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Al Qaeda Tag

Posted by Amy Miller on April 14, 2015 3 Comments
At the end of March, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest stood in front of the corps and dug a hole over the administration's handling of strategic ops in the Middle East. After Yemen's Western-backed Hadi government was forced to flee by Houthi rebels, the White House began fielding questions from the media about how the loss of the Hadi government would affect U.S. counterterrorism strategy in the region. ABC correspondent Jon Karl lashed out after Earnest (accidentally?) revealed that the administration still views Yemen as a model for counterterrorism strategy, in spite of Hadi's fall and the Houthi takeover. Karl's point was valid, and it still stands. The relationship the U.S. has (had) with the Yemeni government was productive to the extent that it allowed us to work with their agencies to control threats to US security in the Arabian peninsula. That capability began to deteriorate last year, even before the Houthi began their full-on assault on Sana'a. The model fell apart, but according to recent reports, we may still have some counterterror capabilities in the region. Earlier today, Yemen's al-Qaeda cell announced that top cleric and Saudi national Ibrahim al-Rubaish was killed by a drone strike. Al-Rubaish had a $5 million bounty on his head, so if this is true, it would provide some excellent optics for struggling US operations on the peninsula.

Posted by Amy Miller on April 02, 2015 2 Comments
While diplomats postured and preened over their hard-fought "nuclear framework" intended to usher in the era of a nuclear-but-not-nuclear Iran, Yemen continued to burn. Today, Iranian-backed Houthi rebels made major progress in their attempt to seize control of Aden, Yemen's key strategic port city and site of ousted President Hadi's last-stand. (He fled to Saudi Arabia last week.) The Houthi don't yet exercise full control over Aden, but have managed to break through barriers armed by soldiers loyal to Hadi, briefly occupy the Presidential palace, and raise the Yemeni flag before withdrawing for fear of airstrikes. This isn't an insignificant accomplishment; if the Houthi eventually oust Hadi loyalists from Aden, they will have seized control over one of the most strategically important ports in the Middle East, and upped the ante on Saudi coalition forces currently trying to regain ground.

Posted by Amy Miller on March 18, 2015 7 Comments
Earlier this year, Iranian-backed Houthi rebels evolved from regional threat into formidable occupation force. They moved out of their strongholds in north Yemen to threaten, menace, and finally occupy the capital city of Sana'a. Conditions deteriorated to the point where the U.S. embassy was forced to evacuate; reports quickly surfaced that the evacuation was botched, and questions arose about the status of weapons, vehicles, and other military aid supplies left behind when US forces left the region. Without an available surveillance infrastructure, the Defense Department has been unable to monitor the movement of small arms and other supplies, and now the Pentagon has come forward saying that they're unable to account for $500 million worth of supplies. From the Washington Post:
In recent weeks, members of Congress have held closed-door meetings with U.S. military officials to press for an accounting of the arms and equipment. Pentagon officials have said that they have little information to go on and that there is little they can do at this point to prevent the weapons and gear from falling into the wrong hands. “We have to assume it’s completely compromised and gone,” said a legislative aide on Capitol Hill who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. U.S. military officials declined to comment for the record. A defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the Pentagon, said there was no hard evidence that U.S. arms or equipment had been looted or confiscated. But the official acknowledged that the Pentagon had lost track of the items.
Who likely got their hands on it? Either al Qaeda, or the Houthi---and neither prospect offers much hope for their return. WaPo created an infographic displaying military aid the US has sent to Yemen since 2010:

Posted by Amy Miller on March 10, 2015 3 Comments
The Gulf Cooperation Council has announced that it will host a series of talks in Riyadh to address the current crisis in Yemen:
Saudi Arabia said on Monday the Gulf Cooperation Council had agreed to host talks in Riyadh to end the Yemen crisis, the state news agency SPA said, quoting a statement by the Saudi King's office. The statement said Saudi Arabia had asked the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, on the request of Yemen's President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, to host the talks in Riyadh where the headquarters of the organisation was, and that they had agreed. Yemen, a neighbour of top oil exporter Saudi Arabia and global security worry because of its strong al Qaeda presence, is caught in a stand-off between Western-backed President Hadi and the Houthi clan, now the country's de facto rulers who are supported by Iran. "The security of Yemen is part and parcel of the security of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries," the statement said.
The situation in Yemen has been devolving at an increasing rate since last year, when Iran-backed Houthi insurgents began taking control of key locations throughout the capital city of Sana'a. In late January, the Houthi laid siege to the presidential palace and took the president hostage; the American embassy made preparations to evacuate. Just days after the attack began, President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi and his government resigned under pressure.

Posted by Amy Miller on January 14, 2015 3 Comments
Yemen's al-Qaida branch has officially claimed responsibility for last week's terror attacks against satirical French newspaper Charlie Hebdo. In two separate videos, one taken the day of the attack and another, longer message from the top al-Qaida commander in the Arabian Peninsula, the group takes responsibility for the attacks and warns of more "tragedy and terror." Fox explains what was revealed in the videos:
An eyewitness heard the gunmen say in French, "We have avenged the Prophet Muhammad!" as they fled the newspaper office, while another witness claimed the gunmen addressed him before fleeing, saying, "Tell them this was Al Qaeda in Yemen." In the video, al-Ansi describes the Kouachi brothers as "heroes" and congratulates them for "this revenge that has soothed our pain.” “Congratulations to you for these brave men who blew off the dust of disgrace and lit the torch of glory in the darkness of defeat and agony,” an-Ansi added. In the video, al-Ansi made no claim to the subsequent Paris attack on a kosher grocery store, during which a friend of Kouachis, Amedy Coulibaly, killed a French policewoman Thursday and four hostages on Friday.

