Global terrorism thread

Security sources in Nineveh province disclosed that unidentified assailants gunned down a senior Saudi commander of the ISIL terrorist group who was in charge of executing Iraqi women in the city of Mosul.

"The unknown gunmen shot at Abu Abdel Rahman, ISIS's senior commander, in al-Askari region in the center of Mosul city, and he was killed right on the spot," a security source said.

He noted that Abu Abdel Rahman was in charge of executing women in Western Mosul, FNA reported.

A consortium of elite, well-paid fighters from across the former Soviet Union are training jihadis in Syria. Their business model could go global.

Heavily armed and expertly kitted with body armor and ballistic helmets, the men can be seen defending bunkers, storming buildings, and even posing by whiteboards giving tactical lessons. Though the titles of these You Tube videos are written in Russian Cyrillic, their background music is an a cappella Islamic chant known as a nasheed, which is often used by extremist groups in propaganda films. But the men are no ordinary jihadis. They are members of Malhama Tactical, the world’s first jihadi private military contractor (PMC) and consulting firm.

Malhama Tactical isn’t an enormous military conglomerate like the infamous Blackwater (now named Academi). It consists of 10 well-trained fighters from Uzbekistan and the restive Muslim-majority republics of the Russian Caucasus. But size isn’t everything in military consulting, especially in the era of social media. Malhama promotes its battles across online platforms, and the relentless marketing has paid off: The outfit’s fighting prowess and training programs are renowned among jihadis in Syria and their admirers elsewhere. It helps that until now the group has specialized its services, focusing on overthrowing Bashar al-Assad’s regime and replacing it with a strict Islamic government.

The group’s leader is a 24-year-old from Uzbekistan who goes by the name Abu Rofiq (an Arabic pseudonym that means father of Rofiq). Little is known about him other than that he cycles through personal social media accounts rapidly, using fake names and false information to throw off surveillance efforts. In virtually every video and photo posted online, he wears a scarf or balaclava to cover his face from the nose down, leaving visible only his narrow dark eyes and long, somewhat tangled, pitch-black hair. He speaks fluent Russian, but with a slight Uzbek accent.

Since launching in May 2016, Malhama has grown to do brisk business in Syria, having been contracted to fight, and provide training and other battlefield consulting, alongside groups like the al Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (formerly known as the Nusra Front) and the Turkistan Islamic Party, a Uighur extremist group from China’s restive Xinjiang province. And despite recent rebel setbacks in Syria, including the loss of Aleppo, demand for Malhama Tactical’s services in the country is as strong as ever, Abu Rofiq told Foreign Policy in an interview conducted over the messaging app Telegram.

But he is also beginning to think about expanding elsewhere. His group is willing to take work, Abu Rofiq says, wherever Sunni Muslims are oppressed. He cites China and Myanmar as places that would benefit from jihad. He also suggests that Malhama Tactical might go back to its roots, returning to fight in the North Caucasus against the Russian government.

In November, the group placed job ads on Facebook looking for instructors with combat experience to join the group. The ad described the outfit as a “fun and friendly team” looking for recruits who are willing to “constantly engage, develop, and learn” and work with Jabhat Fateh al-Sham. It even specified that instructors were privy to benefits like vacation time and one day off a week from jihad. The wording was more befitting of a Fortune 500 company than a group of extremists fighting in a brutal and bloody war. Jihad went global long before Malhama Tactical, but rarely with so entrepreneurial a spirit.

Although Malhama Tactical is the first PMC to work exclusively for extremist groups, it’s hardly the first foreign PMC to enter the Syrian battlefield. The Syrian war has now lasted for nearly six years and cost the lives of more than 400,000 men, women, and children. And amid the chaos of groups like the Islamic State, the left-wing Kurdish People’s Protection Units, and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham vying for territory and influence, the Syrian front has also been a boon for military contractors, who have found work fighting on both sides of the war.

The first iteration of PM Cs in Syria was the Slavonic Corps, an ill-fated, Hong Kong-registered company comprising ex-Russian military that briefly worked alongside government forces in 2013, according to a report by the Interpreter magazine. But it quickly became clear that they did not have the full support of the Syrian government. First, the Syrian army stole their vehicles, then their paychecks never arrived, and finally a Syrian air force helicopter crashed into the Slavonic Corps convoy after flying too low and running into power lines, injuring one mercenary. The Slavonic Corps’ misadventures came to an end when the group disbanded after a defeat by rebels in the desert near the city of Sukhnah in southern Syria in October 2013. The mercenaries returned home to Moscow and were promptly arrested by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) for their unsanctioned Syrian intervention.

