It started last week as an ordinary session in the Majlis, Iran’s parliament. But then, in the course of a speech, Mohammad Reza Pour-Ebrahimi, chairman of the parliament’s Economic Affairs Committee, made an astounding statement. Between Jan. 21 and March 20, he said “A sum of $30 billion was taken out of Iran.” The capital flight came against the backdrop of sporadic but widespread protests that began the month before and continue to the present day, with a nationwide truck driver strike.

While Pour-Ebrahimi’s statement might sound like hyperbole to outsiders, his peers are not treating it as such. The chief of Iran’s chamber of commerce suggested that the $30 billion that left Iran was spent by Iranian tourists abroad, but according to Iran’s central statistics bureau, that two-month figure is far higher than what Iranians send or spend abroad on an annual basis. Government spokesman Mohammad Bager Nobakht, meanwhile, suggested that the $30 billion sum represented real estate investment abroad. If that were true, then Iranian officials are either trying to evade sanctions through front companies or are possibly stashing money abroad so that it is accessible to them if the regime falters.

The $30 billion flight appears to mark an acceleration of an already existing problem. According to an interview with Iranian economist Haydar Hosseini published in the state-controlled press, Iranians transferred $27 billion abroad in 2017. Eshaq Jahangiri, vice president under President Hassan Rouhani, meanwhile, accused the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad government of transferring $22 billion, mostly to markets in Dubai and Istanbul, in the 18 months before Ahmadinejad’s term ended in 2013.

It is common for the Iranian government to blame the outside world for Iran’s economic weakness, but the figures bantered about in Persian by Iranian officials themselves suggest that the problem has never been sanctions, but rather graft.

Opaque and autocratic regimes often embezzle; that’s nothing new. But to move so much money so quickly suggests panic may now be supplanting greed. Civil disobedience is becoming a daily event not only in the capital, but also in the provinces. Labor strikes are becoming more common. And while the youth bulge in Iran is not what so many outsiders assume (Iran has had one of the world’s greatest declines in birth rates since the 1980s), Iran’s youth and the middle-aged are tired of four decades of empty promises. There have been nationwide protests in 1999, 2001, 2009, and now 2017-2018; they are happening with greater frequency and the embers are becoming increasingly difficult to smother.

In addition, what senior Iranian officials know but diplomats and companies seeking to strike deals with the Islamic Republic seem to forget, is that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s health is in doubt. He is nearing 79 years old and, in 2014, allowed himself to be photographed while receiving treatment for prostate cancer in a Tehran hospital. When he does eventually pass, it is not clear whether there is an obvious compromise candidate to unite the various factions in the way that Khamenei himself was believed to be when he succeeded revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989.

Add into the mix the Trump administration. The price of oil is on the rebound and while that might normally save a struggling oil exporter’s economy like Iran’s, it looks like the re-imposition of sanctions will deny Iran access to much of that boom just when Tehran might need it most. If Iran cannot pay its bloated civil service and employees of state-owned enterprises, then that just throws fuel on the fire of discontent.

Iranian regime bluster has been a constant for more than 39 years. And the leadership’s boasts about Iran’s strength are nothing new, even as they are increasingly hollow. What has changed now, however, is that senior regime officials also recognize the regime is in a death spiral; they no longer believe their own lies. Increasingly it looks like Iran’s top officials are trying to squirrel away nest eggs at an unprecedented pace as they prepare for the inevitable.

Islamic State is spreading its influence to other regions, including Africa’s Sahel, and experts are warning that countries in the region should take measures to keep the militant groups from regrouping in these areas, like reported by voanews.com.

Having lost most of the territory it once controlled in Iraq and Syria, the terror group’s fighters are reportedly establishing ties with local militant organizations.

“A key strength of these extremist organizations has been their ability to move with ease across national borders within the Sahel, allowing them to regroup after setbacks, and to replenish their ranks with inflows of fighters, weaponry and resources,” Jennifer G. Cooke of George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs told VOA.

Officials in the Sahel region have also voiced concerns over growing militancy and warned that the militant groups are not only destabilizing the region, but also pose a threat to the security of other countries.

“Most of these terrorists are leaving these places to come to the Sahel, to harbor there and to organize attacks against everybody.” Abdoulaye Diop, Mali’s foreign minister, said during a discussion at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) late last year.

Michael Shurkin, a senior political scientist with the Rand Corporation, shares Diop’s concerns.

“There is legitimate concern that if allowed to, the extremist groups will make themselves into a direct threat to the U.S. and its friends by turning the region into a new Afghanistan, where the Taliban gave al-Qaida the freedom to organize the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.”

G5 Sahel

In order to crack down on militant groups in the region, five countries including Niger, Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso and Mauritania established a joint force known as the G5, which is a 5,000-person military and police force, tasked with carrying out counterterrorism operations along the common border regions of all five countries.

However, the G5 Sahel is not yet fully operational due to funding and logistical issues.

On Tuesday, while on a visit to Mali, the country most affected by terrorism among the G5, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed to donors to provide more sustainable support to the G5 Sahel force.

“The international community must understand the need to provide the G5 Sahel countries with predictable support,” Guterres said.

In February, various countries pledged $509 million to G5, just shy of the group’s initial budget of $529 million, but the contributions have not been made yet.

