of what Israelis living near the Gaza border are suffering.

Regarding the north, Netanyahu’s rivals don’t have a lot to say, aside from somewhat forced expressions of support for the government’s policy and the IDF’s actions. Nevertheless, the unavoidable question is whether the decision to expand Israel’s airstrikes to Iraq (according to media reports) didn’t entail excessive risk, and if this wasn’t the straw that broke the Iranian camel’s back and provoked its attempt to retaliate Saturday night.

When Israel began its airstrikes in Syria several years ago, in the midst of Syria’s civil war, senior defense officials discussed the question of when Syrian President Bashar Assad would get fed up and decide to retaliate for those strikes. Assad restrained himself for a long time, but in 2017, Syrian forces began responding with anti-aircraft fire against Israeli planes. That happened after the regime had regained its confidence by gradually regaining control (with Russian and Iranian help) over most of the country.

The metaphor used at the time was a multi-ride bus ticket: When would enough holes be punched in the ticket for Assad’s patience to wear out? But judging by media reports in recent weeks, Israel has switched from sporadic hole-punching to an unlimited monthly pass. This was presumably unacceptable to Iran, and it will exact a price, even if it won’t necessarily lead to all-out war between the countries.

The Times newspaper published a report entitled ” sick Baghdadi put ISIS under the command of the Professor”, like reported by shafaaq.com.

The newspaper said that Al-Baghdadi handed over ISIS daily affairs department has been handed over to his assistant, Abdullah Qardash, known as the “professor”, who was a former officer in Saddam Hussein’s army who rose to prominence in extremist organizations after the fall of Saddam in 2003. The writer adds that the decision adds more speculation about Baghdadi’s health.

The newspaper also says that US forces arrested al-Baghdadi, 48years old  and Qardash, aged unknown, in 2003 for their links to al-Qaeda and they were arrested together in Basra, where it is believed that al-Baghdadi used his capabilities as a jihadist preacher and was able to recruit hundreds of prisoners for his cause and made his vision for what he described as a state of succession.

The report indicates that al-Baghdadi began his career as a jihadist leader in a very public manner, where he delivered a sermon from al-Nuri mosque   in Mosul in 2014, to declare the birth of his succession. He adds that al-Baghdadi’s first video recording in five years appeared in April this year, and part of his beard was henna and said he was in good health.

Analysts told the newspaper that al-Baghdadi had chosen a successor to rebuild the group while Baghdadi himself renewed the group’s speechifying to attract recruits as he did at the start.

“Baghdadi will not relinquish his post, as he gave Qardash a specific task related to logistics and movement ,” Fadhil Abu Ragheef, a former security analyst with the Iraqi government told the newspaper.

“There are three possible reasons for al-Baghdadi to choose another leader within the organization: to fill the gaps in the organization, to unite with Qardash, who is popular among the group’s members and to prepare him for a new leadership at a later stage,” he said.

Security forces in the region have warned that the remaining cells of the Islamic State remain organized enough to launch attacks and exploit any power vacuum.

The latest attack by Houthi rebels against Saudi oil and gas infrastructure involved ten drones equipped with improvised explosives. Their target was the massive Shaybah oil field, nearly 1000 kilometers from the Yemeni border, like reported by soufangroup.com.

Like other attacks, this latest one failed to cause catastrophic damage, yet demonstrated the Houthis’ increased capability since the conflict began in March 2015. By nearly every measure, the war in Yemen has been a failure.

When initially launched by the Saudi-led coalition, the primary goals were to restore the toppled government of Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi; defeat the threat posed by Houthi rebels, and roll back Iranian influence in the country. The Saudis have achieved none of these goals, and Iran’s involvement in the conflict, specifically through training and assistance to the Houthis, has actually expanded.

The anti-Houthi coalition has been relatively ad hoc; led by Saudi Arabia and, to a lesser extent, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), it has recently fractured, and proxies have turned on one another. The UAE has been supporting the Southern Transitional Council (STC), a faction that has no interest in restoring the Hadi government. The STC’s ultimate goal is to secede and create a new country in southern Yemen.

