The Difference Between ISIS and al-Qaeda

With ISIS taking responsibility for the downing of the Russian airline, the terrorist attacks in Paris and making specific threats against US cities, and al-Qaeda taking responsibility for the attack this week against foreigners in a hotel in Mali, I am once again being asked about the similarities and differences between these two radical Islamic terrorist organizations.

 

Al-Qaeda ("The Base") is a global Islamist Jihadist terrorism group founded by Osama bin Laden around 1989, for the sole purpose of attacking and humiliating the US until all Americans leave Saudi Arabia and Moslem Middle East lands.

 

Initially it was made up of Arab volunteers who fought against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s with the help of the CIA. Today it includes many foreigners, including Americans who are training in Syria in their Khorasan Brigades to perpetrate suicide attacks on US soil, US commercial airlines, and US interests worldwide (The hotel in Mali this week).

Among their beliefs:

• They are convinced that a Christian-Jewish alliance is conspiring to destroy Islam.
• As Salafist jihadists, they believe that the killing of non-combatants is religiously sanctioned.
• Al-Qaeda opposes man-made laws, and wants to replace them with a strict form of Sharia.
• Al-Qaeda regards liberal Muslims, Shias, Sufis and other sects as heretics and attack their mosques and gatherings.

Despite the killing of Bin Laden, the rise of ISIS and recent losses in Syria, al-Qaeda is still growing and raising money. It commands a multinational, stateless army (Jabhat al Nusra - in Syria) as well as a worldwide network of Islamist, extremist, jihadist cells. The two terrorist groups that claimed responsibility for the hotel bombing in Mali, "Al-Mourabitoun" and "al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb" are both Al-Qaeda franchises.

 

ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Sham), aka IS (Islamic State), aka ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and Levant), aka DAESH (Arabic acronym for ISIL), was founded in 1999 by Jordanian radical Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as Jama'at al-Tawhid wa-al-Jihad, "The Organization of Monotheism and Jihad". In 2004, al-Zarqawi swore allegiance to Osama bin Laden and the group became known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).

 

In 2006, AQI merged with several other Iraqi Sunni groups. Their main objective was to establish an Islamic State in Iraq while killing or enslaving all Shiites, Christians and Sunnis who refused to accept Al-Zarqawi's strict interpretation of Sharia law imposed in areas under AQI control.

 

Al-Zarqawi was killed in June 2006. His successors, Abu Abdullah al-Rashid al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayyub al-Masri changed the group's name to The Islamic State in Iraq (ISI).

 

When they were killed in 2010, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi became the new leader, expanding the territory controlled by ISI in Northern Iraq.

 

By 2013 ISI had control of large swathes of Syria, too. Al-Baghdadi again changed the name to The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (ISIL). In Arabic - ISIL = DAESH.

 

As ISIS continued to capture territory in both Iraq and Syria it used barbaric tactics to terrorize and eliminate whole villages of Shiites, Christians, Kurds and Yazidis. Still under the patronage of Al-Qaeda, al-Baghdadi was warned several times by Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama Bin Laden's successor as head of Al-Qaeda, to stop the depraved brutality.

 

Al-Baghdadi ignored him, so In February 2014 al-Zawahiri ordered the disbanding of ISIS. When al-Baghdadi ignored that order, too order, al-Qaeda kicked ISIS out.

 

Free to do as he pleased, Baghdadi was now in control of over half of Syria and a third of Iraq.

 

In June 2014 ISIS, now renamed, "Islamic State" (IS) self-proclaimed itself to be a worldwide Caliphate with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi its Caliph.

