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Posts Tagged ‘Da3esh’

Tidbits and notes. Part 427

Posted by: adonis49 on: November 27, 2019

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Tidbits and notes. Part 427

Europe was wracked with terror attacks for 2 decades in the 1960’s.
The world was wracked with terror attacks for 3 decades after 1980, before Da3esh (ISIS) was established.
Africa was wracked with the most violent of attacks by enrolling children in their armies and forcing them to kill their parents as sign of allegiance.The USA was mainly behind all these crimes against humanity
Singling Da3esh (ISIS) is a strong message that the USA is sticking to its strategy of destabilizing the Middle-East.

The death toll in Gaza surged. According to Palestinian officials, a family of 8 was killed in Israeli airstrikes, bringing the total number of deaths to 32 since both sides started exchanging fire on Nov. 12, following a targeted killing in Gaza. There have been (officially) no Israeli deaths so far.

Actually, every Friday in the last year, Palestinians in Gaza have been marching to the borders as their UN rights to Return home. Israel has been sniping and had killed hundred so far and many thousands have been injured and crippled.

US government regulates everyday consumer products more tightly than it does the nation’s voting systems.

“Operation Blackout”, simulating an election process in USA, pitted ethical hackers against participants from the FBI, Secret Service, Department of Homeland Security, and Virginia police, presenting real-world possibilities pushed to an extreme. The game-play, which forbade any actual hacking, was strategic, not technical, and a team of cybersecurity professionals, monitored by US government observers, decided the outcome. The exercise ended in abject chaos

“America is totally unprepared for what is coming in (election interference) because it will be like nothing we’ve seen before. Everyone is vulnerable, and everyone will be affected.” And the number of people needed to influence an election is surprisingly small,

Most useful decision: Coming to term with “how we wish to die”

Decision to die in own bed is best definition of extreme laziness.

If you die before you decide how to die, that’s tough luck

If you die differently, that’s recklessness.

Les deux puissance au monde, le sabre et l’esprit, ont ete’ vaincus en Libye et en Somalie (there are no States in these 2 countries)

All curves for reforms and changes intersect a focal point: the points of perceived chaos, and the poorer classes are demanded to pay the heavy price.

Palestinians’ “day of rage.” In the West Bank and Gaza, demonstrators protest against the Trump administration’s reversal of longstanding US policy on Israeli settlements, which are considered illegal under international law. The Arab League formally rejected the US position yesterday.

A Moroccan rapper was imprisoned for a song about corruption. Mohamed Mounir, or “Gnawi,” was found guilty of insulting police in the track “Long Live the People.”

In the 2017 election, the MRP poll from YouGov made the surprising prediction—eventually proven correct—that the UK Conservative Party would lose a majority. The 2019 poll relies on 50,000 people, rather than the usual 1,000-people survey.

The intense pressure to succeed in South Korea comes in many forms, including economic, social, cosmetic, and educational, writes Isabella Steger. But as unhappiness mounts at society’s intolerance of failure—perhaps manifested most clearly in the country’s persistently high suicide rate—the government is stepping in to encourage more acceptance of second chances. (How to learn to embrace failure?)

Demonstrating against a hike in fuel prices, some 200,000 people set alight 731 banks and 140 government sites, according to the country’s interior minister. Iran hiking of fuel prices was meant to discourage transferring fuel across borders by illegal dealers.

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Tags: adonis49, Da3esh, Day of Rage, gaza, Isis, Mohamed Mounir, Operation Blackout, palestinians, Tidbits and notes

Smugglers of the loot that funds ISIS (Da3esh)

Posted by: adonis49 on: February 18, 2015

  • In: cities/geography | economy/finance | Essays | Events/Cultural/Educational/Arts | political Artical | social articles
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The men who smuggle the loot that funds IS

By Simon Cox BBC, Lebanon

Artefacts looted from Syria
The gold-plated bronze figurine (photo D Osseman) was stolen from the museum in Hama, western Syria

The trade in antiquities is one of Islamic State’s main sources of funding, along with oil and kidnapping.

For this reason the UN Security Council last week banned all trade in artefacts from Syria, accusing IS militants of looting cultural heritage to strengthen its ability “to organise and carry out terrorist attacks”. (The US looted Iraq artefacts for 8 years)

The BBC has been investigating the trade, and the routes from Syria through Turkey and Lebanon to Europe.