On August 10, STC forces, with UAE military equipment and funding, took over and occupied Yemeni government buildings and offices in Aden. The STC has begun withdrawing from some of the positions it seized while holding onto several small military bases. On August 20, the STC and Saudi-led forces fought again, with the STC seizing two military bases in the city of Zinjibar, east of Aden. Saudi officials have denounced the latest’ unjustified escalation’ by the ‘separatists,’ but the infighting continues.

The latest Houthi drone strikes led to retaliatory airstrikes by Saudi Arabia in the capital of Sanaa on August 19. Airstrikes have been a leading cause of civilian casualties since 2015. The Houthis have no air force, leaving coalition aircraft with uncontested air dominance.

The U.S. is providing intelligence support to mitigate collateral damage, according to the Trump administration, but errant strikes on schools, hospitals, and public infrastructure continue to injure and kill civilians. U.S. support for coalition action in Yemen is predicated upon its stated goal of containing Iran.

Yet, the war in Yemen has actually increased Iran’s influence in the country and on the Houthis. With no clear victory in sight, the UAE has pulled out most of its troops, though it continues to provide support to the STC, much to the dismay of Riyadh. U.N. efforts to bring about a cease-fire have stalled entirely, in no small part because the U.S. refuses to pressure the Saudis to change course, despite bipartisan clamor to end support to the coalition.

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed 63 and wounded nearly 200 people at a wedding in Kabul over the weekend, signaling the group’s enduring reach and underscoring one of the challenges to a U.S. and Taliban peace negotiation, like reported by washingtonpost.com.

The militant group lost its self-proclaimed caliphate in Iraq and Syria earlier this year. But Saturday’s bombing showed that the Islamic State remains a potent force beyond the borders it once claimed and fixed a glare on one of its lesser known but growing affiliates: the Islamic State in Khorasan, as the Afghanistan branch is known.

The bombing came as the U.S. and the Taliban work to finalize a peace deal that would end the 18-year war in Afghanistan. The Trump administration’s top negotiator presented a draft agreement to President Trump Friday that outlines a plan to withdraw thousands of American troops from the country — a move some fear would allow the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, to gain an even bigger footprint.

Here’s what is known about the Islamic State in Afghanistan:

The Islamic State has a growing foothold in Afghanistan
The Islamic State in Khorasan officially began operating in Afghanistan in 2015, according to a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Its name invokes the Khorasan Province, a medieval region that encompassed parts of Afghanistan, Iran and Central Asia.

Started by Pakistani national Hafiz Zaeed Khan, who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State head Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2014, it began as a small band of mostly Pakistani militants operating in the eastern Afghanistan province of Nangahar. Some recruits came from the Taliban, though members of other extremist groups in the region also defected to the Khorasan group, according to the CSIS report.

Like its parent group — the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria — the Afghanistan offshoot has ambitions to hold territory and is known for carrying out brutal attacks on civilians, including women and children. Shiites are particularly frequent targets.

The number of Islamic State affiliated fighters in Afghanistan has grown to include between 2,500 and 4,000, according to a recent estimate by the United Nations. They’re still mostly concentrated in Nangahar — but the wedding bombing in Kabul on Saturday highlighted the group’s growing reach, according to Michael Kugelman, a South Asia specialist at the Wilson Center.

Islamic State in Khorasan has never successfully captured territory in Afghanistan and it remains much weaker than rival militant groups in the region like the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Still, Kugelman said, the group has remained “resilient.”

Their strategy centers on attacking ‘soft targets’

The wedding attack was significantly larger and more destructive than other recent attacks, but it was “vintage ISIS in Afghanistan,” said Fawaz Gerges, the author of a recent book on the rise of the Islamic State. He noted that the group often attacks mosques, schools and weddings.

“The most effective means to stay in business is to carry out devastating attacks against soft targets, and to show that it’s purer than the Taliban and al-Qaeda,” said Gerges, who is also a professor at the London School of Economics.

The carnage produced by these sorts of attacks draws attention that keeps the group relevant, both in Afghanistan and across the world.

