With the Islamic State (ISIL) facing a looming showdown in Raqqa, which could see the capital of the Islamic State Caliphate fall to some combination of Syrian government, Syrian rebel and/or Kurdish forces in the coming months, the future of ISIL may be playing out along the Mediterranean coast of Libya, centered on the vital town of Sirte.

The Pentagon, along with European NATO allies, have concluded that the weakening of the ISIL infrastructure in Iraq and Syria has placed new priority on the fight inside Libya, where the Islamic State has carved out a strong base of operations, spanning an area of between 150 and 250 kilometers of coastal territory. The current “emir” of the Islamic State in Libya is Abdul Qadr al-Najdi, who was appointed by the Raqqa leadership after his predecessor was killed in a bombing attack in March. ISIL is believed to have affiliated groups in eight countries in Africa, from Algeria, to Nigeria and Egypt.

Last week, top Pentagon officials, including Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford, were in Europe for meetings with NATO allies. One priority topic of discussion was the plans for a military intervention against the Islamic State in Libya. Carter told reporters that Italy has offered to be the lead nation in the anti-ISIL military campaign in Libya, and that extensive planning is now underway to develop a battle plan to crush ISIL in Libya before top Islamic State officials can move into Sirte from Raqqa. Best US military estimates, based on US Special Forces and British SAS on-the-ground intelligence, gathered over the past several months of covert operations, indicate that ISIL has in the range of 7,000 fighters in the Sirte region—many with hard combat experience in Syria and Iraq. A handful of top ISIL leaders were dispatched to Libya to oversee the creation of an extensive Islamic State area of control, which has steadily expanded from Sirte towards Misrata in recent months.

The Western strategy for preempting the ISIL relocation plans is both complex and challenging. The United Nations imposed a Government of National Accord (GNA) in March, under Prime Minister Fayez Serraj, but he and his small government team are largely confined to a naval base in Tripoli, with little if any actual governing power.

On May 6, Serraj announced the formation of a military task force to plan out and coordinate the assault against the Islamic State stronghold of Sirte. The day before the announcement, the Islamic State in Tripoli Province seized a major check point 75 miles south of Misurata, at Abu Grein, using classic ISIL battle tactics:  suicide bombings followed by a wave of armed fighters. As many as six towns surrounding the check point were taken by ISIL, cutting off supply routes between Misrata and points south, where Misrata tribal forces have been battling the foreign Islamic State units and have aligned informally with the Serraj government.

The tactical support for Serraj coming from the Misrata militias is indictative of both the opportunities and the flaws in the US and European strategy for defeating the Islamic State in Libya, before they are able to consolidate a new hub of operations large enough to constitute a fallback “caliphate.”

As much as necessity has driven the Misrata rebels to fight against the Islamic State’s recent incursions, they are simultaneously in a power struggle, with military dimensions, against the rival government-in-internal-exile in Tobruk. The Tobruk government is dominated by the Defense Minister, Gen. Khalifa Heftar. Gen. Heftar, who enjoys the official backing of Egypt and the more informal backing of the United States (he lived in exile in the United States for years), is in the process of launching his own assault on Sirte, after having liberated the key eastern Libyan town of Derna from ISIL on April 21.

Misrata militia forces are gathering to the west of Sirte in preparation for a move against the ISIL stronghold, with 2,000 troops now staged near the battle front at Abu Grein.  Gen. Heftar has deployed a force to the east of Sirte at Ajdabiya. He has a total force of 7,000 men, along with combat planes and new tanks and armored personal carriers (APCs), which have been recently supplied by Egypt. US, Italian, German and French combat advisers are reported to be embedded in both the Misrata and Heftar units. Those same nations have offered to send in an international force made up of at least 6,000 troops, to back up the assault on Sirte. But the foreign intervention is opposed by the Misrata militias, and the Tobruk government is yet to vote on whether to recognize the UN-backed Serraj government in Tripoli. The Serraj government has pledged to remove Gen. Heftar from his official position, and this is a major motive for the Misurata forces’ backing.

