ISIS in Huge Trouble at Site of ‘Apocalyptic Battle’ After Blitz by American-Syrian Alliance
Dabiq should have been the preordained site of an apocalyptic battle between a Muslim army and a Christian legion,, according to Islamic mythology.
That battle would be the harbinger of a new world order in which Islam will be the only religion.
Dabiq is of such great significance to Islamic State that it named its English-language online magazine after the town in northern Syria and believes the battle will bring the end of the world.
This is based on what the Prophet Mohammad foretold 1,400 years ago.
“The last hour will not come” until an Islamic army will defeat the “Romans” there, the Prophet said about Dabiq.
“The spark has been lit in Iraq, and its heat will continue to intensify — by Allah’s permission — until it burns the Crusader armies in Dabiq,” Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the liquidated founder of ISIS was quoted as saying by Dabiq Magazine last year.
In Islamic State’s version of this prophecy, the U.S.-led coalition is playing the role of the Romans while ISIS will represent the Muslim army.
However, despite Islamic State’s frantic preparations for the battle — the jihadist organization sent hundreds of its best fighters to Dabiq recently — the town is close to collapse and could spell the end of ISIS in Syria, British media reported on Wednesday.
The U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army supported by 300 U.S. Special Forces and coalition warplanes is making rapid gains on the battlefield and the town could even fall within hours, according to the British news site Express.
Mostafa Sejari, a commander of the Free Syrian Army, however, warned he expected the battle for Dabiq would be “the fiercest ever” but nevertheless expected that FSA control over the city was a matter of time.
In Islamic State’s version of this prophecy, the U.S.-led coalition is playing the role of the Romans while ISIS will represent the Muslim army.
“By controlling Dabiq, we break the myth of Daesh and open a road to reach Marea (in Turkey). Controlling Dabiq is just a matter of time, God willing,” Sejari told Express while using the Arabic acronym for Islamic State.
The progress of the American-Syria alliance is hindered by hundreds of mines that have been planted by ISIS ahead of the battle and the expectation is that the jihadist group will use many suicide bombers to block the entrance to Dabiq.
The Obama administration believes the fall of Dabiq will deliver a devastating blow to the morale of Islamic State’s fighters and would make the recapture of more important cities such as Raqqa (ISIS’ capital in Syria) and Mosul (the second-largest city in Iraq) easier.
But the fall of Dabiq will also harm ISIS’ abilities to recruit new fighters, Kyle Orton, a Middle East analyst and research fellow with the Henry Jackson Society, told Express.
“The coming loss of the town — probably in the next fortnight — will be a blow to ISIS’s ability to recruit, and the Turkish intervention, which has closed the border and driven a wedge between the opposition and al-Qaeda by giving the rebels a realistic alternative, jihadist recruitment in general, seems set to suffer in Syria,” Orton said.
The situation in the self-declared Caliphate has become so difficult that it has caused ISIS to declare the state of emergency.
The U.K. Daily Star reported Tuesday that ISIS leaders who gathered for a crisis meeting in the Iraqi town of Mutaibija ”turned on each other with weapons after arguments broke out.”
A commander of the Shiite al-Hashd al-Shaabi militia told the British paper that “the meeting turned into a bloody massacre after exacerbated disputes between the ISIS leaders that led them to use weapons against each other.”
The Shiite rebel commander added that spies had told him that there are growing disputes among Islamic State leaders. (For more from the author of “ISIS in Huge Trouble at Site of ‘Apocalyptic Battle’ After Blitz by American-Syrian Alliance” please click HERE)
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