Since it was routed from Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State has increasingly turned its attention to other parts of the world, experts say — attracting recruits across Asia and Africa, and exporting its ideology and tactics as it seeks to transition from governing a caliphate to waging a global insurgency.

“Suicide attacks against weddings are force multipliers for ISIS, because it’s desperate to show its potency, its ability to strike near and far, especially after the beating it has taken in Iraq and Syria,” Gerges said.

Experts are divided over the threat ISIS poses in Afghanistan
Some analysts have speculated that Afghanistan could provide fertile ground for the central Islamic State organization to regroup. But experts and government officials disagree over just how great of a threat the group represents in Afghanistan.

Some believe it is an urgent danger: U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned this month that after losing its territory in Iraq and Syria, the umbrella group has access to hundreds of millions of dollars to finance terrorism and that Afghanistan is a fertile conflict zone from which to recruit fighters.

American military officers agree. They see the Islamic State in Afghanistan as a growing problem and worry that the local group could orchestrate attacks against the West, the New York Times reported. And Afghan generals say they have found fighting the group increasingly difficult.

But U.S. intelligence officials think the Islamic State in Khorasan lacks the know-how of the central group and does not pose a threat to Western countries.

Still, Gerges described the group as “a very stubborn affiliate.”

“They have the potential to become a much more dangerous group,” he said.

The U.S. has fought the group in Afghanistan with mixed success
U.S. airstrikes took out key leaders of the Islamic State in Khorasan, including its founder, early on. And in 2017, the U.S. military dropped the “mother of all bombs” on a cave where fighters were hiding in Nangahar province. It was the first time the United States had used the most powerful bomb in its arsenal in combat.

Still, the affiliate group has managed to sustain itself and grow its membership.

“You’ve had a relentless campaign of Afghan and U.S. airstrikes in recent years … but despite all that, it’s remained there. It has not been dislodged; it’s continued to carry out attacks,” Kugelman said.

This has factored into ongoing peace talks between the Trump administration and the Taliban, particularly as the two parties wrestle over whether the United States should keep a counterterrorism force in the country after it withdraws other troops.

The latest draft of the peace deal, as described by U.S. officials, includes an initial withdrawal of about 5,000 of the 14,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan in exchange for the Taliban renouncing al-Qaeda and working to shut down its operations in areas under Taliban control.

But the question of a long-term counterterrorism presence has proven to be a sticking point. The Taliban wants all U.S. forces out of the country.

So far, what to do about the Islamic State in Afghanistan hasn’t made it into the draft deal. Washington has previously said they want the Taliban to renounce the Islamic State, but the draft only mentions the group’s rival, al-Qaeda.

A peace deal could drive Taliban members to the Islamic State
The Taliban and the Islamic State are rivals and the Taliban has fought them in Afghanistan for years. The Islamic State’s ideology and tactics are significantly more extreme than those of the Taliban.

The Islamic State has sought to advance a global project through brutal means. In Afghanistan, it aims to foment sectarian violence by targeting Shiites, experts said.

The Taliban has also carried out attacks on civilian targets like schools and polling places. But unlike the Islamic State, the group denies deliberately targeting civilians. The Taliban sees the Islamic State as “an existential threat,” Gerges said, and it has increasingly sought to define itself in contrast to the Islamic State — as more reasonable, less bloody, and willing to operate as a mainstream political actor.

On Sunday, a Taliban spokesman took the extraordinary step of condemning the attack on Saturday as a “brutal act.”

Despite the rivalry, disillusioned Taliban fighters have defected to Islamic State affiliates. Many of the group’s initial recruits formerly belonged to the Taliban.

A peace agreement with the United States could fuel another exodus. The Taliban is not a monolithic group, experts point out, and more extreme members may see dealing with the United States as a betrayal of the cause.

“If there is a Taliban peace deal, you would have a critical mass of disaffected, angry Taliban hard-liners who would jump into the ISIS camp,” Kugelman said.

Tensions have escalated in the Persian Gulf region in the aftermath of U.S. president Donald Trump’s decision unilaterally to withdraw the United States from the agreement limiting Iran’s nuclear program, like reported by nationalinterest.org.

