Israel faces the jihadists in Syria, in Sinai and perhaps even at home…

From the military observation points overlooking the spot where Israel’s frontiers meet those of Syria and Jordan, Israelis can clearly see the positions of Liwa Shuhada al-Yarmouk—the Yarmouk Martyrs’ Brigade. It is only one of many dozens of Syrian rebel groups, yet Israeli officers half-jokingly describe the fighters, mainly Syrians from nearby villages, as “Daesh lite”. The brigade, which may have between 600 and 1,000 men, has sworn allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the “Caliph” of Islamic State (IS), also known by its Arabic acronym, Daesh. The black flag of IS forms part of its logo.

So far, at least, the group has concentrated on skirmishing with the Syrian army and with rival rebel groups, and on securing its strongholds on the slopes of the Golan. But the Israelis are worried that, as IS is pushed back in other parts of Syria and Iraq, its leaders may decide to take over the Yarmouk Martyrs’ Brigade and use its bases for attacks on Israel or Jordan.

IS has yet to attack Israel. Its main forces in southern Syria are about 80km (50 miles) from Israel’s borders. Last month, IS put out a recording, purporting to be the voice of Mr Baghdadi, saying that “with the help of Allah we are getting closer to you every day. The Israelis will soon see us in Palestine.” On January 18th Lieutenant-General Gadi Eizenkot, the chief of staff of Israel’s armed forces, warned that “the success against IS raises the probability we will see them turning their gun-barrels towards us and also the Jordanians”.

The most direct and likely avenue of attack is across Israel’s frontier with Syria. That is because the situation there is already chaotic; IS bases and civilian villages are close to Israel; and the terrain is mountainous. “A vacuum where no one is in control will always be the most dangerous location we should be looking at,” says a senior Israeli officer. Israel has toughened its border defences on the Golan, with new fences and sensors. It now stations regular forces there instead of reservists.

But IS may also choose other places from which to attack. Wilayat Sinai, which means the “Sinai province” of IS, has been operating on Israel’s western border for five years. It declared allegiance to IS in late 2014 and claimed responsibility for blowing up a Russian airliner last October, killing 224 people. But it is embroiled in a bloody insurgency against Egypt’s security forces. Israel, which is discreetly providing the Egyptians with intelligence and military help, says that IS shares routes for smuggling arms and other supplies with Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza. These could be used for launching future attacks on Israel.

The Israelis are also worried that radical Palestinians who are citizens of Israel may be working for IS. So far they reckon that about 50 of them have gone to Syria to join IS. “There are more Swedes than Israelis fighting with Daesh,” says an Israeli intelligence man. Others say they are confident that Israel’s security service is better than its European counterparts at monitoring IS activity in its own territory. Even so, they fret that IS could become popular among young Palestinians in Israel, and in the West Bank and Gaza, where many are disillusioned both with the Palestinian Authority and with Hamas, its rival.

“IS is here and it’s no secret,” says Reuven Rivlin, Israel’s president. “I’m not talking about the borders of Israel, but about IS within. Research, arrests, witnesses, open and classified analysis all indicate clearly that IS’s popularity is growing and that even Israeli Arabs are actually joining up with it.” Vigilance along Israel’s borders may not be enough.

economist.com

In the wake of growing civil unrest in Tunisia and Morocco, ISIS has launched a new media campaign directed at Muslims in the Islamic Maghreb, which focuses mainly on the ‘apostate’ governments of Tunisia and Morocco.

The campaign, launched on Thursday, consists of several videos released by different ISIS provinces. The jihadists participating in the campaign call on Muslims to join ISIS strongholds in Tunisia, Libya, Mali and Algeria in order to oust the apostate democratic governments of Tunisia and Morocco and replace them with an Islamic regime based on Sharia law.

ISIS jihadists blame the Islamic Maghreb’s governments for striving to ‘westernize’ Muslims by cultivating Western lifestyle which contradicts the Islamic tradition in their state. They also vehemently attack Tunisia for its participation in the international coalition against ISIS, claiming that Tunisia takes part in the killing of Sunnis together with Russia and the US, in the guise of fighting terror.

