AL-QAEDA PUSHES BACK
Eclipsed over the past year both rhetorically and politically by the Islamic State, the Bin Laden network continues its attempts reclaim the ideological high ground. In a recent joint statement that represents what is perhaps the most detailed denunciation of IS to date, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) - two loyal franchises of al-Qaeda and its current head, Ayman al-Zawahiri - formally rejected the legitimacy of the Islamic State's self-declared caliphate. "We repeat what has already been mentioned by Sheikh Ayman Al-Zawahiri and others," spokesman Khaled Batarfi says on the video. "We do not acknowledge this caliphate as legitimate, nor do we deem it legitimate to give it an oath of loyalty." In the video statement, Batarfi lays out that the Islamic State's authority is not based on religious scripture, but "was gained by coercion, force, shedding blood and pronouncing takfir upon Muslims." In response, he calls for Islamist groups that have aligned themselves with IS over the past year to "recognize its deviance, repent and leave it." (Jerusalem Post, November 3, 2015)
HEZBOLLAH'S GROWING ARSENAL... AND WHY ISRAEL WORRIES
Lebanon's terrorist powerhouse is growing stronger. That's the assessment of defense and intelligence officials in Israel, who believe that the Iranian-supported Hezbollah militia has now succeeded in amassing an arsenal of some 150,000 rockets, among them a considerable number of longer-range Iranian missiles. That figure, officials in Jerusalem say, reflects a 50% expansion of the group's arsenal since May - and represents a significant ramping up of its acquisition of war materiel in what is widely viewed as preparation for a future conflict with the State of Israel. (Times of Israel, November 12, 2015)
[EDITORS' NOTE: The number of rockets in the hands of Hezbollah is significant - and worrying. It suggests that the group - despite its extensive, and costly, engagement in the Syrian civil war to date - is now vastly strategically stronger than at the time of its last conflict with Israel in 2006, when it was believed to possess on the order of 30,000 such rockets. Israeli air strikes in Syria in recent days are believed to be at least partially related to Hezbollah's rearmament, much of which has been facilitated by the Assad regime.]
THE ISLAMIC STATE SETS ITS SIGHTS ON THE KREMLIN...
The Russian government's intervention into the Syrian civil war over the past two months has made it the target of extremist groups - the Islamic State most notable among them. A new video from IS, released in recent days over the group's various social media feeds, warns that "[w]e will take through battle the lands of yours we wish," and predicts that "[the] Kremlin will be ours."
The missive, analysts say, represents an escalation of the group's hostility toward the Russian Federation, coming as it does after the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the downing of a Russian commercial airliner over the Sinai Peninsula. "The video is a clear threat to Russia, and to a certain extent to other Western countries," according to Veryan Khan of the Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium. "The Islamic State claims they will reach the Kremlin and bring it down." (Fox News, November 12, 2015)
...AS MOSCOW TAKES STOCK
In a recent speech to a gathering of security officials in the Black Sea city of Sochi, Yevgeny Sysoyev, the deputy director of the FSB, warned that the flow of foreign fighters from the countries of the former Soviet Union has reached massive proportions. Cumulatively, Sysoyev said, the countries of the FSU have supplied 7,000 - or nearly 25 percent - of the 30,000 jihadists estimated to have joined the ranks of the Islamic State and other assorted groups fighting in Syria to date. Sysoyev and other Russian officials disclosed that the Russian government has investigated "nearly 650 criminal cases" against suspected members of foreign militant organizations.
This amounts to an externalization of the problem, Sysoyev described. According to him, "over the past five years, terrorist activity, primarily in the North Caucasus, has fallen by more than ten times." Yet the threat to both Russia and its neighbors remains very real; the Islamic State, he said, is now seeking to subvert Afghanistan as starting point for "the creation of an Islamist quasi-state within the borders of ancient Khorasan, which will include the territory of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Iran and north-western provinces of China." (Moscow Nezavisimaya Gazeta, November 11, 2015)
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