Muhammad Al Adnani
From Arab Spring to the Rise of ISIS
Dated in August 2012, this intelligence information report identified Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) as being one of the principal elements the U.S. and its allies were supporting in their opposition to the Assad Government in Syria. It stated that the “Salafists,” Muslim Brotherhood (MB), and AQI are the major forces driving the insurgency against the Assad Syrian Government. It noted that AQI was speaking through the spokesman of the Islamic State of Iraq, Muhammad Al Adnani. [Al Adnani is now the chief spokesman for the current version of the Islamic State, also called ISIS. Both the MB and AQI are salafist organizations—fundamentalist reformers wanting to return to the days of Muhammad and his companions, the first Caliphs. “Salfafists” as a group in this context probably refers to the Hamas terrorist group, who are the backbone of the “Free Syrian Army” insurgents.]
The report said that AQI had supported the Syrian opposition (rebels) from the beginning, both ideologically and through the media. AQI declared its opposition to the Assad Government because it considered it a sectarian regime targeting Sunnis. AQI conducted a number of operations in several Syrian cities under the name of Jaish Al Nusra (Victorious Army), one of its affiliates.
The intelligence report also predicted the rise of a broad Islamic State forming from segments of Al Adnani’s group. [This group, in fact announced itself to be part of the Islamic State and Caliphate in June 2014, and Al Adnani was named by the State Department as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist’ in 2014]
Knowing that the Benghazi attack on the U.S. Ambassador to Libya on September 11, 2012 occurred just days after the August 2012 intelligence report, we cannot help but wonder if there was some connection.
The September 11, 2001 attacks by Al-Qaeda agents killed 2,996 and injured more than 6,000. Yet the Obama Administration and the Muslim Brotherhood allied with them to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria as part of a long term Muslim Brotherhood agenda of removing secularist or moderate Muslim rulers. This had nothing to do with the Arab Spring except for being a convenient excuse to resume their long-standing war against secularist Shia rule in Syria.
The Muslim Brotherhood is the progenitor of the Hamas and Al-Qaeda terrorist groups, and Al-Qaeda in Iraq is now the Islamic State, commonly known as ISIS. Officially announced in June 2014, ISIS is now a global terror movement far bigger, richer, more fanatical, and more dangerous than any other up to now. It occupies an area of Syria and Northern Iraq bigger than Great Britain and has 75,000 fanatical fighters coming from over 100 countries. Because ISIS has enormous functional oil production within its territory, its income is between $500 million and $1.4 billion per year. Besides oil, they have considerable income from racketeering, kidnapping, taxing the local population, and selling sex slaves. They also have an extremely well developed system of social media communication and state of the art propaganda videos that can be seen on YouTube. Much of their propaganda includes beheading and burning or drowning of their victims in cages. No one knows how many Christians they have killed. One estimate by a Christian rescue mission is 10,000. If the Obama Administration knows the number killed, it is being kept quiet.
The Islamic State’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has made himself Caliph of all Sunni Islam and is getting positive reactions around the world. Boko Haram jihadists in Nigeria have affiliated with ISIS and now call themselves the West Africa Province of the Islamic State. ISIS activity has been uncovered in every U.S. State.
ISIS places a great deal of emphasis on eschatology in recruiting and motivating its fighters. The full name of ISIS is the Islamic State of Iraq and Al Shaam. The Al Shaam is Greater Syria or the Levant—Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan. Al Shaam is the place of the final battle between Islam and unbelievers before the Judgment of Allah. Al Baghdadi believes the end time is near and tells his young warriors that it will be their last chance to be a martyr.
Foreign policy under Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton has been an unmitigated disaster, getting us involved in a Muslim Brotherhood agenda to remove the Assad regime in Syria, stirring up death and destruction, destabilizing the Middle East, and sowing and watering the seeds of global terrorism by facilitating the creation of the fanatical Islamic Caliphate called ISIS, On August 11, a Congressional task force found that the Obama Administration had altered intelligence reports to downplay the threat of ISIS.
Let’s take a look at the demographics of Syria to see the implications of the President’s alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood. He seems to have gotten us on the wrong side of a war, working with highly questionable allies. It looks suspiciously like a U.S. alliance with three Sunni terrorist organizations to overthrow the Syrian government. This has helped Russian foreign policy, and they have used their new position for a stronger alliance with Turkey. Even the Chinese have stepped in. At least the Russians will not be soft on ISIS.
According to the CIA Factbook, Syria’s population was a little over 18 million in 2014. About 87 percent of them are Muslim, but there are important religious, cultural, and political differences among them. Approximately 62 percent are Arab Sunni Muslims. Nine percent are Kurdish Sunni Muslims. About three percent are Turkomen Sunni Muslims, and approximately 13 percent are Shia Alawite Muslims. Another 3 percent are Druze, who are a unique minority that some classify as Shia Muslim. Approximately 10 percent are Christian, of whom more than two-thirds belong to the Syriac or Antiochian Orthodox churches and the rest to various smaller Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant denominations. Except for Lebanon, which is about one-third Christian, Syria has the highest percentage of Christians in the Middle East. In fact, Syria is the only country in the Middle East where the Christian population was increasing prior to the current civil war that began in 2011. The growth, however, was largely from Christians fleeing Iraq. When Saddam Hussein’s regime fell, Iraq’s new constitution made it an Islamic State “with freedom of religion,” but Christians soon came under severe persecution. (Maybe the U.S. de facto official policy that “Islam means peace” should be revised.) Syria’s second largest city, Aleppo, is 20 percent Christian. The Christian population of the Middle East as a whole, however, has dropped from fifteen percent to less than three percent because of wars, genocides, and persecution during the last 100 years.
Syrian demography and politics are distinctive in several ways. The unique Alawite sect of Shia Islam amounts to less than 13 percent of the population but almost completely dominates all political and military leadership positions. The Alawites are very different from the radical fundamentalist Shiites typical of Iran and parts of Iraq. Alawite leaders also tend to lean more toward Arab nationalism than pan-Islamic loyalties. They are quite moderate in culture and are tolerant of Christians, even celebrating some Christian holidays. Politically, the Christians are allied with the Shia Alawites and feel protected under Alawite rule. The Kurds, who predominate in the Rohava government of Northeastern Syria are quite secularized and tolerant and have little attraction to the radical Islamist tendencies frequent in the Sunni Arab majority. They have been strong and courageous opponents of ISIS. The Turkomens who share their territory are similar. The small Druze minority has a reputation of being fierce fighters, but they are not attracted to strict forms of Islam.
Moderation is not typical of most Sunni or Shia Islam. Their imams and mullahs consider the tolerant syncretism of the Alawites and the secular tolerance of the Kurds heretical and Christianity blasphemous. Yet in following the political agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and Al-Qaeda in Iraq to overthrow the Alawite Assad government, the Obama Administration has placed the U.S. on the side of Radical Islam and against the moderates whose survival, prosperity, and friendship are in our own best interests. By allying the U.S. with Al-Qaeda in Iraq we aided and abetted the creation of a fanatical worldwide Caliphate called the Islamic State. This is beyond stupid.
