A senior U.S. official has expressed growing impatience at a lack of Iranian movement toward talks on reviving a moribund nuclear agreement with world powers and cited fears of a “Plan B” that keeps Tehran on a dangerous atomic path.
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Following multiple attacks targeting the “apostate Taliban militia” in Afghanistan,[1] the Islamic State (ISIS) affiliate in Afghanistan, known as the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), continued to ramp up its operations against the Taliban, claiming responsibility for two more attacks in a single day. The escalation of ISKP attacks against the Taliban followed the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan as ISKP seeks to compete with the Taliban and undermine their jihad.
Summary
The central media apparatus of the Islamic State group is mis-reporting on the activities of its cells in central Syria. Rather than exaggerating their capabilities, something that it is conventionally assumed to be doing all the time,1 its Central Media Diwan appears either to be deliberately under-playing them, or, less likely, to be unaware of their full extent, possibly due to communication issues. Indeed, there is a significant disconnect between what the Islamic State is saying its cells in central Syria are doing versus what its adversaries are saying they are doing. This is starkly evident in the fact that the vast majority of attacks that pro-regime sources attributed to the Islamic State in the Badia, Syria’s expansive central desert region, in 2020 went entirely unclaimed by the group, according to data collected and cross-analyzed by the authors. Based on the dynamics that characterize this data, which is supported by fieldwork inside Syria, it appears that this under-reporting on the part of the Islamic State, which has continued unabated into 2021, is at least partially intentional. This suggests that its covert network in Syria may be attempting to surreptitiously establish a strategic hub in this remote central region, something that could act as a rear base for a resurgence in the rest of the country and Iraq in years to come.
After 40 years, Syria once again has dual military rule, where the president and his brother are the highest authorities. In the early 1980s, Rifaat al-Assad, the brother of Hafez al-Assad, was the commander of the Defense Companies and the strong man in Syria in the military, security, and even civilian spheres, while Hafez was in a coma. Today, we see this scenario echoed with the control of Maher al-Assad, Bashar al-Assad’s brother, over the Fourth Division, which has become an elite military unit due to strong Iranian support and its control over various territories of the country.
IS group launched attacks in the Syrian Desert region over the weekend, resulting in the deaths of several Syrian regime militia fighters, according to al-Araby al-Jadeed.
The Islamic State (IS) group launched attacks in the Syrian Desert region over the weekend, resulting in the deaths of several Syrian regime militia fighters. An activist in the eastern Deir-ez-Zour region, Abu Omar al-Bukamali, told The New Arab’s sister site al-Araby al-Jadeed that two members of the Russian-backed Liwaa al-Quds militia were killed on Sunday in an IS attack that targeted a military vehicle in the Syrian Desert (Al-Badia) – also known as the Syrian steppe -, which covers the southeast of the country.
A drone targeted a car at the entrance to the city of Binnish in the Idleb countryside amidst rumors of “the assassination of leaders of the Guardians of Religion Organization.”
On Monday, an Al-Souria Net correspondent in Idleb reported that military surveillance “monitored a reconnaissance flight coinciding with the drone strike on the car, east of Binnish.”
CENTCOM fired a drone missile at at least one jihadi official near Idlib today in the first such strike in recent months.
The United States military targeted an al-Qaeda official with a drone strike in northwest Syria on Monday, the Pentagon said.
Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters the strike was carried out near Syria’s Idlib province but offered no further details. The strike was carried out near the town of Binnish, according to local reports. Kirby said the military had no indication of civilian casualties as of Monday afternoon.
For much of the Syrian civil war, the southern city of Deraa and the surrounding Houran Plains, an agricultural region near the Jordanian border, were divided between government forces and armed rebels. Fighting raged back and forth, killing thousands. It was not until Russia backed a government offensive in 2018 that the situation changed in earnest. That year, Moscow brokered a series of agreements with rebel factions that brought the area back under loose government control.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in Idlib has ended the work of its security apparatus that has been accused of controlling people’s lives.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) has ended the work of Al-Falah apparatus, which it launched in May 2020 as part of the religious police apparatus — Hisbah — that it established in 2014, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported Sept. 3.