 

As a "Caliphate", it claims religious, political and military authority over all Muslims worldwide. The very concept of it being a "Caliphate" and the "Islamic State" has been rejected by Muslim leaders worldwide

 

So to summarize:

• Both Al-Qaeda and ISIS are extreme Islamist terrorist groups.
• Both adhere to the Salafi stream of Islam which wants to take believers back to the "pristine" early days of the faith before it was "polluted and corrupted" by foreign cultures and ideas.
• Both believe that violence and terror are the only ways to achieve their goal of worldwide Sharia and reestablishment of a real Caliphate and Islamic State.
• Al-Qaeda's main goal is attacking the US homeland, and US interests and personnel around the world (First World Trade Center bombing, 9/11, the Cole, Khobar Towers, the Mali hotel, etc.)
• ISIS main goal is to establish a large Islamic State in the Middle East by capturing and "ethnically cleansing" non-Sunnis from most of Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, North Africa and Israel (aka: the Levant) and renewing the Caliphate that was abolished by Kamal Ataturk in Turkey in 1924.
• ISIS secondary goal is killing all the Shiites within its state and either killing or converting all non-Muslims to their extreme interpretation of Islam.
• Al-Qaeda is currently planning a wave of attacks against the US that al-Zawahiri hopes will be greater, in both spectacle and casualty count, than 9/11.
• ISIS has for some time been talking about major attacks in the US, using both radicalized home-grown Jihadis, like in Paris and Belgium, and Americans and Canadians just back from training and fighting with them in Syria.

With no love lost between them, ISIS and al-Qaeda seem to be competing as to who will succeed in attacking the US with greater results.

 

So while there are significant differences between them, the one thing that al-Qaeda and ISIS fully agree on is their hatred for the West in general, and the Great Satan and Little Satan, the US and Israel in particular. 

 

Therefore I agree with some analysts who argue that they just might put aside their differences in order to collaborate on a series of coordinated strikes against the "Great Satan". We'll see...

ISIS Will Not Stop With Paris

The brutal slaughter, by radical Islamic Jihadists, of over 129 French citizens, visitors, students and tourists in Paris, was both eerily similar to, and yet different from 9/11.

 

Both of them were well planned, well prepared and well executed multiple target attacks. Both were perpetrated by extreme Islamist terrorist groups, Al-Qaeda and ISIS, and both were part of the all-out war declared by radical Islamic spiritual leaders against Western cultures, values and religions.

 

The difference between them is that while Al-Qaeda has, to date, focused mainly on attacking the US (9/11, Khobar towers, the Cole, the shoe bomber, the underwear bomber, Times Square, etc.), ISIS has declared both in videos and social media that the downing of the Russian airliner with an on-board bomb and the recent attacks in Paris are just the beginning of an ongoing and sustained campaign of terrorism strikes against every member of the US lead coalition air strikes in Syria, as well as against Russia and Iran.

 

So to be clear, there is no doubt in my mind that ISIS and its world-wide radicalized, in-country affiliates are currently preparing multi-target, mass casualty terrorist attacks in: the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Turkey (again), France (again), Russia (again), Saudi Arabia (maybe), Qatar (maybe) Morocco, Bahrain and - though with very little chance of success - Israel.

 

Can these attacks be thwarted? Yes, at least some can - but not by dropping a few bombs here and there in Syria, or building a broader "coalition", and certainly not by declaring that the goal of the US is to: "degrade, and ultimately destroy ISIS". That just pisses them off and draws thousands more to their ranks.

 

Like Eli Wallach, as "Tuco", said in "The Good the Bad and the Ugly": "When you have to shoot, shoot, don't talk".

 

The military power of ISIS can be destroyed by less talk and by sending tens of thousands of US and coalition troops into Syria and Iraq, with much more massive air support, and with full Russian and Iranian coordination and participation. This very hypothetical operation, like the "D-Day" invasion during WW2, will recapture critical cities and bases from ISIS, kill as many of their fighters and leaders as possible, including any radicalized Western Jihadis they find.

 

They should then establish separate interim Sunni, Alawite, Kurdish Yazidi and Druze autonomies under a strong UN or NATO peace-keeping mechanism, or even better - individual foreign temporary mandates, like after WW1.