A Tunisian jihadist speaking in the video urges Muslims to attack Tunisia, saying: “Follow in the footsteps of your brothers in Paris. Is it easier to bypass the security measures in Paris than in Tunisia? No. But we know Tunisia and we know its coward policemen. Hence, you can do twice as much as your brothers have done in France.”

ISIS’ campaign against Tunisia and Morocco comes amid growing civil unrest in both countries. In Morocco, police violently dispersed a mass protest of teacher trainees that took place on January 7. In Tunisia, nationwide protests of unemployed people have taken place over the past week.

On Wednesday, the protests spread out of the city of Kasserine, where they started, to Tunisia’s capital, where protestors blocked roads. In addition, one man has set himself on fire, becoming the first victim of the protests, which might exacerbate the tensions and transform the protests into a potential uprising, similar to the 2011 Tunisian revolution.

jpost.com/

Photos posted on social media show huge plumes of black smoke rising from the ground.

James Wheeler ‏@wheelertweets 2 h2 ore fa

BREAKING: #ISIS/Daesh attack/explosion on oil pipeline from Amal Field near Ras Lanuf, 2 storage tanks now on fire

58 Retweet 8 Mi piace

The previous attack happened last week when an explosion hit an oil pipeline south of the port town.

Ras Lanuf is one of Libya’s biggest oil terminals and also has a large refinery. Militants loyal to Islamic State have staged several attacks on pipelines and other oil sites in the area over the past few weeks.

Last week Libya’s National Oil Corporation, which operates the Ras Lanuf terminal, said it had emptied storage tanks at the port as a precaution against further attacks.

Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) is gaining ground in Libya, which remains in a state of chaos after the toppling of its leader Muammar Gaddafi in a NATO-backed uprising of 2011.

The group has taken responsibility for, or is suspected of being behind, several attacks apparently aimed at seizing control of oil infrastructure.

rt.com

Five police officers were killed in Egypt’s North Sinai province in an attack on a checkpoint carried out by militants affiliated with the Daesh (Islamic State) terrorist group, local media reported.

The attack on the checkpoint in the North Sinai capital of Arish was conducted overnight, killing three police officers, an Interior Ministry sergeant and a soldier, the Egyptian al-Yaum al-Sabea newspaper said, citing special forces sources. At least 10 people sustained gunshot injuries.

Egypt has been conducting anti-terrorist operations in North Sinai for the last two years, particularly against Wilayat Sinai, a Daesh-affiliated militant group. Daesh itself is outlawed in a number of countries worldwide, including Russia and the United States.

The next battleground in the war on ISIS is forming in the sands of Tripoli…

U.S. Special Operations Command is spending more time and attention on Libya, trying to keep the Islamic State from growing more powerful there, its commander said Wednesday.

“There is a concern about Libya,” said Gen. Joseph Votel, the special ops chief, who has been nominated to take over U.S. Central Command. “It can’t all be about Iraq and Syria.”

The Islamic State’s presence in Libya has been a growing concern for some time. In October, a Defense Intelligence Agency expert called the country “the hub that they use to project themselves across all of North Africa.” More recently, ISIS has reportedly sent Abu Omar, a key leader in Iraq, to Libya, where he “has been tasked with tightening the terror group’s grip on [the town of] Sirte and preparing it as a possible bolt hole for Isil’s leaders in Syria and Iraq,” the Telegraph reported.

Speaking at the SOLIC conference in Washington, D.C, Votel didn’t get into operational detail, but spoke broadly about what American special operators can do against ISIS there — or in other countries threatened by the group.

“In order to address this threat holistically, we do have to do activities and pursue objectives that allow us to tamp down on it,” he said, “prevent it, and destroy it in areas where it is not wholly grown or beginning to metastasize so that we can bring that area back to legitimate local control.”

Right now, that means more on-the-ground intelligence collection and analysis of networks. In other words, the sort of advanced intelligence work we typically associate with the CIA and less with tactical superhero teams.

