Tag Archive for: fighters

Meet the Christian Female Fighters of Syria [+Video]

A new unit of Christian female fighters has been formed in Syria to protect the Syrian Christians from the Islamic State.

The ‘Female Protection Forces of the Land Between the Two Rivers’ is based in Hasekeh province, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and currently has around 50 fighters.

The first recruits graduated the training program in August.

Kurdish forces have long fielded women in frontline combat roles.

There are many different Christian communities in Syria and Iraq belonging to different sects and nationalities. Some are Assyrians, descendants of the Assyrian people who once ruled the Middle East from their capital of Nineveh.

Other Christian factions in Syria include Greek Orthodox, Catholics, Chaldeans, Armenians and Maronites.

One 36 year old mother of two explained to AFP why she had taken up arms “I miss Limar and Gabriella and worry that they must be hungry, thirsty and cold” she said. “But I try to tell them I’m fighting to protect their future.”

The battalion recently fought to recapture the town of Al-Hol, alongside the ‘Syrian Democratic Forces,’ a coalition of Kurds, Arabs and Christians.

Get a preview of Clarion Project’s upcoming film, Faithkeepers, about the violent persecution of Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East. The film features exclusive footage and testimonials of Christians, Baha’i, Yazidis, Jews, and other minority refugees, and a historical context of the persecution in the region.

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EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is an illustrative picture. Photo: © brian.ch creative commons.

U.S. scraps failed $500 million program to train ‘moderate’ Syrian rebels

Moving from one spectacular failure to the next. Nothing that the US does to counter the Islamic State will succeed until officials examine its ideology realistically. Without that, every move to counter it effectively will founder on the unreality of the State Department’s analysis.

“US scraps its $500 million programme to train ‘moderate’ Syrian rebels after producing fewer than 80 soldiers, most of whom were either shot or ran away,” by Simon Tomlinson, MailOnline, October 9, 2015:

The U.S. has scrapped its $500 million program to train moderate rebels after it produced fewer than 80 fighters, most of whom had been killed or fled.

U.S. Defence Secretary Ash Carter said Washington would instead work more closely with capable Kurdish and other forces in Syria.

No details were immediately available, but the programme to train and equip moderate Syrian rebels to fight the Islamic State group is widely considered a failure.

Carter said at a news conference in London that the work the U.S. has done with the Kurds is a good example of an effective approach with a capable, motivated ground combat force.

He did not provide more details.

U.S. officials have said the new effort would focus more on embedding recruits with established Kurdish and Arab units, rather than sending them directly into front-line combat.

Last week, a commander of one of the U.S.-trained rebel units turned over a half-dozen U.S. vehicles to extremist militants….

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U.S. Department of Homeland Security: No way to vet Muslim Syrian refugees

And since the Obama Administration continues in its resolute denial of the motivating and guiding ideology behind the global jihad, there is no possible way that DHS could effectively subject these refugees to “robust screening.” Any attempt by them to do so is foredoomed.

DHS Confesses: No Databases Exist To Vet Syrian Refugees,” Investor’s Business Daily, October 6, 2015:

Immigration: As the White House prepares to dump another 10,000 Syrian refugees on U.S. cities, it assures us these mostly Muslim men undergo a “robust screening” process. Not so, admits the agency responsible for such vetting.

Under grilling from GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions, head of the Senate subcommittee on immigration, the Homeland Security official in charge of vetting Syrian and other foreign Muslim refugees confessed that no police or intelligence databases exist to check the backgrounds of incoming refugees against criminal and terrorist records.

“Does Syria have any?” Sessions asked. “The government does not, no sir,” answered Matthew Emrich, associate director for fraud detection and national security at DHS’ U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Sessions further inquired: “You don’t have their criminal records, you don’t have the computer database that you can check?” Confessed Emrich: “In many countries the U.S. accepts refugees from, the country did not have extensive data holdings.”

While a startling admission, it confirms previous reporting. Senior FBI officials recently testified that they have no idea who these people are, and they can’t find out what type of backgrounds they have — criminal, terrorist or otherwise — because there are no vetting opportunities in those war-torn countries.

Syria and Iraq, along with Somalia and Sudan, are failed states where police records aren’t even kept. Agents can’t vet somebody if they don’t have documentation and don’t even have the criminal databases to screen applicants.

So the truth is, we are not vetting these Muslim refugees at all. And as GOP presidential front-runners duly note, it’s a huge gamble to let people from hostile nations enter the U.S. without any meaningful background check. It’s a safer bet just to limit, if not stop, their immigration.