The U.S. military has implicated Iranian agents in several summer 2019 attacks on civilian ships sailing near Iran. The U.S. Navy sent the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and her strike group to the region. The U.S. Air Force deployed B-52 bombers and F-22 and F-35 stealth fighters.

If war breaks out, American forces could target Iran’s small navy as well as the vessels belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps militia.

The battle could be brief. Iran’s fleet has a long history of waging losing fights with the United States and other Western powers.

During World War II, the Allied powers worried that Iran, while technically neutral, might sympathize with and aid the Nazis, potentially depriving the Allies of the country’s oil. On Aug. 25, 1941, Commonwealth and Soviet forces invaded.

British and Australian warships steamed into Abadan Harbor as part of a surprise attack. HMS Shoreham opened fire first, striking the Iranian warship Palang. Soon virtually the entire Iranian fleet was in ruins and commander-in-chief Adm. Gholamali Bayandor lay dead.

The British and Soviets divided up Iran and deposed its shah. In the two decades following the war, the new regime rebuilt the navy with mostly British-made ships, some of which remain in service today.

The new Iranian navy fought hard during the bloody Iran-Iraq war between 1980 and 1988. Iran’s attacks on tanker ships—some strictly neutral, others admittedly supplying Iraq—incited international rage.

In 1987, Washington approved Kuwait’s request to “reflag” its tankers as American vessels, in order to allow the U.S. Navy to escort the ships through the Persian Gulf. The Americans’ Operation Earnest Will, lasting from July 1987 to September 1988, included several smaller efforts that resulted in the destruction of Iranian forces.

The Navy converted two oil-service barges into “sea bases” for Special Operations Forces and armed helicopters, and the U.S. Army placed attack copters aboard Navy ships. On Sept. 21, 1987 Little Bird helicopters from the Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment attacked the Iranian vessel Ajr as she laid mines, forcing the crew to abandon ship.

A few days later, Little Birds sank three Iranian patrol boats.

On Oct. 16, 1987, an Iranian missile struck a Kuwaiti tanker, injuring 19 people. In response, a U.S. task force targeted two inoperable oil platforms that IRGC forces were using as bases for armed speedboats.

American warships surrounded the platforms, compelling the Iranian crews to evacuate. U.S. commandos climbed aboard one platform to gather up any documents the Iranians had left behind. Four U.S. destroyers opened fire, setting the platforms ablaze.

On April 14, 1988, the frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts struck an Iranian mine while escorting tanker ships through the Persian Gulf. The carrier USS Enterprise led a retaliatory raid.

Two U.S. destroyers and an amphibious assault ship carrying a battalion of U.S. Marines assaulted an oil platform the Iranians were using as a staging base. The Iranians fired back, drawing heavy return fire from the destroyers and Marine Cobra helicopters. Marines stormed the platform, capturing one surviving Iranian gunner.

Iranian speedboats raided three civilian cargo ships. As the Iranians withdrew, Enterprise’s A-6 bombers zeroed in, sinking one speedboat with cluster bombs.

The Iranian missile boat Joshan fired a Harpoon anti-ship missile at a group of American warships—and missed. The Americans fired back with Harpoon and Standard missiles then sank the damaged Joshan with their guns.

While the U.S. ships fought off Iranian air attacks, Tehran’s 1960s-vintage destroyers joined the battle. Sahand and Sabalan both fired without effect at A-6s overhead. The A-6s shot back with Harpoons and laser-guided bombs, sinking Sahand and badly damaging Sabalan.

At least 56 Iranians died in the fighting. Two U.S. Marines perished when their helicopter crashed. Battered, the Iranian fleet pulled back, and since then has been hesitant to make good on its periodic threats against Iran’s neighbors and the United States.

According to several anonymous American intelligence officials, Osama bin Laden’s favorite son, Hamza, has been killed. Information on when (sometime in the past two years), how (possibly an air strike), where (likely in Afghanistan), and by whom (involving America) remains unclear, like reported by mei.edu.