The Smuggler

It has taken many calls and a lot of coaxing to get a man we are calling “Mohammed” to meet us. He is originally from Damascus but now plies his trade in the Bekaa valley on the border between Syria and Lebanon.

He’s 21 but looks much younger in his T-shirt, skinny jeans and black suede shoes. As we sit in an apartment in central Beirut I have to lean forward to hear the softly spoken young man describe how he began smuggling looted antiquities from Syria.

“There’s three friends in Aleppo we deal with, these people move from Aleppo all the way to the border here and pay a taxi driver to sneak it in.”

He specialised in smaller items which would be easier to move on – but he says even that has become too risky. “We tried our best to get the items which had most value, earrings, rings, small statues, stone heads,” he says.

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Smuggler: “IS stole from the museums“

He made a good profit but bigger players with better connections “sold pieces worth $500,000, some for $1m”, he says. When I ask who’s making the money and controlling the trade in Syria his gentle voice takes on a flinty tone: “IS are the main people doing it. They are the ones in control of this business, they stole from the museums especially in Aleppo,” he says.

“I know for a fact these militants had connections overseas and they talked ahead of time and they shipped overseas using their connections abroad.” Mohammed is still involved in cross-border trade, but no longer in antiquities. “Anyone caught with it gets severe punishment,” he says. “They accuse you of being IS.”

The Go-between

To sell looted antiquities you need a middle-man, like “Ahmed”. Originally from eastern Syria, he is based in a town in southern Turkey – he doesn’t want me to specify which one as he doesn’t want the police to know.

As a Turkish-speaker he is popular with Syrian smugglers, who ask if he can move goods on to local dealers. When I speak to him via Skype he shows me a blanket next to him filled with artefacts – statues of animals and human figures, glasses, vases and coins. They were dug up in the last few months.

“They come from the east of Syria, from Raqqa, all the areas controlled by ISIS (Islamic State),” he says. Islamic State plays an active part in controlling the trade, he tells me. Anyone wanting to excavate has to get permission from IS inspectors, who monitor the finds and destroying any human figures, which are seen as idolatrous (those Ahmed is showing me have slipped through the net). IS takes 20% as tax. “They tax everything,” he says.

gold coins

The main trade is in stoneworks, statues and gold, and it can be extremely lucrative. “I have seen one piece sold for $1.1m,” he says. “It was a piece from the year 8500BC.”

He gently handles each artefact as he brings it closer to the webcam to give me a better view. He has had to pay a sizeable bond to the smugglers to get this material and he doesn’t want to lose any of it.

The final destination is Western Europe, he says. “Turkish merchants sell it to dealers in Europe. They call them, send pictures… people from Europe come to check the goods and take them away.” Ahmed will have to return the looted artefacts to his Syrian contacts, as I am clearly not buying them, but he won’t be returning to his homeland. “If I went back I’d be killed,” he says.

The Dealer

It’s an unremarkable tourist shop in the centre of Beirut. Inside the glass cases are ancient oil lamps, rings and glassware but the shop owner, a laconic man in his late 40s, has an unusual selling tactic – he says much of it is fake.

However, he assures me he does have genuine pieces from the Hellenic and Byzantine periods, around 1,000 years old. I’m interested what other items he can get, mosaics for example? I had been advised by archaeologists that mosaics would almost certainly be looted – at the moment, that would mean most likely from Syria.

He asks which kind I want. Faces, animals, geometric designs? “If you’re serious we can have a serious negotiation… there is always a way,” he promises. When I ask if it’s legal he smiles as he tells me the only way to legally ship these items is with official documentation from a museum saying they have been cleared for export.

A statue from Palmyra

If it was only a small mosaic I wanted, I could take the chance and try to smuggle it out myself but he warns it’s a serious decision, as I could get caught. For a fee he can have them shipped to the UK but it will cost me many thousands of pounds.

We shake hands as I leave and he gives me his business card. It has only taken 10 minutes to be offered illicit antiquities. Arthur Brand, an investigator who helps recover stolen antiquities isn’t surprised, it chimes with his experience in Lebanon. “I’ve been there several times and at times and it really is amazing,” he tells me from his base in Amsterdam.