“If I win, they’re going back,” Donald Trump vowed. “They could be ISIS. This (mass Syrian immigration) could be one of the great tactical ploys of all time.”

Ben Carson, for his part, said that he would bar refugees from Syria because they are “infiltrated” with terrorists seeking to harm America. “To bring into this country groups infiltrated with jihadists makes no sense,” Carson asserted. “Why would you do something like that?”

The Obama regime claims to have no evidence of terrorist or even extremist infiltration. But Sessions made public a list of 72 recent Muslim immigrants arrested just over the past year who were charged with terrorist activity.

The list doesn’t include the Boston Marathon bombers, who emigrated from Chechnya as asylum seekers. Or the several dozen suspected terrorist bomb-makers brought into the U.S. as Iraq war refugees.

They included two al-Qaida in Iraq terrorists mistakenly resettled as refugees in Bowling Green, Ky. Waad Ramadan Alwan and Mohanad Shareef Hammadi were sent to Bowling Green even though they had been detained by authorities in Iraq for killing U.S. soldiers.

Alwan had crossed the border into Syria. Still, both passed background checks and were declared “clean.” They were then placed in U.S. public housing and afforded other welfare benefits.

While here, the two refugees plotted to obtain Stinger missiles and attack homeland targets. The FBI caught up to them before they could carry out their plans. They are now serving 40 years in federal prison….

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Islamic State: ‘Just wait’ we have smuggled 1000s of Muslim fighters into Europe

Just as it threatened to do. Authorities should not dismiss this claim lightly. After all, European officials are doing absolutely nothing to determine if there are jihadis among the refugees.

“‘Just wait…’ Islamic State reveals it has smuggled THOUSANDS of extremists into Europe,” by Aaron Brown, Express, September 6, 2015:

AN OPERATIVE working for Islamic State has revealed the terror group has successfully smuggled thousands of covert Jihadists into Europe.

The Syrian operative claimed more than 4,000 covert ISIS gunmen had been smuggled into western nations – hidden amongst innocent refugees.

The ISIS smuggler, who is in his 30s with a trimmed jet-black beard, revealed the ongoing clandestine operation is a complete success.

“Just wait,” he smiled.

The Islamic State operative spoke exclusively to BuzzFeed on the condition of anonymity and is believed to be the first to confirm plans to infiltrate western countries.

Islamic State, also referred to as IS and ISIS, is believed to be actively smuggling deadly gunmen across the sparsely-guarded 565-mile Turkish border and on to richer European nations, he revealed.

There are now more than 4,000 covert ISIS gunmen “ready” across the European Union, he claimed.

The operative said the undercover infiltration was the beginning of a larger plot to carry out revenge attacks in the West in retaliation for the US-led coalition airstrikes.

“If someone attacks me,” he said “then for sure I will attack them back.”

Islamic State extremists are taking advantage of developed nation’s generosity towards refugees to infiltrate Europe, he said.

The lethal ISIS gunmen use local smugglers to blend in and travel amongst a huge tide of illegal migrants flooding Europe.

More than 1.5million refugees have fled into Turkey alone – desperate to escape the bloodshed in Syria.

From Turkish port cities like Izmir and Mersin, thousands of refugees venture across the Mediterranean aiming for Italy, he said.

Then the majority make for more welcoming nations like Sweden and Germany, turning themselves over to authorities and appealing for asylum.

“They are going like refugees,” he said.

Two Turkish refugee-smugglers backed up the claims made by the ISIS Syrian operative.

One admitted to helping more than ten trained ISIS rebels infiltrate Europe under the guise of asylum seekers.

He said: “I’m sending some fighters who want to go and visit their families.

“Others just go to Europe to be ready.”

The Syrian operative, a former member of his nation’s security forces, said ISIS had ambitious plans ahead.

“It’s our dream that there should be a caliphate not only in Syria but in all the world,” he said “and we will have it soon, God willing.”

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The ‘Invasion of Europe’ continues today…

If one judges by the photos, it sure looks like young men are the problem in the flood of supposed refugees from the Middle East swarming into Europe.  A picture is worth a thousand words.  A lot of pictures like those here at the Daily Mail are worth much more!

What sort of men are these?  Instead of running to Mama Merkel for comfort, why aren’t they fighting to save their own countries?

I thought of this post—some Syrians are opportunists—when I saw these photos.

Disgusting in Budapest earlier today:

Budapest train

Go here for our complete archive on the invasion.