Some analysts, like George Washington University’s Cooke, warn that the G5 must pull its act together to ensure that international partners do no lose interest.

“The force has won initial support from European partners, the United States, Saudi Arabia and others, all of whom have been convinced of the need for a greater regional security cooperation,” Cooke said. “If operationalization of the joint force becomes bogged down in disagreements or delays, international partners will very likely lose interest.”

Military option

Some experts charge that the military option is not the only answer to the problem of extremism in the region.

“Equally important, however, will be to use U.S. diplomatic and development leverage to press governments of the region to think beyond the military and address not just the symptoms, but the drivers of violence and insecurity as well,” Cooke said.

The Rand Corporation’s Michael Shurkin agrees with Cooke’s assessment.

“The answer is some combination of longer-term economic and political development paired with steady progress on the part of the member nations’ security force,” Shurkin said. “It’s about opportunities as well as about integrating marginalized populations.”

U.S. role

A U.S military spokesperson told VOA that they are coordinating with G5 on the ground.

Samantha Reho, spokesperson for the U.S. Africa Command, said that last month, several military officers from G5 Force participated in the annual Flintlock Exercise, organized by the U.S. Special Forces Command in cooperation with nations across the Sahel. Flintlock is designed to foster regional cooperation to stabilize regions of North and West Africa, and reduce the presence of violent extremist organizations.

Reho added that the G5 Force is a new initiative and that there is no determination yet as to how the U.S. will support it.

“But what I can tell you is that any direct support we provide will be [in] conjunction and in coordination with those respective host nations and other U.N. and international partners, mainly France’s 4,000 troops, who have had a long-standing military presence in the region,” said Reho.

Shurkin of the Rand Corporation believes that working with the French in the Sahel will be a good idea.

“The U.S. can help the G5 force be more effective, working in tandem with the French, not in isolation from the French,” he said.

Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon called on the UN Security Council to recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization in light of its planned emergency session, set to take place on Wednesday according to jpost.com.

“The fact that the Security Council is holding a discussion on Hamas attacks against Israeli citizens is a positive step. But the Council members must also take action and not be satisfied with words only,” Danon expressed.

“I call on the Security Council to formally recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization. It is time to fight the Palestinian terror leadership just like we fought the leadership of al-Qaeda and ISIS.”

American Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley strongly condemned the latest round of mortar and rocket fire emanating from the Gaza Strip on Tuesday and called for an emergency session of the UN Security Council to be held.

“The Security Council should be outraged and respond to this latest bout of violence directed at innocent Israeli civilians, and the Palestinian leadership needs to be held accountable for what they’re allowing to happen in Gaza,” Haley said in a statement.

Russia’s recent call for foreign forces to leave Syria was seen as a possible turning-point in its tricky alliance with Iran, though analysts say their partnership still has a long way to run, like reported by dailymail.co.uk.

“With the start of the political process in its most active phase, foreign armed forces will withdraw from Syrian territory,” President Vladimir Putin vowed after meeting his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad in Sochi on Friday.

Putin’s envoy to Syria, Alexander Lavrentiev, later said this included Iran.

Up to now, the two countries have worked in fairly close tandem, with Russia providing the air power and Iranian forces doing the heavy lifting on the ground.

Henry Rome, Iran researcher for the Eurasia Group in Washington, said Putin’s comments were “not game-over in the Russia-Iran alliance in Syria by any means, but it is a pretty serious bump in their road”.

“No timeline was fixed for foreign forces to leave,” he added. “But it is noteworthy the Kremlin didn’t walk the statement back later, or soften the tone.”

Iranian officials reacted testily, with foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi telling reporters: “Nobody can force Iran to do something against its will”.

Analysts say Russia is motivated by fears that the Syrian conflict could evolve into an even deadlier war between Iran and Israel.

Unnerved by the presence of so many Iranian forces to the north, Israel has launched a series of deadly air raids on Iranian positions in Syria in recent weeks.

Russia is the only power with close ties to both, and seen as crucial to keeping the pot from boiling over.

“The Russians are playing a delicate balancing act between different regional allies,” said Julien Barnes-Dacey of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

He said the Russian statement about removing foreign forces was a message to Iran that there would be limits to its influence.

“But they will have extreme difficulty in enforcing it,” he added.

“We’ve seen a whole series of statements from Russia over the last couple years about an impending drawdown of foreign forces, none of which have materialised.”

Iran is deeply entrenched militarily in Syria, and wary of Russia trying to edge it out of the country and reap all the spoils of reconstruction.

“Iran fought a very difficult war — is still fighting it — and expects long-term concessions out of that in terms of energy contracts and so on,” said Rome.

There has been consternation in Tehran, he said, that Russian and Turkish firms are winning key contracts instead of them, and even more so that Russia appeared to give Israel the green light for its recent air strikes on Iranian positions.

– ‘Using each other’ –

But for all the bad blood, Russia and Iran are still working closely.

Iran relies on Russian air support and anti-aircraft equipment, while Iranian forces and proxies will be crucial to a ground war that is still far from over.

“They will both use each other as much as possible, for as long as possible,” said Rome.

For analysts in Iran, claims of divisions are over-blown, and they insist Iran has no interest in maintaining a long-term presence in Syria.

“Iranians are fine with leaving Syria,” said Mohammad Marandi, a political analyst at the University of Tehran.

