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Report on foreign fighters in Syria: 5 years of war, 360,000 foreign fighters

Dr. Jameel M. Shaheen
Firil Center for Studies
Fri, 19 Feb 2016 15:46 UTC
firil
A statistics-based study that covers what has happened in Syria between April 10, 2011 and 31 January 2016. The study focuses on the Syrian opposition, in general, and the number of the foreign fighters, in particular. Some of the numbers mentioned here are approximate due to the disappearance of the bodies. The study literature builds on what has been published by websites, media and internet pages, both inside Syria and outside it. It also depends on other 51 sources, some of which are listed at the end of the research.

Key Findings:

1. The number of foreign fighters who have fought the Syrian army between April 2011 and the end of 2015 is 360,000. The number does not indicate a totality of all the fighters who fought together; rather it refers to the total number in the time span of the study. The figure includes men and women, all those who participated in the fighting directly, by taking up guns, or indirectly, by providing military and logistic support, in addition to doctors, nurses, marriage jihad women, drivers who took up arms, and the people involved in digging tunnels or building soil mounds. It is found that 95,000 were killed, and that 120,000 have departed, either temporary or permanently, to their home or other countries, and 24,000 were missing. The missing person, by definition, is the one who has not shown for more than 6 months.

2. The number of the foreign fighters who are fighting the Syrian army is estimated to be 90,000 in Syria; most of them fight within the ranks of ISIS and al Nusra Front, compared to those fighting with other factions.
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Info

Colombia and FARC shake on historic peace deal after 52 years of CIA-funded war


RT
Thu, 25 Aug 2016 16:22 UTC
FARC's Ivan Marquez (L) and Colombia's Humberto de la Calle (R) shake hands
© Alexandre Meneghini / ReutersFARC's Ivan Marquez (L) and Colombia's Humberto de la Calle (R) shake hands over their historic peace deal Wednesday while Cuba's Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez looks on.
The CIA may need to find another enemy in Colombia now that the South American country's government has reached a historic peace deal with the 'People's Army' known as FARC.

Negotiators from both sides shook hands on Wednesday in Cuba, ending a 52-year conflict funded by the US government.

The announcement was met with celebration in Colombia.

Comment: A truce between the Colombian government and FARC has been reached in Havana

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Star of David

Israeli think tank: Don't destroy ISIS; it's a 'useful tool' against Iran, Hezbollah, Syria and Russia

Ben Norton
Salon
Tue, 23 Aug 2016 16:00 UTC
Daesh tank
© Reuters
According to a think tank that does contract work for NATO and the Israeli government, the West should not destroy ISIS, the fascist Islamist extremist group that is committing genocide and ethnically cleansing minority groups in Syria and Iraq.

Why? The so-called Islamic State "can be a useful tool in undermining" Iran, Hezbollah, Syria and Russia, argues the think tank's director.

"The continuing existence of IS serves a strategic purpose," wrote Efraim Inbar in "The Destruction of Islamic State Is a Strategic Mistake," a paper published on Aug. 2.
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Star of David

Are the Clintons actually 'witting' Israeli agents?

Philip Giraldi
Unz Review
Tue, 23 Aug 2016 15:47 UTC
Michael Morell
© Win McNamee / Agence France-PresseFormer Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell
Man who "ran the CIA" offers an entirely new perspective

On August 5th, Michael Morell, a former acting Director of the CIA, pilloried GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, concluding that he was an "unwitting agent of Russia." Morell, who entitled his New York Times op-ed "I Ran the CIA and now I'm endorsing Hillary Clinton," described the process whereby Trump had been so corrupted. According to Morell, Putin, it seems, as a wily ex-career intelligence officer, is "trained to identify vulnerabilities in an individual and to exploit them. That is exactly what he did early in the primaries. Mr. Putin played upon Mr. Trump's vulnerabilities... In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation."