According to some Afghan sources, Hamza had allegedly been spending time in Afghanistan’s northeastern Kunar Province in January 2019, in the Shultan Valley, where he was residing with a Lashkar-e-Taiba commander known as “Mawyaa.” According to Hamza himself, one of his sons was “martyred” in a possible airstrike in Afghanistan in 2017, so Hamza was clearly being tracked, presumably by those who finally killed him.

Ever since his emergence in August 2015, Hamza bin Laden was perceived by many as being positioned to take over from Ayman al-Zawahiri as al-Qaeda’s global leader. Al-Qaeda itself declared that Hamza was “a young lion” who would “carry forward the cause.” But beyond assumptions made primarily in West, it was never clear whether Hamza truly was Zawahiri’s inevitable successor. In fact, his messages rarely attracted the level of attention or excitement that al-Qaeda might have wished.

When al-Qaeda introduced Hamza’s voice to the world in the summer of 2015, the group was in the midst of one of its most challenging periods yet. The explosive rise of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, its proclamation of a “caliphate,” and rapid expansion across the world challenged — and arguably overturned — al-Qaeda’s position of primacy as the global leader of militant jihad. Meanwhile, Zawahiri appeared to be increasingly disconnected from global events and distant from his affiliates in Syria, Yemen, North Africa, and beyond, most of which were pursuing strategies that further distanced them from al-Qaeda’s central brand. Therefore, the timing of Hamza’s emergence was no coincidence. As a bin Laden, he was undoubtedly meant to re-unite and re-energize al-Qaeda’s global movement at a time of unprecedented challenge.

But Hamza was not a veteran of the jihad. He had never fought in a war or commanded soldiers on a battlefield. His claim to authority was based solely on his name. And with time, that did not appear to be enough. His sudden introduction to the world reflected al-Qaeda’s vulnerable state, not its continued strength. And Hamza’s failure to rise to fame underlined just how detached al-Qaeda’s central leadership had become within the group’s active theaters of battle. When compared to Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, or Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Zawahiri is an extraordinarily uncharismatic individual, whose lengthy speeches come across more like a university lecture from an ageing and bookish professor than a commander-in-chief leading a global army.

With the defeat earlier this year of ISIS’s territorial caliphate in Syria and Iraq, al-Qaeda has an opportunity to regain some of the influence it has lost in recent years. But with Hamza’s death and Zawahiri at the helm, al-Qaeda has lost its last bin Laden and retained its uninspiring leader, who is reportedly also in bad health. Going forward, Zawahiri and his two deputies in Iran — Sayf al-Adel and Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah — will need to redefine what al-Qaeda represents today and re-establish an effective and efficient channel of command and control, if they have any hope of continuing to steer a united and cohesive international movement.

For now, the trajectory of al-Qaeda is one of decentralization. This is not an encouraging development either. Violent extremist organizations that are less restrained by distant and disconnected leaders have a history of embedding more deeply and sustainably within localized conflict dynamics. That strategy of “localism” has encouraged al-Qaeda affiliates to adapt and evolve in ways that challenge the traditional assumptions of al-Qaeda’s identity and more importantly, pose serious and unprecedented challenges to al-Qaeda’s enemies.

In Syria, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham devolves considerable power to a technocratic government; runs periodic elections for local councils; engages — albeit delicately — with international diplomatic initiatives; and seeks to establish political dialogue with foreign governments, including in the West. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, meanwhile, has embraced a public policy of only supporting peaceful protests in Algeria, while fighting wars in some of Algeria’s neighbors. In Yemen, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has teamed up within tribal alliances to fight the Houthis, while simultaneously declaring war on ISIS. This does not reflect a moderation of al-Qaeda — these movements remain as extreme as ever — but it does illustrate greater political maturity.