“They weren’t there in the first place and if the Americans and their allies hadn’t created this mess in Syria, they wouldn’t be there now,” he said.

Russian analyst Vladimir Sotnikov said Putin had no interest in damaging the “strategic partnership” with Iran.

“Although Iran is not an easy partner for Russia, the two countries will not break their close ties,” he told AFP.

He said Putin’s comments about foreign forces referred to countries without clear authorisation from Assad, which Iran currently has.

But all analysts agree the major parties are manouevring for position in the post-war landscape.

“My sense is that Assad won’t want to be left with an autonomous military sub-system that reports to Tehran from inside his country,” said Barnes-Dacey.

“But the bottom line is that the Iranians are in Syria to stay, with some degree of military presence.”

The group still poses a risk almost 17 years on from the beginning of the War of Terror, like reported by theweek.co.uk

Taliban insurgents this week abandoned a short-lived bid to take over the capital of the western Afghan province of Farah.

The group flooded Farah city early on Tuesday, “forcing the governor to flee and driving security forces and officials into a handful of besieged compounds”, reported The Guardian.

Five civilians and 25 members of the country’s security forces died in the ensuing fighting, according to Afghan authorities, before Taliban fighters quit the city in the late evening.

“Officials immediately hailed the insurgents’ departure as a victory,” reports The New York Times. They said that hundreds of insurgents had been killed in the one-day assault and that the government’s response “proved it could beat back any Taliban initiative to take and hold territory”.

But one resident told the US-based newspaper that the Taliban’s retreat in fact highlighted the hold the organisation now has over the area.

“The Taliban managed to leave the city without a single shot being fired, and the night was calm,” said Abdullah Khan.

“It shows the utmost incompetence of our forces. The Taliban were wandering the Farah city streets openly without fear, as if they had lived there a long time, making jokes with their friends and telling citizens to stay calm and not worry.”

Farah province “is a key drug-trafficking corridor that borders Iran and the opium-growing heartlands of Helmand”, says The New York Times. The region has been the focus of the Taliban’s annual spring offensive – which the group launched last month by formally renouncing government calls for peace talks.

President Ashraf Ghani has offered the Taliban unconditional peace talks, accompanied by a ceasefire, recognition of them as a political party, and the release of some prisoners, among other incentives.

But almost 17 years on from the start of the War on Terror, how much of a threat does the Taliban pose in Afghanistan?

A strong hold

An investigation by the BBC earlier this year found that Taliban fighters were openly active in 70% of the country.

The insurgence were “in full control of 14 districts (that’s 4% of the country) and have an active and open physical presence in a further 263 (66%), significantly higher than previous estimates of Taliban strength”, according to the report.

The broadcaster also uncovered evidence of hikes in Taliban taxation across the country. In districts where they are openly present, the militants “force farmers, local businesses and even commercial goods convoys to pay them tax, while still leaving it to the government to foot the bill for basic services such as schools and hospitals”, says the BBC.

“They are charging people for the electricity that we supply,” the chief of a southern district told reporters.

Changing tide

Despite their advances, the Taliban “still lack national support for their cause”, says the Asia Times’s Ihsanullah Omarkhail. According to a survey on the national consensus, a majority of Afghans have rejected the Taliban. Fewer than 10% showed sympathy for the group, with most Afghans viewing the Taliban as the greatest challenge to their safety.

The group also appears to be losing the battle to enforce the idea that theirs is a “holy war” against foreign occupation. Last week, at a conference in Indonesia, 70 prominent Muslim scholars issued a fatwa, declaring that violent extremism and terrorism are against Islamic principles, in an effort to convince the Taliban to lay down its weapons.

Counterterrorism expert Javid Ahmed told Al Jazeera that the Taliban was concerned by the conference, the first of its kind.

“Any religious pronouncement against the Taliban or their extremist tactics could strip Taliban’s religious legitimacy, which is the last thing they want to hear,” he said, adding: “It may also marginally curb the Taliban recruitment.”

Pakistan pressure

The Asia Times’s Omarkhai argues that the Afghan government will struggle to combat the Taliban as long as insurgents “continue to enjoy safe havens in Pakistan”.

Without doubt, “Pakistan and its intelligence service have more influence over the Taliban than any other country or intelligence service”, the Brookings Institute think tank’s Bruce Riedl wrote in 2013.

One key problem is that “regional and global consensus around peace talks with the Taliban is still missing”, says the Asia Foundation’s Mohammad Shoaib Haidary.

“The US backs peace negotiations with the Taliban while at the same time the group enjoys financial, technical, and intelligence support from key regional countries like Pakistan, Iran and Russia,” he continues.

Since Donald Trump’s election, the relationship between Pakistan and the US has become strained, with the US president threatening to cut nearly $2bn worth of aid to Islamabad.

Nevertheless, “the relationship hasn’t exactly ground to a halt”, says CNN’s Michael Kugelman. Rather, Trump has attempted to force Pakistan to cooperate in tackling the Taliban through a series of “more modest measures”, which “are a far and weaker cry from the muscular moves threatened by the administration earlier”.

Ultimately, Washington’s policy so far “amounts to pressuring Pakistan with pinpricks”, Kugelman concludes.

“It’s a policy unlikely to achieve its main aim, which is getting Pakistan to target the terrorists on its soil that are killing Americans in Afghanistan.”

