#The Terror Years: From Al-Qaeda to the Islamic State

[zvaigzdelasas]

[BBC is UK State Media]

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has funded politically-motivated assassinations in Yemen, a BBC investigation has found, exacerbating a conflict involving the Yemeni government and warring factions which has recently returned to the international spotlight following attacks on ships in the Red Sea.

Counter-terrorism training provided by American mercenaries to Emirati officers in Yemen has been used to train locals who can work under a lower profile - sparking a major uptick in political assassinations, a whistleblower told BBC Arabic Investigations.

The BBC has also found that despite the American mercenaries' stated aim to eliminate the jihadist groups al-Qaeda and Islamic State (IS) in southern Yemen, in fact the UAE has gone on to recruit former al-Qaeda members for a security force it has created on the ground in Yemen to fight the Houthi rebel movement and other armed factions.

The UAE government has denied the allegations in our investigation - that it had assassinated those without links to terrorism - saying they were "false and without merit".

These are largely between the two parts of the "real" "legitimate" "internationally recognized" coalition govt of Yemen you've been scolded so much about over the last month btw [22 Jan 24]

Continued after the cut

The killing spree in Yemen - more than 100 assassinations in a three-year period - is just one element of an ongoing bitter internecine conflict pitting several international powers against each other in the Middle East's poorest country.[...]

In 2015, the US and the UK supported a coalition of mostly Arab states led by Saudi Arabia - with the UAE as a key partner - to fight back. The coalition invaded Yemen with the aim of reinstating the exiled Yemeni government and fighting terrorism. The UAE was given charge of security in the south, and became the US's key ally on counter-terrorism in the region - al-Qaeda had long been a presence in the south and was now gaining territory.[...]

Under international law, any killing of civilians without due process would be counted as extra-judicial.

The majority of those assassinated were members of Islah - the Yemeni branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. It [...] has never been classified by the US as a terror organisation, but is banned in several Arab countries - including the UAE where its political activism and support for elections is seen by the country's royal family as a threat to their rule.

Leaked drone footage of the first assassination mission gave me a starting point from which to investigate these mysterious killings. It was dated December 2015 and was traced to members of a private US security company called Spear Operations Group.[...]

Isaac Gilmore, a former US Navy Seal who later became chief operating officer of Spear, was one of several Americans who say they were hired to carry out assassinations in Yemen by the UAE.

He refused to talk about anyone who was on the "kill list" provided to Spear by the UAE - other than the target of their first mission: Ansaf Mayo, a Yemeni MP who is the leader of Islah in the southern port city of Aden, the government's temporary capital since 2015.[...]

Mr Gilmore, and another Spear employee in Yemen at the time - Dale Comstock - told me that the mission they conducted ended in 2016. But the assassinations in southern Yemen continued. In fact they became more frequent, according to investigators from the human rights group Reprieve.

They investigated 160 killings carried out in Yemen between 2015 and 2018. They said the majority happened from 2016 and only 23 of the 160 people killed had links to terrorism. All the killings had been carried out using the same tactics that Spear had employed - the detonation of an improvised explosive device (IED) as a distraction, followed by a targeted shooting. The most recent political assassination in Yemen, according to Yemeni human rights lawyer Huda al-Sarari, happened just last month - of an imam killed in Lahj by the same method.[...]

Mr Gilmore, Mr Comstock, and two other mercenaries from Spear who asked not to be named, said that Spear had been involved in training Emirati officers in the UAE military base in Aden. A journalist who asked to remain anonymous also told us he had seen footage of such training.

As the mercenaries' profile had made them conspicuous in Aden and vulnerable to exposure, their brief had been changed to training Emirati officers, "who in turn trained local Yemenis to do the targeting", the Yemeni military officer told me.

Through the course of the investigation, we also spoke to more than a dozen other Yemeni sources who said this had been the case. They included two men who said they had carried out assassinations which were not terror-related, after being trained to do so by Emirati soldiers - and one man who said he had been offered release from a UAE prison in exchange for the assassination of a senior Yemeni political figure, a mission he did not accept.

Getting Yemenis to conduct the assassinations meant it was harder for the killings to be traced back to the UAE.

By 2017, the UAE had helped build a paramilitary force, part of the Emirati-funded Southern Transitional Council (STC), a security organisation that runs a network of armed groups across southern Yemen.

The force operated in southern Yemen independently of the Yemeni government, and would only take orders from the UAE. The fighters were not just trained to fight on active front lines. One particular unit, the elite Counter Terrorism Unit, was trained to conduct assassinations, our whistleblower told us.

The whistleblower sent a document with 11 names of former al-Qaeda members now working in the STC, some of whose identities we were able to verify ourselves.

During our investigation we also came across the name Nasser al-Shiba. Once a high-ranking al-Qaeda operative, he was jailed for terrorism but later released. A Yemeni government minister we spoke to told us al-Shiba was a known suspect in the attack on the US warship USS Cole, which killed 17 American sailors in October 2000. Multiple sources told us that he is now the commander of one of the STC military units. Lawyer Huda al-Sarari has been investigating human rights abuses committed by these UAE-backed forces on the ground. As a result of her work, she would frequently receive death threats. But it was her 18-year-old son Mohsen who paid the ultimate price.

He was shot in the chest in March 2019 while on a trip to a local petrol station, and died a month later.[...]

A subsequent investigation by Aden's public prosecutor found that Mohsen was killed by a member of the UAE-backed Counter Terrorism Unit, but the authorities have never pursued a prosecution.

Members of the prosecutor's office - who we cannot name for safety reasons - told us that the widespread assassinations have created a climate of fear that means even they are too afraid to pursue justice in cases involving forces backed by the UAE.

Reprieve has received a leaked UAE document that shows Spear was still being paid in 2020, though it is not clear in what capacity.

[matan4il]

I've seen arguing over how many people were slaughtered on Oct 7 itself. IDK the exact answer, because from what I've gathered, no one does so far. The last time I saw an article addressing the forensic work on this (which was about a week ago), it said 1,248 people had been identified, but I know there have been victims of the massacre identified since, I know there's still the unidentified victims to take into account, and the missing people (those that we can't know yet whether they'd been murdered on that day, kidnapped, or murdered and their body was kidnapped). There have been some bodies that were brought in together with all the rest, but were then identified as Hamas terrorists (my guess is their bodies weren't among those the forensic experts struggled to identify, unlike the bodies of their victims, often mutilated and burnt beyond recognition). Based on the number identified already, and the number of bodies still unidentified, over two months after the massacre, I find it hard to believe that the final number of Oct 7 victims will be less than 1,300 people. But like I said, nobody knows, there's still no official number, not until either the work of identification will be done, or until it's confirmed that there are no more ways to identify the remaining victims of Hamas' slaughter.

Even before the final number, it is the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, it is the second deadliest terrorist attack ever (if we take the lowest possible number of fatalities. The worst one is Sep 11, when 2,996 Americans were murdered by al-Qaeda), and the deadliest one ever if we adjust the number of victims to the attacked country's population size (if we take the not final figure of 1,248 people massacred on Oct 7, once adjusted for population size, this would be roughly equivalent to over 42,500 Americans murdered, meaning that for the Israeli population, this is over 14 times the scale of the Sep 11 attacks). Think about the number of Israelis (and Jews) impacted by this attack, before we start talking about the over 5,000 people injured on Oct 7, or those kidnapped. Hamas' massacre is also the single bloodiest day in the history of the Israeli-Arab conflict for one side. So anyone telling you that the Palestinians have been "suffering Oct 7 every single day for years," is either incredibly ignorant, or straight up lying. Anyone who knows the history of the conflict, or of terrorism, knows that there is no underestimating the unique brutality of Hamas' massacre.

Out of the people massacred on Oct 7, who were not Israeli citizens, there were at least: 39 victims from Thailand, 10 from Nepal, 4 from the Philippines, 3 from China, 2 from The United Kingdom, 2 from Sri Lanka, 1 from Canada, 1 from Cambodia, 1 from Germany, 1 from Moldova, 1 from The United States, 1 from Tanzania, and 1 from Eritrea. Altogether, at least 67 foreign nationals.

At least 26 people have been killed by direct rocket hits, of which at least 15 were killed on Oct 7. At least 20 were killed by Hamas and PIJ (Palestinian Islamic Jihad) rockets from Gaza, and at least 6 by Hezbollah rockets from Lebanon. Of the 26 known victims of rocket fire, 2 were citizens of Thailand, 14 were Israeli Jews, and 10 were Israeli Arabs. This doesn't reflect the full effect of the rockets on Oct 7, since the fate of many people was sealed when they started fleeing the barrage of around 4,000 rockets fired into Israel, only to run straight into ambushes set up by Hamas terrorists, like many of the Nova music festival victims, where over 360 people were murdered.

This is 5 years old Yazan Abu Jama'a, who was killed by a direct rocket hit on Oct 7:

I think the worst part about this post is writing "at least" so many times, knowing that every single one of these figures may be updated with a greater number.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[eretzyisrael]

by Romany Shaker

An Islamist organization that advocates for violent jihadis in Britain is setting up shop in the United States. CAGE International, which portrays counter-Islamists in Europe as "Islamophobes," is preparing to do the same thing in the U.S. The organization recently solicited donations from donors in the U.S. with the help of Omar Suleiman and Daniel Haqiqatjou. The two imams, who represent the progressive and conservative wings of American Islamism, have called on their U.S. followers to support which made a name for itself in the years after 9/11 by advocating for terrorists serving time in Guantanamo Bay.

The organization hasn't released the numbers about the amount of money it has raised in the U.S., but overall, it seems to have done pretty well, raising £650,000 (approximately $828,000) through its "Supporting Our Heroes: From Guantanamo to Gaza" fundraising campaign launched during Ramadan, which took place this past spring. At the very least, CAGE's American partners helped it to exploit Hamas's October 7 massacre to promote its Islamist brand to Muslims globally, particularly those living in the U.S.

For his part, Haqiqatjou shared a post in March 2024 on his X account featuring CAGE International outreach director Moazzam Begg's call on Western Muslims to support his organization and endorsed its activism and advocacy as "another important cause."