The announcement of the united combat command from the Serraj government on May 6 is a step towards bringing in the foreign forces to accelerate the drive against ISIL. But the very same move could intensify the internal fighting: Between the Misrata and Heftar forces, between the two rival armies and the Islamic State, and against the very idea of the UN-installed “unity” government, which has been criticized strongly by factions of the Libyan Dawn, that previously held power in Tripoli, and the Tobruk internationally-recognized parliament.

The situation on the ground is made more complex by recent reports that Gen. Heftar has invited some former Qadaffi loyalists to join his forces against ISIL. One of Gen. Heftar’s recently installed senior commanders is Gen. Ali Kanna, a Tuareg fighter who backed Qadaffi in the 2011 war, but then fled to Niger in August 2011, when Tripoli was taken over by the rebels. Mattia Toaldo, a Libya specialist with the European Council on Foreign Relations, reported the return of Kanna, and noted that some former Qadaffi officers see the battle against ISIL as an opportunity to return to Libya with some leverage for the future.

There are conflicting reports that US Special Forces on the ground in Libya have made contact with some of the ex-Qadaffi fighters, who can play a valuable role in the anti-ISIL offensive, since they originally came from the Sirte region and still have tribal ties there.

The Pentagon strategists and National Security Council planners who are pushing the offensive against the Islamic State in Libya are said to be well-aware of the trappings of their strategy, but feel they have no alternative, given the strategic importance ascribed to defeating ISIL in North Africa, before they establish a further beachhead and potential new capital for their global operations.

Washington is hoping, with very little basis for optimism, that a three-prong strategy can ultimately succeed in defeating ISIL and creating the basis for a unified government in Tripoli. Under that strategy, the US will support rival indigenous military forces that all are competing to take over Sirte. At the same time, US and European Special Forces advisers on the ground will look for opportunities to forge unified military actions against ISIL, drawing together rivals. And if the Serraj government can establish a credible command center for the anti-Islamic State war, he may be able to invite foreign military assistance at some point that could be a decisive game-changer.

All of these contending factors make a short-term success in the Libya anti-ISIL effort hard to imagine. From a technical military standpoint, there are logistical problems, given that foreign military operations will be likely coordinated out of Italy, and through the US Africa Command (AFRICOM), which has its formal headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany.

Prime Minister Serraj has already issued warnings that he opposes the launching of any offensive against Sirte, until his command center is up and running. Events on the ground argue against such a delay.

mebriefing.com

pakistantoday.com.pk/

Europe and America made mistakes, but the misery of the Arab world is caused mainly by its own failures

When Sir Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot secretly drew their lines on the map of the Levant to carve up the Ottoman empire in May 1916, at the height of the first world war, they could scarcely have imagined the mess they would set in train: a century of imperial betrayal and Arab resentment; instability and coups; wars, displacement, occupation and failed peacemaking in Palestine; and almost everywhere oppression, radicalism and terrorism.

In the euphoria of the uprisings in 2011, when one awful Arab autocrat after another was toppled, it seemed as if the Arabs were at last turning towards democracy. Instead their condition is more benighted than ever. Under Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, Egypt is even more wretched than under the ousted dictator, Hosni Mubarak. The state has broken down in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen. Civil wars rage and sectarianism is rampant, fed by the contest between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The jihadist “caliphate” of Islamic State (IS), the grotesque outgrowth of Sunni rage, is metastasising to other parts of the Arab world.

Bleak as all this may seem, it could become worse still. If the Lebanese civil war of 1975-90 is any gauge, the Syrian one has many years to run. Other places may turn ugly. Algeria faces a leadership crisis; the insurgency in Sinai could spread to Egypt proper; chaos threatens to overwhelm Jordan; Israel could be drawn into the fights on its borders; low oil prices are destabilising Gulf states; and the proxy conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran might lead to direct fighting.

All this is not so much a clash of civilisations as a war within Arab civilisation. Outsiders cannot fix it—though their actions could help make things a bit better, or a lot worse. First and foremost, a settlement must come from Arabs themselves.

Beware of easy answers

Arab states are suffering a crisis of legitimacy. In a way, they have never got over the fall of the Ottoman empire. The prominent ideologies—Arabism, Islamism and now jihadism—have all sought some greater statehood beyond the frontiers left by the colonisers. Now that states are collapsing, Arabs are reverting to ethnic and religious identities. To some the bloodletting resembles the wars of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Others find parallels with the religious strife of Europe’s Thirty Years War in the 17th century. Whatever the comparison, the crisis of the Arab world is deep and complex. Facile solutions are dangerous. Four ideas, in particular, need to be repudiated.