Following the Kremlin’s own intervention in Syria in September 2015, nearly 1,500 Russian mercenaries arrived from the “Wagner” group, an infamous and secretive Russian PMC that previously fought alongside Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, according to an investigation by Sky News. Their mission was to assist the Assad regime, and unlike the Slavonic Corps, Wagner enjoys extensive support from the Russian government. Dmitry Utkin, a former special forces brigade commander of Russia’s military intelligence service, allegedly leads the group. Although little is known about Wagner, it’s believed that it mimics Academi’s model by operating as an elite infantry unit and relies on the Russian government for support, even flying into Syria on board official military aircraft and training at a Russian special forces base in Molkino in southwestern Russia. Wagner remains in Syria to this day.

At the same time, a litany of Russian-speaking fighters have fought alongside jihadi groups waging war against the Syrian government. According to the Soufan Group, there are at least 4,700 foreign fighters from the former Soviet Union in Syria, the majority of whom come from the Russian republics of Chechnya and Dagestan. These fighters typically arrive in Syria better equipped and trained than local militants and with years of experience fighting the Russian government in the mountains of Chechnya and Dagestan during the 1990s and 2000s.

These battle-hardened fighters quickly earned respect from local militants, who noticed the Russian speakers took on a much higher death rate than local fighters. They came to populate the ranks of both the Islamic State and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, as well as various smaller groups, where locals refer to them as inghimasi, a term used among jihadis to refer to fighters who plunge into enemy front lines to inflict the maximum amount of casualties with no plan of returning alive. The archetypal inghimasi fights until he runs out of ammunition before detonating his suicide vest as his position is overrun.

But while many of their compatriots have become front-line shock troops, the former Soviet fighters of Malhama Tactical go a different way, carving out their own distinct niche between the worlds of professional PM Cs and jihadi groups operating in Syria. They function as consultants, arms dealers, and, on occasion, elite warriors.

Malhama’s elite status makes sense against the background of Abu Rofiq’s own military career. Abu Rofiq told FP that he had moved as a young man from Uzbekistan to Russia, where, in addition to starting a family, he joined one of the Russian government’s most elite military units, a group of airborne troops known as the VDV. In 2013, Abu Rofiq left Russia for Syria, where rather than joining one faction, like most foreign fighters do, he remained independent and moved between them, before founding Malhama in 2016.

Throughout 2016, Malhama Tactical’s units trained the hard-line Islamist rebel group Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham in urban combat to help their fight against the Syrian regime in Aleppo. In one video, trainees practice firing multiple rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) rounds and work as squads to assault a building. In another, a two-man team clears rooms and eliminates targets using grenades and gunfire, all under the watchful eye of Malhama instructors.

This type of training isn’t cheap — the RPG rounds Malhama uses in its practice sessions are estimated to cost around $800 each on the black market — which is why military training for most rebel and jihadi groups in Syria has tended to consist of little more than marching, acrobatics, and basic marksmanship. But for jihadi groups that can afford it, Malhama Tactical’s infantry training is worth the expense. One European military contractor who spoke on the condition of anonymity acknowledged that the group’s tactical skills would provide it, and whomever it trains, a distinct advantage on the Syrian battlefield.

Malhama Tactical’s operators have, on occasion, also acted as special forces for different jihadi groups. In September 2016, they embedded with the Turkistan Islamic Party to help it repulse an Assad regime attack in southern Aleppo, according to a rebel activist source familiar with the group. However, Abu Rofiq says his outfit’s primary goal is to train other rebel and jihadi groups in combat, rather than fight on the front lines. Abu Rofiq admitted that Malhama also produces equipment for other jihadi groups as needed. Malhama, for example, manufactures accessories for the PKM, an extremely popular Russian-made 7.62 mm machine gun. The vests and grips, widely used in Aleppo during the intense fighting there, have become especially sought after among jihadis.

Malhama Tactical also takes its social media presence very seriously. The group advertises its services through Facebook, You Tube, Twitter, and the Russian social media site V Kontakte, although the group’s account has been suspended. Its Instagram feed has the feel of something produced by a major corporate gun manufacturer. It features artsy, filtered photos of weapons and fighters taken from multiple angles, interspersed between various high-quality Malhama logo designs. With more than 208,160 views on You Tube, Malhama has a large reach, especially for its size. By comparison, the Free Syrian Army al-Moutasem Brigade, which is 50 times larger and half a year older, has just over 110,000 You Tube views. Everyone from rebels in Syria to Ukrainian soldiers and Russian separatists in Donetsk has commented on the group’s posts.