Al-Falah apparatus is tasked with monitoring markets and forbidding the mixing of men and women among other functions, to impose its control over the smallest details of the people’s daily lives. This apparatus continued to harass the population until it was recently suspended, following popular protests against it for interfering in the people’s personal lives and imposing many restrictions on them.
According to an analytical reading prepared by the Istanbul-based Jusoor Center for Studies, Al-Falah apparatus consists of several offices: Women’s Patrols Office, Mohtasiboun, Executive Force, Judicial Office and Complaints and Follow-up Office. Its members have absolute authority, such as arresting and holding perpetrators of legal violations accountable, and its actions range from advising to using direct force under the principle of “the duty of enjoining the good and forbidding the evil.”
One of Al-Falah’s most prominent tasks is to prevent men and women from mixing in public places by erecting control points on university campuses and in parks, preventing men from selling women’s clothes, banning the display of mannequins at shops, monitoring wedding halls and banning music and smoking. In addition, it is known to interfere with women’s clothing and accessories and forcing humanitarian organizations to separate their staff by gender.
The director of public relations in HTS’ affiliated salvation government, Mulham al-Ahmad, told Al-Monitor, “In conjunction with terminating the work of Al-Falah, HTS started forming an alternative apparatus under the name of the ‘moral police.’ It will be affiliated with the salvation government’s police institutions, and its tasks will be limited compared to Al-Falah’s.”
He noted, “It will focus on moral issues and refrain from interfering in the details of the lives of civilians. It will have a civilian capacity to solve conflicts within the community, which is part of the salvation government’s measures to govern various fields in the areas under its control. Al-Falah has played its role throughout the last phase. Now, these measures are in accordance with the new plan drawn up by HTS.”
Ending Al-Falah’s work comes as part of a series of changes that HTS is gradually making within the framework of opening up to the outside world and marketing itself as a legitimate opposition group and ruler of Idlib, with whom partnerships and understandings can be built.
However, it seems that HTS is forced to form the moral police in order to satisfy the extremist current within it, which does not accept many of these new changes.
Muhammed el-Sukkeri, a researcher at the Jusoor Center for Studies, told Al-Monitor, “HTS focuses on rearranging its house through its government institutions and is working in an organized manner because it realizes that its militaristic character and the way it manages Idlib according to its ideologies could never allow it to make it on the regional and international scene.”
He said, “HTS has thus started paying more attention to its civilian authority in an attempt to find tools to help deal with the international community, especially after bringing in aid, which is an important step for HTS.”
Sukkeri noted, “HTS’ desire to be part of the political process — to have a foothold in the future Syria and to enter the Syrian parliament — prompted it to reconsider its previous policy and work to showcase itself as a civilian authority, so as to persuade the West to allow it to play its role and represent Idlib. However, ending the work of Al-Falah and forming the moral police can be a mere change of name.”
The Hisbah apparatuses have a long record of violations against civilians, most notably the attacks on girls in the Idlib city market in June 2017. In addition, a female preacher once beat up the director of exams at Idlib University due to a dispute over her outfit. Bus drivers affiliated with the nongovernmental Violet Organization were arrested, and teachers and students of Al-Orouba High School, the Pythagoras Institute and the Center for Development and Technology were beaten up, all under the pretext of men and women mixing. These apparatuses have also carried out floggings, against the perpetrators of Sharia violations.
The chairman of the Syrian Network for Human Rights, Fadel Abdul Ghany, condemned the extremist practices of the Hisbah apparatus in Idlib.
“These apparatuses impose restrictions on the population in the areas under their control, interfering in personal affairs and freedoms, according to their hard-line ideology. They beat up civilians, arrest them and force violators to pay fines. They violate basic rights provided by international human rights laws,” he told Al-Monitor.
He added, “Through these apparatuses, HTS is trying to control society to fully comply with its ideology. The international community should help Syrian society get rid of extremist organizations by taking serious steps according to a specific and strict timetable to achieve a political transition toward democracy that guarantees stability and human rights.”
The Turkish army and its allied Syrian factions have recently increased attacks against the Syrian Democratic Forces in northeast Syria.
The Turkish army has intensified its attacks against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northeast Syria over the past few weeks.