First, many blame the mayhem on Western powers—from Sykes-Picot to the creation of Israel, the Franco-British takeover of the Suez Canal in 1956 and repeated American interventions. Foreigners have often made things worse; America’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 released its sectarian demons. But the idea that America should turn away from the region—which Barack Obama seems to embrace—can be as destabilising as intervention, as the catastrophe in Syria shows.

Lots of countries have blossomed despite traumatic histories: South Korea and Poland—not to mention Israel. As our special report (see article) sets out, the Arab world has suffered from many failures of its own making. Many leaders were despots who masked their autocracy with the rhetoric of Arab unity and the liberation of Palestine (and realised neither). Oil money and other rents allowed rulers to buy loyalty, pay for oppressive security agencies and preserve failing state-led economic models long abandoned by the rest of the world.

A second wrong-headed notion is that redrawing the borders of Arab countries will create more stable states that match the ethnic and religious contours of the population. Not so: there are no neat lines in a region where ethnic groups and sects can change from one village or one street to the next. A new Sykes-Picot risks creating as many injustices as it resolves, and may provoke more bloodshed as all try to grab land and expel rivals. Perhaps the Kurds in Iraq and Syria will go their own way: denied statehood by the colonisers and oppressed by later regimes, they have proved doughty fighters against IS. For the most part, though, decentralisation and federalism offer better answers, and might convince the Kurds to remain within the Arab system. Reducing the powers of the central government should not be seen as further dividing a land that has been unjustly divided. It should instead be seen as the means to reunite states that have already been splintered; the alternative to a looser structure is permanent break-up.

A third ill-advised idea is that Arab autocracy is the way to hold back extremism and chaos. In Egypt Mr Sisi’s rule is proving as oppressive as it is arbitrary and economically incompetent. Popular discontent is growing. In Syria Bashar al-Assad and his allies would like to portray his regime as the only force that can control disorder. The contrary is true: Mr Assad’s violence is the primary cause of the turmoil. Arab authoritarianism is no basis for stability. That much, at least, should have become clear from the uprisings of 2011.

The fourth bad argument is that the disarray is the fault of Islam. Naming the problem as Islam, as Donald Trump and some American conservatives seek to do, is akin to naming Christianity as the cause of Europe’s wars and murderous anti-Semitism: partly true, but of little practical help. Which Islam would that be? The head-chopping sort espoused by IS, the revolutionary-state variety that is decaying in Iran or the political version advocated by the besuited leaders of Ennahda in Tunisia, who now call themselves “Muslim democrats”? To demonise Islam is to strengthen the Manichean vision of IS. The world should instead recognise the variety of thought within Islam, support moderate trends and challenge extremists. Without Islam, no solution is likely to endure.

Reform or perish

All this means that resolving the crisis of the Arab world will be slow and hard. Efforts to contain and bring wars to an end are important. This will require the defeat of IS, a political settlement to enfranchise Sunnis in Iraq and Syria, and an accommodation between Iran and Saudi Arabia. It is just as vital to promote reform in countries that have survived the uprisings. Their rulers must change or risk being cast aside. The old tools of power are weaker: oil will remain cheap for a long time and secret policemen cannot stop dissent in a networked world.

Kings and presidents thus have to regain the trust of their people. They will need “input” legitimacy: giving space to critics, whether liberals or Islamists, and ultimately establishing democracy. And they need more of the “output” variety, too: strengthening the rule of law and building productive economies able to thrive in a globalised world. That means getting away from the rentier system and keeping cronies at bay.

America and Europe cannot impose such a transformation. But the West has influence. It can cajole and encourage Arab rulers to enact reforms. And it can help contain the worst forces, such as IS. It should start by supporting the new democracy of Tunisia and political reforms in Morocco—the European Union should, for example, open its markets to north African products. It is important, too, that Saudi Arabia opens its society and succeeds in its reforms to wean itself off oil. The big prize is Egypt. Right now, Mr Sisi is leading the country to disaster, which would be felt across the Arab world and beyond; by contrast, successful liberalisation would lift the whole region.

