http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/06/isis-barbarians-face-their-own-internal-reign-of-terror.html?via=twitter_pageSIGNS OF DECAY02.06.15
Jamie Dettmer
ISIS Barbarians Face Their Own Internal Reign of Terror
The internal bloodletting among ISIS factions has begun, and could get much worse.
The propagandists of the putative Islamic State would have you believe it is just one big happy family, righteously slaughtering apostates, enslaving women (literally), beheading and burning alive its prisoners, all in the name of God. But quarrels over a range of issues—from divvying up of the spoils of war to competition over women and, yes, the handling of foreign hostages—point to a lot of trouble beneath the surface of this terror army.
This is according to political activists in northern Syria, including members of the a group called Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently, which follows developments in ISIS very closely and appear to be well-sourced inside the city of Raqqa, which is the so-called Islamic State’s capital. The group reported on a failed Jordanian attempt to rescue Muadh al Kasasbeh, a downed pilot from the Jordan Air Force, and his subsequent execution, burned alive, weeks before the hideous video of his murder was made public by ISIS.
Commanders in the Aleppo Operations Room, a center coordinating activities of the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army and other factions, tell The Daily Beast there has also been an increase in defections from ISIS ranks, especially among militants who have been selected for suicide-bomb missions.
On Friday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that an ISIS cleric in Aleppo province who dared to criticize the immolation of Kasasbeh has been removed from his post by the “caliphate” leadership and will be put on trial by the group. The Saudi-born imam had said those responsible for the video-recorded murder are the ones who should be put on trial. ISIS has responded to criticism from Quranic scholars the world over, who say the execution was utterly un-Islamic, by posting a line on Twitter insisting it is permissible to burn an infidel to death. (For the record, Kasasbeh was not an infidel at all, but a devout Muslim who prayed before he took off on the mission that ended with his plane crashing, his capture, and his murder. But the caliph and his cronies claim they have the exclusive right to decide who is and is not a Muslim, and what is and is not the will of God.)
Some independent Syrian media reported that the head of the al Hisba police force in Raqqa, responsible for the enforcement of Sharia law, fled after trying to mount a coup. But Slaughtered Silently activists say the departure of Abu Talha al-Kuwaiti, along with nearly a dozen of his supporters, wasn’t the upshot of a takeover bid. They say it arose out of more petty but equally deadly disputes that had led to the execution earlier in the war of his patron, the governor of the Raqqa, who went by the name Abu Ayyub al-Ansari.
The ISIS leadership has issued no statement about any of these reported executions.
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