Malhama’s You Tube and Facebook pages also showcase free online guides for jihadis, covering improvised grenade construction, weapon cleaning, room clearing, and urban combat, among other skills. The group’s instructors organize online training sessions — on subjects including battlefield first aid; the use of weapons, such as RPG-7s; hand signal systems for urban combat; and introductions on how to conduct ambushes — when in-person assistance and consulting is not possible.

Although Malhama Tactical charges for its services, Abu Rofiq insists he isn’t a mercenary. He says his group’s motivation transcends money. “Our goal is different; we are fighting for an idea,” he said — namely, jihad against Assad.

“We’ll see a lot more of this activity going forward in the decades to come,” said Sean Mc Fate, an associate professor at the National Defense University and author of The Modern Mercenary, a book about private armies. For Mc Fate, the growth of Malhama Tactical is a natural offshoot of the prolonged Syrian war, but the outfit’s mixture of extremist ideology with the privatization of war is a unique and troubling trend. “A jihadi group doing this is a new level because if you’re talking about hardcore idealists paying for [military training], then that’s a milestone of modern warfare,” Mc Fate said.

Abu Rofiq’s leadership has also brought him unwanted attention from the Russian government, which views him as a major terrorism threat. On Feb. 7, Russian airstrikes flattened Abu Rofiq’s apartment in Idlib, killing his wife, infant son, and several other civilians. Despite initial reports to the contrary, a local source confirmed that the airstrikes missed Abu Rofiq entirely. He had exited his apartment just moments before to help casualties from another nearby bombing.

In either case, Abu Rofiq’s jihadi PMC model has already had a significant effect on battles in northern Syria and could soon inspire copycat organizations outside the Middle East. Even if Abu Rofiq is killed and Malhama Tactical is destroyed, he’s already shaken up the war against Assad — and maybe even the future of the global military-industrial complex.

Dozens of people were killed and more than 100 others wounded after a bomb tore through a crowded Sufi shrine in southwestern Pakistan on Thursday...Reports on the exact death toll have varied — with The Associated Press reporting that at least 75 people died, while the Pakistani newspaper Dawn put the number at 70.

The Lal Shahbaz Qalandar shrine, which has stood in the town of Sehwan for some 800 years, is a center of Sufi life and worship in the region. Worshippers had converged on the shrine for dhamaal, a ritual that packed the area with people — thousands of people, by CNN's account.

Immediately following the explosion, Pakistan's chief of army staff, Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, issued a blistering statement through the military's spokesman.
"Each drop of nation's blood shall be revenged, and revenged immediately," Bajwa said. "No more restraint for anyone."
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif also struck a defiant tone: "Such cowardly acts cannot deter the resolve of the nation to stand against terrorism and our government is committed to root out this menace."
Pakistan...has been buffeted by attacks not only from ISIS, but also Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a Taliban splinter group which has promised a campaign of violence against government buildings.

Pakistan "formally complained" to its neighbor Afghanistan on Wednesday, "charging that the militants were operating from sanctuaries across the border." In response to Thursday's attack, the military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Asif Ghafoor, blamed "hostile powers" and "sanctuaries in Afghanistan." He tweeted that Pakistan would be immediately closing its border with Afghanistan "till further orders due to security reasons."

Ivanka Trump, President Trump’s oldest daughter and a convert to Judaism, issued a statement over Twitter on Monday calling for “religious tolerance” after a new wave of threats against Jewish community centers.

The tweet was Ms. Trump’s most vocal foray into a public discussion and was made over an issue her allies say she feels personally.

The message was posted after Ms. Trump wrote, and then deleted, an earlier one moments beforehand.

Ms. Trump converted to Judaism before marrying her husband, Jared Kushner, an Orthodox Jew, putting her in a position to be a prominent voice at a moment when a number of anti-Semitic episodes have taken place around the country. Her previous substantive effort in the White House involved convening a women’s business council, an event she helped create, when the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, visited the president.

On Monday, 11 separate bomb scares were called into Jewish community centers around the country. They were the latest in a string of such threats since the start of the year.

“Since the beginning of this year, we’ve seen four waves of these threats — we’ve never seen that before,” said David Posner, the director of strategic performance at the JCC Association of North America. Just one community center reported such a threat in all of 2016, he said.

The centers threatened on Monday were in Albuquerque; Birmingham, Ala.; Buffalo; Chicago; Cleveland; Houston; Milwaukee; Nashville; St. Paul; Tampa, Fla.; and Tulsa, Okla. Like the earlier threats, they were deemed hoaxes, but not before several of the centers were evacuated as a precaution.

Mr. Trump has been criticized as slow to condemn anti-Semitic comments, and his candidacy was hailed by white nationalists and white supremacists throughout 2016.

