Antichrist’s Men Battle ISIS In Samarra (Rev 13:18)

Iraqi security forces and Shiite fighters from Saraya al-Salam, loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, fire toward Islamic State militants on the outskirts of Samarra, Iraq, on Sunday. REUTERS/Stringer

 
ISLAMIC STATE MILITANTS BLOW UP TEMPLE IN ANCIENT CITY OF PALMYRA

By Kinda Makeih

Reuters

DAMASCUS, Syria — Islamic State militants on Sunday blew up the temple of Baal Shamin, one of the most important sites in Syria’s ancient city of Palmyra, said Maamoun Abdul Karim, the country’s antiquities chief.

The temple bombing would be the first time the insurgents, who control swathes of Syria and Iraq and captured Palmyra in May, damaged monumental Roman-era ruins.

“We have said repeatedly the next phase would be one of terrorizing people and when they have time they will begin destroying temples,” Abdul Karim told Reuters.

“I am seeing Palmyra being destroyed in front of my eyes,” he added. “God help us in the days to come.”

A week ago, the militants beheaded Khaled Asaad, an 82-year-old scholar who worked for more than 50 years as head of antiquities in Palmyra, after detaining and interrogating him for over a month.
Before the city’s capture by Islamic State, Syrian officials said they moved hundreds of ancient statues to safe locations out of concern that the militants would destroy them.

In June, Islamic State blew up two ancient shrines in Palmyra that were not part of its Roman-era structures but which the militants regarded as pagan and sacrilegious.

The militants were also beginning excavation for gold and giving licenses for illicit excavation of the city’s treasures, Abdul Karim added.

Administration Fails To Stop The Third Nuclear Horn (Daniel 8:8)

Analysis: Despite billions in aid, U.S. unable to get Pakistan to confront militants

By David Rohde

WASHINGTON Fri Dec 19, 2014 5:12am IST

(Reuters) – Since 2001 the United States has tried virtually every strategy available to persuade Pakistan’s army to take the threat of militancy more seriously, but 12 years and $28 billion in aid later, all the American approaches are widely viewed as having failed.

First, the Bush administration heaped praise on former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, agreed to reimburse the Pakistani army for anti-Taliban military operations and launched drone strikes that killed al Qaeda leaders and militants wanted by the Pakistani government.

Adopting a more confrontational stance, the Obama administration unilaterally carried out the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, vastly increased aid to Pakistan’s weak civilian institutions and, at times, cut off aid to the Pakistani military.

Yet the militants continue to operate, ever more brazenly, as illustrated by Tuesday’s harrowing attack on a school in Peshawar, in which 132 students were killed by a faction of the Pakistan Taliban. And with the United States increasingly focused on other crises, Washington’s options for bringing about change in an increasingly unstable Pakistan are dwindling fast.

“There is great ‘Pakistan fatigue’ in Washington,” said Cameron Munter, who served as the American ambassador to Pakistan from 2010 to 2012. “Not only have the last dozen years been very difficult, but other challenges – from Syria to Ukraine to Iran, to name a few – demand our attention.”

Although Tuesday’s attack sparked widespread condemnation, current and former U.S. officials expressed cynicism that the bloodshed would cause Pakistan’s military to change its view of militants.

Munter and other officials said the United States has been unable to break a powerful, army-backed narrative in Pakistan that militant attacks are the result of America’s war on terror. Foreign powers, not Pakistan, are responsible for growing militancy in Pakistan, according to the narrative. And Pakistan is not responsible for the problem and unable to stop it.

That narrative played out immediately when Pakistan’s army chief, General Raheel Sharif, flew to Afghanistan within 24 hours of the attack to meet Afghan leaders. They said they had information that the school attack was directed by militants hiding inside Afghanistan.

“We are hoping that we will see strong action from the Afghan side in the coming days,” said Pakistani army spokesman Major General Asim Saleem Bajwa.

One senior American official said he hoped the trip was not “communications Kabuki” designed to divert blame for the failure to stop the attack away from the Pakistani army. Analysts said the army is failing to live up to its decades-long history of training, funding and sheltering some militant groups and using them as proxies to counter archrival India in Afghanistan and Kashmir.

Since 2001 a parade of American officials – from presidents to CIA directors – have repeatedly warned Pakistan’s generals that they will lose control of their militant proxies and eventually be attacked by them. Pakistani military officials have denied sheltering militants.

CHINESE PRESSURE?