“The illicit trade is run as a professional business with with offices and business cards and you can buy antiquities from Lebanon, but also from countries like Syria, Iraq.” The link between smugglers and dealers is the dirty secret the art world doesn’t want to admit to, he says.

The Cop

He could easily pass for the star of an Arabic cop show but Lt Col Nicholas Saad is a real policeman, head of Lebanon’s bureau of international theft. In his office, filled with certificates from the FBI and Scotland Yard, he shows me photos of huge Roman busts seized in a recent raid in Lebanon.

We go up to the roof of his police station, where out to the east, beyond the mountains, is the border with Syria. This is where refugees pour into the country and are exploited by the smuggling gangs.

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Lt Col Nicholas Saad: Most money is made in Europe

“The refugees come in big numbers and the gangs put things between the belongings of the refugees,” he explains. Since the conflict in Syria he has noticed a significant increase in the smuggling of looted artefacts, “especially from the Islamic parts, Raqqa (the base) of the Islamic State”, he adds.

His team has seized hundreds of Syrian artefacts. “We have the archaeology expert that said they’re very valuable from the Roman period, from the Greek period, years before Christ,” he says. But there isn’t a market for them in Lebanon. “Lebanon is a transit station, it’s one of the the doors that goes to Europe. The real money is made in Europe.”

The Treasure

Inside the Beirut National museum are treasures from the cradle of civilisation – Hellenic, Roman and Byzantine statues, busts and sarcophagi 3,000 years old. Hidden away from the public in a store room below the main galleries, seized looted antiquities wait to be returned to Syria.

My guide is Dr Assaad Seif, an archaeologist and head of excavations at the directorate general of antiquities in Beirut. He rings a bell and a wrought iron door is unlocked. Inside are scores of items – pottery, stonework – but the most valuable items are sealed away in a warehouse. “We have huge funeral sculptures, representing men and women used to seal the tombs, from Palmyra,” he says.

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Dr Assaad Seif: Some smuggled artefacts are fake, others are worth $1m

Most of the seized items are from excavations rather than thefts from museums. The looters target warehouses at ancient sites like Palmyra, a Unesco world heritage site. “The warehouses at archaeological sites have objects they know are not listed or catalogued yet, and they think it could be easier to sell them,” he says.

“The Palmyra objects had value for people in Syria… it gives a kind of identity,” he says. Although reluctant to put a price on any of the bigger items, after some coaxing he relents. “We have a dozen objects that would sell for $1m each on the open market.” I understand why they keep them out of sight of curious foreign visitors.

The Destination

File on 4

Stolen tablet

You can hear Simon Cox’s radio documentary on File on 4, on BBC Radio 4, at 2015 on Tuesday 17 February – or afterwards on the BBC iPlayer

It has taken days to get through to Dr Maamoun Abdulkarim, the archaeologist in charge of Syria’s dept of antiquities in Damascus. When I do reach him, he’s angry. “The sites under the control of ISIS, in these areas we have a disaster, a lot of problems. IS attack all things just for the money,” he says.

“It is our memory, our identity, for the government, the opposition, for all Syria.” It’s impossible to stop the looting but he is adamant more could be done to crack down on the trade. “We are sure through all the sources a lot of objects go from Syria to Europe, in Switzerland, in Germany, in UK – and Gulf countries like Dubai and Qatar,” he says.

It was a common refrain.

Everyone from the Lebanese police to Mohammed the smuggler and Ahmed the go-between said the main market was Europe.

In the UK there have been no prosecutions or arrests for selling looted Syrian artefacts but Vernon Rapley, who ran the Metropolitan Police’s art and antiquities squad for almost a decade, says too much shouldn’t be read into this.

“I’m quite confident that there have been seizures of material like this,” he confidently states, as we stroll around his new workplace, the Victoria and Albert museum, where he is director of security.

Rapley still liaises closely with his former police unit and he is certain that artefacts from Syria are being sold here. He wants the trade in these antiquities to become “socially repugnant and unacceptable” so that in the future, he says, “we don’t have interior decorators looking for these things to decorate people’s houses”.

