The Islamic State (IS) has become a magnet for international brigades, drawing over 30,000 fighters from 5 continents and 86 countries to their war in Iraq and Syria. While the international brigades are part of a global movement, most of the volunteers come from two-dozen countries, mainly in the Middle East, Maghreb, Western Europe, Russia and Central Asia. Most Islamist internationalists are paid a salary to fight and engage in police functions within IS-occupied regions. This essay will identify the principle sources of recruitment of Islamist internationalists and the reasons underlying their commitment. We will also contrast and compare IS internationalists to the earlier international brigades fighting for the Spanish Republic against fascists in the 1930’s; fascist internationalists fighting for the Nazis against the USSR in the 1940’s; and the democratic internationalists in the 1970’s who joined the Sandinista revolution against the Somoza dictatorship.
Category: The 9/11 Questions
Russia’s incisive military intervention in Syria has succeeded in not only stabilizing the Arab state and salvaging it from a terrorist takeover. Russia’s maneuver also exposed the foreign-fueled nature of the conflict – as a…
The Middle East will never be the same as before. What is becoming more clear now that ISIS is a toy used by players for their agenda and plans to reshuffle the map of the Middle East”. Evacuating US sponsored terrorists is routine. See Seymour Hersh’s coverage of the evacuation of Al Qaeda “enemy combatants” in Afghanistan in November 2001. The Iraqi Army, the Counter Terrorism units, the Federal police, and Anbar tribes entered the city of Ramadi that was occupied by the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” group (ISIS) for several months.
Public perception about the so-called “Global War on Terror” is manipulated in various ways by a trail of misinformation and disinformation. This article is a case study on the October 22, 2015 lone gunman rampage of Parliament…
The “War On Terror” and “The War On Drugs” are both fraudulent, and they are both related. In a classic example of “reverse projection”, ”the War on Terror” is literally a “War for Terror”, and the “War on Drugs” is literally a “War for Drugs”. Terror, coupled with the illegal trade in narcotics, particularly heroin, is enabling the orchestration, and funding, of illegal warfare which serves the interests of an international oligarch class as it destroys humanity. The barbarity of the military operations conducted by the West is beyond the imagination of most domestic audiences, even when details are publicized. Broadly speaking, we can decode the 9/11 terror wars using a simple formula:
A striking example of how dangerously Americans are misinformed and misled by the war party was featured in a major article in 24 December, New York Times. In “Russia Rearms for a New Era,” the…
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 gave birth to a dangerous American ideology called neoconservativism. The Soviet Union had served as a constraint on US unilateral action. With the removal of this constraint on Washington, neoconservatives declared their agenda of US world hegemony. America was now the “sole superpower,” the “unipower,” that could act without restraint anywhere in the world. The Washington Post neoconservative journalist Charles Krauthammer summed up the “new reality” as follows: “We have overwheming global power. We are history’s designated custodians of the international system. When the Soviet Union fell, something new was born, something
Latest military conflicts involving the US exposed the new Washington’s combat operation tactic: first, achievement of domination in the air; second, deployment of air forces, tactical missiles and Special Forces in neutralization of an enemy’s…
With the 115 year old tradition of the annual Army-Navy football classic on Saturday, the so called “America’s game” and “rivalry for the ages” is now once again upon us. This occasion never fails to…
Video Nearly every night, Israeli special ops forces secretly rescue wounded fighters in Syria, among them jihadists, as seen in dramatic footage the Daily Mail captured while embedded with the military force. The Daily…