The New Caliphate

**Wanderin' Zero** · 06-04-2015, 18:26

http://iolmobile.co.za/#!/article/ca...g-is-1.1841189

So here we are now, it's finally reached us too. More to come, no doubt.

**Wanderin' Zero** · 11-05-2015, 13:01

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/05...king-fun-isis/

**Wanderin' Zero** · 11-05-2015, 17:53

http://www.theatlantic.com/internati...-yemen/392795/

**Wanderin' Zero** · 24-05-2015, 14:51

With Victories, ISIS Dispels Hope of a Swift Decline

BAGHDAD — Just last month, when Western and Iraqi officials talked about the Islamic State, it was mostly to list a series of setbacks to the terrorist group: defeated in the Syrian town of Kobani, battered by a heavy airstrike campaign, forced out of a growing list of towns and cities in Iraq.

But in just the past week, the Islamic State has turned that story around. Last weekend it solidified its hold on Iraq’s Anbar Province with a carefully choreographed assault on the regional capital, Ramadi. And on Wednesday, it stretched its territory in Syria into the historically and strategically important city of Palmyra.

Confounding declarations of the group’s decline, the twin offensives have become a sudden showcase for the group’s disciplined adherence to its core philosophies: always fighting on multiple fronts, wielding atrocities to scare off resistance and, especially, enforcing its caliphate in the Sunni heartland that straddles the Iraqi-Syrian border. In doing so, the Islamic State has not only survived setbacks, but also engineered new victories.

“Nobody here from the president on down is saying that this is something that we’ll just overcome immediately,” a senior State Department official said in a briefing with reporters on Wednesday, in which the ground rules demanded anonymity. “It’s an extremely serious situation.”

Read more here: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/24/wo...line.html?_r=0

**Wanderin' Zero** · 24-05-2015, 15:02

Bloodshed in the kingdom

http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21652037-rare-bomb-hits-shia-mosque-bloodshed-kingdom

SAUDI Arabia has seemed more or less sheltered from the wars and sectarian bloodletting that have raged all around it in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. No longer.

On May 22nd a suicide bomber struck a mosque in the eastern region of Qatif, which is home to the majority of the kingdom’s 2.8m Shias (some 10% of the population). At least 20 people were killed as they gathered in the Imam Ali Mosque; scores more were injured. Islamic State (IS), which has long threatened to attack Shiites in the kingdom, claimed responsibility. If true, it signals that the sectarian violence raging to Saudi Arabia's north and south is now penetrating the kingdom itself, which IS now calls “Najd Province”.

In November, a recording by a man purporting to be Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, IS’s chief, called on followers to “erupt volcanoes of jihad everywhere”, and announced the extension of his “state” to Saudi Arabia, among other places.

Today a disturbing number of Saudi clerics peddle anti-Shia rhetoric, without fear of arrest. Hours before the bombing, one imam in Riyadh was quoted as telling the devout at the end of Friday prayers: “Allah, attack all the Shia everywhere; Allah, send them earthquakes; Allah, kill them all.”