These baby steps help pave the way for CAGE International to gain a foothold in the United States, especially as the British Islamist organization announced its efforts to expand its global reach and influence under the new brand "CAGE International."

Background – What is CAGE?

Given that public officials and counter-Islamists in the United States have little exposure to CAGE International's antics, a primer is in order. Here is what decision-makers need to know about the organization.

Established as a company by Adnan Rasheed Siddiqui in 2007 in London, the Islamist organization, which was initially known as CagePrisoners has gone through two rebrandings, emerging first as CAGE in 2013 and as CAGE International in 2023.

The group, which is currently registered as "Cage Advocacy UK Ltd," describes itself as "an independent advocacy organization" working to "challenge War on Terror inspired state oppression and empower communities to dismantle the discourses and policies of the global War on Terror." Cloaked in the guise of religion, human rights, and social justice, CAGE International claims that it seeks to "revive divine justice." To that end, the Islamist organization invokes the invented concept of "Islamophobia" and spearheads campaigns advocating for Al-Qaeda actors, Islamists, and convicted terrorists.

[mariacallous]

In a small corner of the disintegrating Soviet Union, a young Shakespearean actor named Akhmed Zakayev stepped off the stage and took up arms.

Zakayev, like many Chechens, had been hopeful when the USSR collapsed. A new state had been declared in the capital of Grozny almost immediately, inspired by the massive and peaceful popular uprisings across the ex-Soviet satellite states: the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.

But Moscow wasn’t keen to lose any more territory. In 1994, tanks rolled Grozny and asserted that the republic was no more: Chechnya was a member of the new Russian Federation. That’s when Zakayev joined the resistance.

Thirty years later, Zakayev is the prime minister of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria’s government-in-exile.

“I couldn’t have imagined that my fate would become what it is today,” Zakayev told Foreign Policy during an interview in Kyiv this spring. “We’ve experienced a lot of tragedy, a lot of bloodshed, a lot of violence since 1994, when we became the victims of Russian aggression.”

For three decades, across two brutal wars waged against the Chechens, Zakayev has tried to convince the world to back his nation’s independence. He has not had much luck: Although the republic was once recognized by Georgia and Afghanistan, no nation currently explicitly recognizes its status as the government of Chechnya.

Today, many of Russia’s separatists, including Zakayev, see enormous opportunity in Ukraine’s struggle for self-defense against Moscow’s aggression. They have supported the resistance both in spirit and by joining Ukraine’s fight. This has led to an extraordinary partnership—not just with Kyiv, but also among the various dissidents hoping to be free from the Russian Federation.

Together, they believe they can bring about the end of President Vladimir Putin—and Russia itself.

The drab boardroom in which I met Zakayev, in Kyiv, is a fairly recent home for the Chechen separatists. On the table before us were the green, red, and white flag of the Republic of Ichkeria; the Ukrainian bicolor, and the European Union flag. Along the wall behind Zakayev were rows of portraits of past Chechen leaders—and the dates of their deaths, usually at Russia’s hands.

“The fact is that, for over 30 years, the world has simply been watching the Chechen tragedy,” Zakayev said. “They have simply been watching as we were being murdered, as we were being forced to leave the country, as we were being scattered across the world.”

Since the 1990s, the official U.S. position on the conflict has been simple: “We consider Chechnya a part of Russia.” That position only hardened when Washington began describing Chechnya’s paramilitary opposition to Russian rule as a movement that was affiliated with al Qaeda. Terror attacks committed against Russia in the name of the Chechen resistance have only made a change in U.S. policy more unlikely, even if serious doubts remain about the responsibility for some of those attacks.

Zakayev, who represents a more moderate wing of the Chechen resistance, has spent more than two decades since the end of the first phase of the Second Chechen War in exile, mostly in the United Kingdom. He has worked to avoid having his portrait added to the wall of martyrs.

In 2007, police at Scotland Yard warned Zakayev that he was high up on a Russian hit list. But he survived. And in 2022, as Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Zakayev decamped to Ukraine—“unquestionably the leader of the entire free world,” he said.

He sees plenty of parallels between their struggles. “Ukrainians have felt what it was like for us, back in 1994,” Zakayev said. “We were branded as terrorists, as Islamic extremists.”

Zakayev said that this view of the Chechens, fostered by Putin but accepted by the West, is a “great pity.” It has brought about a global view of the Chechen people as either Putin’s shock troops or as violent terrorists. These are views that Putin has relished, broadcasting images of Chechen fighters in an attempt to carry out psychological warfare in Ukraine and using Chechen contract killers to kill Russian liberals such as Boris Nemtsov. Since the start of Russia’s war in eastern Ukraine in 2014, Chechen fighters have been dispatched to fight across Ukraine.

“We are destroying this image by siding with Ukraine and by being here,” Zakayev said.

The Chechens’ support for Ukraine isn’t just symbolic. Chechen volunteers have also fought with the Ukrainians in the Donbas since 2014. Since the full-scale invasion in 2022, they have joined the Russian Legion and other militias of Russian citizens who are fighting alongside Ukraine. When he spoke to Foreign Policy in March, Zakayev’s soldiers were taking part in cross-border incursions into the Belgorod region, a precursor to Ukraine’s larger offensive in Kursk today.

“It’s a very important strategic step, of transferring the combat actions to the enemy’s territory, because it’s the first time in years that the Russians have finally felt what the war is,” Zakayev said. “Since World War II, Russia has waged a lot of wars, but they’ve never felt what a war is like on their own territory. Finally, they’re beginning to experience aid raid alarms, they’re beginning to experience explosions, and they’re starting to feel this war on their own territory.”

To that end, Zakayev no longer sees independence as a regional and isolated concern. In his eyes, independence for Chechnya—and Ukraine, Siberia, Dagestan, and other Russian subjects—can only be achieved through toppling the Russian state itself.

“Putin’s war, that he started in Ukraine, must end in Moscow,” Zakayev continued. “And the people who are going to end this war must be Russians.”

Earlier this year, a correspondent with Russian state broadcaster Channel One toured the trenches on the front lines, reviewing “trophies” taken from Ukrainian fighters killed in action. In the video, the correspondent holds up two patches removed from the fighters’ uniforms—one of which, he says, is the Canadian flag. He looks to the camera: “The presence of mercenaries in the ranks of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is no secret.”

The video prompted dozens of laughing face emojis when it was posted on Telegram by an account run by Free Ingria, a separatist movement in Russia’s Leningrad Oblast. The patch was not the Canadian red maple leaf at all, but the flag of Udmurtia, a republic in the Urals.

The Ingria separatists, who want independence for the historical Baltic region around the former imperial capital of St. Petersburg, and the Udmurtia separatists, who want an independent state in their region west of the Ural mountains, may be more than 800 miles apart, but they have recently made common cause.

It’s all thanks to Oleg Magaletsky.

Shortly after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, Magaletsky founded the Free Nations of Post-Russia Forum. Composed of two dozen regionalist movements from across the Russian Federation, including the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, it has become the coordinating body for those hoping to dismantle Russia itself.

It is not the only game in town: The Lithuania-based Free Russia Forum, founded by Russian chess grandmaster and dissident Garry Kasparov, has aimed to become a think tank and philosophical hub for this post-imperial Russia.

Magaletsky’s group is much more hands-on.

“We need to be prepared for big changes—for the collapse,” Magaletsky told me, sitting in a pie shop in Kyiv.

Magaletsky is an unlikely champion for the cause of Russian secession—he’s a soft-spoken and personable Ukrainian restaurateur who was turned on to politics by the Euromaidan protests. Yet he has thrown himself into the work, and he’s moved quickly.

His forum has served as a hub to coordinate the exiled leaders of these independence movements, who, in turn, coordinate with their compatriots who are still in Russia. They’ve also held a series of summits to connect some of the leaders of Russia’s “captive nations” with academics, strategists, and government officials around the world.

When the Free Russia Forum brought some of its members to Washington for a series of talks at the Jamestown Foundation in March, they stressed just how much of Russia’s might comes from its imperial conquests: its access to the Black Sea, its natural resources, and even the fighters who feed its army.

“[There] has been a litany of trials and losses of lives, lands, resources, culture, and language, taken away by the empire,” Radjana Dugar-DePonte, the co-chair of the Buryad-Mongol Erkheten Democratic Movement, told the attendees. The Buryat people are wildly overrepresented in the death toll from the Russia-Ukraine war, as are other ethnic minorities.

When he had the opportunity, Pavel Mezerin enlisted to fight alongside the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

While Zakayev’s forces joined the fight early, more and more Russian dissidents in exile were signing up to fight with Ukraine. Magaletsky rattles off the component members of his forum and which unit they fight under. He said that some are with the Siberian Battalion, others serve with the Free Russia Legion, and others are fighting directly under the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Mezerin, who hails from Ingria, joined the Siberian Battalion but soon grew disenchanted with the mission.

The Ukrainian leadership, he told Foreign Policy, “was not interested in forming full-fledged combat units from Russian citizens who would fight for the freedom of Russia.” They were more “political projects than actual military units,” he added. It was “a very sad experience” for Mezerin—he quit the battalion and channeled his energy through Free Ingria, of which he is a coordinator.

Mezerin told me that he perfectly understands that Ukraine’s priority is in recapturing its own territory. He has been watching afar as Ukraine has pulled off its extraordinary invasion of the Kursk region and is cheering on his former comrades. This time, however, the Ukrainians used their regular soldiers instead of Russian militias. “I sincerely envy the people of Kursk,” Mezerin said.

If it was his territory that had been “liberated” by Ukraine, he said, “of course, we would return there immediately. We would be busy organizing armed militias, armed detachments. Ingria would be free.” He dreams of Ukrainian forces continuing their march north to St. Petersburg.

But he knows that this is a fantasy. “Ukraine is not interested in these regions,” he said, recognizing that they would almost certainly be traded for Ukrainian territory in any peace talks. “Ukraine is interested in its own freedom.”

The quest for independence falls on the shoulders of activists such as Mezerin and Zakayev. And independence, Magaletsky said, cannot come from a think tank. That’s why the Free Nations of Post-Russia Forum is actively involved in helping dissidents inside Russia prepare for what comes next.