Without reform, the next backlash is only a matter of time. But there is also a great opportunity. The Arabs could flourish again: they have great rivers, oil, beaches, archaeology, youthful populations, a position astride trade routes and near European markets, and rich intellectual and scientific traditions. If only their leaders and militiamen would see it.

economist.com

While Islamic State seized world’s attention, bin Laden network rebranded and recharged

Whatever happened to al-Qaeda? A decade-and-a-half ago, it perpetrated the single largest act of international terrorism to ever take place on American soil. Yet, these days, Osama bin Laden’s terror network barely warrants a mention in the mainstream news media. Instead, it is al-Qaeda’s onetime Iraqi franchise, now known as the Islamic State, or ISIL, which commands near total attention in both politics and the press. That has never been more true than on Iraq’s bloodiest day of 2016 when bombs swept through Baghdad killing at least 93.

Perhaps that’s understandable. Bin Laden was killed in a U.S. special operations raid in Pakistan in 2011. And over the past two years, ISIL’s explosive growth in Iraq and Syria, its unparalleled brutality and its ability to mobilize disaffected Muslims have helped catapult the terrorist group to the status of global public enemy No. 1. Despite notable gains by the expanding military coalition being marshaled against it, the group for the moment remains a formidable and entrenched foe.

But recent days have also brought a timely reminder that ISIL’s progenitor, too, is still alive and kicking. As Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute details in Foreign Policy magazine, al-Qaeda is poised to establish a proto state in northern Syria, where its regional affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, has managed to carve out a fiefdom of its own in the midst of the Syrian civil war.

That revelation is significant for at least three reasons:

usatoday.com

Federal law enforcement agencies are tracking almost 800 cases related to ISIS inside the US, according to FBI Director James Comey.

He told reporters Wednesday that there are currently about 1,000 cases open into potentially radicalized individuals living in the U.S. Out of these cases, roughly 80 percent of them are related to the Islamic State.

Despite that high number, Comey said that ISIS’ power in the U.S. is dwindling, as fewer Americans are traveling overseas to fight with the terror group.

“The so-called Islamic State brand has lost significant power in the United States,” Comey said. “They’ve lost their ability to attract people to their Caliphate from the United States.”

He revealed that the FBI encountered between six and ten Americans a month in 2014 and the first half of 2015 who traveled to the Middle East or tried to go there to join ISIS.

He said that number has dwindled down to one per month since last summer and is continuing a downward trend.

Comey did acknowledge that ISIS’ “ability to motivate troubled souls, to inspire them” remains a problem in the U.S.

He said that their online propaganda remains a threat, since it targets people from all over the globe.

He added that encrypted messaging apps like Facebook’s WhatsApp and Telegram have hindered some of their efforts to catch radicalized individuals, calling the technology a “huge feature of terrorist tradecraft.”

foxnews.com

Last week’s confirmation that Australian Islamic State member, Neil Prakash, had been killed in a US air strike has been greeted as a cause for optimism in the war against the terrorist group.

But what’s the real impact of removing a person like Prakash? And what role, if any, should high-value targeting have in conflict scenarios and the broader fight against terrorism?

Prakash was significant both to Australia and Islamic State for a number of reasons.

He was the most high-profile Australian foreign fighter in the Middle East. Other well-known Australians have either died, including Mohamed Elomar and ‘Ginger Jihadi’ Abdullah Elmir, or, as in the case of Khaled Sharrouf, have maintained a low-profile.

Prakash also became an active recruiter for Islamic State, focused particularly on sourcing potential Australians fighters and supporters. Based in Syria, he had largely taken on the lead recruiting role vacated by Mohamed Ali Baryalei after his arrest in the September 2014 Operation Appleby raids.

Finally, Prakash reached out to inspire and plan terrorist acts in Australia, most recently the Anzac Day plot that was disrupted only days before his death in Mosul.

Prakash was a nominal Australian living and operating beyond the reach of Australia’s laws. Domestic legal measures—like control orders, passport cancellation, citizenship renunciation—were either irrelevant or largely ineffectual in the combat zone he had lived in for the past three years.  But his actions fighting in a war, and his allegiance to Islamic State meant he was an enemy combatant in a military action recognised under international law. He died as a combatant.