You can hear Simon Cox’s radio documentary on File on 4, on BBC Radio 4, at 2015 on Tuesday 17 February, or afterwards on the BBC iPlayer

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Tags: adonis49, Arthur Brand, Assaad Seif, Da3esh, Dr Maamoun Abdulkarim, funds, Isis, loot, looting cultural heritage, Lt Col Nicholas Saad, Simon Cox, smugglers, trade in antiquities, Vernon Rapley

Hot posts this week (June 18/2014)

Posted by: adonis49 on: July 6, 2014

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Hot posts this week (June 18/2014)

  • New Israeli Facebook page: Kill a Palestinian every hour. Is that within free expression?
  • “Oh God! Here We Go Again” in Iraq. And the 7 who should STFU about Iraq
  • Different point of view Of famous landmarks. And how development altered the view
  • Iraq and Syria Islamic extremist movement ISIS, Da3esh: Occupies most of Sunni majority districts
  • Making shorts out of headdress designs: Like Palestinian kuffiyeh
  • Are in love with the “Mondial” World Cup? Why the Lebanese should be in sync? How it can affect Ramadan?
  • How Wehr and Google translate Arabic: History of Arabic dictionaries…
  • What kinds of learning programs? Common Core State Standards, Inquiry Learning…
  • The Israelis who broke silence: Stories from an occupation

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Tags: adonis49, Arabic dictionaries, Core State Standards, Da3esh, Hot posts this week (June 18/2014), Islamic extremist movement ISIS, Israelis who broke silence, Kill a Palestinian, Palestinian kuffiyeh, STFU about Iraq, Wehr

Iraq and Syria Islamic extremist movement ISIS, Da3esh: Occupies most of Sunni majority districts

Posted by: adonis49 on: June 16, 2014

  • In: cities/geography | death/ terminally ill/ massacres, genocide | Essays | Events/Cultural/Educational/Arts | Islam/Moslem/Islamic world | political Artical | religion/history | social articles
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 Iraq and Syria Islamic extremist movement ISIS, Da3esh: Occupies most of Sunni majority districts

For a year now, one of Al Qaeda factions in Syria and Iraq ISIS has been positioning itself in the North-East region of Syria (Deir el Zur and Hasakeh along the Euphrates River) and in the Sunni dominant region of Iraq in the North-West .

Looks like Daesh was getting trained in swift warfare in Syria with objective of sweeping through the upper half of Iraq. ISIS has managed to dislodge the Nusra Front and the Jihad Islamists movement in Syria from  the Euphrates River region and linking firmly with Iraq. ISIS was involved in selling oil to Turkey from the Syrian oil fields.

After occupying Mosul, ISIS put its hands on $500 million  in the city central bank, enough to pay salaries of 20,000 fighters for an entire year.

Over half a million people fled Nineveh Province to the Kurdish dominated province of Irbil.

Jacob Siegel published on WORLD NEWS this June 13, 2014:

ISIS’s Secret Allies

The Iraqi extremist group didn’t conquer a major chunk of the country in the North-West on their own (about a fourth so far) and threatening the Capital Baghdad after entering Ba3kouba (75 km from the capital). They had help – from ex-Saddamites (led by Ezzat al Douri, second in command to Saddam), tribal councils, and many  other Islamist militants.
All eyes have been on ISIS:  this jihadist group cut Iraq within a week in half and declared its own state in the cities it captured. With fewer than 10,000 fighters ISIS forced the retreat of the better-armed Iraqi army forces many times its size.
Their incredible success on the battlefield has fed into a growing lore about the group: the small band of fanatics that can take down a country. The truth is more basic and it’s something ISIS doesn’t want to admit—they weren’t acting alone.
It wasn’t having God on their side that let ISIS conquer Mosul and Tikrit with hardly a fight, analysts say. It was the other Sunni insurgent groups that were there alongside them, unacknowledged partners in the coalition. Those groups have deep organizational roots and were instrumental in the takeover but have been largely overshadowed by ISIS.The standoff in Iraq isn’t between a single militant group and the government.

There is a broad coalition of Sunni groups—both nationalist and Islamist—who had been plotting against Iraq’s Shia government for years before ISIS’s rise provided the chance to strike. ISIS and its partners are unnatural allies. Maintaining their unity was the key to their early success, and is the only way they can hold the ground they have taken, but that incentive may prove to be weaker than the force of their natural hostilities.

“ISIS control in Mosul is contingent on political alliances they have made with the Baathists and the tribal groups,” said Brian Fishman, a fellow at the New America Foundation, who has been following ISIS since the group’s early days during the Iraq war.