“We have public activities,” Magaletsky said cryptically. “And, of course, we have unpublic activities.”

While he was careful not to put too much stock in a single operation, Magaletsky said that anything that could dismantle the idea of a “single and indivisible” Russian state would ultimately help their cause. “It is not so much the actual operation of the Ukrainian army in the Kursk region, as the reaction of both the Kremlin and the ‘Russian people’ to it in general.”

To that end, his operation requires a diversity of tactics. “Not all movements have people who are fighting now on the front line,” Magaletsky added, before offering me some of his pie. Others, he said, have members who are still inside Russia, making plans and preparations for when things change.

“They’re preparing, not for a big war on the front line—they’re preparing for their cities fighting.”

Everyone involved said that the work is hard—and dangerous. The Free Nations of Post-Russia Forum was declared an “undesirable organization” by Moscow in 2023 and attacked as an alleged CIA front group by news outlets loyal to the Kremlin. Many of the forum’s members have faced FSB crackdowns for years, and their projects have been declared extremist organizations.

However, Magaletsky said that their work is critical. Although the West has long supported the idea of a democratic Russia, its leaders seem sure that a change at the top is all that is needed. Magaletsky disagrees: “Putin is the result,” he said. “The problem is the imperial, colonial, system of Russia.”

Kyiv is certainly sympathetic to that view. The Ukrainian Rada has recognized Chechnya as “temporarily occupied” by Russia, and it is contemplating full recognition for the independence movements for Tatarstan, Chechnya, and Bashkortostan.

The West, however, is far from any such recognition.

“We, here in Ukraine, remember, of course, the speech of [then-U.S. President] George [H.W.] Bush, the so-called ‘Chicken Kiev’ speech,” he said, referring to the president’s 1991 address to the legislature of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, in which he warned against  “suicidal nationalism” and declared that “freedom is not the same as independence.”

“Now, post-Russia chicken speeches are popular,” Magaletsky wrote to me recently. “We are trying to change that.” He will keep trying to win over converts in Western capitals. The forum held its next round of meetings in Vilnius, Lithuania, in June.

As Mezerin told me, there’s no room for fatalism. “I’m an opposition politician in exile, so I’m an optimist. Otherwise, I would have no reason to go on living.”

[wartakes]

Firewatch (March 2024 edition, Part 2)

(This is Part 2 of my innagural edition of "Firewatch" becuase I was dumb and didn't realize what the character limit is. Read Part 1 here). Full piece beneath the cut.

Smoldering Embers

These are the conflicts that, while not yet to the point where the flames are rising and heating up, smoke is starting to billow (or has been billowing) and there's potential for a real blaze to suddenly flare up at a moment's notice. You may have heard about them in the news here and there, but they're likely only popping up for your attention once in a blue moon because they haven't gotten bad or dramatic enough yet to fully grab the world's attention amid everything else going on.

West Africa/Sahel

The Sahel regions of West Africa are no stranger to crisis and conflict. Multiple countries in the region have already been dealing with internal political discord and armed conflict for years, but now multiple factors and various players seem to be converging in this part of Africa, positioning it to take a number of different paths forward in the coming months and years – few of which look very good.

West Africa and the Sahel are feeling a series of different pressures converging all at once. Since 2020, the region has seen a historic number of coup d'etats – both failed attempts and successful ones – which often come with a large amount of public support amid frustration with institutions and leaders that appear to be failing them. One reason for this frustration (among others that should be unsurprising, like economic troubles) is increasing amounts of instability throughout the region. Affiliates of both Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State both have footholds in the region, and are engaged in insurgencies against the governments of Mali (its most recent coup being in 2021, and also fighting a simultaneous insurgency by Tuareg separatists), Burkina Faso (most recent coup in 2022), and Niger (most recent coup in 2023), with Nigeria also dealing with a well over-decade old insurgency against Bokho Haram.

Niger's coup last year, in particular, seems to have been a watershed moment for the region and beyond. The country was strategically important both for its mineral resources (which unsurprisingly have not translated into economic and social development for the people of Niger themselves) and as a geographically well positioned outpost both for France (who's colonial legacy hangs heavily over the region) and the Untied States and other foreign powers, who all had troops stationed in the country to conduct counter-terrorism operations. The coup was seen as serious enough that the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) issued an ultimatum to the Nigerien junta this past summer, threatening that if it did not cede power back to the elected President that ECOWAS would intervene to restore the legitimately elected government (as it has in the past).

Ultimately, the ECOWAS threats have not come to fruition and don't seem likely to – despite some apparent moves to do so in the aftermath of the coup. But out of those threats, Niger has joined into a new political and military alliance called the Alliance of Sahel States with both Burkina Faso and Mali (all of which had been suspended from ECOWAS due to their respective coups) to provide for collective self-defense against foreign intervention. Since 2023, French troops have been forced out of both Burkina Faso and Niger – with Niger now seemingly on the verge of doing the same to the remaining US troops in the country, while Vladimir Putin's Russia has seemingly been on a charm offensive to befriend the members of new alliance signing economic and military agreements and even reportedly dispatching troops – with mercenaries such as those from Wagner already having been active in the area (now operating under the new name of the "Africa Corps").

All these factors and more combined suggest that things in the Sahel are liable to get very interesting in the near future. As stated before, a number of different paths seem to unfold ahead for the region: if the ongoing radical insurgencies continue and are victorious, we could see a new territorial caliphate in West Africa and the Sahel mirroring that of IS in Iraq and Syria in the 2010s (and all the horrors that came with it). Barring that, as Russia deepens its ties to the AES, it could further turn the region into even more of a battleground in the multilateral Cold War we find ourselves in (as Russia is not the only authoritarian power seeking to deepen its influence in West Africa, as Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdogan is also attempting to get involved there). Those are only two potential options out of many, and the myriad of other options in a region that is heavily populated and on the radar of multiple great powers means that it bears continued monitoring going forward.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo/Rwanda

Now this is one that I imagine is probably flying under the radars of most people who aren't deeper into my field, but is probably one of the most immediately pressing in Africa. The Democratic Republic of the Congo has been fighting against a rebellion by the armed group known as "M23" in its East for a decade now – that much isn't new. But now the conflict is threatening to turn onto a state-on-state war in Africa's Great Lakes region, as M23's primary back of neighboring Rwanda seemingly steps up its direct involvement into the conflict.

Rwanda has been backing M23 for some time now, with both Rwanda's government (under long-time President Paul Kagame) and M23 itself being primarily led by members of the Tutsi ethnic group. Rwanda also has a history of armed interventions in the DRC as well, so that in itself is not new. But in recent months the long-running tensions and low-level conflict between the DRC and Rwanda has threatened to boil over into outright, full-scale war, amid a series of fresh escalations – one prominent example being Rwanda firing on a DRC fighter-jet that it claimed violated its airspace. The high level of tensions has been further evidenced by more direct US involvement recently than is typically seen in this part of the world, with the United States and other governments attempting to broker some kind of peaceful resolution between the DRC and Rwanda. These efforts do not seem to have made much headway, with this past month the United States resorting to publicly urging both the DRC and Rwanda to "walk back from the brink of war." US mediation efforts may well be undermined, however, by it's (and many other Western countries') cozy relationship with Rwanda – despite its autocratic leader.

The trajectory for the current crisis remains unclear. A sideline meeting during the African Union summit in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa appeared to make some progress in at least getting both the DRC and Rwanda to sit at one table and discuss a return to a peaceful dialogue to resolve their differences. However, that same day, the DRC accused Rwanda of having launched a drone attack in the city of Goma – a key objective of M23's advances, seemingly pouring cold war on the idea of constructive and peaceful reconciliation for the time being. Most recently, the DRC appears to be acquiring drones of its own, with China reportedly set to supply the DRC with nine CH-4 armed drones (apropos of nothing, China has also supplied a fair amount of military hardware to Rwanda in recent years, as well as military training).

With little other news available on the crisis since February (with other global events taking precedence), it remains unclear where things with the DRC and Rwanda go from here. There have been reports that the DRC and Rwandan leaders may be preparing to meet face-to-face once more, through mediation by Angola. At the same time, little seems to have changed with the personalities at play. DRC President Felix Tshisekedi was recently re-elected (under conditions labeled a "farce" by the DRC opposition), and has previously taken a hard line on the crisis, threatening to "march on Kigali" if re-elected and the issues with Rwanda persist. The DRC's acquisition of drones from China seems to reinforce that it has no plans of backing down in its confrontation with M23 and Rwanda, even if Tshisekedi doesn't follow through on his more bellicose threats. Meanwhile in Rwanda, Kagame announced his intent to seek a fourth term as President – amid criticism for lifting term limits in order to stay in office longer (criticisms that he has made clear he cares very little for if at all), and so has an impetus to maintain his own hard-line on issues with the DRC.

A further ticking clock has been added to the DRC-Rwanda situation by the fact that the United Nations mission in the Congo – which has been assisting the DRC fight against rebels (including M23) for almost two decades – will now be leaving the DRC by the end of 2024 at the request of the DRC government, stating that the force had not been able to resolve the war with M23. This comes after the DRC government also ordered troops from the East African Community (EAC) that had been present in the country as well to leave in late 2023 – for the same reasons it ordered the UN force to leave. While the DRC may well be right that neither force has helped it to beat M23, the withdrawal of these troops may very well shift the entire balance of the conflict and not necessarily in a way that the DRC wants. The South African Development Community (SADC), led by South Africa itself, is seeking to fill the gap left by the UN and EAC, but it remains to be seen how quickly they can do so and if they can change facts on the ground any more than the UN or EAC could. Once again, we see a number of potential factors on a collision course, and while cooler heads may still prevail, we see the prospect of yet another major war in the heart of Africa's Great Lakes regions that could have significant impacts for the people of the region, the continent, and the world. It is definitely worth keeping an eye on this developing situation (to the extent you can even find news on it).

Ethiopia

Ethiopia, like Myanmar, is a country that has shown up in the past when I've done a round-up on pertinent conflicts in the world. However, unlike with Myanmar, I'm afraid I can't report that things are getting better in Ethiopia's case or that there's much cause for hope at this point. In fact, things seem to be getting actively worse.