Prakash’s death is also significant in that it’s an indicator of the ongoing military degradation of Islamic State’s fighting forces in Iraq and Syria.

From the heady days of al Baghdadi’s declaration of a caliphate in June 2014 followed by a year of offensives leading to effective control over key cities, population and territory in Iraq and Syria, the erstwhile IS government has lost almost half of the area it controlled, and much of its other resources. As high-value targets like Prakash and Abu Wahib (also killed in a US strike this week) are removed from the battlefield, Islamic State’s leadership and capability are weakened.

Military defeat at every turn, territory and resources eking away, leadership being slowly dismantled. In a conventional military conflict, such developments would spell the enemy’s demise. But Islamic State is an insurgent group with a strong cultural and ideational base, rather than a conventional and state-based military force.

The group’s ability to recover from these leadership losses depends on the particular roles they performed. It might take some time to find a replacement for Prakash’s network into Australia, but there are many involved in recruitment and plotting who will keep the online activity going.

As we saw with the video of the Ginger Jihadi, the social media propaganda machine can easily produce imagery of another Australian to engage supporters here, regardless of the individual’s ability.

And as Musa Cerantonio and others have demonstrated, in the online environment of contemporary violent extremists, you don’t need to be anywhere near the fighting or the caliphate to inspire and recruit others to the cause.

Similarly, the death of Abu Wahib will detract from Islamic State’s tactical capability in Anbar province, where he was leading the insurgent group. And Anbar is one of the key areas of focus for the next stage of the US-led coalition’s campaign. But the group has demonstrated previously that it has others to fill vacant roles.

Attacking high-value targets plays an important role in the overall military campaign. Despite the best efforts of Islamic State’s online propaganda machine, such defeats are impacting its supporters. The allure of the caliphate has worn off for many would-be foreign fighters: recruitment is down an estimated 90% from a year ago with an average of 200 a month now heading for the conflict zone compared with 1,500 to 2,000 per month in early 2015.

As the last fighters battle it out in Iraq and Syria, others have already moved to the new arenas in North Africa and Yemen—some of which include already declared wilayats—to join some local insurgent groups already in place, in order to attract the next wave of foreign fighters.

For Islamic State in particular, the move to external operations is a mixed experience. The pending end of the proclaimed ‘caliphate’ in Iraq and Syria undermines its legitimacy. But the move outwards to new fighting fronts guarantees its survival, at least for now.

Prakash’s death removes one of the key links funnelling violent extremists to and from Australia. He had recruited Australian foreign fighters and inspired others through his online activity, though had failed to achieve any operational impact on Australia in his small-scale plots. But he was persistent in seeking to attack Australians. The threat he posed has now been neutralised.

Australian authorities demonstrated considerable capability in tracking Prakash’s online engagement, and disrupting plans for fresh attacks. The US high-value target strike is another blow against Islamic State, but new threats will arise in other places. The key to this long-term and multifaceted campaign is to maintain the focus, momentum and commitment.

aspistrategist.org.au

President Barack Obama is increasingly calling upon Special Operations forces to carry out so-called “small wars” across the Middle East and Africa to challenge both ISIS and al Qaeda in places where the U.S. maintains a footprint beyond Syria and Iraq.

In his first trip overseas since taking command of U.S. Special Operations a month ago, Gen. Raymond Thomas told a Middle Eastern audience recently that “complex” fails to adequately describe the current security environment. That complexity is leading the Obama administration to expand the use of small teams of Special Operators in various terror hotspots.

Thomas previously served as head of the secretive Joint Special Operations Command — the unit that includes Navy SEALS, the Army’s Delta Force and other covert Special Operations units.

“We are attempting to identify opportunities to expand [Special Operations’] global presence, forward access and relationships to leverage opportunities short of crisis,” Thomas said.

He did not offer additional details, but many military officials privately have noted that ISIS came to power and began controlling large swathes of territory, posing a major terror threat, faster than the U.S. could respond. They don’t want to see it happen again.

