MUST-READS

• ISIS
  CIA: Islamic State group has up to 31,500 fighters

  A CIA spokesman says a new intelligence assessment estimates that the Islamic State group can muster between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters across Iraq and Syria, up from a previous figure of 10,000. The new assessment is based on a review of intelligence reports from May to August. It is larger than the 20,000 figure being used by many outside experts.

• Jordanian Intelligence
  The Mouse That Roars

  Jordan played a key role in helping U.S. intelligence hunt down and kill Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, the Islamic State's predecessor, according to former U.S. and Jordanian officials. Outside of Israel, Jordan's intelligence service is widely seen as the most competent and the closest to U.S. intelligence organizations. Many of its senior staff members were trained by the CIA, former U.S. officials say. That has helped Jordan, despite its small size, craft an intelligence service capable of wins like nabbing Zarqawi and helping the Americans quell a Sunni insurgency in Iraq in 2006.

• U.S. Strategy
  The “Best Game in Town” – Five Key Risks of the President’s Strategy

  It may seem unusual to criticize a strategy you have both suggested and endorse, and it is important to stress from the outset that President Obama has almost certainly chosen a strategy that is the “best game in town” — if he fully implements it, gives it the necessary resources, and sustains it over time.  The President has had to choose a strategy based on the “rules of the game” in the United States, in Iraq, in Syria, and allied states. They are rules that place major constraints on what the United States can do.

• Islamic Extremism
  Opinion: As Caliphates Compete, Radical Islam Will Eventually Weaken

  The rise of the Islamic State will inspire other jihadist groups to claim their own caliphates and emirates. In the long run, the extremism of these contrived dominions and the competition among them will undermine the jihadist movement. However, before that happens, the world will witness much upheaval.

• Labor
  Expat employment in Saudi up by 14% in 2014

  A Shoura council member has urged the Labour Ministry not to allow major companies to circumvent Saudisation laws by signing accords with subcontractors run mostly by expatriates, according to the report in Arab News.

• Islamic Finance
  Saudi Arabia Said to Weigh Opening Nation’s Debt Markets

  Saudi Arabia is working on new rules aimed at promoting the local currency bond and sukuk market, three people with knowledge of the matter said today. The rules are expected to allow foreign investors to buy local currency bonds for the first time and could be published early next year, they said.

• Saudi Arabia seizes $500 million worth of narcotics

  Speaking at a news conference, Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mansour al-Turki said among the substances seized were 7.32 kilograms of unprocessed heroine, 5.84 kilograms of processed heroine, 16.37 tons of marijuana and more than 21 million amphetamine capsules. He said the crackdown over the six-month period saw the arrest of more than 1,100 suspects, 741 of whom are residents from 35 countries.

• Business Outlook
  Saudi Arabia, UAE lead best business outlook in emerging markets

  Increasing external and domestic demand has led to the high PMI levels, with growth in new export orders hitting a record high and credit growth picking up for the first time in the last five years. Although the recent improvement in global economic conditions has reinforced the Saudi Arabian and the UAE economies, their domestic sectors are playing a major role behind the countries’ stabilities, both consumer and corporate led.

• Counter-Terrorism
  Here’s What Often Happens After You Kill a Terrorist Leader

  The efficacy of removing terrorist leaders depends in part on the nature of the group targeted. In her 2008 book How Terrorism Ends, Audrey Kurth Cronin of George Mason University identified leadership decapitation as one of several factors that have historically been involved, sometimes in combination, in the demise of terrorist organizations—with negotiations, loss of popular support, and repression among the others. “Those that have ended through decapitation,” she has written, “have tended to be hierarchically structured, young, characterized by a cult of personality, and lacking a viable successor.” In her own study, Jordan found that religious organizations “are highly resistant to leadership decapitation.”

  • Long War Journal - Shabaab names new emir, reaffirms allegiance to al Qaeda
• Qatar
  Qatar’s Support of Extremists Alienates Allies Near and Far

  Standing at the front of a conference hall in Doha, the visiting sheikh told his audience of wealthy Qataris that to help the battered residents of Syria, they should not bother with donations to humanitarian programs or the Western-backed Free Syrian Army.

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