“This alliance marching on Baghdad is not a natural one,” Fishman added. “We can understand how it was put together in opposition to the government but what exactly is holding it together, and how sturdy it is, is an open question,” he said.

The anonymity of the non-ISIS members in the anti-government faction wasn’t by choice. Some have used social media to broadcast their war exploits and document their control of conquered territories. It could be an early sign of fissures in the coalition that beat back Baghdad’s army.

(All images used in this story were taken with permission from the twitter account of Middle East scholar Aymenn Al-Tamimi.)

If the rebel groups begin fighting against ISIS and each other, even as they remain at war with the government, it could lead to something like Syria’s war of all against all. Iraq may not descend into the kind of protracted conflict that has ground up Syria and its people, but the days ahead will invariably be filled with bloodshed.

Hassan Hassan, an analyst at the Delma institute in Abu Dhabi, was one of the first observers to point out ISIS reliance on cooperation with Iraqi insurgent groups.

“Non-ISIS groups played a central role in the takeover,” Hassan said.

Tactical details from the past week’s offensive are hard to come by. But Hassan says the groups that cooperated with ISIS include: “The Sufi-Baathist militia known as the Army of the Men of the Naqshbandi Order, which has former members of the Iraqi army during Saddam Hussein’s reign. The Al Qaeda-originated Ansar al-Islam, and provisional tribal councils, many of the which are actually front groups for the Naqshbandis,” according to Hassan.

The coalition seemed—initially at least—to have tempered ISIS’ severe approach to governance, which traditionally relied on public execution as a staple of justice.

“This alliance marching on Baghdad is not a natural one. We can understand how it was put together in opposition to the government but what exactly is holding it together, and how sturdy it is, is an open question.”

“The involvement of these groups can be felt through the way the fighters treated the local population fairly well, compared to the usual notoriously brutal behavior of ISIS,” Hassan said.

It’s a point echoed by Fishman. “There has been genuine learning from this organization about how to interface with populations,” Fishman said, referring to ISIS’ experiences in Iraq and the areas it currently controls in Syria.

Because Mosul fell so quickly, with little fighting from the Iraqi army, the city appears to have been relatively unscathed by the assault that wrested it from government control. With ISIS and other anti-government insurgent factions long entrenched in Mosul they seem to have been able to quickly restore some basic services in the city.

One photo captured by Middle East scholar Aymenn al-Tamimi, who collects tweets from Iraqi insurgent groups including ISIS,  shows garbage trucks collecting trash in eastern Mosul on Thursday.

Another shows fuel tankers providing gas to a line of cars.

For all its genuine learning and operational acuity, ISIS’ conception of itself as the embodiment of God’s will is hard to reconcile with practical compromise.

The relative moderation evidenced early on may be necessary to maintain the population’s support and preserve the coalition, but ISIS has begun to impose its fundamentalist approach.

Already, the group has declared itself the sole authority in Mosul and released a set of religious laws for the people of Nineveh province. The laws laid out are no one’s idea of moderate:

– “For women, dress decently and wear wide clothes. Only go out if needed.”
– “Our position on Shrines and graves is clear. All to be destroyed basically.”
– “Gatherings, carrying flags (other than that of Islamic State) and carrying guns is not allowed. God ordered us to stay united.”
– “For the police, soldiers and other Kafir institutions, you can repent. We opened special places that will allow you to repent.”
– “No drugs, no alcohol and no cigarettes allowed.”

There are more rules on the list, but that gives a pretty good sense of their severity.

Hassan, who has been observing ISIS said, “It is expected that ISIS would try to impose itself, considering that it brands itself as a state and that it alone has the legitimacy to rule.”

“The group’s propensity for imposing its will regardless of the consequences will likely lead to confrontation and clashes with other groups. The offensive was planned together but that does not mean the old rivalries will not come up again. It is very likely that rivalry will lead to clashes.”

AP

 

 

 
 

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Tags: adonis49, Aymenn Al-Tamimi, Brian Fishman, Da3esh, Deir el Zur, ex-Saddamites, Ezzat al Douri, Hassan Hassan, iraq, Isis, Jacob Siegel, Naqshbandi Order, Nineveh province, syria

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