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Assyrian Christians Defending Their Homeland from Islamic State Genocide

In a “Crime Against Humanity” on January 8, 1914 a Jihad was declared by the Ottoman Empire against “all Christians”; it was a government ordered genocide against Greeks, Assyrian, and Armenian Christians, the genocide resulted in the brutal murders of over one million Christians over the next two years.  For over the last 3 years, the world has been witnessing another “Crime Against Humanity”; today the same type Jihad that was perpetrated against Christians over 100 years ago by the Ottoman Turks, is being perpetrated by ISIL and Al Q’ieda in another bloody genocide against Syrian in Syria and against Assyrian Christians on the Plains of Ninveh in Iraq.

The Plain of Nineveh is the 2000+ year old ancient homeland of Aramaic speaking Assyrian Christians in what used to be Mesopotamia, but is called Iraq today.  The Assyrian Christians pride themselves on being the oldest ethnic Christian community in continuous existence since Jesus Christ walked the face of the earth; they speak the same language Christ spoke, worship in churches the Christ’s Disciples founded, and since Roman times theses courageous Assyrian Christians have been persecuted and murdered for refusing to denounce their faith in Jesus Christ.  The Pope called the Assyrian Church “The Martyr Church.”  Hundreds of ancient Assyrian Christian Churches, some that go back as far as 1800 years are being burned to the ground, along with their ancient religious artifacts and historic bibles by ISIL and Al Q’ieda; the Tomb of Jonah has also been destroyed.  For over 3 years particularly vulnerable Assyrian Christians have been fleeing their ancient ancestral homeland in the Nineveh Plain from the onslaught of ISIL and Al Q’ieda, seeking protection from the Kurdish Pershmerga Forces from the bloody genocide that has been underway for many years, as have thousands of peaceful Muslims who refuse to support the Jihad of Christians by Radical Islamic Terrorists.

For over 3 years the international media has reported that ISIL and Al Q’ieda has been insisting on mass conversion to Islam or death; hundreds of thousands of Syrian and Assyrian Christians, are being horrifically targeted for religious cleansing by Radical Islamic Terrorists.  The terrorists are brutally torturing, crucifying, beheading, burying Christians alive, shooting them execution style, dowsing them in oil and burning them alive, cutting the young Assyrian Christian children in half, raping & murdering female children and women, conducting mass executions, and selling some of the Assyrian Christian women into white slavery (there are hundreds of photos of those atrocities on the worldwide net).  The Greek Catholic Relief Agency has reported that 300,000 Syrian and Assyrian Christians refugees have been seeking resettlement in the US thru the UN Muslim Resettlement Program, but they have been rejected by the UN and by the Obama administration.

Leaders of the International Community have been raising their voices in opposition to the current “Crime Against Humanity.”  The Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Royal Family in England, the UK Prime Minister, the King of Jordan, the President of Egypt, the President of Kurdistan, the Prime Minister of Japan, the Prime Minister of Australian, President George W. Bush, Reverend Billy Graham, the Patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Prime Ministers of NATO nations, the Prime Minister of Israel, Christian Religious Leaders of every denomination from throughout the world, and the Secretary General of the United Nations have all raised their voices in unison to demand that the bloody genocide of Christians in Syria and Iraq stop.  The occupant of the Oval Office has not joined world leaders in their condemnation of the genocide of Christians by ISIL & Al Q’ieda in this latest “Crime Against Humanity”: Obama refuses to utter one word of condemnation, nor has he called on the Radical Islamic Terrorists to stop the bloody genocide of defenseless Christians—his silence for the last 3 years has been deafening.  However, Obama did refer to Christians in a recent prayer breakfast, the same way Radical Islamic Terrorists refer to Christians, as “Crusaders.”

Less than 400,000 Assyrian Christians survivors of the 4,065,000 Assyrian Christians who once populated 70 Urmia villages in the Nineveh Plain remain in Iraq; many Assyrian Christians have fled the country and are among the 300,000 Christian refugees seeking entry into the US as refugees.  For over 3 years, the 400,000 Assyrian Christians have been desperately seeking military weapons and logistic support from the Obama administration and the Iraqi government.  Very little of the US military and logistic support, that is being sent to Iraq by the US, has been funneled by the Iranian controlled Iraq government to the Kurdish Pershmerga Forces.

