To beat Militants, Syrian force goes back to the basics
RAQQA: Once the last Islamic State group fighters are ousted from Syria’s Raqqa, the unconventional forces battling the jihadists say they’ll have batteries and masking tape to thank for their victory. The Syrian Democratic Forces on the verge of seizing IS’s former bastion Raqqa have received sophisticated support from the US-led coalition, including air strikes, weaponry, and intelligence. But winning their monthslong offensive against the jihadists, they say, required going back to basics. In a cavernous warehouse just east of Raqqa’s Old City, SDF fighters sit cross-legged on a dusty rug piled high with cylinder-shaped three-volt batteries, masking tape, empty cigarette packs and loose wires.
The materials are used to make primitive powerbanks to charge the walkie-talkies that SDF commanders rely on to communicate with each other across Raqqa’s frontlines. As artillery fire and air strikes echo in the background, the assembly line gets to work. One fighter stacks eight batteries into a brick-like shape while another prepares the tape that will hold them together. A third peels the aluminum foil from white cigarette packs-perfect for a conductor-and begins taping it to the wires he snipped from the walls of the battered building. “Our positions have to be in touch 24 hours per day with these walkie-talkies, but they’re not that great,” says local SDF commander Sevger Himo.
‘Mother of invention’
Built-in batteries last just three hours, which forced SDF commanders to switch them off between coordinating storming operations, defensive rocket fire, or civilian rescues. But with the hand-made battery packs, walkie-talkies stay charged for up to two straight days. The powerbanks are ubiquitous in battle-ravaged Raqqa, including in frontline positions near the city’s hospital and football stadiums, two of IS’s last redoubts in the city. SDF fighters advancing there are often isolated for days from rear bases, making fully-charged walkie-talkies their only link to the outside world. “This has saved lives more than once. Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say,” says Himo, a young fighter with a boyish face. “National armies have their own factories, but we’re a military force without much international support-so we rely on things we can get in the market and KUALA LUMPUR: The battlefield deaths of two leaders of an Islamic State alliance in the southern Philippines could thrust a Malaysian who trained at an Al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan as the militant group’s new regional “emir”, experts and officials say. Intelligence officials describe Malaysian Mahmud Ahmad as a financier and recruiter, who helped put together the coalition of pro-Islamic State (IS) fighters that stormed Marawi City in May. Isnilon Hapilon, Islamic State’s anointed “emir” in Southeast Asia, and Omarkhayam Maute, one of two Middle East-educated brothers at the helm of the militant alliance, were killed in a raid on a building in Marawi and their bodies recovered yesterday, Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said.
Philippine authorities said they were still searching for Mahmud. “Based on our information, there is still one personality, Dr Mahmud of Malaysia, and he is still in the main battle area with some Indonesians and Malaysians,” military chief,
Malaysian teacher seen as new ‘emir’ of pro-IS militants
Gen Eduardo Ano, said yesterday. “But their attitude is now different, they are no longer as aggressive as before.” He did not elaborate. Ano urged the 30 militants remaining in a shrinking combat zone to surrender and free hostages as troops stepped up their fight.
Abdullah Maute, the alliance’s military commander, was reported killed in August, though no body was found. Intelligence officials in Malaysia believe Mahmud left Marawi months ago. Malaysia’s police counter-terrorism chief Ayob Khan Mydin Pitchay told Reuters in July that Mahmud “managed to sneak out from Marawi city to another safe place with his followers”. The 39-year-old Mahmud, who holds a doctorate in religious studies and was a university lecturer in Kuala Lumpur, was Hapilon’s second-in-command in the IS’s Southeast Asia “caliphate”, according to a July report by Indonesia-based Institute of Policy Analysis and Conflict (IPAC).
Recruitment and financing
Sitting in the inner circle of the Marawi command centre, Mahmud controlled recruitment and financing, the IPAC report said. He was the contact for foreigners wanting to join the fight in the Philippines or with IS in the Middle East, it said. “It wasn’t just Indonesians and Malaysians contacting Dr Mahmud ... he was also the contact for Bangladeshis in Malaysia who wanted to join the fighting in Mindanao,” IPAC’s director Sidney Jones told Reuters. Rohan Gunaratna, an analyst at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, described Mahmud as “the most important IS leader in Southeast Asia”. Ahmad El-Muhammady, a lecturer at the International Islamic University of Malaysia (IIUM) and a counter-terrorism advisor to the police, said Mahmud often solicited funds for IS operations. “He’s always the one asking people “does anyone have any money they’d like to donate?”, and he will usually reply when followers in the region ask him about the situation in the Philippines,” Ahmad said.
‘Just disappeared’
Mahmud grew up in Batu Caves, a crowded Kuala Lumpur suburb, famous for a Hindu temple housed in a large complex of caverns. Mahmud’s wife and three children were last known to be living there, although Reuters could not locate them. Before leaving Malaysia in 2014, Mahmud taught young Muslim students at a tahfiz, a school to memorize the Koran, in Nakhoda, a village near Batu Caves, residents said. “When he (Mahmud) started the school, he did stay there for the first one or two years, but then he just disappeared,” said 50-year-old Zainon Mat Arshad, a Nakhoda resident who went to the mosque where Mahmud prayed. “When he was at the tahfiz school, he kept mostly to himself and if he had come over to pray on Friday, I don’t think anyone would have recognized him,” said Zainon. “He didn’t mingle with the local community.” —Reuters