That explains why — although much of the U.S. response is clearly focused on Iraq and Syria — Special Ops forces are being asked to prevent both ISIS and al Qaeda from gaining a stronger foothold in places like Libya, Somalia and Yemen. The military characterizes many of the operations as “advising and assisting” local forces with intelligence and overhead surveillance to help identify targets. But in reality there are also many instances of the U.S. conducting direct attack operations on terror targets.

Among the places where “small war” activities are underway:

Somalia

About 50 U.S. troops operate at undisclosed locations across southern Somalia advising and assisting Somali, Kenyan and Ugandan forces in their fight against Al-Shabaab, the local al Qaeda affiliate.

This week, U.S. personnel helped those forces plan an operation against illegal checkpoints. The U.S. headquarters for the effort remains at the airport in Mogadishu, Somalia, but the fact that the troops are at times in the field shows how far the U.S.-Somali military relationship has come since the 1993 U.S. battle in Mogadishu, Somalia, often referred to as the “Black Hawk Down” battle, in which several U.S. troops were killed.

Al-Shabaab has conducted a number of attacks in Kenya against Western interests in recent years, raising concerns for the U.S. about its ability to recruit more fighters in the region and the growing influence of al Qaeda on the group. The U.S. has also conducted counter-terrorism operations against Al-Shabaab, both in raids on the ground and from drone and aircraft strikes. In March, the Pentagon said it conducted a large-scale airstrike against an Al-Shabaab camp in Somalia, killing some 150 fighters there.

West Africa

The U.S. has sent up to 300 military personnel to Cameroon. Many are involved in drone operations there from Garoua to help provide intelligence in the region to assist local forces. There are additional drone operations based out of Niger. A U.S. military official said a major concern remains Boko Haram inside Nigeria and its declared affiliation with to ISIS. The U.S. sees ISIS increasingly trying to recruit fighters from West Africa, the official said.

Yemen

The Pentagon will offer few details, but recently a small number of U.S. troops went back into Yemen to help Saudi and United Arab Emirates forces in their battle against the al Qaeda affiliate there. The U.S. troops are providing intelligence assistance and advice, according to several U.S. military officials.

Libya

A small number of U.S. forces occasionally travel into Libya, according to several U.S. officials. A few months ago, the Pentagon had to acknowledge the presence of U.S. personnel in Libya when photos showing them appeared online. The Pentagon said they were there trying to meet with locals but left the country at the request of local authorities.

The current U.S. troops are trying to connect with political and security officials in Libya to get more information so if a national government is formed, the U.S. will be ready to provide additional military assistance. The Pentagon recently acknowledged there is a “concept of operations” for Libya that includes continued airstrikes against ISIS targets when they can be located.

wesh.com

The Islamic State group’s cyberwar capabilities are unsophisticated, but they won’t be that way for long.

That was the conclusion of a 25-page report released by Flashpoint.

The report, “Hacking for ISIS: The Emergent Cyber Threat Landscape,” found that the Islamic State’s “overall capabilities are neither advanced nor do they demonstrate sophisticated targeting.”

However, the severity of the attacks by the groups supporters isn’t likely to remain unsophisticated, it added.

“Their capability of hacking military or NSA servers in the United States is far-fetched, but it’s not completely impossible,” said Laith Alkhouri, Flashpoint’s director of Middle East and North Africa research and one of the authors of the report.

“Concern is high, not because they have sophisticated hacking skills but because they’re utilizing multiple ways of bringing in new talent, utilizing all the freely available tools online, trying to utilize malware that’s already available and building their own malware,” he told TechNewsWorld.

Script Kiddie Assassins

ISIS lacks the organization and skills of other cyber adversaries of the United States, noted another author of the report, Flashpoint Director of Security Research Allison Nixon.

“Chinese and Russian hackers are organized criminal gangs or nation-state supported groups,” she told TechNewsWorld. “They’re highly educated, highly skilled. They use custom malware and custom tools.”

“On the other hand, ISIS supporters are more like script kiddies or hactivists. They have a low level of sophistication and engage in behavior patterns and use toolsets that we would see in any other attention-seeking group,” Nixon continued.

“They’re using open source tools and very old public exploits,” she said. “They’re only capable of hacking sites that aren’t very well maintained in the first place.”