For the last 3 years, the Iranian controlled Iraqi government has rejected distribution of any weapons and logistic support to the Assyrian Christians to save them from ethnic cleansing, or to the Sunni tribes who once allied themselves with US military forces in support of the “Surge” during the Iraqi War.  The friendly Sunni tribes have been persecuted by the Iranian controlled Iraqi Shite Government ever since friendly US military forces were summarily pulled out of Iraq by Obama. US Forces were completely pulled out of Iraq at the end of the Iraqi War, despite warnings from US military general officers and US senior intelligence officials, who warned that removing a residual US military force would destabilize Iraq, and allow Al Q’ieda to grow once again.  Future US military and logistic support from the US must to delivered directly to the Kurdish Pershmerga Forces, Assyrian Christians, and friendly Sunni tribes who once allied themselves with the US military during the “Surge.”

The Assyrian Christians in Iraq who make up the Assyrian Iraqi Democratic Movement (AIDM) have sought and obtained support from US Assyrian communities.  The American Mesopotamian Organization (AMO) and other Assyrian organizations in the US; have jointly developed a project entitled “Restore Nineveh Now” with AIDM    AMO is soliciting and collecting donated funds to equip and train 4000 Assyrian Christians volunteers in an newly developed Assyrian Militia, called “The Nineveh Plain Protection Units.”  Currently 600 volunteers are being trained to lead and mobilize “The Nineveh Plain Protection Units” in two locations in eastern Iraq.  The Nineveh Plain Protection Units will defend their fellow Assyrian Christians from being massacred in ISIL’s and Al Q’ieda’s Jihad (the below listed article provides specific details on the training that is underway).

The Combat Veterans For Congress support a coalition of 55 US Congressmen who have asked Obama to take immediate action to provide weapons and logistic support directly to the Assyrian Christian’s Nineveh Plains Protection Units and, after 3 years, to finally speak out against the bloody genocide being perpetrated by Radical Islamic Terrorists designed to annihilate the Ancient Faith Community of Assyrian Christians on the Plains of Ninveh.  Kindly click on the below listed link to watch a video of a Congressional spokesman for the 55 US Congressmen that was provided to us by Foster Friess.

Watch this 3:45 minute video from U.S. Representative Trent Franks:


‘We Love This Land’: Iraqi Christian Men Fight to Keep ISIS Away From Homes

A battalion of Assyrian Christian men train at a former U.S. military facility outside the city of Kirkuk, Iraq. (Photo courtesy: Kaldo Oghanna)

Athra Kado had never shot a gun before, let alone seen a battlefield.

Until recently Kado, 25, spent his young career in a classroom, teaching high school students how to speak Syriac, his native language.

But Kado is one of hundreds of Assyrian Christian men—many with no military experience—taking up arms to protect their towns from ISIS terrorists who invaded this part of Iraq early last year.

“If we don’t have land to live, what’s the purpose of teaching a language?” Kado tells The Daily Signal in a Skype interview from a former U.S. military facility outside the city of Kirkuk, where he is finishing up a training camp with 500 or so amateur fighters.

Recruits to the new Christian militia, or battalion, say their villages and families were abandoned by Iraqi government and peshmerga forces last summer, letting the terrorists seize control.

Since then, some 30,000 Christians have fled the Nineveh plains—an area inhabited by minority groups such as Iraqi Christians, Yezidis and Shabaks.

Without official government support, and with minimal equipment primarily funded through donations, the young Christian men—most in their early to mid 20s—feel a responsibility to defend their own.

“We saw that nobody was doing anything for us,” says Kado, whose home town, Al Qosh, is the only Christian town in the Nineveh plains free of ISIS control. “We know that we don’t have another chance if we don’t fight for ourselves. No one is protecting us. We want to make a change.”

Last summer, Iraq’s most prominent Christian political party, the Assyrian Democratic Movement, issued a call for volunteers from minority groups to form a local defense force to fight ISIS, the Sunni militant group also known the Islamic State or ISIL.

In late January, the Kurdistan Regional Government’s peshmerga—a leading force fighting ISIS that receives American support—offered up the Kirkuk training facility as the grounds for the Assyrian Christian battalion to learn military might.

“This is our right as human beings and as indigenous people: to protect our people and ourselves,” says Kaldo Oghanna, a party official from the Assyrian Democratic Movement who oversaw the training. “It is not logical for people south of north [of here] to secure this area.”

”This is our right as human beings and as indigenous people: to protect our people and ourselves,” says @KaldoRamzi.

Kado, the young fighter, said at least four Americans—volunteers with military experience—are helping train the men to use weapons such as automatic rifles, mortars, machine guns, AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades.

Fighters acquire skills fast, because they have to. They train from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day.

“When someone wants badly to do something, everything is easy for him,” Kado says.