“One of the things that SOF can do,” in Libya, he said, is “continue to understand the lay of the land there. One of the things that we are trying to focus on is understand the human domain, understand the personalities, the leaders  who carries weight in particular areas?”

That will could mean more non-kinetic, non-combat operations according to Votel, and one key to stopping international terror groups like ISIS, or as he called them, transregional threats.

“What may appear a vast transregional threat is in many cases a series of local issues in which an external actor has taken advantage of by leveraging modern communications through contextually appropriate messaging,” he said.

Votel, who has been tapped to take over Central Command, said U.S. special operators would continue to build up the ability of Libyan government and other partners to combat ISIS on their own.

But in Libya right now, no one is sure exactly what that means. The country has had two rival governments since 2014, each backed by various militias that brought down Gaddafi. On Tuesday, Libya’s Presidential Council announced a new government to bring together the groups. Two of the nine factions rejected the deal.

In his remarks today, Votel acknowledged that building partner capacity wasn’t easy, especially in Tripoli.

“It is a challenge in Libya,” he said, “not impossible.”

Combating a group like the Islamic State in a place on the verge—but not yet immersed in crisis—is a different challenge than staging raids in hot war zones like Syria. Consider the bad optics of the failed SOF mission in December. Soon after some 20 special operations troops disembarked from their plane in Libya, they found themselves featured on the Libyan Air Force’s Facebook feed. “While in Libya, members of a local militia demanded that the US personnel depart. In an effort to avoid conflict, they did leave, without incident,” a Pentagon spokeswoman said.

Votel didn’t comment on the incident.

defenseone.com

Some 700 American troops on a long-running deployment could be in danger of an attack by extremists affiliated with the Islamic State, the Pentagon worries, but it may not be able to get them out anytime soon.

U.S. military commanders fear the soldiers deployed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, and charged with keeping the peace between Egypt and Israel, are becoming an irresistible target for Islamist fighters concentrating nearby.

The Wilayat Sinai group has pledged allegiance to ISIS, attacked Egyptian troops and planted roadside bombs. They have called the peacekeepers a “crusader force.” The group dramatically raised its profile last November when it claimed responsibility for downing a Russian civilian plane filled with tourists over the Sinai, killing all 224 on board.

In the Sinai, American soldiers are closer to ISIS than anywhere else in the world, one military official said. The official and others who talked with NPR asked not to be identified since the Defense Department hasn’t decided officially whether to try to withdraw the troops from the Sinai.

The U.S. troops are posted to two desert camps, part of an observer force in the Sinai created by the 1979 Camp David Accord between Israel and Egypt, which was brokered by President Carter. The peace treaty has held and the international detachment has had relatively little to do over the years in their desert outposts.

There are just over 700 U.S. troops in the Sinai force, out of a total of more than 1,680 from 12 nations. The countries also include Australia, Canada, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Fiji, France, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, the United Kingdom and Uruguay. They rotate their troops in and out of Egypt for the mission.

A Recent Attack

Since September, six troops – including four Americans – have been wounded during patrols. That month, the command removed personnel from a remote checkpoint three miles from a main base, saying it could not “safely resupply” the site and continue to conduct the mission.

Over the past several months, the U.S. has beefed up security at the North Camp, which is squarely in the middle of the insurgency. Occasional rockets and mortars come into the camp, and there are fears the resupply aircraft could be under threat. Last fall, the Pentagon sent in more troops, armored vehicles, artillery and cameras mounted on aerostat balloons.

Those are only defense measures, however. Outside the gate, in the Sinai itself, security is handled by the Egyptian military.

An Egyptian tank outside the North Camp gate occasionally fires a tank round in response to fire by militants, U.S. officials say. If the Egyptians do go after the militants, these officials say, it often involves punishing attacks. But the Egyptians lack programs, like jobs or assistance, that could provide avenues to a better life and potentially blunt the insurgency.

Back in November, U.S. officials tried to downsize the force during a meeting in Rome, where the peacekeeping force is headquartered. The U.S. delegates wanted to reduce the force by 20 percent and replace it with a variety of surveillance equipment. Both Egypt and Israel balked.