But some current and former U.S. officials said the sheer brutality of this week’s attack would intensify demands from Pakistan’s public for the army to confront militancy. James Dobbins, who served as the Obama Administration’s Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan from 2013 to 2014, said there was also growing pressure from Pakistan’s longtime ally China.

“I think they are pressing Pakistan to take this threat more seriously,” he said.

Munter, the former ambassador, argued that the problem reflects a more fundamental question of whether militants have become so entrenched that the Pakistani army cannot defeat them.

The senior administration official was more optimistic, contending that even before the school attack, the Pakistani public was raising pressure on the army to act. The ongoing military operation in North Waziristan that militants said prompted the school attack was evidence of change.

“There has been a growing sense in Pakistan that this is an issue that they need to deal with,” said the senior official, who asked not to be identified by name.

But Shamila Chaudhary, who served as senior director for Pakistan and Afghanistan on the National Security Council from 2010 to 2011, warned that as U.S. attention has shifted elsewhere, the steady deterioration of Pakistan’s institutions, security forces and economy has continued.

For years, Chaudhary said, she dismissed alarmist warnings from other U.S. experts on Pakistan that the country’s nuclear arsenal was unsafe. The inability of Pakistan’s security forces to protect a military-run school, she said, has given her doubts regarding Pakistan’s atomic arsenal for the first time.

“I will have a hard time saying to people that militants can never steal Pakistan’s nuclear weapons,” she said. “The more these things happen, that rate of risk goes ahead, and I just think, well, it could happen one day.”

(Editing by Jason Szep and Douglas Royalty)

The Small Horn Will Bring Their Fight To America (Daniel 8:7)

Could Islamic militants in Iraq bring their fight to America?

Anna Mulrine
The Christian Science Monitor

August 12, 2014

 

ISIS At The White House

As the Islamic State gains ground and enlarges its pool of foreign fighter recruits, it is increasingly likely to attack on American soil as well.

That has been the warning coming from some lawmakers and defense analysts this week, who argue that the United States has de facto declared war on the Islamic State by launching air strikes against IS positions, and now it must steel itself for foreign militants to bring the fight to the US.

“Mr. President, be honest with the threat we face,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R) of South Carolina warned on Fox News. “They are coming.”

Senator Graham’s warning followed what seemed to be an Islamic State fighter threatening to “raise the flag of Allah in the White House.”

A widely-circulated photo on the web showed an IS supporter taking a photo with an IS flag in the foreground, and the White House in the background, the implication presumably being that the IS was at the gates of the White House. The tagline on the much-discussed but unverified photo read, ‘We r here,” with a smiley-face emoticon.

There is, however, a big difference between aspirations of attacking America on its own soil and having the means to carry it out. Do IS fighters have skills or means that surpass, for example, Al Qaeda, who has been threatening for more than a decade after 9/11 to carry out another significant attack on US soil, but never managed to do it?

“These [IS] guys are battle-hardened, and they have had a significant amount of training in Syria and Iraq on all kinds of tactics and techniques, like bomb-making,” says Samuel Brannen, senior fellow in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“They have blood on their hands – not just read about it on the Internet,” he adds. “That is something they have now done – fired a gun at a human. It’s not about bringing new skills, but practiced skills.”

What’s more, increasing numbers of IS fighters are Westerners, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein and others have warned. “They are not applying for visas,” Mr. Brannen says. “They are showing passports.”

This will likely mean higher bars at US borders and stepped-up intelligence sharing with Turkey and other NATO nations. That said, Brannen adds, “It could be really tough.”

At the doomsday end of the spectrum, some analysts argue that the combination of Western-born fighters and IS ambition could create “an existential threat” to the United States.

“This could happen in the broadest sense of the term,” says retired Col. Peter Mansoor, former executive officer to retired Gen. David Petraeus, who commanded US forces in Iraq.

“It would initially take the form of terrorists coming back to the United States from Iraq and Syria using their Western passports and conducting horrific terrorist acts on the homeland,” adds Dr. Mansoor, now an associate professor of military history at Ohio State University.

“In the longer term, if [IS] would be able to get control of the kinds of lands that they seek – the Islamic world as it was in the 11th century, which includes Spain, Pakistan, and Iran – they would also seek to gain control of nuclear weapons,” he adds. “I have no doubt that if this group gained control of a nuclear weapon that they would use it, and they would become an existential threat to the entire Western world.”