With its attack on Shia militias, the Islamic State (IS) has recently regained prominence in northern Iraq. However, the brief period between the declared victory over IS and its current re-emergence -roughly December 2017-February 2018 – saw the manifestation of a new insurgent group called the ‘White Banners’, like reported by eurasiareview.com.

Named after its white banner with a lion’s head in the centre, the group was mainly responsible for attacks in the Kirkuk area. While no apparent official statements were made by the group, there is ample evidence suggesting that the faction was an alliance between IS and Kurdish organisations, possibly the Kurdish Free Life Party (PJAK). Although PJAK fighters had covertly joined the Kurdish Peshmerga in the battle against IS, the Iraqi government’s takeover of territories contested by both Kurds and Arabs like Kirkuk in October 2017 facilitated a strategic alignment between the groups. This commentary investigates recent and past IS partnerships that have gone unreported in mainstream media. It concludes that IS only cooperates with other insurgent factions when it finds itself in a position of weakness. When in a position of strength, the group aims to monopolise the insurgency.

Cooperation first occurred after the US withdrawal from Iraq in 2011. At that time, IS’ predecessor, the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), started collaborating with the nationalist Ba’athist insurgents of the ‘Jaish Rijaal al-Tariqa al-Naqshabandiyya (JRTN)’. In late 2013, around the time of Sunni protests against their marginalisation by the government, IS – at this time known as ‘the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS)’ – expanded its collaboration with the JRTN.

In both instances, IS found itself in a position of relative weakness in Iraq and thus decided to form a partnership with the JRTN. In 2011, ISI faced extensive pressure from security forces and local tribal fighters. It also lacked the manpower to pose a real challenge to these state-backed fighters. The group’s ‘breaking the walls’ campaign, in which prisons were targeted to free its fighters and boost its ranks, only started later, in July 2012.

Further, although the 2013 anti-government protests formed the perfect opportunity for ISIS to instigate sectarian strife in Iraq, the group had largely allocated its resources in Syria where it intended to take advantage of the civil war. Therefore, the Salafists decided to team up with the JRTN, whose political front was leading several protests but lacked the required tactical expertise to challenge the government beyond peaceful protests. In January 2014, their combined efforts seized control of Fallujah for several days after which it was retaken by the security forces. Thus, even with pooled resources, ISIS’ partnership still proved weak vis-à-vis the Iraqi security forces.

On the contrary, when ISIS was able to attain a position of strength and become the dominant insurgent group in Iraq, it ended its partnerships and turned against its former allies. While the January battle for Fallujah was still very much a combined effort, the June 2014 takeover of Mosul was essentially spearheaded by ISIS. Having established full control over Raqqa, ISIS was able to allocate more resources to Iraq. Although the group still allowed the JRTN to exist in the fringes of the insurgency, it soon turned against its partners, which were subsequently removed from the newly-established ‘Caliphate’.

A similar conclusion can be drawn from the recent alliance between IS and the Kurdish group. Cooperation between both actors manifested itself after IS lost most of its territory in Iraq to the government. The ‘White Banner’ phenomenon even indicates that IS found itself in a more precarious position than at the time of its partnership with the JRTN. While in past alliances IS still operated under its own name and flag, during its recent cooperation with Kurdish fighters, it accepted the use of an alternative representation. As it is only in the Kurds’ interest to use different symbols, it can be assumed that the demand was made by the Kurdish factions and a weakened IS agreed.

The recent resurgence of IS activity in northern Iraq did not feature White Banner attacks, confirming the hypothesis that a strengthened IS is unlikely to cooperate with others. Two possible scenarios can be further hypothesised. One scenario suggests that IS was able to demand the usage of its own name and credentials in the attacks, meaning they now find themselves in a relatively stronger bargaining position vis-à-vis the Kurdish resistance group. Another scenario could be that in this moment of strength, the Salafists ended all cooperation with the Kurds and the White Banners were dissolved.

In both instances, the ideological difference between the groups is further evidence of the necessity of their cooperation. While IS is a Salafist organisation that even labelled al Qaeda as “the Jews of jihad,” the JRTN finds itself at the other end of the spectrum as a nationalist, Ba’athist, non-sectarian, pan-Arabist organisation. Similarly, PJAK is a leftist-nationalist organisation that does not espouse IS’ ideology. Thus, while cooperation with another Salafist group could possibly be explained by ideological motives, the ideological distance between IS, the JRTN, and the Kurdish faction supports the idea that the partnerships were borne out of material considerations.

To sum up, the recent partnership between IS and Kurdish nationalistsis not the first time the Salafist organisation has cooperated with other (non-Islamist) groups. These instances indicate that IS only participates in alliances when it finds itself in a position of weakness. Given a chance, IS will end its cooperation.

Indonesia has again exploded in a paroxysm of terrorist violence, but with a new twist: family suicide bombers. This may be the first time in the world that parents took their children on a family outing to blow themselves up, like reported by lowyinstitute.org.

The three families included the six killed in the bombings of three churches in Surabaya on Sunday, 13 May: Dita Oepriarto, aged 45; his wife Puji, 42; Yusuf, a son, 18; Firman, a son, 16; Fadhila, a daughter, 12; and Pamela Rizkita, a daughter, 9.