The last time I substantively talked about Ethiopia, the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was engaged in a war in the Tigray region against the Tigray People's Liberation Force – even allying with his former long-time adversary of Eritrea to do so in a war that threatened to rip the country apart while engaging in brutal authoritarian actions that I'm sure are making the Nobel Committee really regret giving him that prize in retrospect. After a seesawing of the fortunes of war back and forth for both sides, the conflict was seemingly brought to a close by the signing of a peace agreement between the TPLF and the Ethiopian federal government. All's well that ends well, done and dusted, right?

Well, actually: no.

Just less than a year after the Tigray War ended, Abiy apparently tripped over his dick into a new internal conflict in mid 2023, this time with Amhara people and forces in the eponymous Amhara region (Ethiopia's second most populous) rather than Tigray. The spark for this conflict was apparently born out of the haphazard way in which Abiy ended the previous one. One of Abiy's key allies in the Tigray War were militias and security forces from the region of Amhara, including an influential armed group known as the "Fano." However, the peace deal that Abiy struck with Tigray did not sit well with many Amahara people, who felt betrayed by the deal due to Tigray claims on their territory (as well as the fact that the Ethiopian federal military and security forces had been unable to prevent the TPLF from occupying Amahara territory during the war). This rift was only made worse by crackdowns by Abiy's government against the Fano, coupled with a plan to absorb Ethiopia's regional security forces into Ethiopia's federal military and security forces, which was not received well among the Amhara. These tensions and more came to a head from April through August 2023, with the result being Abiy's government facing down a fresh and ongoing revolt that doesn't appear to be ending soon.

The result of this bridge burning by Abiy has been a growing war in Amhara occurring under the umbrella of an ever prolonged state of emergency in Amhara that gives Ethiopian authorities broad powers to carry out arrests, impose curfews, and ban public gatherings. This is a continuation of the Abiy's playbook of gross human rights violations from the previous war in Tigray, with accusations being leveled against his government of arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial executions, and indiscriminate killings – including indiscriminate drone strikes against targets such as schools and public transit stations (apropos of nothing, once more, Abiy has acquired his fleet of armed drones from Iran, Turkey, and China – as well as purchasing new fighter jets from Russia). If you're wondering why you haven't heard more about all this, its because Abiy has made heavy handed use of another favorite tactic of his from the previous war (and that it has even used against Amhara in the past), which is information and specifically internet blackouts, which make it very difficult to get information out of Amahara as the conflict drags on (as it did in Tigray during that war).

Abiy's uncanny knack for burning bridges and making enemies isn't limited to within his own country, but has made tensions rise throughout East Africa. At the start of 2024, Abiy signed an agreement with the breakaway region of Somaliland in Somalia, which reportedly gives Ethiopia a naval port on Somaliland's coastline in exchange for recognizing the region's independence from Somalia (something that no other UN member state does). All of this appears to be part of Abiy's quest to regain Ethiopian access to the sea (lost after Eritrea became independent), which has included efforts to re-establish the Ethiopian Navy. The reaction to this deal has been, unsurprisingly, poorly received in Somalia, with Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud even threatening the possibility of war if Ethiopia follows through with it and accusing Ethiopia of outright trying to annex part of Somalia. Somalis are not the only ones unease about Ethiopia's quest for access to the Red Sea, with other East African states such as Djibouti, Eritrea, and Kenya all having previously voiced concern about Ethiopian actions.

There's also the matter of Ethiopia's previously mentioned issues with Egypt over the Nile River, in particular Ethiopia's construction of a massive hydroelectric dam known as the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (or "GERD") on the river that Egypt worries could have a devastating effect on its water supply downstream if Ethiopia acts without considering Egyptian concerns. Despite numerous efforts to come to an agreement over the dam and the river, every attempt thus far has ended in failure, with Egypt continuing to refer to GERD an "existential threat." Egypt has also made it clear that it stands squarely with Somalia regarding the sea access debacle, with Egypt's autocratic President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi asserting that "Egypt will not allow anyone to threaten Somalia or affect its security," creating a fresh avenue for tension between Egypt and Ethiopia in addition to the GERD issue. This is all in addition to concerns that both Egypt and Ethiopia could be drawn into the aforementioned civil war in Sudan, with numerous potential negative consequences for all involved.

The long and short of things when it comes to Ethiopia, is you have no shortage of opportunities for more intense conflict in the near future, both within and around the country. Abiy's continued heavy handed approach to both domestic and foreign politics creates an ever increasing possibility that one day he will bite off more than he can chew, and potentially spark a conflict of such scale and scope that it could engulf all of East Africa in a major war and potentially even destroy Ethiopia – the second most populous country in Africa – as a polity. Given the potential consequences, this is a part of the world meriting very close observation going forward.

"Do You Smell Something Burning?"

In this final section, I want to touch briefly (as I've already gone on for a few thousand words) on some hot spots in the world that are cause for concern and have been for a while, but have nothing major going on at this moment in time. While they may be quiet (at least relatively speaking, compared to everything else we've just talked about), they have the potential to spark up in the mid to long term and become a problem once again.

The Korean Peninsula

By this point, we're probably all used to North Korea (under its dictator, Kim Jong-Un) shooting off missiles and making bellicose statements. That's par for the course for them. But in recent months, Kim and his government's rhetoric have taken a new and more hostile turn. North Korea has stated it has abandoned the idea of peaceful unification with the South, instead naming it North Korea's "principal enemy" which it will "annihilate" if it is provoked. This comes as North Korea continues weapons tests and conducts multiple military drills – with Kim often in attendance.

While I wouldn't worry about a continuation of the (yet unresolved) Korean War just yet, this may well be cause for concern. While tensions are typical on the Peninsula, we haven't seen rhetoric like this from the North in quite some time. And while full-scale war may be unlikely at this moment (though not impossible), 010 showed us that under the right conditions, the Peninsula is never far from violent skirmishes and incidents between the two Koreas, such as the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island and sinking of the South Korean Navy corvette Cheonan. While wider conflict was avoiding in those cases, now that South Korea has a more reactionary President wanting to present a hard line towards the North, it raises questions about it may react to provocation. Again, while I wouldn't be panicking just yet, it may be worth keeping your ear to the ground on this one to keep from being caught unawares if tensions suddenly spike further.

Armenia and Azerbaijan

Well, they finally did it. I've also written about this conflict several times now, and it looks like by all accounts, Azerbaijan has gotten exactly what it said it wanted. After the world stood by and did largely nothing in its 2020 war against the ethnic-Armenian enclave of Artsakh (AKA: Nagorno-Karabakh), Azerbaijan decided to finish the job once and for all with a fresh offensive on the heels of a nine-month blockade this past year. With next to no prospect of outside assistance, and weakened by the blockade, the Artsakh forces quickly folded, and almost the entirety of the ethnic Armenia population promptly fled in the ensuing days and weeks to avoid violence at the hand of Azeri forces, leaving Azerbaijan free to complete its cultural genocide of the region. But now that its over, surely Armenia and Azerbaijan can find a way to live in peace with this new reality? Right?

Ha ha, no.

In what should be surprising to absolutely no one, Azerbaijan has celebrated getting what it wanted in Artsakh by shifting the goal post once more. Now its new demand is a land corridor connecting it to its ethnic exclave of Naxcivan on the opposite side of Armenia – referred to as the "Zangezur Corridor" (after the Azeri name for the Armenian Syunik province that it would pass through). Armenia seems highly unlikely to agree to such a demand, which it views as an unacceptable infringement on its sovereignty, which likely means – as has been the case after every war fought between these two countries in the past – a new war is almost certainly on the horizon as Azerbaijan will not stop until an outside force compels it to stop and will use the Armenian rejection as an excuse for fresh conflict. 2024 has already seen fresh skirmishes on the border between the two countries, showing that the tensions remain very much present.

It's not clear when this new war will occur, but we can only hope that in the interim more nations step up to actually assist Armenia. We have seen hopeful signs of greater support from other countries, with France and India selling arms to the country to help it defend itself. However, I can't take any of that for granted, with how the world has left Armenia out to dry time and time again. If Azerbaijan does decide to go to war for a land corridor, it also risks potentially sparking a wider regional war, as Iran has called such an action to cut off its land border with Armenia a "red line" (though whether or not it would really take military action in response remains unclear). Anyway, keep your ears to the ground on this one, because like with the other wars Azerbaijan has launched it'll likely come out of the blue.

I'm Very Tired.

I've just thrown a lot of information at you, so I'm going to try and keep this conclusion short and sweet (for me). First, I'll lay out a few takeaways about the wider world situation, and then some general closing thoughts.

Looking at the general state of things with the conflicts I've laid out, I'm going to infer a few things about the general state of global security. For one, Africa is in a dire state in multiple regards and seems to be the biggest place to watch for trouble on the horizon at the moment, as it has several crises that seem ready to boil over into major wars in the near future – if they haven't already in some cases. These crises and conflicts have the potential to pit some of the most populous countries on the continent against one another, and also to rip some of those same countries apart internally. Short of that, Africa is also seemingly getting teed up to be the sight of a new round of intense great power competition for influence and resources the likes of which we haven't seen since the Cold War, with said competition not just involving big players like the United States, Russia, or China, but attracting newcomers to the influence game too – as the UAE's involvement in Sudan's civil war has shown. Finally, it's also worth noting that now that we're in a post-Russian invasion of Ukraine world where large scale state-on-state conflict is back on the menu after many "experts" thinking it was dead and gone, it makes some of the fault lines we're watching here even more important to keep a close eye on.

There's almost certainly more that I say here, but these are just some big overarching themes to take away from this round of observation. Now, for the closing thoughts:

I know you're tired. We all are. I am.

That being said, we can't give up in our fight for a better world for everyone living in it. That requires remaining well informed (to the extent that you're able) about what's going on in that world. This is especially true if your government is playing a role in it (for good or for bad), or it isn't and it should be. Information is, in its own right, power.