• Russia - the Alawite autonomy
• Turkey - the Sunni autonomy
• Israel - the Druze autonomy
• US (temporarily) the Kurdish/Yazidi autonomy, until a time in the future when Kurdistan can be reunited.

This fantasy military operation will only degrade and probably destroy the physical Islamic State. But it will have no effect on the ISIS ideology which is deeply rooted in traditional Islam, the Quran and the early reliable scriptures. It's these beliefs and ideologies that motivate and drive the thousands of ISIS influenced Islamic Jihadist in North America, Europe and the Middle East, that are at this moment preparing to fulfill their Caliph's recent orders to: "kill the enemies of ISIS with bombs, guns, knives, stones or your bare hands."

 

Robust, ongoing anti-Islamist/Jihadist police operations, based on excellent and actionable intelligence, can, in most cases (but not all!) prevent these inevitable terrorist attacks.

   

But to stop the "cancer" of extreme, radical Islamic Jihadism, as described by many commentators over the past weekend, its core source of influence must be eradicated, and that is not the Islamic State, but the so called "Caliphate".

 

The "Islamic State" controls large areas of Iraq and Syria. So by definition it is a "state". However a "Caliphate" has to have a "Caliph" who: (1) cannot be self-appointed and (2) must fulfill certain criteria. Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi is a false Caliph, who not only appointed himself, but also does not meet the full qualification test.

 

So if al-Baghdadi can be convincingly delegitimized and disgraced, then his whole compelling narrative about the prophesized reestablishment of the Caliphate becomes a lie, and fallacy. Hopefully this will damage the ISIS brand.

 

But the US can't do that, neither can any non-Moslem. But the religious leaders of Saudi Arabia can.

 

This kind of religious ruling, or Fatwa, can only be issued by a high ranking experts on Sunni Islam like Ahmed Al-Tayeb, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University in Cairo and Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti, Sheik Abdulaziz Al al-Sheik, the highest religious authority in the country.

 

Both have strongly condemned ISIS and Al-Qaeda as "enemies of Islam". But to date neither has demanded the removal of al-Baghdadi as an imposter nor initiated the complex mechanism to install a legitimate Caliph.

 

So even if someone kills al-Baghdadi, and then kills the next self-appointed leader of ISIS, and then the next one and the next one, the terrorist attacks won't end. As long as the false dream of the "new caliphate" is alive and well in the Cyber world, and the tempting, heavenly "benefits" that Islamic "martyrdom" bestows on those who "earn them" attract disenfranchised and marginalized young people from all over, we can expect many more ISIS ideology-driven attempts at mass casualty terrorist attacks.

 

ISIS and its followers will not stop with Paris. Its next targets are listed above. They said they will do it, and I have no reason to doubt them.

Netanyahu and Obama - "The best Meeting Ever"? Not Exactly...

On Monday morning President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu met face to face for the first time in over a year. Considering the well documented history of their mutual distrust and personal dislike of each other, all eyes were glued to both the obligatory photo-op session and more importantly to the body language and comments after their two-and-a-half hour business meeting.

 

During the photographed session warm (if somewhat forced) smiles and handshakes were abundant while the frowns, stares and scowls we saw in previous meetings were kept to a minimum. It was clear that both leaders, in their respective "mutual admiration society" comments, tried to show that policy disputes are now behind them and that they are looking forward to cooperating on current burning Middle-East issues. Obama reiterated America's commitment to Israel's security and Bibi said that he has not given up on a two state solution between Israel and a demilitarized Palestinian state that recognizes the Jewish state of Israel.

 

They then went into a two-and-a-half hour working meeting with aids and advisors. And that's when, according to several Israeli participants, there was more than a slight change of tone. To be clear - the participants agreed that the extended meeting was cordial and business-like, but it didn't go exactly the way Bibi's team had expected. Maybe that's why there was no joint announcement at the end.

 

While there was no direct American request regarding construction or expansion of what the U.S. officially defines as "illegal settlements", there was a hint as broad as the state of Texas.