Although ISIS hackers have some similarities to hactivists, they differ from them in at least one very important way. “Hacktivists don’t threaten physical violence,” Nixon said. “Physical violence is an important part of ISIS hackers.”

“They’re interested in translating these online threats into physical attacks,” she added.

Attacks of Opportunity

The hacking tools of ISIS cyberwarriors are almost invariably going to be taken from publicly available open source projects because of the ease of obtaining such tools along with the fact that they can often be used successfully, the report noted.

Developing proprietary tools would require significant effort and resources to create a completely private toolset that is on par, or better than, what is already available publicly, it said.

Of course, actors may modify this publicly available software or write simple scripts, but it is unlikely these groups are building software from the ground up for their supporters to use, the report said.

“As pro-ISIS cyber attacks and capabilities have gradually increased over time but remained relatively unsophisticated, it is likely that in the short run, these actors will continue launching attacks of opportunity,” it noted.

“Such attacks, include finding and exploiting vulnerabilities in websites owned by, for example, small businesses, and defacing these websites. Other attacks may include DDoS attacks,” the report continued.

Hacking Powerhouse

Pro-ISIS cyberactors are demonstrating an upward trajectory, indicating that they will continue to improve and amplify pre-existing skills and strategies, the report said.

Such a trend was exemplified by the recent merger of multiple pro-ISIS cybergroups under one umbrella: the United Cyber Caliphate.

“We’re starting to see these groups coalesce their brand. They’re increasing their ranks in number. They’re increasing their ranks in skill. They’re increasing their ranks in languages, which means they’re increasing the channels on which they operate and which they distribute their claims of responsibility,” Alkhouri noted.

“That means they have a much more powerful message and a more robust structure than before,” he continued. “They are coalescing their ranks to become a hacking a powerhouse.”

U.S. Responds

The United States isn’t ignoring the growing threat of ISIS in cyberspace. A new campaign was designed to disrupt the ability of the Islamic State to spread its message, attract new adherents, circulate orders from commanders and carry out day-to-day functions, like paying its fighters, according to a news report published last week.

While the Pentagon hasn’t been shy about letting ISIS know U.S. cyberforces will be gunning for it, details have been in short supply.

“There doesn’t seem to be any specifics on what they intend to do or how they intend to carry it out,” said Lawrence Husick, co-chairman of the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Center for the Study of Terrorism.

“It may be as something as simple as finding some servers and executing an automated attack on those servers,” he told TechNewsWorld, “or it may be something more complicated, like the use of directed malware or the disruption of encrypted channels used by ISIS on the dark Web.”

Given how the military likes to keep its cyber cards close to its BDUs, it’s a bit unusual that it’s saying anything at all about its plans for ISIS. “I’m not sure why they chose to talk about it,” said Richard Stiennon, author of There Will Be Cyberwar.

“It’s better to take advantage of your ability to intercept and spoof messages without telling your adversary about it,” he told TechNewsWorld.

Psych Op

However, there could be a domestic angle to the Pentagon’s bravado about its cyberwar efforts. “There’s a desire by the branches for more dollars from Congress for their cyber programs,” Stiennon said.

On the other hand, prying money from Congress for cyber initiatives doesn’t seem to be a problem. “For many years, Congress has pretty much given the military everything that it wants in the way of cyber,” Husick said. “That’s one area of the budget where they have really not had any problem at all.”

The Pentagon’s announcement of a cyber campaign could be an effective weapon against ISIS. “Deception and disruption are part of the game of warfare,” he said. “There are times when you say something and do nothing, and there are other times when you do something and say nothing.”

“They may be trying to get into the head of ISIS,” said retired Rear Adm. James Barnett, head of the cybersecurity practice at Venable.

Nevertheless, he doesn’t think the Pentagon is bluffing when it says it’s going to escalate the cyberwar with ISIS.