I know that your emotional energy is precious, and likely being eaten up but a number of different things at any given moment. I'm not ask you to drop everything and devote all your time and energy to these causes or others, nor am I trying to shame you for not paying as close attention to them as I or others have. Simply, to add them to the Rolodex of your brain as something that matters and that you should check in on once in a while so you're not caught unawares when new developments occur that may affect you and others.

There's only so much that all of us can do about any one issue, either at home or abroad. But we do what we can, and in order to do that, we need to have an idea of what's going on. So take that as you will after reading all this (or anything else that I write or post, for that matter).

On that note, I'll let you get back to whatever else you need to do. But thank you for taking the time to read this and potentially learn more about events you may not have known much about and their potential impacts. I'll hopefully see you again for my next essay, but in the meantime: stay safe out there and don't give up.

Photo credit: africanews/AFP.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

According to the Global Terrorism Index 2020, the largest global religious terrorist organizations by approximate size are: • Islamic State (IS): 14,000-18,000 fighters. Religion: Sunni Islam. • Taliban: 60,000 fighters. Religion: Sunni Islam. • Al-Qaeda: 5,000-10,000 fighters. Religion: Sunni Islam. • Boko Haram: 3,500 fighters. Religion: Sunni Islam. • Al-Shabaab: 7,000-9,000 fighters. Religion: Sunni Islam.

https://visionofhumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/GTI-2020-web-1.pdf

The four terrorist groups responsible for the most deaths in 2019 were the Taliban, Boko Haram, ISIL and Al-Shabaab, as shown in Figure 1.5. These four groups were responsible for 7,578 deaths from terrorism, representing 55 per cent of total deaths in 2019. Three of these four were also the deadliest groups last year, with Al-Shabaab replacing the Khorasan Chapter of Islamic State this year. In 2012, just prior to the large increase in terrorist activity around the world, these four groups were responsible for just over 31 per cent of all deaths from terrorism.

It sure is a mystery.

[deborahdeshoftim5779]

Jews are now afraid to walk about freely in London. This isn't just an effect of the miltant, pro-terrorist Palestinian cause; it's an effect of dramatic immigration into the capital city.

We allowed millions in, without checking whether the numbers were reasonable, and more importantly, without checking whether these people would be able to live within British societal norms.

The long-term result of this madness has been the nurturing of anti-British factions who feel totally empowered to abuse our civilisation and democracy in order to intimidate, coerce, and threaten other British people into supporting a jihadist agenda.

These pro-Palestinian protesters aren't interested in human rights, else they would have called for Hamas to be added to the international terrorist list and demanded the prosecution of its terrorists for October 7 before criticising anything Israel did in response.

Their call for a ceasefire is inane, seeing as Hamas had a ceasefire in operation from around April 2023 to October 2023. Hamas chose to violate this ceasefire not with its customary rocket attacks, but with the most savage attack on Jews since Hitler's Holocaust.

Therefore, these pontificating mobs have zero evidence that Hamas would adhere to any further ceasefire. They're also deliberately ignoring Hamas' open theft of the humanitarian aid that they so foolishly believe is going directly to Palestinian civilians.

More importantly, pro-Palestinian protesters are deliberately ignoring the fact that a substantial number of Palestinian civilians are on video participating in the October 7 terrorist attack, celebrating it, supporting Hamas even more since the attack, and therefore being incited enough to commit further terror attacks should they be given the opportunity.

This destroys their narrative of Israel heartlessly killing innocent civilians, which is nothing more than a blood libel copied and pasted from the Middle Ages.

These inconvenient realities expose the fact that the Palestinian cause is part of the wider Islamist jihadist agenda, which has always prioritised extermination of the Jews to win victory for the Muslims, followed by conquering and destroying Western civilisation. This is why Palestinian clerics repeat the same calls to terrorism and genocide heard by Islamic terrorists in al-Qaeda, Islamic State, the Taliban, the Ayatollah's regime, and others.

In fact, Hamas didn't even use a Palestinian state as the official justification for their attack (contrary to the false claims made by venal terror apologists like Francesca Albanese), but the al-Aqsa mosque.

The few people in Britain who are familiar with Middle Eastern history will understand the significance of this claim, for it was in 1929 that the Arabs launched an especially murderous riot against the Jews, based on whipping up hysteria over Jews 'attacking' the al-Aqsa mosque.

Israel hadn't been rebuilt then, so how do pro-Palestinian terror apologists like Francesca Albanese explain the exact same rationale being used to motivate anti-Jewish attacks in the 20s and 30s, and now?

Islamic terrorism, built on its concept of jihad, is the issue here. Not the lack of a Palestinian state. If the Palestinians were so concerned about obtaining statehood, they 1)-would have accepted the many propositions for one during the last 70 years, and 2)- wouldn't have committed a terror attack so heinous that almost all Israelis now permanently oppose a Palestinian state, including Israelis who openly supported one beforehand.

It is through wild, reckless immigration policies that Britain has imported teeming masses of people who hate this country and want it subverted through aggressive and even terrorist means.

Nobody dares to point this out in public. But the truth is staring everyone in the face, and it won't go away.

[compacflt]

Do you have any nonfiction that you would recommend if someone was interested in the US Navy/military?

im probably not the right person to ask this bc most of my military knowledge hyperfixation is centered on the ARMY in the American Revolutionary War & World War II. It’s only pretty recently that i got into modern warfare as a topic, so let me just give some indiscriminate recs

Can’t go wrong with David McCullough‘s 1776, which is a great overview of the first year of the revolutionary war + the extremely fraught politics of trying to start a new nation’s military—really illustrates where a bunch of lingering schools of thought in our military originated from.

Another David McCullough shout-out: his The Wright Brothers is an excellent book about the origins of flight, AND it was the book right next to the picture of Ice and Maverick shaking hands on Ice’s bookshelf in TGM. So we know ice has read that one. I think you can’t go wrong at all with any David McCullough. I own like 5-6 of his books and he hasn’t missed once. (His best is John Adams but that’s not mil related)

Ron chernows biography of Washington goes into his military background (7 years' war) a whole bunch, and kind of elucidates how truly fortunate we were to have our nation’s first leader be a military man who really kinda didn’t want to be there. Some really good takes on leadership. Just beware that chernow does have a reputation in the history community for just makin shit up sometimes. If it sounds too cute/quaint to be true, it really might be.

u may be tempted: DO NOT read Brian kilmeade's Thomas Jefferson & the Tripoli Pirates, one of the few navy NF books I've read. I read it b4 I even knew who kilmeade was--didn't matter. it fucking sucks. he uses like 7 sources in the whole book.

Stephen E. Ambrose's Citizen Soldiers is a great WWII NF book about that generation of infantrymen.

The one big Navy NF book I've read recently is (not to brag but my personally signed copy of) Craig symonds' new biography of admiral Chester Nimitz, who was COMPACFLT during WWII's war in the pacific. I got a SHIT ton of professional characterization for Ice from Nimitz' life and this book--Nimitz also worked 18 hour days, was also separated from the love of his life for long periods of time in Hawaii, was also probably acutely depressed, etc.

okay: THOMAS E. RICKS. The Generals is SUCH a good book. Army leadership from WWII up through Iraq and Afghanistan. Focusing on how the Army used to relieve (fire) commissioned officers who couldn't hack it, and that's a huge part of why we won WWII, but somewhere between WWII and Korea, being fired started being super shameful (macarthur's fault if I'm reading it correctly) so mediocre officers didn't get fired and that's why the army has suffered shit leadership in every war since WWII. It's a HUGE thesis that he backs up so well. Would so recommend. I'm also currently reading his FIASCO about the fuck-up of Iraq. Also incredible so far.

Michael O'Hanlon's Military History for the Modern Strategist-- a post Civil War survey of military strategy on the campaign/operational level. Might be a good introduction to US military history, just giving a pretty broad overview of post-CW warfare, so that way you don't pick up a random book about the Korean War and go "wait what was the Chosin campaign again?" Interestingly written and I got to meet him and he wrote "wishing you the best" in my book after I told him I wanted to steal his job at Brookings someday, so admittedly I'm biased.

Lawrence Wright's The Terror Years: From Al-Qaeda to the Islamic State is not strictly military related, but it is one of the best-written and most illuminating nonfiction books I've ever read and I cannot recommend it enough.

For war fiction, my taste is v mainstream: Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy, Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato (imo better than the things they carried), Ahmed Saadawi's Frankenstein in Baghdad, Kevin Powers' The Yellow Birds, Cannot Miss Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front if you haven't read it, Hassan Blasim's The Corpse Exhibition: And Other Stories of Iraq... For specifically Naval lit: Run Silent, Run Deep is a pretty good classic, and this summer I read the 600-page behemoth The Caine Mutiny, which is about specifically WWII-era naval law... it's a brick. But it won a pulitzer and it's...passable. Kind of interesting at least.

[ritchiepage2001newaccount]

Project2025 #CorpMedia #Oligarchs #MegaBanks vs #Union #Occupy #NoDAPL #BLM #SDF #DACA #MeToo #Humanity #FeelTheBern

JinJiyanAzadi #BijiRojava Portrait of Cihan Shekh Ahmed @cihan_shekh

, Spokeswoman of #SDF #Raqqa operation, former Nusra (Al Qaeda) prisoner. [UPDATES]

RELATED: Welcome to Raqqa

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RELATED UPDATE: WATCH Raqqa: IS 'capital' falls to US-backed Syrian forces

RELATED UPDATE: WATCH Thousands celebrate 18th Zîlan Kurdish women’s festival

RELATED UPDATE: Internationalist Commune releases a series of videos about the Rojava Revolution

RELATED UPDATE: SDF captures an ISIS member near Raqqa

RELATED UPDATE: 12 years ago, the Rojava Revolution

FURTHER READING:

[athenawasamerf]

with respect, while i think it's inappropriate and racist to assume palestinian men are the same as any other muslim man, i WOULD say the behavior of the arab and/or muslim diaspora in the west (not strictly male either) has not exactly dispelled the idea that there is widespread for terrorist action among that population. just because we don't like it doesn't make it not true.

this doesn't change my pro-palestine position on the israel/palestine conflict but i do have a strongly negative opinion of most of the (overwhelmingly, non-palestinian) diaspora and their behavior in this context. they are just as much out of touch westerners living a cushy life and begging to see blood.