For Israel, the U.S.-led force provides a certain comfort level, particularly at a time of rising tensions throughout the Middle East. The Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group, was elected in Egypt in 2012, but was overthrown a year later by the current leader, President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi. The Egyptian president and Israel share a strong opposition to Islamist groups.

Using Technology To Monitor

Daniel Byman a professor of security studies at Georgetown University, said replacing U.S. troops with technology that could monitor the area is “eminently sensible” since it reduces risk. “You’re able to sustain the mission better if there’s less risk,” he said.

This isn’t the first time grumblings about the Sinai mission have bubbled up out of the Pentagon. Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld twice tried to cut the deployments a decade ago, citing an overburdened military, but was rebuffed by both Egypt and Israel.

The peacekeeping force, officially known as the Multinational Force and Observers, is just one of the ways the U.S. provides security assistance to Egypt. The overall package comes to $1.3 billion annually. The camps for the peacekeepers, one located in northern Sinai and another in the south near the resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh, employ some 400 Sinai residents.

David M. Satterfield, who oversees the Multinational Force and Observers, is a retired career Foreign Service officer who served in Iraq and was U.S. ambassador to Lebanon. He was appointed as director general of the MFO by Egypt and Israel back in 2009.

Satterfield’s spokesman, Brad Lynch, declined to address the possibility of reducing the U.S. troop presence.

“It hasn’t been our policy for a long time to make comments on our peacekeeping force,” Lynch said.

Lynch referred all questions to the MFO headquarters in Rome. Officials did not respond to a request for comment.

Geoffrey Aronson, an analyst with the Middle East Institute in Washington, wrote about the growing dangers in the Sinai on the institute’s website last month.

“The (Multinational Force and Observers) and in particular the United States, must now confront the unwelcome prospect of a kinetic engagement with ISIS in Sinai,” he worte. “The Obama administration, thus, finds its options narrowed by the demands of its allies, increasing rather than reducing the number of boots on the ground, and hoping it will not be drawn into another open front with ISIS.”

npr.org

Misrata’s senior military intelligence commander tells Telegraph a new bespectacled Iraqi commader known only as “Abu Omar” had taken charge in Gaddafi’s hometown of Sirte.

telegraph.co.uk

breitbart.com

“The Islamic State is already here; that is no longer a secret. I am not speaking about territories bordering the State of Israel, but within the state itself,” President Reuven Rivlin warned Monday.

Addressing the ninth annual conference of the Institute for National Security Studies, held at the Eretz Israel Museum in Ramat Aviv, Rivlin said, “Research studies, arrests, testimonies and overt and covert analyses — many conducted by the INSS — clearly indicate that there is increasing support for the Islamic State group among Israeli Arabs, and some are actually joining up.”

According to the president, “Anyone familiar with Arab society knows that in recent years there has been considerable radicalization in some Bedouin settlements in the south, and in Arab towns and villages in the north, on the issue of implementation of Shariah [Islamic] law. We are even seeing the influence of extremist ideas in areas and groups identifying as secular.

“In various villages, at political rallies, even ones attended by members of Knesset, we have seen the black flag of Islamic State being waved. There is growing support for Islamic State on our social media and more and more moderates are feeling threatened, feeling that the rug is being pulled out from under them.”

Rivlin continued, “The threat of Islamic State is not unique to Israel. It is not a product of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, quite the opposite even. It is impossible to draw a clear political and geographical ‘axis of evil’ around which to focus our forces or the enemy.”

The president stressed that his warning was not an indictment of the Arab population in Israel, but said that he expected the Israeli Arab leadership to show responsibility. He said the Arab leadership’s condemnations of violence were sometimes too weak or forced, mainly suggesting cowardice.

“The voices blaming the ‘occupation’ for all the resident evils, expressing ‘sympathy and understanding’ toward violence directed at innocent people — they are a stain on a population that needs a clear voice of guidance above all else,” Rivlin said.

israelhayom.com