Members of the second family also died on Sunday when the bomb they were making exploded prematurely in Sidoarjo, just outside Surabaya. Anton Febrianto, aged 47; his wife Puspitasari, also 47; and two children, Hilta Aulia Rahman, aged 17, and Ainur Rahman, aged 15, died. Children Faisa Putri, aged 11, and Garida Huda Akbar, aged 10, survived.

The third family of five was involved in a suicide attack on a police station in Surabaya on Monday, 14 May. They used two motorcycles, and four family members were killed in the attack. An 8-year-old child survived.

These kinds of attacks are unprecedented.

At the height of Jemaah Islamiyah’s influence, just before the Bali bombings, families were committed to the cause, but only an adult male would ever be considered a warrior. Jemaah Islamiyah men married the sisters or daughters of other Jemaah Islamiyah members, or chose wives from Jemaah Islamiyah schools where the girls had been carefully inculcated with the organisation’s values.

The women served as mothers, teachers, couriers, and sometimes business managers, but almost never as combatants – even in the communal conflicts of Ambon and Poso.

When children were involved as combatants, it was usually because they had been orphaned or abandoned. One Indonesian Jemaah Islamiyah member married a Filipina in Mindanao who was willing to plant a bomb, although there is no evidence that she ever did. But it wasn’t a suicide bomb, and it is hard to think of any self-respecting Jemaah Islamiyah member deliberately sending his wife and children to destruction.

But from the beginning, ISIS has been a family affair. The caliphate deliberately encouraged whole families to migrate – berhijrah – to Syria so fathers could fight, women could reproduce, teach or treat the wounded, and children could grow up in a pure Islamic state.

Indonesians, along with many others around the world, responded enthusiastically. Sometimes the men went first and their wives followed with infants and toddlers. Sometimes they brought their teenaged daughters and married them off to non-Indonesian nationals.

One prisoner, nicknamed Brekele, allowed his 12-year-old son Hatf to go to Syria with relatives in August 2016. Hatf died in combat with a French ISIS unit two months short of his 13th birthday.

In August 2015, an extended family of 27 people, ranging from an infant only a few months old to a 78-year-old wheelchair-bound matriarch, left for Syria. Twenty made it through, three died in Syria (including the elderly woman), and 17 came home in July 2017. This was not a case of the men dragging reluctant women along. If anything, it was the daughters and wives in that group who were more determined than the men.

ISIS managed to turn the concept of jihad into a family affair, with a role for everyone. Women were “lionesses”, children were “cubs”.  Everyone was given a sense of mission. Only by having normal families living normal lives could ISIS hope to make a claim to functioning like a normal state.

The problem was that many of the women were not satisfied with the very traditional role ISIS assigned them. Some, as we know from observing social media, wanted more action and admired women suicide bombers in Palestine, Iraq, and Chechnya.

The involvement of families leaving or returning from ISIS has several implications. It means deradicalisation has to happen as a family – it can’t only be aimed at the men. And deradicalisation programs cannot just be aimed at inculcating nationalism or exposing extremists to other interpretations of Qur’anic texts. They have to address how families as a whole, often indoctrinated into believing that anyone outside ISIS is the enemy, can be persuaded to change their objectives as individuals and as a family unit.

In other kinds of extremist organisations – neo-Nazi groups in Eastern Europe, gangs in the US, child soldiers in Ambon – individual mentors who take a long-term interest in the fate of their protégés have been key. But in Indonesia thus far, mentoring has been an ad hoc process, and when it does happen it is usually aimed at male prisoners exclusively.

In Poso after the communal conflict subsided, some psychologists tried to assess the degree of trauma children exposed to the fighting had suffered, and to design appropriate classroom-based interventions to ease it. It would be useful to know if there are any lessons from Poso that could be applied to ISIS-influenced children, including children of prisoners and deportees.

The first task, though, is to map known pro-ISIS networks and document the family networks. The government needs to know more about these families and their backgrounds before they can begin to develop more strategic programs. The need for this knowledge is urgent. If three families can be involved in two days’ worth of terrorist attacks in Surabaya, surely there are more ready to act.

The prevailing assessment among Western media is that Iranian-backed Hezbollah emerged the winner from the Lebanese parliamentary elections held May 6. There are, however, nuances that should be taken into consideration when interpreting the electoral outcome, like reported by al-monitor.com.

First, as recent days have demonstrated, Hezbollah loyalists can resort to coercion at any time to intimidate rivals and remind those concerned that with or without elections, the movement controls the ground. As seen in the May 2008 clashes in Beirut between Hezbollah and forces associated with the Future Movement, however, Hezbollah’s ability to thoroughly trample rivals is limited and comes with high risks. Foremost, an unstable Lebanon jeopardizes Hezbollah’s safety net at home, hence the goal of the Shiite armed group is to manage the political system rather than to subjugate it. The 2018 elections are not expected to alter these dynamics.

Second, while it is true that the newly elected parliament is in some ways “Hezbollah friendly,” this comes with a caveat. In the big picture, the principal Lebanese political figures will not likely raise the issue of Hezbollah’s weapons, because they all are focused on the domestic power struggle. The caveat is that to avoid a backlash, the Shiite group has to remain neutral in the political battle among the ruling class.

More than half of the current parliament — the Future Movement, Free Patriotic Movement, Lebanese Forces and Progressive Socialist Party — has in the past few years either been critical or not publicly supportive of Hezbollah’s regional agenda. The Shiite coalition of Hezbollah and Amal and their core allies now have a one-third blocking vote of 43 seats, which allows them to veto any legislation that goes against Hezbollah’s interest.