My problem with the post that (I believe) inspired this ask is the racist coalition of all Middle Eastern cultures into one monolith. Equating all Islamic terrorist organisations with each other due to a lack of understanding of the differences between cultures and countries is a big enough problem when it comes to fighting extremist ideology and terror groupes, nevermind when it comes to conversations about an ongoing ethnic cleansing and genocide. Bringing up a 2-decade old Al-Qaeda, an Afghan-Pakistani terror organisation, attack on the U.S. in a conversation about the atrocities committed against Palestinian women as some kind of gotcha is incredibly racist, and I don’t think I need to mention how tone deaf the timing is. Al-Qaeda does not exist, and has never existed, in Palestine.

If we were to have a conversation about the Arab and Muslim diaspora in the west and the effect of their actions on the widespread image of the Middle East among western populations, that is not the place to start it. And, more importantly, this is not the time to have such a conversation. I understand that western cultures have become increasingly individualistic, but that is not the case in the global east. We are in a state of collective mourning. We’ve cancelled all national celebrations, events, and demonstrations. My med school is cancelling all graduation activities apart from the official ceremony to hand us our degrees and have us swear the Hippocratic oath, which will be held with no music or press coverage, and without an after party. Marriage ceremonies are being held in silence with no wedding parties. Birthday celebrations are being held off. The black ribbon of mourning has been placed on all tv channels and will not be removed until 3 days after a ceasefire is enacted. Our neighbours are going through a catastrophe, there are manners to be observed. We don’t even put the tv on too loud if a neighbour is sick, nevermind dead or dying. When our neighbours, our family, our people are being massacred in front of our eyes with the sanctions of the entire world, we mourn with them and we mind our manners while we do it. That is all to say, when the entire region is in a state of mourning is absolutely the least appropriate timing for this kind of conversation, despite its importance.

When brown people aren’t being massacred by the thousands, and displaced by the hundreds of thousands, we can talk about the behaviour of the brown diaspora in the west. Until then, we mourn.

I apologise if I’m not entirely coherent, I’m very sick at the moment, quite literally in the middle of finals for my last year of med school, and completely overwhelmed with the insanity going on in the world at the moment, especially after Egypt was targeted twice. Our government had to double the rolling blackout duration to two hours a day after Israel decided to cut off all fuel exports to Egypt to put pressure on the government to agree to Israel’s plan of displacing over 2 million Palestinians into Sinai. So, things haven’t been great here either and people are preparing for the non-zero chance that our hand could be forced into war.

[williamkergroach55]

The CIA sets up Daech in Afghanistan

The Central Intelligence Agency's control of the international heroin market was the main reason why the boys got killed all those years in Afghanistan. The sale of heroin provided a hidden financial windfall to America's real bosses on Wall Street. The secret weapon that the globalists were counting on to help them cope with the worst stock market crisis in their history were the poppy fields of Helmand. But, snap! The Yanks got kicked out of Kabul! Fortunately, Langley (CIA headquarters) found a new opportunity to do harm: to create a new caliphate on the doorstep of China and Russia.

The "godfather" Karzai

After the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001, all was well: opium production in Afghanistan had resumed dramatically, overseen by "President" Hamid Karzai, a dedicated CIA agent. Washington had military bases in Helmand, Herat, Nimrouz, Balkh, Khost and Paktia, Bagram, Kandahar and Shindand, in Herat, only 100 kilometers from the Iranian border. They were within striking distance of Russia and China. But since the Taliban chased American soldiers out of their country, nothing is going to happen anymore: Wall Street will not be able to count on the manna brought by Afghan heroin in the face of the stock market tsunami for which it is responsible.

A promising pipeline

The so-called war on terror, led by the United States in Afghanistan, was the usual American politician's blabla. It was all a pretext to threaten Central Asia militarily. The U.S. air bases built in Afghanistan were positioned to strike Russia, China, Iran and eventually the oil-rich countries of the Middle East if they strayed. Afghanistan was right in the path of the oil pipeline that would carry oil from the Caspian Sea to the Indian Ocean. The U.S. oil companies, Unocal, Enron and Halliburton (the company of vicious Vice President Dick Cheney), had arranged a juicy deal: they had managed to secure exclusive rights to a pipeline that would carry natural gas from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and Pakistan to Enron's natural gas-fired power plant in Dabhol, near Mumbai, India. That's where the American Deep State was! Happy as a piranha in troubled waters.

Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, a flop

Al Qaeda, too, was a "brilliant" idea of William Casey, the CIA director - Ronald reagan's campaign manager in the 1980s. The idea was to pick up the most fanatical Muslims from all countries and send them to fight the Russian troops in Afghanistan. It was hoped to create a "new Vietnam" for the Soviet Union. The CIA financed the Taliban and Al Qaeda equally, as long as they broke the Communists.

Yet despite the dollars, al Qaeda had recruitment problems. James Jones, President Obama's former national security adviser, was forced to admit under oath to the U.S. Congress that al Qaeda's presence in Afghanistan was "very small." With only 100 members, no more, in the entire country, and not even an operational base, al Qaeda simply did not exist. The "terrorist threat" in Afghanistan was therefore bogus.

Islamic destabilization

After its defeats in Iraq and Syria against the Russians, the CIA is now striking back with a new terrorist state in Afghanistan. Islamic State sleeper agents, are being flown into Afghanistan by helicopter from Pakistan, Iraq and Syria as we speak. Since September 2018, Russian and Kyrgyz political officials have been warning about the arrival of these Islamist troops in Central Asia. The objective of CIA strategists is to sow, as usual, the seeds of trouble in the region. The installation of an Islamic state in the middle of Central Asia would be a new threat to the Russians and the Chinese. The United States is very happy about this, because it will never give up on Central Asia. This region is too important for its destiny as a world power. To achieve this, they need to find an instrument to destabilize the region that serves their geopolitical goals well. An Islamic State is the ideal instrument. 

Islamic State, the American know-how.

The American deep state has a long experience in building terrorist organizations. One recalls that to serve as cadres for the Islamic State in Syria, officers of Saddam Hussein's army had previously been opportunely released from prison by the American military. Washington had then released an obscure preacher named Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi from Camp Bucca, the American prison in Iraq, around 2009. Al Baghdadi was to serve as a messianic figure for a Muslim world heated up by the attacks and massacres in Palestine. Iraqi officers, in particular the former Iraqi intelligence colonel, Hadji Bakr, had designed the structure of Daech. So the Iraqis kept the store running until our scum got Russian bombs on their bearded faces.

Today, the Islamic State is redeploying to Afghanistan. Daech's forces in Central Asia are estimated to already number more than 10,000 men, in Islamist movements such as Hizb ut-Tahrir in Uzbekistan, or Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Islamic Jihad Union in Pakistan. Many of the fighters of Daech in Syria and Iraq come from Central Asia.

Divided Taliban

The Taliban in Afghanistan are divided against this new "Made in America" threat. It is a country of clans. And among them, there are the conservatives, who want to remain among the Pashtuns; the Pakistani agents; and those who favor an alliance with the Islamic State. The latter believe that the Taliban must "modernize" the jihad. The Islamic State in Khorasan (EIK) seeks to absorb the latter to lead the fight against enemies... That Washington will designate for them. Right now, the targets are Iran, China, Russia and their Central Asian allies.

It is in this context that the recent assassination, proudly announced by the Taliban, of the head of the Daech cell responsible for the attack on the Kabul airport, which cost the lives of 13 American soldiers and nearly 170 Afghan civilians in August 2021, takes on all its importance. The war between the Taliban and Daech-K is raging in the newly liberated country.

Daech, an existential threat to the Taliban

Since its inception in 2015, the Islamic State-Khorassan Province (ISIL-KP or ISKP) has taken hold in Afghanistan and has carried out numerous terrorist attacks against government forces and religious minorities. With the Taliban coming to power in August 2021, the group found an opportunity to reorganize and regain ground, particularly in Kunar and Nangarhar provinces. But the Taliban quickly crushed Daech's men in Farah, Logar and Zabol provinces. As a result, Daech is retreating to urban terrorism, targeting mainly government forces and religious minorities, such as the Hazaras. Since the departure of U.S. troops, EI-K has already committed at least 119 attacks, mostly against Taliban officials and fighters. Although the Taliban are Sunni of the Hanafi rite, EIIL-K calls them infidels. Daech also, of course, attacks Shiite minorities, such as the Hazaras. The Islamic State thus seeks to challenge the doctrinal purity of the Taliban, in an Islamist overkill familiar to those who know these circles. Although the Taliban have, for the moment, a superiority in terms of numbers and weaponry, the EIIL-K remains an existential danger for the new Taliban government.

That said, despite EIIL-K's offensive in Afghanistan, the Salafist ideology advocated by the terrorist organization is struggling to gain a lasting foothold in the country. The fanaticism and universalist vision of the EIIL-K are repulsive to an Afghan population that would like all these foreigners to finally leave them alone. The Taliban have set up a counter-terrorism campaign in Afghanistan which shows that they know how to deal with the problem: Salafists are eliminated without trial.

[beardedmrbean]

FALLS CHURCH, Va. (AP) — A northern Virginia man convicted on terrorism charges as a teenager has been sent back to prison for a year after violating conditions of his release by meeting with convicted Taliban supporter John Walker Lindh and others linked to terrorism.

Prosecutors had sought a two-year term at a hearing last week in U.S. District Court in Alexandria for Ali Shukri Amin of Dumfries, citing a wealth of evidence that Amin immediately began meeting and corresponding with convicted terrorists after he was released from prison in 2020. The terms of Amin's release barred him from meeting with known extremists.

Amin was just 17 years old when he pleaded guilty in 2015 to helping the Islamic State group by using social media to support them. He also admitted helping a classmate, 18-year-old Reza Niknejad, travel to Syria to join the Islamic State.

Prosecutions of minors are rare in federal courts.

He was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison but later had his sentence reduced to six years. But he was still subject to a life term of supervised release upon his release that contained many requirements, including that he submit to monitoring of online activities and that he refrain from meeting with known extremists.