“Me and my friends are getting this information so fast. We want to do that. We will go to our villages and towns and protect them so ISIS can’t come to our families.”

The training wraps up Thursday, when the civilian fighters are expected to be able to defend their turf.

“I know I am ready,” Kado says.

500 iraqi christian fighters

Some 500 amateur Assyrian Christian fighters learn how to be a disciplined fighting force. (Photo courtesy: Kaldo Oghanna)

Help Wanted

Oghanna says the training of Iraqi Christian fighters has occurred without financial support from the Iraqi, Kurdish or U.S. governments.

Donations, mostly from Assyrians abroad, fund everything from guns to bullets to food.

He hopes the United States steps forward—help that may be on the way.

The U.S. National Defense Authorization Act, approved in December, includes language to train and equip fighters against the Islamic State.

As part of the legislation, up to $1.6 billion should go toward support for units such as the Iraqi Army, Sunni tribal fighters, peshmerga and local forces protecting “vulnerable” minority groups in the Nineveh plains.

“The U.S. supports many groups [fighters], especially in Syria, where many of them convert to join ISIS,” Oghanna says. “We know it’s complex [to decide who to support], but we are for sure not going to convert to ISIS.”

‘My Land’

The Assyrian Christians, who consider themselves the indigenous people of Iraq, want to survive on their terms.

For Kado and the battalion fighters, that means staying in their villages, no matter that ISIS militants want to wipe Christianity out of Iraq.

Oghanna says there are currently less than 400,000 Christians living in Iraq, down from about 1.6 million in 2003. Most have fled.

Kado will not. His family’s roots in Al Qosh date back 400 years.

More than 400 families from other Christian villages have come to Al Qosh to seek shelter. So Kado stays.

“We don’t want to be refugees in another country,” Kado says.

Adds Oghanna, “It would be bitter for us to migrate to Europe and the U.S.”

Kado has great respect for America.

He listens to American music, and he learned English through the songs and lyrics of Whitney Houston.

Two of his brothers live in Detroit.

“I want to vacation in the U.S.,” Kado says, smiling sheepishly, listing Las Vegas as a spot he hopes to visit. “But I want to stay and live here.”

Kado is risking everything to stay—to be the guardian of his religion, his land.

“I have thought about dying,” Kado says. “But the most important thing I’ve learned in the camp is discipline. It’s not just Christianity. If it was just Christianity, I could be Christian in Europe. It’s a matter of … this is our land. We want to live on it. We love this land.”

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of a battalion of Assyrian Christian men training at a former U.S. military facility outside the city of Kirkuk, Iraq. (Photo courtesy: Kaldo Oghanna)

Four Islamic State fighters arrested in Texas in the last 36 hours

“If you really want to protect Americans from ISIS, you secure the southern border.” Oh come now. That would be racist. Better to get beheaded or blown up in a jihad attack than that, right?

“JW Confirms: 4 ISIS Terrorists Arrested in Texas in Last 36 Hours,” Judicial Watch, October 8, 2014:

Islamic terrorists have entered the United States through the Mexican border and Homeland Security sources tell Judicial Watch that four have been apprehended in the last 36 hours by federal authorities and the Texas Department of Public Safety in McAllen and Pharr.

JW confirmed this after California Congressman Duncan Hunter, a former Marine Corp Major and member of the House Armed Services Committee, disclosed on national television that at least ten Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) fighters have been caught crossing the Mexican border in Texas. The veteran lawmaker got the astounding intel straight from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Homeland Security agency responsible for guarding the 1,933-mile southern border.

“If you really want to protect Americans from ISIS, you secure the southern border,” Hunter proclaimed on a national cable news show this week. “It’s that simple. ISIS doesn’t have a navy, they don’t have an air force, they don’t have nuclear weapons. The only way that ISIS is going to harm Americans is by coming in through the southern border – which they already have.” The three-term congressmen went on: “They aren’t flying B-1 bombers, bombing American cities, but they are going to be bombing American cities coming across from Mexico.”…

However, military experts told JW that the increase in security indicates that Ft. Bliss is a target. Military installations in the U.S. only make changes to security measures when there are clear and present threats, according to retired Army Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, former commander of the Army’s elite Delta Force who also served four years as Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. “That means they’re getting a threat stream. Ft. Bliss had to have a clear and present threat,” Boykin said. Following that news, federal law enforcement sources in El Paso revealed that U.S. Congressman Beto O’Rourke telephoned the area offices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) in an effort to identify—and evidently intimidate—sources that may have been used by JW to break the ISIS in Juarez story.

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