How does the West confront an al-Qaeda affiliate whose fighters work with mainstream elements of society and whose energies are dedicated to some of the very same fights that Western governments unofficially support — like in Yemen? How do regional governments combat an al-Qaeda affiliate which, to at least some people within its midst, appears to be doing more to protect civilians from repression and brutality than the regional governments themselves — like in Syria? And how does any government challenge an al-Qaeda affiliate whose public position is to support peaceful protests? These are the dilemmas that our governments are just beginning to face now and which may come to dominate in the future. The threats posed by al-Qaeda’s fighters are just as significant as they have ever been and they must be countered with determination. But our responses to those threats will need to be far more intelligent and grounded in local truths than ever before.

In early August, Iran seized another oil tanker in the Persian Gulf, on this occasion an Iraqi tanker that Iran said was caught ‘smuggling’ Iranian oil to the ‘Arab states’, like reported by soufangroup.com.

Since U.S.-Iran tensions escalated in May, as the Trump administration ramped up sanctions, Iran has seized three oil tankers, including one owned by the United Kingdom, and attacked another six tankers. The United States and Iran also downed one of each other’s unmanned aerial vehicles.

None of the attacks has led to a loss of life, but the pattern of actions indicates that any future incident could easily escalate into significant armed conflict. In an attempt to deter Iran’s attacks in the Gulf, the United States has continued to build up forces there.

Starting with the acceleration of a U.S. aircraft carrier group in May, the United States has announced deployments of additional combat aircraft and missile defense units to the Gulf, as well as the return of U.S. military personnel to the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia that the United States has not used since the 2003 war to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

The U.K., which had a tanker, the Steno Impero, seized on July 19 in retaliation for the earlier seizure by British Overseas Territory Gibraltar of an Iranian tanker en route to Syria, has sent two warships to the Gulf to protect British ships.

On August 5, the U.K. announced it would join a U.S.-led operation to monitor and help protect shipping in the Gulf. However, the U.S. effort to recruit additional coalition members has run into opposition from countries who do not want to adopt the Trump administration’s campaign of maximum pressure on Iran. Germany, for example, has outright refused to join any Gulf protection mission.

The difficulty in recruiting allies to the protection mission, when added to the Trump administration’s reticence to retaliate for Iran’s provocations, has given Tehran— as well as other states in the region—the clear impression that the United States and its allies are taking every step possible to avoid war with Iran.

That impression was fostered by President Trump’s aborted retaliation for Iran’s downing of a U.S. unmanned aerial surveillance aircraft in June. Iranian leaders read the U.S. and U.S.-allied hesitance to react militarily to Iran’s provocations as affirmation of Iran’s strong regional position, including its successful intervention on behalf of Bashar Al Assad in Syria, the political and military strength of key Iranian allies Lebanese Hezbollah and Shia militias in Iraq, and the Zaidi Shia Houthi movement in Yemen.

Iranian leaders calculate that, because a U.S.-Iran clash could easily cascade throughout the region, war with Iran would undermine President Trump’s repeated pledges to extricate the United States from the long conflicts in the region and complicate his drive for re-election in 2020.

The Trump administration’s caution in incorporating military action into its policy of maximum pressure on Iran has caused the Gulf states to recalibrate their posture. In July, the UAE, one of the hardline Gulf states on Iran, announced a pullout of its ground troops from Yemen. Those troops were the backbone of the Saudi-led coalition’s operations against the Houthis, and the pullout cast doubt upon Riyadh’s ability to sustain that war effort.

On July 31, the UAE sent a security delegation to Tehran for the first high-level bilateral talks between the two countries since 2013. The visit, coming on the heels of the hesitancy of the UAE to blame Tehran directly for the recent attacks on commercial shipping, suggested that Abu Dhabi may be seeking to de-escalate tensions.

There are indications that Saudi Arabia might undertake talks with Iran as well. Both Gulf states have apparently concluded that their agitations against Iran over the past several years risks leaving them to face conflict with the Islamic Republic without direct U.S. military support.

The Gulf states appear to have concluded that easing Tehran’s unrest over the U.S. maximum pressure campaign is preferable to a war that could destroy much of the infrastructure investments the Gulf states have made in recent decades.

The policy adjustment by the Gulf states highlights the lack of international support for the Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign against Iran, although there are no indications, to date, that the administration plans to alter that course.