I have previously observed how incomprehensible the designation of "unwitting agent" used in a sentence together with "recruited" is, but perhaps I should add something more about Morell that might not be clear to the casual reader. Morell was an Agency analyst, not a spy, who spent nearly his entire career in and around Washington. The high point of his CIA experience consisted of briefing George W. Bush on the President's Daily Brief (PDB).

Morell was not trained in the arduous CIA operational tradecraft course which agent recruiters and handlers go through. This means that his understanding of intelligence operations and agents is, to put it politely, derivative. If he had gone through the course he would understand that when you recruit an agent you control him and tell him what to do. The agent might not know whom exactly he is really answering to as in a false flag operation, but he cannot be unwitting.

Comment: Indeed, Killary's decisions over the years have dove-tailed remarkably with the long-term goals of Israel.

What the media misses in the Syrian bloodbath: a 'thank you' to Hillary from Israel

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MIB

Turkish police 'stopped tracking ISIL cell before attacks'


Hurriyet Daily News
Thu, 25 Aug 2016 15:34 UTC
turkish police terrorists Ankara attack
© Hurriyet Daily News
Turkish police in the southeastern province of Gaziantep on March 2014 reportedly stopped tracking a group of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants, who later staged deadly attacks in Turkey.

Police stopped tracking militants in order to prevent them from receiving "unjust treatment" as part of a then-existing law stating that people suspected of involvement in terrorist activities cannot be tracked for more than six months to "prevent them from being victims," according to the Doğan News Agency.

Police in the southeastern province of Gaziantep monitored from 2012 to 2014 some 19 militants including Yunus Durmaz, the mastermind of the Suruç and Ankara bomb attacks and the former Turkey "emir" of ISIL, according to an indictment.

A total of 19 militants of the group, along with eight fugitive suspects and Durmaz, who blew himself up during a police raid in late May, were physically and technologically tracked by the police for two years, and information and pictures obtained during this period were included in the indictment of an ISIL case opened in March.

Comment: One might want to inquire if the prosecutor's office was staffed with Gulenist supporters.
[A] quote from a Gülen speech to his followers when he was still in Turkey in the 1990's:
"You must move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the power centers...You must wait for the time when you are complete and conditions are ripe, until we can shoulder the entire world and carry it...You must wait until such time as you have gotten all the state power...in Turkey...Until that time, any step taken would be too early—like breaking an egg without waiting the full forty days for it to hatch."

—Imam Fetullah Gülen, in a sermon to followers in Turkey


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Laptop

UK MPs: Twitter, Facebook, Google "consciously failing" to combat extremist material


RT
Thu, 25 Aug 2016 14:59 UTC
isis computer
© Dado Ruvic / Reuters
Social media giants Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and others are "consciously failing" to combat extremist material promoting terrorism on their sites, an influential group of MPs claims.

The Home Affairs Select Committee have accused internet giants such as Google of "passing the buck" and allowing websites to become "recruiting platforms for terrorism."

Committee chair Keith Vaz MP described online forums, message boards, and social media platforms as "the lifeblood of Daesh," also known as Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).

His damning assessment comes a week after it emerged that UK authorities had faced difficulties when trying to get the internet posts of radical Islamist cleric Anjem Choudary taken down, even after he was arrested for supporting IS.

Comment: On the one hand, the NSA is presented as an omniscient entity spying on everyone, aware of a person's entire online fingerprint. On the other hand, jihadis seemingly use social media platforms with little to no consequence. There's a contradiction here. Another contradiction: Twitter, Facebook and Google all claim to be doing their part to clamp down on online extremists, but they don't seem to be doing a very good job. Well, maybe that is their job.

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Snakes in Suits

Turkey hunts alleged coup plotter who also made super PAC donations for Hillary Clinton campaign

Paul Singer
USA Today
Tue, 23 Aug 2016 14:56 UTC
Grand National Assembly of Turkey bombed
© Adem Altan, AFP/Getty ImagesPeople inspect damage after the Grand National Assembly of Turkey was bombed by rebel jets on July 16, 2016, in Ankara as part of an apparent coup attempt.
An Istanbul-based college professor, who has been accused by the Turkish government of coordinating last month's failed coup attempt, is at the center of a group of suspicious 2014 contributions to a super PAC supporting Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, a USA TODAY analysis shows.