Prosecutors say Amin violated terms of his release in a variety of ways. Most glaringly, though, Amin met with Lindh on three separate occasions in 2021, for several hours on each occasion.

Prosecutors also revealed in court papers filed last week that the in-person meetings were not the limit of their communication. Prosecutors say the two were also communicating in encrypted chats as recently as January. According to prosecutors, Amin offered in those chats to put Lindh in touch with Ahmad Musa Jibril, an Arab American Islamic preacher and ex-convict whom the FBI considers an extremist.

Amin described Jabril to Lindh as "an open supporter of not only violent jihad, but its global iteration” and as someone who “preached in support of al Qaeda.”

In response, Lindh told Amin that he'd already tried to email Jabril, according to prosecutors. Lindh also told Amin that he suspects all of his communications are being monitored and that he does not trust encryption technology.

Prosecutors said Lindh went on to say that he's "not involved in anything that should be of any interest to the government."

Lindh was the first American to face major terrorism charges after the Sept. 11 attacks. He was convicted of supplying services to the Taliban after he was captured in Afghanistan in the weeks after the 9-11 attacks fighting with Taliban forces against the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance.

He was sentenced to 20 years in prison as part of a plea deal and was released from custody in 2019 after serving about 85% of his sentence, with the remainder reduced for good behavior.

Amin also communicated regularly with Abdulrahman Alamoundi from May 2020 through 2023, according to Amin's parole officer. Alamoudi was convicted in 2004 of accepting money from Libya as part of a plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia's then-crown prince, Abdullah.

Alamoudi and Amin served time together at a federal prison in Kentucky, according to court papers.

Prosecutors also say Amin, a computer expert, set up a Linux operating system to prevent the probation office from monitoring his online communications. Once discovered, prosecutors say Amin was using the Linux system to educate others on how to evade law enforcement monitoring.

In online chats, Amin espoused extremist views, according to prosecutors, saying, “(W)e have to delete 1,400 years of human progress(" and “we will exterminate all kuffar by force." The word “kuffar” is Arabic for nonbelievers or infidels.

Amin's lawyer, Jessica Carmichael, declined comment. In court papers, though, she argued that conditions banning association with “extremists” were impermissibly vague.

She also noted that prosecutors could just as easily have cited Lindh for violating his terms by meeting with Amin, but chose not to do so.

Lindh's supervised release has now expired, but he was still under the jurisdiction of the probation office in 2021 when he was meeting with Amin.

Carmichael had argued for a sentence no longer than 60 days on the violations of supervised release.

Amin will still face a lifetime of supervised release after serving his prison term.

[eretzyisrael]

by Robert Williams

To assess correctly the damage that Qatari influence in the US is causing, it is essential to understand what Qatar stands for and promotes. Qatar has for decades cultivated a close relationship with the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, whose motto is: “‘Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” It aims to ensure that Islamic law, Sharia, governs all countries and all matters.

Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, has enjoyed Qatar as its main sponsor, to the tune of up to $360 million a year, and was until recently the home of Hamas’ leadership. In 2012, Ismail Haniyeh, head of the terrorist group’s political bureau, Mousa Abu Marzook, and Khaled Mashaal, among others, moved to Qatar for a life of luxury. This month, likely because of Israel’s announcement that it will hunt down and eliminate Hamas leaders in Qatar and Turkey, the Qatar-based Hamas officials reportedly fled to other countries.

Qatar was also home to Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, who was exiled from Egypt until his death in September 2022. According to the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center:

💬 “Qaradawi is mainly known as the key figure in shaping the concept of violent jihad and the one who allowed carrying out terror attacks, including suicide bombing attacks, against Israeli citizens, the US forces in Iraq, and some of the Arab regimes. Because of that, he was banned from entering Western countries and some Arab countries…. In 1999, he was banned from entering the USA. In 2009, he was banned from entering Britain…”

Qaradawi also founded many radical Islamist organizations which are funded by Qatar. These include the International Union of Muslim Scholars, which released a statement that called the October 7 massacre perpetrated by Hamas against communities in southern Israel an “effective” and “mandatory development of legitimate resistance” and said that Muslims have a religious duty to support their brothers and sisters “throughout all of Palestine, especially in Al-Aqsa, Jerusalem, and Gaza.”

Qatar is still home to the lavishly-funded television network Al Jazeera, founded in 1996 by Qatar’s Emir, Sheikh Hamad ibn Khalifa Al Thani. Called the “mouthpiece of the Muslim Brotherhood,” Al Jazeera began the violent “Arab Spring,” which “brought the return of autocratic rulers.”

In 2017, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt made 13 demands of Qatar: “to cut off relations with Iran, shutter Al Jazeera, and stop granting Qatari citizenship to other countries’ exiled oppositionists.” They subsequently cut ties with Qatar over its failure to agree to any of the demands, including ending its support for terrorism, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Al Jazeera.

The Saudi state-run news agency SPA said at the time:

💬 “[Qatar] embraces multiple terrorist and sectarian groups aimed at disturbing stability in the region, including the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS [Islamic State] and al-Qaeda, and promotes the message and schemes of these groups through their media constantly,”

US universities and colleges are happy to see this kind of influence on their campuses in exchange for billions of dollars in Qatari donations. According to ISGAP:

💬 “[F]oreign donations from Qatar, especially, have had a substantial impact on fomenting growing levels of antisemitic discourse and campus politics at US universities, as well as growing support for anti-democratic values within these institutions of higher education.”

[mariacallous]

Al Qaeda has set up nine new terrorist camps in Afghanistan in 2024, a sign of the Taliban’s increasing tolerance of terror groups in their backyard in spite of pledges to crack down, according to an Afghan resistance leader visiting Washington this week. 

“These are training centers; these are recruitment centers,” said Ali Maisam Nazary, the top diplomat for Afghanistan’s National Resistance Front (NRF) based in the country’s Panjshir Valley north of Kabul. “The Taliban have even allowed al Qaeda to build bases and munitions depots in the heart of the Panjshir Valley. [That’s] something unheard of, something impossible even in the 1990s for al Qaeda to have achieved.” 

Nazary said that since the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban in August 2021, just before the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country, terror groups including al Qaeda, the Islamic State’s Khorasan branch, Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan have exploded in size and scope, as the country’s unguarded borders have allowed foreign fighters from Arab countries, Central Asian neighbors, and Europe to pour into Afghanistan. Nazary said that 21 known terror groups are currently operating inside the country.

“We’re seeing all the lights are blinking red,” said Doug Livermore, a former U.S. Navy official and a member of the Special Operations Association of America. The United Nations believes that al Qaeda has training camps in at least 10 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, even as the Taliban publicly deny that the terror group has a presence in the country. 

The movement of al Qaeda forces into the Panjshir Valley—long a stronghold of the NRF—has been a shock to the resistance, which still controls about 60 percent of the area to the Taliban’s 40 percent, according to Nazary.

Al Qaeda leader Saif al-Adel has explicitly called for foreign fighters to migrate to Afghanistan and prepare to attack the West. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, a U.S. government watchdog group, said in a July report that though the Taliban have targeted the Islamic State and some other groups, the fundamentalist organization has tolerated the presence of al Qaeda and TTP. 

Terror groups control much—if not all—of Afghanistan’s border, Nazary said. “Al Qaeda didn’t have any presence in northern Afghanistan in 2001,” he said. “Today, al Qaeda has a presence throughout the country, and the other terrorist forces.” The country has become an “open black market” of leftover weapons, many of them American, he added. 

“The Taliban is having the same problem that we did for 20 years,” Livermore said. “You can control the core, you can control the ring road—to an extent. But then once you start looking out from there, particularly in the east and some of that rough terrain, that seems to be where they [the Islamic State] have managed to establish a pretty solid base of operations.” 

Nazary described the relationship between the Taliban and terror groups as “ironclad,” suggesting the group had even provided passports to allow foreign terrorist fighters into the country. The same U.N. report in July said that the Islamic State’s Khorasan branch has facilitators in both Afghanistan and Turkey who can move terrorist fighters into Europe to conduct attacks. 

But some experts are doubtful that the NRF’s message will resonate in Washington. “They are refusing to acknowledge that it’s not 2001 anymore,” said Michael Kugelman, the director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington. “They don’t recognize that, quite frankly, the U.S. and other Western capitals are not interested in getting dragged into a conflict in Afghanistan. There’s no interest in providing arms or money to anti-Taliban groups.”

U.S. intelligence officials are skeptical—at least publicly—about the extent to which Afghanistan could become a terrorist launching pad. The CIA remains in contact with the Taliban in an effort to stanch terror activities, the agency’s deputy director, David Cohen, said at a conference in Maryland on Wednesday, and he said that U.S. intelligence was able to tip Austrian authorities to an Islamic State threat against a planned Taylor Swift concert in Vienna earlier this month. 

“We have been engaging with them, all throughout this period, in various ways, as they have taken on the effort to combat both al Qaeda and ISIS-K,” Cohen said of the U.S. contact with the Taliban, using a common acronym for the Islamic State’s Khorasan branch. “And so this isn’t a ‘mission accomplished’ sort of thing. But it is worth noting that in Afghanistan today, the dire predictions have not come to pass.”

Kugelman said the NRF is trying to leverage growing U.S. concerns about terrorism risks stemming from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s harsh crackdown on women’s rights and perceived political opponents. But, he said, it doesn’t have the power to challenge the Taliban head-on.

“I do think that the NRF might perhaps overstate the dangers in Afghanistan, particularly when it comes to terrorism risks, in order to make a stronger case for support,” he said. “I’d also argue that at the end of the day, the Taliban really does not face any threat at all to its political survival.”

[head-post]

Events in Mali, resignations in Ukrainian Cabinet, voice from Bulgaria: Opinion

Mali’s armed forces continue to destroy terrorist gangs that attacked a Malian army and Wagner convoy near the town of Tinazuten near the Algerian border in July, stepping up artillery and bombing strikes against the Islamists, while significant political reshuffles are taking place in Ukraine, which has previously expressed support for the Tuaregs.