Third, Lebanese politics no longer revolves around the Western-backed March 14 and pro-Syrian March 8 coalitions. Independent figures from the March 14 coalition were mostly eliminated from parliament in the vote this month, and although Hezbollah revived the remnants of the March 8 alliance, there is little it can do. The new dividing line in Lebanese politics is the 2016 deal that elected Gen. Michel Aoun president — those who were part of it, and those who continue to challenge it.

Aoun and Prime Minister Saad Hariri, the leader of the Future Movement, have recently kept Samir Geagea, the leader of the Lebanese Forces, at arms’ length, although he had been expecting to reap benefits from endorsing the 2016 deal. Geagea won 15 seats in the May vote, so the Aoun-Hariri alliance will have to accommodate his demands, which include heading the Energy Ministry, which oversees gas exploration and has for years been controlled by the Free Patriotic Movement, founded by Aoun. Meanwhile, there is growing opposition to the 2016 presidential deal led by Amal leader and parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, Sunni leader Najib Mikati and Maronite leader Sleiman Frangieh.

Fourth, the next constitutional steps — electing a parliament speaker, nominating a prime minister and forming the Cabinet — will test and most likely reinforce these alliances. While Berri and Hariri are expected to retain their posts, there will be some rope-tightening.

Hezbollah might have to intervene once again to manage disputes between Amal and the Free Patriotic Movement. The preconditions have already been announced. Berri made it clear that he wants the Finance Ministry to stay in Amal’s hands as a Shiite veto against the Maronite-Sunni alliance, since the finance minister will have to sign most major decisions by the president (a Maronite) and the prime minister (a Sunni). Aoun has hinted that if there is no consensus on forming the Cabinet, that is, no agreement with the opposition, the government will be formed with the minimum threshold of 65 votes to gain the parliament’s vote of confidence.

Unlike the opposition camp, the Aoun-Hariri-Geagea alliance can secure this threshold and has the upper hand in the Cabinet if Geagea remains on their side. That said, no single coalition can rule the country alone, so the two camps will have to reach an agreement on forming the Cabinet.

Fifth, the math will be different if this parliament ends up electing the next Lebanese president. There is a five-month difference between the expiration of the parliament’s term, in May 2022, and the presidential election, in October 2022, and it is not clear whether Lebanese leaders will once again extend the term of the parliament to elect the next president. Nonetheless, the anti-2016 deal camp have the one-third obstruction vote to prevent a quorum and delay legislative sessions until an agreement is reached on a consensus candidate. Hence, it is harder for the Free Patriotic Movement leader, Gebran Bassil, to succeed his father-in-law, Aoun, if this parliament decides the presidency in four years. Moreover, the anti-2016 deal camp got one of its main presidential candidates, Jean Obeid, into parliament in preparation for a possible election battle in 2022. The Free Patriotic Movement will therefore not break from Hezbollah to increase Bassil’s presidential chances.

Assessing the winners and losers of the May 6 elections is not a simple task. The popular vote reflected not only the flaws of the new electoral law, but also the inherent deficiencies of the political system. What has preserved Lebanon’s stability in recent years is the international umbrella in place since 2014, when the United States and Iran entered into a tacit rapprochement. This umbrella is now at risk after President Donald Trump’s rejection of the Iranian nuclear deal and Israeli-Iranian confrontations next door in Syria.

If Riyadh inspires Geagea to withdraw support for the Aoun-Hariri alliance or the United States pressures Aoun to completely break with Hezbollah, Hariri will be undermined with no better options for surviving politically. An unlikely alliance in the new parliament with former March 14 allies Geagea and Jumblatt will not give Hariri the simple majority of 65 votes. Hezbollah might emerge as a clear winner if external pressure forces Lebanon back to the pre-2016 political divide.

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2018/05/lebanon-parliamentary-elections-hezbollah-winner.html#ixzz5F5lE2nWj

Amb. Ryan Crocker was Gen. David Petraeus’ diplomatic partner during the 2007-2008 “surge” in Iraq, and Crocker remains highly regarded for the role that he played then, like reported by kurdistan24.net.

On April 25, speaking at The Atlantic Council, Crocker expressed concern about the vulnerability of US forces in Syria.

“There could be important reasons why we would want to pull our troops out of Syria, once they don’t have an Islamic State (IS) enemy to fight,” he said.

“I keep thinking of the Marines in Lebanon,” Crocker continued. The “same constellation of actors” exists now in Syria, and “the preponderance of force there is not with us.”

The following day, two analysts, speaking at The Hudson Institute, expressed a similar concern.

Jennifer Cafarella is the Senior Intelligence Planner at the Institute for the Study of War. Michael Pregent served as an advisor in Iraq to Petraeus, and then Gen. Ray Odierno, and is now at the Hudson Institute.

Cafarella and Pregent both warned of the vulnerability of US forces in Iraq, as well as Syria.

Cafarella began by noting that Iranian-backed Shia militias have been formally incorporated into the Iraqi security forces.

“The Iranians are deploying Iraqi Shia militias, with Government of Iraq authority, and possibly with weapons provided by the United States, to Syria,” Cafarella said, “to fight on behalf of Bashar al-Asad, and on multiple occasions in the past year to attack American forces,” as she stressed that US troops “are vulnerable.”

