There are some great duties which need to be carried out. You honorable gentlemen came up with some solutions and specified certain responsibilities in this congressional meeting. I too would like to mention two, three tasks that cannot be ignored: one is the formation of a scholarly, rational, and comprehensive movement, by ulama from all Islamic denominations, with the purpose of uprooting the takfiri orientation. This movement should not be confined to certain denominations. All the
President Donald Trump’s airstrikes in Afghanistan are making it easier for the Taliban to recruit new members to attack U.S. troops, a spokesman for the Afghan Taliban said.
In an interview posted on the Taliban’s website, spokesman Muhammad Yusuf said there is a direct link between an increase in civilian casualties in Afghanistan and the Taliban’s ability to recruit new members.
“Civilian losses and casualties increased significantly due the indiscriminate bombing, artillery shelling and
A UK report on modern slavery identifies its various manifestations – sexual exploitation, labour exploitation and domestic servitude – concluding that increased awareness results in an increase in detection and reporting. But, with trafficking at the root of much modern slavery it is clearly a worldwide phenomenon, not limited to the west or to any particular country.
Modern Slavery is usually a hidden phenomenon, it goes on behind closed doors and can be hard to detect. Victims are
It was a few weeks after the rains failed in the winter of 2009 that residents of Shirqat first noticed the strange bearded men.
Circling like vultures among the stalls of the town’s fertilizer market in Iraq’s northern Salahaddin governorate, they’d arrow in on the most shabbily dressed farmers, and tempt them with promises of easy riches. “Join us, and you’ll never have to worry about feeding your family,” Saleh Mohammed Al-Jabouri, a local tribal sheikh, remembers one recruiter
On Nov. 7, Albania's High Criminal Court changed the sentences of two Muslim Albanians from prison to house arrest. The detainees, Xhezair Fishti and Medat Hasani, who are Salafists, were arrested in November 2016 by Albanian counterterrorism units on suspicion of planning an attack on the Israeli national football team, which was scheduled to play Albania on Nov. 12, 2016.
These Salafists were two of some 150 Muslims who the Albanian police detained that month. Albanian authorities, who
The RAND Corporation’s recent piece titled, “Al Qaeda in Syria Can Change Its Name, but Not Its Stripes,” all but admits what was already suspected about designated terrorist groups operating in Syria – that they are undergoing a transition in an attempt by their state sponsors to bolster their legitimacy and spare them from liquidation amid the shifting tides on the battlefield.
The piece, written by Colin Clarke described by the RAND Corporation as a “political scientist at the RAND
A number of recent terror operatives and fighters for the Islamic State hail from that landlocked nation and some of its Central Asian neighbors. Why?
The alleged assailant in the New York terror attack, Sayfullo Saipov, has brought back to global attention Uzbekistan, the resource-rich, desperately poor, and wildly corrupt Central Asian state that has been largely hidden from view for over a decade.
A number of recent terror operatives and fighters for the Islamic State hail from that
Chatting with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in November 2016, Barack Obama mentioned Indonesia, where he spent part of his childhood back in the 1960s. The country, he noted, was a changed place. Where Muslims once adopted elements of Hinduism, Buddhism, and animism, a more austere version of Islam had taken hold once Saudi Arabia began pouring money into Wahhabist madrassas in the 1990s. Where women had formerly gone about with
by Tom Engelhardt
Honestly, if there’s an afterlife, then the soul of Osama bin Laden, whose body was consigned to the waves by the U.S. Navy back in 2011, must be swimming happily with the dolphins and sharks. At the cost of the sort of spare change that Donald Trump recently offered aides and former campaign officials for their legal troubles in the Russia investigation (on which he’s unlikely to deliver) — a mere $400,000 to $500,000 — bin Laden managed to launch the American war on
Across the western world, countries have succumbed to pressure and incrementally introduced the paraphernalia of a security state. Albeit without the promised security and massive breaches of privacy and other hard won human rights. The rise of the security state has implications across the planet from austerity measures, the militarisation of police forces and copious amounts of tax dollars funnelled into the Military Industrial Complex. This, we are told, is needed to fight the farcical
If you want to change a group of terrorists who have killed American overseas into something that appears to be much more benign, all you have to do is pay off the right people in Washington. With enough money, you can even open a nice plush lobbying office on Pennsylvania Avenue in the District of Columbia, not too far from the White House and Capitol Hill.