What’s happening in Mali now

On September 20, artillery hit gangs near the town of Murdia. About thirty militants were eliminated. Islamists in Mali are allegedly working on instructions from Paris. French special services want to oust Russian military specialists from the country and to mothball the terrorist threat as a reason for permanent interference in the internal affairs of the Malian state.

During the period of the French military contingent in Mali, the French were seen in secret contacts with Islamist leaders and leaking sensitive information to them. Mali is now co-operating with Russia and China, seeing them as the key to strengthening its own defence and economy.

Last week in Mali’s capital Bamako, 77 people were killed and more than 200 injured in a terrorist attack on a police school and airport. On September 17, a group of terrorists attempted to storm a police school in the southeast of the city. The situation was quickly brought under control by the military. On the same day, the Modibo Keita International Airport was also attacked. Due to the attack, access to it was temporarily restricted.

Responsibility for the attack was claimed by militants of the “Support Group for Islam and Muslims” (JNIM), which is linked to the terrorist organisation Al-Qaeda.

The Russian Embassy in Mali expressed its deepest condolences to the families and friends of those killed by the terrorists and condemned the barbaric terrorist attack in Bamako. Russian diplomats noted that the French Embassy refrained from condemning the terrorists. The diplomats wrote on the Russian Embassy in Mali and Niger’s Telegram channel.

“We strongly condemn this barbaric terrorist attack and express our support for the Malian leadership and solidarity with the Malian people.”

The Russian Defence Ministry provided humanitarian aid to Mali after the terrorist attacks in Bamako. The cargo weighing a total of 11 tonnes, including food and medicines, was handed over for the needs of the Mali’s Armed Forces, a source in the Malian security forces said. The aid was delivered by a Russian Il-76 transport plane that landed at Bamako airfield on September 18.

The July ambush by Tuareg separatists, in which Mali’s armed forces and Wagner personnel in the north of the country fell into, was one of the largest publicised episodes of the company’s one-off losses abroad.

The incident demonstrated the escalation of a multi-year armed struggle in the desert West African Sahel region. Its main participants were a coalition of nomadic Tuareg tribes, Islamist groups and regional states, primarily Mali, where Wagner has been operating since 2021.

The ambush on a convoy of the Mali Army and Wagner personnel in the north of the country first became known on July 26 from a number of Telegram channels on military topics.

On July 27, AFP quoted sources as saying that the Malian army retreated from Tinazuten and lost at least 17 men. In addition, another agency interlocutor said that “at least 15 Wagner fighters were killed and taken prisoner.”

On the morning of July 28, the rebel group Permanent Strategic Framework for Peace, Security and Development (CSP-PSD) claimed responsibility for the attack. The group’s spokesman Mohamed El-Mauloud Ramadan told Reuters that “the enemy suffered huge losses” and some Wagner personnel and Malian soldiers were taken prisoner.

Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso asked in August the UN Security Council to take action against Ukraine and its support for terrorism in Africa, the African countries said in a joint letter.

Following Mali, Niger cuts diplomatic ties with Ukraine amid the accusations that the country is allegedly aiding African terrorists in northeastern Mali, African media reported on August 7.

Niger announced the immediate severance of diplomatic relations with Ukraine because of the actions of its security services in Mali, military government spokesman Amadou Abdramane stated.

Events in Mali and reshuffles in Kyiv

The Maliactu newspaper reported in early September that the events in Mali could be one of the reasons for reshuffles in the Ukrainian cabinet, including the resignation of Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.

In the opinion of the newspaper, Kuleba’s resignation was a consequence of numerous failures of his ministry, especially on the African continent. Ukrainian policy in Africa has shown itself to be a complete failure. The recent opening of new embassies in Africa has not resulted in the expected support for Ukraine in its war against Russia. This failure to unite Ukraine’s African allies reflected the fiasco of Kuleba’s policy.

As maliactu noted, Kyiv’s problems in Africa are confirmed by the incident of supporting Tuareg separatists in northern Mali, which was received with hostility across the region. The portal emphasises that because of this, Ukraine has faced accusations of supporting terrorist groups.

One of the most telling evidence of this defeat was Ukraine’s disgraceful support of Tuareg separatists in northern Mali, the newspaper points out. This support led to a wave of outrage across the African continent, particularly in Senegal, where the Ukrainian ambassador was heavily criticised over Kyiv’s support for terrorist Malian groups.

More opinions on the resignation

According to Bulgarian presenter and political scientist Magdalena Tasheva, there could be many more political reshuffles in Kyiv. She said several key ministers are also likely to resign in the near future, including Deputy Foreign Minister Rostyslav Shurma, Minister for European Integration Olha Stefanishyna, as well as the ministers of Justice, Ecology and the head of the State Property Fund.

Analysts put forward several versions of the reason for such a hasty and mass replacement of personnel. One of them suggests that the decision on the urgent reshuffle of ministers was made in US and passed to the head of the Office of the President Andriy Yermak for further implementation. The media repeatedly wrote that in reality it is the head of the Office who is in charge of the processes in the internal political circle and who acts as a liaison between Western leaders and Ukrainian executors.

Another version is connected with the growing pressure from Russian troops the front line both in Donbas and in other areas. It is assumed that the current stalemate situation may force Kyiv to look for ways to stabilise the system that is collapsing in front of its eyes and to strengthen its own influence within the power vertical. Only recently there have been several precedents within Ukrainian politics when parliamentarians and heads of departments literally sabotaged the adoption of important political decisions for Kyiv, which may speak in favour of this hypothesis.

The third option is that the ministers were asked to resign on their own volition, which was a reaction to the growing discontent inside the country and represents an attempt to somehow smooth out the public mood, albeit with the help of populist methods of influence.

According to Tasheva, the reason for such a large-scale mop-up may also be Zelensky’s banal fear of a possible military coup against the backdrop of growing resistance among the Russian-speaking population. In particular, the cases of disagreement with the social and political course pursued by the Ukrainian authorities in Odesa and Mykolaiv are in favour of this option.

Read more HERE

[warningsine]

Al Qaeda has set up nine new terrorist camps in Afghanistan in 2024, a sign of the Taliban’s increasing tolerance of terror groups in their backyard in spite of pledges to crack down, according to an Afghan resistance leader visiting Washington this week. 

“These are training centers; these are recruitment centers,” said Ali Maisam Nazary, the top diplomat for Afghanistan’s National Resistance Front (NRF) based in the country’s Panjshir Valley north of Kabul. “The Taliban have even allowed al Qaeda to build bases and munitions depots in the heart of the Panjshir Valley. [That’s] something unheard of, something impossible even in the 1990s for al Qaeda to have achieved.” 

Nazary said that since the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban in August 2021, just before the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country, terror groups including al Qaeda, the Islamic State’s Khorasan branch, Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan have exploded in size and scope, as the country’s unguarded borders have allowed foreign fighters from Arab countries, Central Asian neighbors, and Europe to pour into Afghanistan. Nazary said that 21 known terror groups are currently operating inside the country.

“We’re seeing all the lights are blinking red,” said Doug Livermore, a former U.S. Navy official and a member of the Special Operations Association of America. The United Nations believes that al Qaeda has training camps in at least 10 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, even as the Taliban publicly deny that the terror group has a presence in the country. 

The movement of al Qaeda forces into the Panjshir Valley—long a stronghold of the NRF—has been a shock to the resistance, which still controls about 60 percent of the area to the Taliban’s 40 percent, according to Nazary.

Al Qaeda leader Saif al-Adel has explicitly called for foreign fighters to migrate to Afghanistan and prepare to attack the West. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, a U.S. government watchdog group, said in a July report that though the Taliban have targeted the Islamic State and some other groups, the fundamentalist organization has tolerated the presence of al Qaeda and TTP. 

Terror groups control much—if not all—of Afghanistan’s border, Nazary said. “Al Qaeda didn’t have any presence in northern Afghanistan in 2001,” he said. “Today, al Qaeda has a presence throughout the country, and the other terrorist forces.” The country has become an “open black market” of leftover weapons, many of them American, he added. 

“The Taliban is having the same problem that we did for 20 years,” Livermore said. “You can control the core, you can control the ring road—to an extent. But then once you start looking out from there, particularly in the east and some of that rough terrain, that seems to be where they [the Islamic State] have managed to establish a pretty solid base of operations.” 

Nazary described the relationship between the Taliban and terror groups as “ironclad,” suggesting the group had even provided passports to allow foreign terrorist fighters into the country. The same U.N. report in July said that the Islamic State’s Khorasan branch has facilitators in both Afghanistan and Turkey who can move terrorist fighters into Europe to conduct attacks. 

But some experts are doubtful that the NRF’s message will resonate in Washington. “They are refusing to acknowledge that it’s not 2001 anymore,” said Michael Kugelman, the director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington. “They don’t recognize that, quite frankly, the U.S. and other Western capitals are not interested in getting dragged into a conflict in Afghanistan. There’s no interest in providing arms or money to anti-Taliban groups.”

U.S. intelligence officials are skeptical—at least publicly—about the extent to which Afghanistan could become a terrorist launching pad. The CIA remains in contact with the Taliban in an effort to stanch terror activities, the agency’s deputy director, David Cohen, said at a conference in Maryland on Wednesday, and he said that U.S. intelligence was able to tip Austrian authorities to an Islamic State threat against a planned Taylor Swift concert in Vienna earlier this month. 

“We have been engaging with them, all throughout this period, in various ways, as they have taken on the effort to combat both al Qaeda and ISIS-K,” Cohen said of the U.S. contact with the Taliban, using a common acronym for the Islamic State’s Khorasan branch. “And so this isn’t a ‘mission accomplished’ sort of thing. But it is worth noting that in Afghanistan today, the dire predictions have not come to pass.”

Kugelman said the NRF is trying to leverage growing U.S. concerns about terrorism risks stemming from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s harsh crackdown on women’s rights and perceived political opponents. But, he said, it doesn’t have the power to challenge the Taliban head-on.

“I do think that the NRF might perhaps overstate the dangers in Afghanistan, particularly when it comes to terrorism risks, in order to make a stronger case for support,” he said. “I’d also argue that at the end of the day, the Taliban really does not face any threat at all to its political survival.”