Pregent concurred, adding, “These IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps]-Quds Force militias are actually basing around US bases.” The US has “such a small footprint” that “we are hostages.”

Some two weeks after those seminars, on May 8, President Donald Trump affirmed that the US would withdraw from the Iranian nuclear agreement while announcing the reimposition of tough sanctions on Iran.

At a press briefing that day by teleconference from Baghdad, Maj. Gen. Felix Gedney, Deputy Commander for Strategy and Support in the US-led Coalition against IS, was repeatedly asked by journalists if increasing tensions with Iran would negatively affect the Coalition’s mission and, specifically, put Coalition troops at enhanced risk.

Gedney saw little problem, however. “I’m absolutely confident that we can manage the force protection for our troops,” he said in response to a question from Kurdistan 24.

Yet Entifadh Qanbar, an Iraqi-American and President of the Future Foundation in Washington DC, is one more informed voice who disagrees.

Qanbar echoed Pregent as he told Kurdistan 24, “US troops are located in close proximity to the Shia militias. So the militias know of their whereabouts.”

“I think US troops are in great danger,” he continued. “But I don’t think they should pull out of Iraq. They’re necessary to prevent [IS’] reemergence and more generally to maintain stability.”

Qanbar lost a nephew in Iraq—US Army Staff Sergeant, Ahmed Altaie, who was kidnapped in 2006 by an Iranian-backed militia which later killed him. Qanbar understands well the pain of such a loss.

Qanbar had a suggestion. “I think it would be a good idea to move the troops to Kurdistan. The Kurds will have their back.”

“The troops will still be able to maneuver quickly to attack [IS] and do operations, as needed,” he continued, “because most of what remains of IS in Iraq is located along the borders of Kurdistan—in the disputed territories and nearby Sunni areas.”

“But that way, they would be much safer, yet still able to fulfill their mission,” he said.

Of course, short-sighted policies in Washington could inhibit such a move, Qanbar noted. “But if they think that Iraq is ‘one-Iraq,’ then Kurdistan is part of Iraq.”

As the Islamic State group (IS) suffers a downfall after its defeat in Syria and Iraq, a new challenge is rising: a revived Al-Qaeda, and its affiliates, which has started to regain its previous status as the world’s top terrorist threat. While the world focused on the self-proclaimed Islamic State, as it dominated the headlines …

As the Islamic State group (IS) suffers a downfall after its defeat in Syria and Iraq, a new challenge is rising: a revived Al-Qaeda, and its affiliates, which has started to regain its previous status as the world’s top terrorist threat, like reported by dailynewsegypt.com.

While the world focused on the self-proclaimed Islamic State, as it dominated the headlines and preoccupied national security officials for the past four years, Al-Qaeda has been quietly rebuilding. The group announced another affiliate dedicated to the “liberation” of Kashmir last summer, coupled with the resurrection of its presence in Afghanistan and the solidification of its influence in Syria, Yemen, and Somalia, according to Bruce Hoffman, visiting senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who studies terrorism and insurgencies.

Hoffman indicates that although Al-Qaeda’s rebuilding and reorganisation predates the 2011 so-called Arab Spring, the security vacuum that followed allowed the movement to revive itself. As the masses longed for democracy and economic reform, Al-Qaeda discerned new and inviting opportunities.

The group faced a series of losses in the ranks of prominent figures in its organisational hierarchy, after the successive killings in 2011 and 2012 of Osama bin Laden; Anwar al-Awlaki, the group’s chief propagandist; and Abu Yahya al-Libi, its second-in-command. The string of deaths lent new weight to the optimists’ predictions that Al-Qaeda was a spent force.

However, it appears that Al-Qaeda was among the regional forces that benefited most from the turmoil that accompanied the Arab Spring. With the emergence of Ayman Al-Zawahiri as a powerful leader, forces loyal to Al-Qaeda and its affiliates now number in the tens of thousands, with a capacity to disrupt local and regional stability, as well as launch attacks against their declared enemies in the Middle East, Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe, and Russia.

According to Hoffman, Al-Qaeda has knit together a global movement of more than two dozen franchises, with around 20,000 men under arms in Syria alone, and it has perhaps another 4,000 in Yemen and about 7,000 in Somalia.

Rising from the Arab Spring ashes

In the period from 2012-13, thousands of hardened Al-Qaeda fighters were freed from Egyptian prisons by Islamist then-president Mohamed Morsi. Those fighters acted as the movement’s kiss of life, when instability reigned and a handful of men well-versed in terrorism and subversion could plunge a country or a region into chaos. Whether in Libya, Turkey, Syria, or Yemen, their arrival was providential in terms of advancing Al-Qaeda’s interests or increasing its influence.

The ousting of Morsi afterwards was used as part of Al-Zawahiri’s propaganda to feed Al-Qaeda’s narrative to disbelieve Western promises about either the fruits of democracy or the sanctity of free and fair elections.

But Syria was the movement’s most prominent playground, as one of Al-Zawahiri’s first official acts after succeeding bin Laden as emir was to order a Syrian veteran of the Iraqi insurgency, named Abu Mohammad al-Julani, to return home and establish the Al-Qaeda franchise that would eventually become the Nusra Front.