On Thursday, at his first lengthy news conference alone as president, Mr. Trump was asked by a reporter for a Jewish magazine how the government plans to respond to the increase in such anti-Semitic incidents. The president responded angrily, saying the question was “insulting” and that he was the “least anti-Semitic person in the world.”

In addition to Ms. Trump’s statement, the Trump administration addressed the issue more directly on Monday.

“Hatred and hate-motivated violence of any kind have no place in a country founded on the promise of individual freedom,” Lindsay Walters, the White House deputy press secretary, said in a statement. “The president has made it abundantly clear that these actions are unacceptable.”

Also on Monday, the police in University City, Mo., near St. Louis, were investigating vandalism at a Jewish cemetery where dozens of headstones were damaged, according to reports.

Many cemeteries have sustained vandalism, and the police have not said whether they believed the episode in University City was motivated by anti-Semitism. Even so, Gov. Eric Greitens said on Twitter that he was “disgusted to hear about the senseless act of desecration,” issuing the kind of condemnation that Jonathan A. Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, had urged of all politicians.

“We look to our political leaders at all levels to speak out against such threats directed against Jewish institutions, to make it clear that such actions are unacceptable,” he said in a statement about the bomb threats.

Though it’s far from the headlines of most Western newspapers and magazines, terrorism remains an issue in China, and in the northwestern province of Xinjiang in particular. The 9/11 attacks brought Islamic terrorism under the spotlight, and by doing so, provided the Communist Part of China (CPC) with new rhetoric to apply to its security policy in Xinjiang, articulated around George W. Bush’s “War on Terror.” Since then, Uyghur activists have been systematically labelled as terrorists by the Chinese authorities. As Chien-peng Chung explains: “the government considers these activists part of a network of international Islamic terror, with funding from the Middle East, training in Pakistan, and combat experience in Chechnya and Afghanistan.”

The Domestic Security Response in Xinjiang

The Chinese regime implemented a comprehensive panel of security measures in Xinjiang, built on the twin assumptions that Islamic terrorism was the most prominent security threat to the Middle Kingdom and that its roots were to be found in the Uyghur ethnic minority. Those security measures include the intervention of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and various paramilitary organizations such as the People’s Armed Police (PAP) and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC). It is important to note that the PLA remains an institution controlled by Han Chinese and that although Uyghurs can enroll, there are in fact very few of them in senior military posts. As for the PAP, the Chinese government stresses that one of its most prominent roles is to “hunt down the East Turkestan terrorists.” The number of guards on duty everyday nationwide within the PAP is now up to 260,000.

The XPCC is a unique outfit. Stephan Blank defines the XPCC, created in 1954 by Mao Zedong to enhance stability in Xinjiang, as a “quasi-military/business conglomerate” which employs about 2.4 million people (probably more than 2.6 million today, out of the 22.6 million overall population of Xinjiang), almost all Han Chinese. The XPCC owns about one-third of the land in Xinjiang, with an industrial production of approximately 25 percent of Xinjiang’s total output. In the light of the emphasis put by the Chinese regime on anti-terrorism over the past decade, the XPCC is to play a prominent role in ensuring the security of the region. Chinese President Xi Jinping stated that he wanted “walls made of copper and steel” and “nets spread from the earth to the sky” to defend against terrorism in Xinjiang, while also advocating the central role played by the XPCC in Xinjiang’s development.

The use of military and paramilitary forces to crack down on Xinjiang has also been complemented by domestic soft policies such as the “Go West” migration policies, which encourage Han Chinese to settle in Xinjiang. An influx of Han is used to counterbalance the presence of Uyghurs and provide demographic prevalence to the Chinese majority ethnic group.

The CPC’s crackdown on Xinjiang did not start immediately after 9/11, but it is undeniable that the worldwide crystallization of security concerns around Islamic terrorism provided a solid ground for the Chinese regime to implement very harsh security measures in a region which had recurrent separatist issues throughout modern Chinese history. The ties discovered between the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) and al-Qaeda in 1999 were legitimate concerns for China, but the security measures implemented by the CPC as a response to the terrorist threat in Xinjiang still seem excessive. Colin Mackerras explains in his book China, Xinjiang, and Central Asia: History, Transition and Crossborder Interaction into the 21st Century that the “strike hard” campaigns led by the CPC to ensure security in China were essentially directed toward Uyghurs in Xinjiang and aimed at targeting their religious activities, including religious education, allegedly to prevent the propagation of Islam. Some of the most noticeable policies include, for instance, banning Muslim children from religious institutions, the obligation for Uyghurs to sell and advertise alcohol in their shops, and the passport confiscations in Xinjiang.