 

The American team had prepared a very detailed and effective presentation about what they described as the situation on the West Bank, showing how current and future Israeli unilateral actions, including within the "consensus" blocs (about 8% of the total West Bank, that include: the Jordan Valley and the mountains to its West; areas around Jerusalem and the Western hills of Judea that overlook and can strategically threaten the entire greater Tel Aviv metroplex and Ben Gurion airport, was "harming" any possible future negotiations or resolution.

 

The "consensus" blocs are the absolute minimum that most Israelis, from both the left and the right, agree must remain in Israel for security reasons.

 

The presentation essentially laid out a snapshot of the problem, perhaps to make future negotiations more focused on details and specifics. But even President Obama conceded that the Peace Process will probably not be concluded during his presidency.

 

Several other items were discussed by the two leaders and their teams during the meeting:

• The Iran nuke deal. Both agreed that Iran must never have nukes, but continued to completely, if respectfully, disagree on whether the P5+1 nuke deal was the way to do it. Iran has not yet signed it, and has stopped implementation according to the will of the Supreme Leader, who is demanding even more concessions from the US.
• The situations in Syria and Iraq with Russian and Iranian growing involvement.
• The war against ISIS and global Islamist terrorism. According to one report the President or Vice President thanked Bibi for sharing the highly sensitive message Israel intercepted between the small but dangerous group "Islamic State in Sinai" (formerly "Ansar Beit al-Maqdis") and the ISIS commanders in Rakkah, Syria, bragging about how they downed the Russian airliner by putting a bomb in or near its tail section, and asking if this qualifies them for "full membership" the Islamic State which would give them supplies of heavy weapons, ammunition, mortars, rockets, anti-aircraft missiles (which they don't have now) training, etc.
• The ongoing "Knife Intifada" in Israel (The US, reportedly fully supported Israel's actions to protect its citizens, especially in the wake of the attack that killed American soldiers in Jordan this week).
• The Israeli request, as detailed in this column last week, to increase the annual military aid agreement from $3.1 billion a year to $5 billion a year for the next 10 years. This is to enable Israel to purchase:
  • A squadron of highly advanced, gen 4.5 F15SE (Screaming Eagle) fighters
  • More Arrow 2 anti-intercontinental ballistic missile systems
  • A squadron of V22 helicopter/plane Osprey troop carriers, capable of reaching Iran
  • More advanced technology.
• Finally - Netanyahu made a personal request for Obama to use his executive powers to wave the five year "travel restriction" on Jonathan Pollard, who is being released from prison next week after serving 30 years, and enable him to travel and live in Israel, with his wife.

So what was agreed? On most of the items it was decided to set up specific joint work groups that will prepare a new MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) that Obama said he hopes to sign "before he leaves office" working papers for the discussion and eventual decision of the two leaders.

 

Regarding the expanded military request, President Obama said that he hopes to sign it before his presidency ends in 2017, which coincides with the expiration of the current military aid agreement.

 

Regarding allowing Jonathan Pollard to move to Israel next week, according to my sources the President's answer was an unequivocal "NO"!

 

And Finally - either there was much more going on during those two-and-a half hours that we don't know about yet...or all previous meetings Bibi had at the White house were really, really bad.

 

That's the only way I can explain Bibi saying on Monday, just before getting into his limousine outside the West Wing, that this sit-down with US President Barack Obama was "one of the best meetings I've had with him."

Last Week In The Middle East

Last week, here in Texas we were focused on storms, flooding, a terribly managed TV debate, the Cowboys' injury list ...and Halloween. But in the always turbulent Middle East, breaking news stories were coming in so fast that it was hard to keep up. Here is a rundown of some of the major ones:

 

US-Israel Relations

In preparation for Prime Minister Netanyahu's visit to the Oval Office next week, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe (Bogie) Ya'alon Spent the past week in Washington in extended meetings with Secretary of Defense Ash Carter. They discussed, current events, ISIS, Syria...and Israel's requests for additional new and upgraded equipment needed to maintain its military superiority and capabilities in the wake of the very problematic Iran nuclear deal.

