Who Is IS?

[Draggingtree]

P J Media: Who Is IS?

I think the Russians are involved, in tandem with the Iranians, who have had their own troops on the Syrian battlefield for years.

 

by Michael Ledeen June 6, 2015 - 2:01 pm

Who are they anyway? IS, the Islamic State, that is.

 

There are two big components: religious fanatics and totalitarian leaders. The secret of IS’ success lies in combining the two ideologies and methods of enlisting and controlling millions of people. Sometimes the two merge in fanatical leaders, as took place in the latter years of Saddam’s Iraq (the dictator himself had a personal imam, even). Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi seems a case in point. This appears to be rare, however; for the most part the Islamic Staters are one or the other, with fanatics populating the rank-and-file and politburo-style regime builders dominating the elite. We hear a lot about the faithful, but not so much about the nomenklatura. Here’s a look-see at what we might call the caliphate’s political class.

 

[Draggingtree]

The Terror Strategist: Secret Files Reveal the Structure of Islamic State

 

By Christoph Reuter

 

Aloof. Polite. Cajoling. Extremely attentive. Restrained. Dishonest. Inscrutable. Malicious. The rebels from northern Syria, remembering encounters with him months later, recall completely different facets of the man. But they agree on one thing: "We never knew exactly who we were sitting across from."

 

In fact, not even those who shot and killed him after a brief firefight in the town of Tal Rifaat on a January morning in 2014 knew the true identity of the tall man in his late fifties. They were unaware that they had killed the strategic head of the group calling itself "Islamic State" (IS). The fact that this could have happened at all was the result of a rare but fatal miscalculation by the brilliant planner. The local rebels placed the body into a refrigerator, in which they intended to bury him. Only later, when they realized how important the man was, did they lift his body out again.

 

Samir Abd Muhammad al-Khlifawi was the real name of the Iraqi, whose bony features were softened by a white beard

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/islamic-state-files-show-structure-of-islamist-terror-group-a-1029274.html