Evaluation of the Chinese Counterterrorism Policy

The question that arises now is whether or not those new policies were effective in reducing the terrorist threat in Xinjiang. An overview of the data available indicates that the new Chinese counterterrorism policy implemented after 9/11 and based on the concept of “War on Terror” has been mostly inefficient in reducing the terrorist threat in China overall. A look at the data shows that casualties from terrorist attacks in China are in fact on the rise (stats in article).

More importantly, Xinjiang has become the focal point for terrorism in China after 9/11 despite the CPC’s repeated security crackdowns in the region.

The resurgence of violence in Xinjiang in the aftermath of 9/11 may be understood through an ideological shift among Uyghur opposition movements, from ethno-nationalism toward religious fundamentalism. If the Chinese government used 9/11 as an argument to impose its rule on the northwestern province in a particularly harsh fashion, Uyghur opposition groups meanwhile found in religious fundamentalism a new way to mobilize support and enhance resentment toward the Chinese regime. The spread of global jihad has provided disillusioned and frustrated Uyghurs with a new rhetoric and strategy to oppose what they consider as an oppression from the Chinese central leadership.

Sarah Cornelison, in her article “Conditions and Mechanisms for Terrorist Mobilization: Applying the Chechen Case to the Uyghur Question,” highlighted that the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP), a successor to ETIM, is now calling for the liberation of “East Turkestan” from “infidel Chinese Communist invaders” while advocating for the establishment of an Islamic Caliphate. This narrative and such statements are quite far from the original calls for political autonomy and the preservation of cultural customs that Uyghur opposition groups made back in the 1990s and before. The change in strategy also allows Uyghur Islamist cells to receive support from local and international religious networks, globalizing their struggle. The suicide bombing targeting the Chinese embassy in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan on August 30, 2016 exemplifies this trend. The attack was carried out by an ethnic Uyghur who held a Tajik passport with the name of Zoir Khalilov, and, according to Kyrgyzstan state security, the attack was ordered by Uyghur militants active in Syria and carried out by a member of ETIM. Moreover, the attack was allegedly financed by emissaries from the Syria-based Nusra Front.

While the Chinese government still pretends that large organized Islamic cells like ETIM are responsible for the acts of terrorism committed in Xinjiang or violence by Uyghurs more generally, evidence shows that violent actions in the aftermath of China’s new counterterrorism policy are usually spontaneous acts initiated by religious preachers and followers of “underground” Islamic schools. The Chinese counterterrorism policy articulated around the concept of the “War on Terror” might have been successful in fighting large-scale organizations such as ETIM, but failed to take into account the regional opposition to the CPC in Xinjiang. On the contrary, the harsh crackdown is giving more ground for individuals frustrated by religious and cultural repression to resort to violent action.

The Consequences of China’s Security Policy

The Chinese regime played a very dangerous game by demonizing Uyghurs as a whole, and ultimately failed to see Uyghur opposition groups’ gradual shift from political aspirations (more autonomy and cultural tolerance) toward religious fundamentalism in Xinjiang. Today, extremist groups use the CPC’s anti-Muslim rhetoric against the Chinese central authorities and its symbols (the police, the military, and even the Han Chinese population). ETIM and other Uyghur separatist organizations – and increasingly, isolated individuals – were able to continue their struggle against the Chinese central government by reshaping their narrative around religious arguments, a process facilitated by the harsh security measures implemented in Xinjiang.

Despite Beijing’s intense counterterrorism policy targeting Uyghurs and Islam more generally in Xinjiang, terrorism did not decrease but instead, flourished in the region, claiming more casualties than ever before in the aftermath of 9/11. As large-scale security policies targeting religious communities find more and more advocates in today’s world, the Chinese example should force us to reconsider such radical policies. They have a strong potential to push societal frustrations toward narratives fueled by religious fundamentalism.

Al-Qaeda’s spectacular attacks in 2001 drew the world’s attention to Islamic terrorism, and together with the following rise of various transnational jihadist groups, raised more and more concerns in the international arena. However, acknowledging the existence of radical religious beliefs that push individuals to resort to acts of terrorism does not imply the necessity of blind security measures indiscriminately targeting members of Muslim communities. The Chinese counterterrorism policy ultimately fueled resentment against the CPC’s religious repression among Uyghurs and led to the spread of a terrorist threat much deadlier and much more challenging than what the Chinese regime had to deal with during the previous decades.

Based on the Chinese example, the rise of anti-Muslim feelings in Western societies appears to be as concerning as the rise of Islamic terrorism itself. Countries like the United States or France might want to think twice before resorting to extreme religious repression as a counterterrorism strategy.