A headline worthy of The Daily Mash

From The Times:

Isis issues coronavirus travel advice: terrorists should avoid Europe

The Isis terrorist group is steering clear of Europe because of the coronavirus. Having previously urged its supporters to attack European cities, the group is now advising members to "stay away from the land of the epidemic" in case they become infected.

The group has issued a new set of "sharia directives" that instruct followers to "cover their mouths when yawning and sneezing" and to wash their hands regularly. Isis militants have plenty of experience in covering their faces, though previously they did so to hide their identities when beheading hostages on camera.

In the latest issue of its al-Naba newsletter, the group refers not to guidance from the World Health Organisation or other medical experts, but to recorded quotes by the Prophet Muhammad.

I've read spy novels, I know how this works.

From the Evening Standard:

British spies are risking their lives daily in Islamic State heartlands to “take the fight to the enemy,” the head of MI6 said today.

Alex Younger stressed agents recruited by the Secret Intelligence Service had penetrated IS “upstream” to stop terror attacks on Britain’s streets.

But in his first public speech, the SIS chief laid bare the perils these individuals faced operating in “the most dangerous and hostile environments on earth” - where paranoid IS fanatics have executed hundreds of people wrongly suspected of being spies.

Spies spend most of their time spying on each other and searching for moles in their own ranks, so it's always good idea to give the other side the impression that you have double agents in their organisations, even if you haven't. Unless you actually have, in which case you have to try and disguise the source of your information etc, in endless twists of logic.

We know that ISIS is just Islamism taken to extremes, they love nothing more than raping, maiming, torturing and killing people and when they run out of victims they just slaughter each other for whatever spurious reason. (The Saudis are hardly better, but for some reason, they count as a reliable ally, go figure). No doubt people in ISIS are paranoid already, of their actual enemies and each other, so basically MI6 has now signed a death warrant for anybody connected with ISIS who has lived in the UK. In which case good work!

If we assume that the head of MI6 is acting rationally, the logical deduction must be that we have no British spies in ISIS. The gamble is, will ISIS assume that Younger is a blithering idiot who has just given away our trade secrets and turn on each other, or will they assume it is a bluff and ignore it? Or is it a double bluff? Or a treble bluff?

This is easier with novels because you can just read to the end and find out...

Well, Duh

From the BBC

Afghan government forces have lost control of the centre of the town of Sangin in Helmand province after days of fierce fighting, reports suggest.

Officials told the BBC that the Taliban controlled the local government building and police station.

The Taliban say their fighters have seized the entire district and that their flag is flying over Sangin.

Yet another example of the West treating the rest of the world like the West. We continue to treat countries that are not industrialised, where the incentives are to grab land as though they are industrialised (where the incentives are to make a cheaper computer or handbag).

Someone out there might connect these two histories:

Invade Afghanistan
Install weak government
Protect government
Leave Afghanistan
Strong militia takes part of the country a few years later

and

Invade Iraq
Install weak government
Protect government
Leave Iraq
Strong militia takes part of the country a few years later

The only solution to places like Afghanistan is to find a way to industrialise them. That's what gives you democracy, human rights and so forth.