At the start of the Syrian civil war, the Nusra Front was the product of a joint initiative with Al-Qaeda’s Iraqi branch, which had rebranded itself as the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). However, as Nusra grew in both strength and influence, tensions and disputes started to erupt between ISI and Al-Qaeda over control of the group.

Later on, in a bold power grab, ISI’s leader, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, announced the forcible amalgamation of Nusra with ISI in a new organisation to be called the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), without Al-Zawahiri’s approval. Consequently, al-Julani refused to accede to the unilateral merger and appealed to Al-Zawahri. The quarrel intensified, and after Al-Zawahri’s attempts to mediate collapsed, he expelled ISIS from the Al-Qaeda network.

Since its emergence, ISIS—which later on rebranded itself as the Islamic State (IS)— become the world’s main attention-getter. While the world focused on IS, Al-Qaeda has been quietly rebuilding its strength, and fortifying its various branches.

Al-Qaeda’s new strategy was to protect its remaining senior leadership, through scattering them to Syria, Iran, Turkey, Libya, and Yemen, with only a hard-core remnant of top commanders remaining in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Syria: The cornerstone of Al-Qaeda’s resurrection

The importance that the group attaches to Syria can be seen through the high inflows of top Al-Qaeda leaders sent to the country in the last seven years. Among them was Muhsin al-Fadhli, a bin Laden intimate who, until his death in a 2015 US airstrike, commanded the movement’s elite forward-based operational arm in that country, known as the Khorasan Group. Haydar Kirkan, a Turkish national and long-standing senior operative, was sent by bin Laden himself to Turkey in 2010 to lay the groundwork for the movement’s expansion into the Levant, before the Arab Spring created precisely that opportunity. Kirkan was also responsible for facilitating the movement of other senior Al-Qaeda personnel from Pakistan to Syria to escape the escalating drone strike campaign ordered by former US president Barack Obama. He was killed in 2016 in a US bombing raid.

Moreover, in 2016, Saif al-Adl, who is arguably the movement’s most battle-hardened commander arrived in Syria. Al-Adl is a former Egyptian Army commando whose terrorist pedigree, dating to the late 1970s, includes assassination plots against former Egyptian president Anwar Al-Sadat, the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and Al-Qaeda’s post-9/11 terrorist campaigns in Saudi Arabia and South Asia.

Later on, Hamza, bin Laden’s youngest son, reportedly appeared in Syria in 2017, adding more evidence to the fact that Syria has become the most popular venue to wage holy war since the seminal Afghan jihad of the 1980s.

According to Hoffman, Al-Qaeda’s presence in Syria is far more pernicious than that of IS. Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the latest name adopted by Al-Qaeda’s local affiliate, is now the largest rebel group in the country, having extended its control last year over all of Idlib Province along the Syrian-Turkish border.

Throughout the seven years of the Syrian civil war, Nusra and Free Syrian Army (FSA)-affiliated brigades have essentially functioned as a coalition in the fight against the Syrian government, with FSA commanders often referring to fighters from Nusra as members of the FSA itself. In many cases, FSA offensives against Syrian government military bases or check points have begun with suicide or truck bombings carried out by Nusra militants. Nusra and FSA-affiliated brigades have established joint committees to divide weapons captured from the Syrian army in rebel offensives. FSA commanders often sell US and Gulf-supplied weapons to Nusra.

In a lengthy study analysing the Nusra Front’s strategy, Jennifer Cafarella of the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) concluded that “JN (Nusra Front, also known as Jabhat al-Nusra) serves as a force multiplier for other rebel groups. JN leverages small units of highly skilled fighters to contribute an essential special forces-like capability to rebel military offensives. JN provides highly effective capabilities such as the deployment of suicide bombers to produce asymmetric effects against the regime.”

Filling the ISIS Vacuum

According to Hoffman brief, IS can no longer compete with Al-Qaeda in terms of influence, reach, manpower, or cohesion. In only two domains is IS currently stronger than its rival: the power of its brand and its presumed ability to mount spectacular terrorist strikes in Europe.

However, Hoffman believes that the latter is a product of Al-Zawahri’s strategic decision to prohibit external operations in the West so that Al-Qaeda’s rebuilding can continue without interference. The handful of exceptions to this policy—such as the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris and the 2017 Saint Petersburg Metro bombing in Russia—provide compelling evidence that Al-Qaeda’s external operations capabilities can easily be reanimated.   

Moreover, Al-Qaeda’s success in resurrecting its global network is the result of three strategic moves made by Al-Zawahri. The first was to strengthen the decentralised franchise approach that has facilitated the movement’s survival. Over the years, the leaders and deputies of Al-Qaeda’s far-flung franchises have been integrated into the movement’s deliberative and consultative processes. Today, Al-Qaeda is truly “glocal,” having effectively incorporated local grievances and concerns into a global narrative that forms the foundation of an all-encompassing grand strategy Hoffman explained in his policy brief.

The second major move was the order issued by Al-Zawahri in 2013 to avoid mass casualty operations, especially those that might kill Muslim civilians. Al-Qaeda has thus been able to present itself through social media, paradoxically, as “moderate extremists,” ostensibly more palatable than IS.

This development reflects Al-Zawahri’s third strategic decision, letting IS absorb all the blows from the coalition arrayed against it while Al-Qaeda unobtrusively rebuilds its military strength.