“We may not hear about the operations for months, but at some point we’ll hear about a coordinated strike, either in combination with conventional forces or something significant in cyberspace,” he told TechNewsWorld.

ecommercetimes.com

When Islamic State spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani exhorted followers to attack Westerners using knives, rocks, or cars in September 2014 and then again in January 2015, the simplistic nature of such attacks—as well as the message behind them—had particular appeal to a very small subpopulation suffering from profound mental illness. In October 2014, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau shot and killed a Canadian soldier near Parliament Hill in Ottawa; he had a long history of mental illness. In December 2014, Man Haron Monis took 12 people hostage in a coffee shop in Sydney, Australia, resulting in the death of two hostages as well as Monis; Monis also had a long history with mental illness. A June 2015 study by Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program reported that lone actor attackers were likely to suffer from ‘some psychological disturbances.’ A review of criminal charges related to the so-called Islamic State in the U.S. by the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School found that—along with a criminal past—a history of mental illness was common among the approximately 70 cases. 

The convergence of serious mental illness and terrorist motivation—however delusional—appears to have manifested again on May 10 in Grafing, Germany. In the early morning hours at the S-Bahn train station located 25-miles southeast of Munich, a lone suspect—identified only as German national ‘Paul H.’—attacked a man on the train with a knife, killing him. The suspect then attacked and wounded three more victims on the platform. Police have confirmed the suspect shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ and ‘infidels must die’ during the assault. Given al-Adnani’s call for precisely this type of random attack, media attention understandably focused on the killer’s reported extremist exclamations. The suspect’s apparent mental illness, however, will likely prove far more determinative of his actions.

The overwhelming majority of individuals struggling with mental illness have no violent tendencies. However, those who do commit acts of violence in the name of the Islamic State often suffer from feelings of intense social isolation, perceived persecution, and imagined enemies everywhere. Those three traits—isolation, persecution, and paranoia—figure prominently into much of the Islamic State’s propaganda. While the reasons people join or support the Islamic State are as varied and personal as the people joining, the allure of belonging—coupled with the simplistic and well-defined narrative of friend and enemy—can be extremely attractive for those struggling to find clarity.

Despite the ubiquity of Islamic State propaganda, lone actor attacks of any nature are exceedingly rare—including those in which the victims are entirely random and the attacker seriously disturbed. The media coverage of the attack in southern Germany—where violent crime of any sort is rare—stemmed in part from the random savagery, the locale of mass transit, and the fear that yet another person had answered the Islamic State’s call to attack in any manner possible. Perhaps because the attack was short-lived and the attacker so obviously mentally disturbed, the media coverage has not become a spectacle; a rarity when it comes to attacks associated—however tenuously—to terrorism. Given the widespread and simplistic message of the Islamic State, the threat of further unsophisticated, yet still horrific attacks by disturbed individuals will persist. Though the occurrence of these attacks is highly unpredictable, the infrequency of such events means the threat is truly quite minimal.

soufangroup.com

The app called Huroof – meaning alphabet or letters in Arabic – has ‘tank’, ‘gun’ and ‘rocket’ among the vocabulary taught

The Islamic State has reportedly released an app to teach children the Arabic alphabet with the aid of guns, tanks and cannons.

The mobile application, Huroof – which means alphabet or letters in Arabic – gives a step-by-step walkthrough of the Arabic alphabet, and offers games and a nasheed (an a cappella Islamic song) to help users memorise the alphabet.

Caleb Weiss, reporting on the app in the Long War Journal, said the lyrics of the nasheed were “littered with jihadist terminology”.

The app is clearly marketed to children, with the branding of stars, balloons and flowers masking military themes, and “tank”, “gun”, “cannon”, “bullet” and “rocket” among the vocabulary taught.

Islamic State’s propaganda outlet, the Library of Zeal, publicised the mobile application on its channel on the encrypted messaging service Telegram as well as other file-sharing websites on 10 May.

The press release, which included screenshots from the app as well as a link to download it, said it “teaches the cubs the alphabet letters”. Isis refers to its militants as “lions” and their children as “cubs”.

It appears to currently be available only on Android devices.

It is Isis’ first app targeted at children, but the terrorist group has released others in the past as a means of distributing propaganda, after encountering difficulties using mainstream internet services.

Telegram said last year it was taking action to block its use by Isis after security researchers found its public channels were being used to broadcast news and videos of its military victories or sermons.

Telegram said last November it had identified and blocked 78 Isis-related broadcast channels in 12 languages on its site.

Just last month the Afghan Taliban created an app, Alemarah, in an attempt to reach a wider digital audience with its videos and statements.

theguardian.com