One-time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been rightly blamed for the ill-conceived and badly bungled “regime change” in Libya in
The US’ only answer to terrorism is violence against violence, but that’s like trying to eradicate diseases by killing patients; a more constructive approach is needed, says Jan Oberg, director of the Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research.
A report released under the Freedom of Information Act shows the US has been simulating an invasion of West Africa in response to an imaginary terror attack on American soil.
The latest Pentagon project was designed to train those who
A strong smell of blood and flesh permeated the Imam Zaman mosque in Kabul on Saturday hours after dozens of Shia worshippers were slaughtered by a suicide bomber during evening prayers.
Broken glass and dust covered the red carpet, soaked in the blood of the men, women and children who had been praying on Friday when the attacker blew himself up, causing carnage in the cavernous prayer hall.
At least 56 people were killed and dozens wounded in the assault claimed by the Islamic State group
Howard Dean was never one of us. Dean, a former governor, first became famous as a progressive hero in 2004, before serving as the Democratic National Committee Chair from 2005 to 2009. What has he done since then? Why, turned lobbyist. The last several years have been kind to Dean’s bottom line, but not his followers. The former Governor and DNC honcho opposes single-payer and called the Iranian Revolution Guard a terrorist organization. What can we make of such a decreased paragon?
We
Jihadist acts of terror
Indeed, a group of jihadist terrorists attacked New York's World Trade Center on February 26, 1993. The aim of the attack, which involved driving a bomb-laden truck into the basement of the complex, was to bring down both towers of the Trade Center.
That mission wasn't accomplished, but the explosion did kill six people.
The mastermind of that 1993 attack was Ramzi Yousef, whose uncle Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, known as KSM, would go on to be the operational
As I argue in my recently published policy analysis here at Cato, the American-led war on terror has clearly failed. Unfortunately, rather than accept the obvious fact that the campaign was badly misguided and focusing homeland security efforts in more fruitful areas, the Trump administration appears ready to embrace, and perhaps even to escalate, the American commitment in the Middle East. Though President Trump himself has frequently voiced concerns about nation building in Iraq and the
American policymakers and pundits have an unfortunate history of embracing odious foreign political movements that purport to be democratic. During the Cold War, embarrassing episodes included Washington’s support for the Nicaraguan Contras and Jonas Savimbi’s National Union for the Total Independence of Angola. The post–Cold War era provides ample evidence that influential Americans have not learned appropriate lessons from those earlier blunders. The Clinton administration made common cause
What were a Saudi prince, a former Republican House Speaker and a former Democratic vice-presidential candidate doing together in a suburb of Paris last weekend?
Would you be surprised to discover that Prince Turki Bin Faisal, Newt Gingrich and Joe Lieberman were speaking on behalf of a group of Iranian exiles that was officially designated a “Foreign Terrorist Organization” by the United States government between 1997 and 2012?
Iran hawks long ago fell head over heels for the Mojahedin-e
The Washington Times reports on the latest Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK) rally:
Thousands of supporters of an Iranian dissident group rallied here Saturday for the overthrow of Tehran’s theocratic regime at an event that featured speeches by several Trump administration allies — including Newt Gingrich and Rudolph W. Giuliani — as well as the former head of Saudi intelligence.
Gingrich and Giuliani and the other Americans that appeared at the rally have been shilling for the MEK for years
An Iranian analyst says Tehran-Paris relations need to be redefined after the French capital recently hosted the annual gathering of the notorious anti-Iran terrorist group MKO.
The editor-in-chief of the Iranian Diplomacy news website has, in an analytical piece, talked about the recent gathering of the terrorist Mojahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MKO or MEK) in the French capital of Paris.
Sergei Barseghian has underlined the need for a redefinition of Tehran-Paris ties given the
There are some great duties which need to be carried out. You honorable gentlemen came up with some solutions and specified certain responsibilities in this congressional meeting. I too would like to mention two, three tasks that cannot be ignored: one is the formation of a scholarly, rational, and comprehensive movement, by ulama from all Islamic denominations, with the purpose of uprooting the takfiri orientation. This movement should not be confined to certain denominations. All the