 

These requests are in addition to the annual $3.1 billion in military aid Israel already receives as part of a $30 billion contract that ends in 2017. The requests include:

1. New, redesigned and upgraded F-15 fighters
2. Osprey V22 troop carriers
3. Precision "stand-off" air to surface missiles
4. Additional "Arrow" anti-missile missiles
5. A guarantee that Israel will be the only country in the region with F-35 fighters...and more.

According to Israeli sources these additional requests were authorized, and will be on the president's desk for signature during Bibi's visit. While it is doubtful if this gesture will change the personal distrust between the two leaders, the photo-op could, at least, help improve the optics of US-Israel relations.

  

Violence in Israel

The ongoing "knife Intifada" continued unabated last week despite heavy thunder storms. One noticeable change was a move of the locations of these "lone wolf" attacks from Jerusalem to cities within the "green line": Beer-Sheva, Beit Shemesh, Rishon Le-tzion...even Tel-Aviv. According to Israeli security sources - this is probably the result of Palestinian president Abu Mazen's call to continue the attacks, but move the violence away from Jerusalem, after the recent American-Israeli-Jordanian agreement to put cameras on Temple Mount (The Palestinian Authority has not yet agreed).

 

In addition, both Hamas and ISIS have ramped up their social media incitement. In one video ISIS calls for Palestinians "everywhere" to stab Jews "anywhere".

  

In another they call on Palestinians to: "Frighten them with car-bombs...turn them into rotten corpses and scattered body parts. Know that the soldiers of Islam are fighting here in Iraq, Syria, in Khorasan, the Caucasus, and in West Africa, but their eyes are pointed at Jerusalem, and they will enter it with Allah's help."

The narrator then continues: "The battle for Jerusalem is one of the end goals of Islamic State and will take place after two major battles between a Muslim army and 70 nations in Syria, according to Islamic State's end-time vision".

 

Another ISIS video last week said that Palestinian Arabs should not trust Hamas or Fatah because they only serve their own interests and "are collaborators of the Crusaders (the West) and others are collaborators of the Iranians."

  

In yet another new video, an ISIS member implores the Palestinian Arabs not to wait any longer and to go out and kill Jews: "What are you waiting for? For organizations like Hamas to open their weapons caches to you? Be Lone Wolves who attack Allah's enemies. Carry what you can as far as weapons go and murder them where you find them."

 

It's unfortunate that The US administration still seems to have a cavalier attitude about murderous, Islamist inspired, anti-Jewish violence in Israel: On October 19, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said, after meeting Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo in Madrid, that the fatal knife attacks against Jews in Israel are just: "random acts of violence."  (second 45 of the recording) 

 

Downed Russian Airliner

As of this writing, it is still not clear what exactly caused the Russian Airliner to disintegrate over Sinai last week. ISIS has claimed responsibility, despite the fact that most military experts agree that they probably could not have shot it down with the weapons they are known to have.

 

However with recent reports from analysis of the wreckage, preliminary autopsies of the bodies recovered, data from the flight recorders and analysis of data from a US military satellite that detected a large "flash" from the Airbus just before it disappeared from the radar, most experts now agree that there was some sort of catastrophic explosion on board, at 30,000 feet.

While a mechanical glitch could have brought down the civilian Airbus A321-200, I tend to agree with the British experts that are claiming, as of today (Wednesday, November 4th, that despite formidable Egyptian security at the airport in Sinai, someone managed to get an explosive device onto the airplane, probably in the cabin. Remember, the bomb that brought down the Pan AM plane over Lockerbie weighed only 12 ounces, and was hidden in a small transistor radio.

 

We'll follow the investigation closely, as well as the lead-up to, and the contents and optics of, the November 9th Oval office meeting.