It has been something of a strange weekend in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). On Saturday (2/5/15) the UK based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) announced that 51 Syrian civilians had been killed in a US-led coalition air-strike in which no ISIL fighters were injured.
Although they are amateurs and have a clear bias against the Syrian government when it comes to ISIL the SOHR tend not to lie deliberately. However no-one has produced any evidence to support this claim and it has been denied by the coalition. Also following an investigation by the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) found no evidence of the strike taking place the alleged location of the strike shifted from Kobane to Aleppo City.
As I've explained on numerous occasions Aleppo City provides a neat microcosm for the wider situation in Syria. The Syrian government control roughly half of the city while a roughly quarter is controlled by the Al Qaeda affiliated Al Nusra Front (ANF) while the final quarter and much of the surrounding area is controlled by ISIL. The YPG also control some positions in the countryside surrounding the city. Sitting around 50km (30 miles) from the border with Turkey Aleppo City has also been the main focal point for insurgent fighters who have been trained in Turkey to enter Syria and a major supply route for them to be equipped.
This program suffered a major set-back in November 2014 when two of these supposedly moderate US and Turkish trained groups - the Syrian Revolutionary Front (SRF) and Harakat Hazm - defected to ANF taking their training an weapons with them allowing ANF to take control of the town of Jabal al-Zawiya and the Bab al-Hawa border crossing with Turkey which sits around 45km (27 miles) west of Aleppo City. Despite this clear evidence that weapons and training earmarked for the 'moderate opposition' was ending up in the hands of ANF the program apparently continued and appears to have played a decisive role in the ANF's ability to defeat the Syrian government first at Idlib City on March 28th (28/3/15) and then at Jisr al-Shughour on April 25th (25/4/15). I am assured though that the program was finally suspended just before the fall of Idlib City and currently remains suspended.
The very north-western tip of Aleppo province roughly above the diagonal line between the Turkish towns of Kilis and Reyhanli is actually under the control of the YPG making it the third and final Kurdish Canton alongside the Kobane and Cizire Cantons. It is known as the Afrin Canton after the town of Afrin which functions as its de facto capital. With the YPG being proven to be skilled and secular fighters who have control of the border area with Turkey while the supposedly 'moderate opposition' seemingly allied to ANF if perhaps makes sense for the coalition to increase their support for the YPG in the Afrin Canton.
Therefore the entirely false rumour of a coalition strike in this area could well have been intended to draw attention to the area and any one of these issues. Also it appears to have pre-empted an announcement on Tuesday (5/5/15) by British pressure group Amnesty International which condemned the Syrian government of endangering civilians by bombing Aleppo City from the air. With the coalition unable to confirm that it too hadn't killed civilians in air-strikes in Aleppo City it raises questions about how legitimate this condemnation of the Syrian government actually is.
As I covered separately at the time on Sunday (3/5/15) an Islamist terror attack was carried out in Garland - a suburb of Dallas, Texas, US. Yesterday (5/5/15) ISIL radio claimed responsibility for that attack. It is difficult to gauge how credible that claim is because through the rise of ISIL the nature of Islamist terrorism has changed significantly.
What Al Qaeda used to do is recruit people one-by-one from Mosques, community groups and even from within extended families. These recruits would then secretly travel to training camps in places such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen/Saudi Arabia under the guise of family weddings or pilgrimages to Muslim holy sites such as Mecca. In those camps they would be given often quite specific training and a mission. They would then travel to their country of origin and prepare to carry out that mission under the supervision of a handler who used secret communications methods like heavily encrypted emails, couriers and even dead-drops. Often a handler would be in contact with several cells all tasked with carrying out the same mission. For example I think there were three cells tasked the carry out the 2005 7/7 bombings in London, UK - the one that succeeded, one that tried but failed a week later and one that was stopped before they could even try.
Although they do worryingly seem to have be permitted to keep these traditional community based routes open ISIL make far greater use of the open Internet with the group posting some 90,000 videos and messages a week and figures like Aqsa Mahmood - aka Umm Layth - recruiting openly on social networks like Twitter and Facebook. While many of ISIL's messages are small such as Vine's showing them in battle or at rest one of the big videos they released recently (13/4/15) was entitled "We Will Burn America" which using file footage of the 9/11 attacks along with footage of ISIL executions of US citizens such as James Foley called for self-radicalised supporters to carry out attacks particularly in the US. Obviously this video would very much set the mood music for the Garland attack.
Another propaganda outlet that is likely to have inspired the attack is the kill-list featuring both Geert Wilders who attended the event and the American Freedom Defence Initiative (AFDI) that hosted the event which has long been circulated by the Yemeni-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). This list which I think dates back to 2012 has been brought back to people's attention following the Paris, France attacks in January and the Copenhagen, Denmark attacks in February. Although one of the attackers seems to have links to Somalia which is closely linked to AQAP if I'm being totally honest I don't think many of ISIL's self-radicalised Internet fanboys understand how AQAP and ISIL are different groups and thanks to the US drone program in Yemen AQAP's leadership has recently been shifted to one that is closer to ISIL.
With the ISIL video and the AQAP list setting the tone planning the operation itself could well be something as simple as someone in a Facebook group or a Twitter list containing the attackers casually mentioning that the event was taking place. Then someone else would apparently casually point out how easy it was for the Paris attackers to carry out their attack by simply taking out a payday loan to buy the equipment they needed.
Obviously putting out a rumour the day before of US air-strikes killing civilians in Syria would certainly add fuel to the fire.
17:05 on 6/5/15 (UK date).
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