Adil Oksuz is the subject of a massive manhunt in Turkey. Two years ago, an apparently fictitious company that Oksuz created made a $5,000 donation to the Ready for Hillary PAC, a group preparing for Clinton's presidential campaign.

The Clinton campaign did not provide a response to USA TODAY's questions about the donations. The campaign did not control the operations of the super PAC.
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Alarm Clock

'We killed some folks': CENTCOM report admits U.S. airstrike 'might have' killed civilians


RT
Thu, 25 Aug 2016 14:51 UTC
super hornet
© Hamad I Mohammed / ReutersAmerican baby killers jets with precision civilian-targeting systems.
American jets targeting Islamic State in Raqqa, Syria may have killed an unknown number of civilians during an airstrike Tuesday, the US Central Command has said.

"Reports indicate that what appeared to be a non-military vehicle drove into the target area after the weapon was released from the aircraft," CENTCOM said in a statement Wednesday, referring to Tuesday's airstrike near the self-proclaimed capital of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL)."The vehicle's occupants may have perished as a result of the strike."


Comment: "I swear judge, she just ran right into my fist."


US bombers were targeting a "weapons facility" outside of Raqqa, CENTCOM said, adding that officials at joint task force level will review the incident and decide whether it warrants an investigation.

Comment: The U.S. has no authority to be in Syria in the first place.

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Camcorder

Karachi's mayor-elect Waseem Akhtar to run city 'via video link from prison'


RT
Thu, 25 Aug 2016 14:47 UTC
Waseem Akhtar
© Akhtar Soomro / ReutersWaseem Akhtar, mayor nominee of Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) political party, gestures while speaking to members of the media (unseen) after the ballot for mayor outside the Municipal Corporation Building in Karachi, Pakistan, August 24, 2016.
Waseem Akhtar, the mayor-elect of Karachi, has promised to run Pakistan's biggest and richest city from his prison cell via a "video link," according to his lawyer. Akhtar was detained last month on suspicion of aiding alleged militants.

Akhtar is a member of Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), which has ruled the port city of Karachi for decades.

Authorities do not expect to release Akhtar before August 30, when he is scheduled to take his oath. Thus, Akhtar's plan is to run the city from prison, with prison guards arranging all his visits.

"He will open an office in jail and via video link he will conduct council sessions," Reuters quoted Akhtar's lawyer, Mahfooz Yar Khan, as saying. "He can run Karachi via video link for five years."

MQM has reportedly asked the prison to make sure Akhtar has a "well-furnished office" during his time in prison as well as have police escorts for meetings outside the jail.

Comment: Maybe Killary can do the same thing?

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Document

AP report on Clinton Foundation donors meeting with the war harpy finally published, after 3 years of stonewalling from Corrupt Hillary


Yahoo! News / AP
Tue, 23 Aug 2016 14:26 UTC
More than half the people outside the government who met with Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state gave money — either personally or through companies or groups — to the Clinton Foundation. It's an extraordinary proportion indicating her possible ethics challenges if elected president.

At least 85 of 154 people from private interests who met or had phone conversations scheduled with Clinton while she led the State Department donated to her family charity or pledged commitments to its international programs, according to a review of State Department calendars released so far to The Associated Press. Combined, the 85 donors contributed as much as $156 million. At least 40 donated more than $100,000 each, and 20 gave more than $1 million.

Donors who were granted time with Clinton included an internationally known economist who asked for her help as the Bangladesh government pressured him to resign from a nonprofit bank he ran; a Wall Street executive who sought Clinton's help with a visa problem; and Estee Lauder executives who were listed as meeting with Clinton while her department worked with the firm's corporate charity to counter gender-based violence in South Africa.
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