Posted by Mike LaChance on September 30, 2014 8 Comments
Do we really need to invent new terror groups to justify America's actions in the Middle East? Is the Obama administration so reluctant to admit that al-Qaeda still exists? If you ask Andrew C. McCarthy of National Review, the answer to both of those questions is yes:
The Khorosan Group Does Not Exist We’re being had. Again. For six years, President Obama has endeavored to will the country into accepting two pillars of his alternative national-security reality. First, he claims to have dealt decisively with the terrorist threat, rendering it a disparate series of ragtag jayvees. Second, he asserts that the threat is unrelated to Islam, which is innately peaceful, moderate, and opposed to the wanton “violent extremists” who purport to act in its name. Now, the president has been compelled to act against a jihad that has neither ended nor been “decimated.” The jihad, in fact, has inevitably intensified under his counterfactual worldview, which holds that empowering Islamic supremacists is the path to security and stability. Yet even as war intensifies in Iraq and Syria — even as jihadists continue advancing, continue killing and capturing hapless opposition forces on the ground despite Obama’s futile air raids — the president won’t let go of the charade. Hence, Obama gives us the Khorosan Group. The who? There is a reason that no one had heard of such a group until a nanosecond ago, when the “Khorosan Group” suddenly went from anonymity to the “imminent threat” that became the rationale for an emergency air war there was supposedly no time to ask Congress to authorize. You haven’t heard of the Khorosan Group because there isn’t one. It is a name the administration came up with, calculating that Khorosan — the –Iranian–​Afghan border region — had sufficient connection to jihadist lore that no one would call the president on it. The “Khorosan Group” is al-Qaeda.
Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing. As we all know, the Obama administration loves to fuss with nomenclature.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 11, 2014 11 Comments

Memory...

Posted by Leslie Eastman on August 29, 2014 22 Comments
Watching the press conference that President Obama gave yesterday in which he revealed that his foreign policy has devolved from "don't do stupid stuff" to "no strategy," I was perplexed that the media was complaining more about the color of the suit instead of its emptiness. Mulling over the subsequent coverage, I couldn't help but wonder what the upcoming September 11th would bring for our country, because our enemies are clearly inspired by weakness. Now Judicial Watch has revealed that Islamic terrorist groups are operating Mexico and plan to attack the United States along our southern border.
Specifically, Judicial Watch sources reveal that the militant group Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) is confirmed to now be operating in Juarez, a famously crime-infested narcotics hotbed situated across from El Paso, Texas. Violent crimes are so rampant in Juarez that the U.S. State Department has issued a number of travel warnings for anyone planning to go there. The last one was issued just a few days ago.

Posted by Bruce Carroll on July 22, 2014 7 Comments
It has been ten years since the original 9/11 Commission released it's report. The Commission has stayed together informally, but today released a anniversary report entitled “Reflections on the Tenth Anniversary of The 9/11 Commission Report.” The panel members warn that though al-Qaeda has been severely weakened since 2001, new and offshoot groups -- like ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) continue to pose serious threats to the United States national security. From The Washington Post:

Posted by Bruce Carroll on July 10, 2014 32 Comments
The breaking news via Twitter on Wednesday night was quite alarming. The United Nations seems to be playing down the significance of the threat, but the Iraqi government's warning was specific that this material could be used in creating weapons of mass destruction.
Iraq has notified the United Nations that Sunni militants seized nuclear material from a university in the northern city of Mosul last month as they advanced toward Baghdad, the nuclear regulatory body of the United Nations said on Thursday. Gill Tudor, a spokeswoman for the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is based in Vienna, said in a statement that the organization’s experts believed the material — thought to be uranium — was “low-grade and would not present a significant safety, security or nuclear proliferation risk.” Word of the seizure first emerged in a letter to the United Nations dated July 8 and seen by reporters from Reuters, which quoted it as saying that “terrorists” from the insurgent Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, known as ISIS, had taken control of the materials. The letter said that almost 90 pounds of uranium compounds had been kept at the university and that the materials “can be used in manufacturing weapons of mass destruction,” Reuters said.
The first question that comes to many Americans' minds is: How can there be uranium material left in Iraq? After all, the Bush Administration was skewered by the media (and continues to be) when they presented the "yellowcake" evidence at the United Nations prior to the 2003 Iraq War. And, as that TIME article pointed out, even the Bush Administration admitted in 2003 that they messed up on the yellowcake evidence.

Posted by Bruce Carroll on June 11, 2014 35 Comments
Al-Qaeda aligned terror groups have made major land gains from the Syrian civil war into the heartland of Iraq over the last several days. Despite the herculean efforts of the United States military with the Multi-National Force in Iraq from 2003 to 2011, Iraq appears to be sliding into violent chaos across much of its territory between Baghdad and the border with Syria. Fueled by training in the Syrian civil war and allowed by the vacuum of no major U.S. forces in Iraq, the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), is poised to take control of the most land mass since al-Qaeda formed in the late 1980s. According to videos posted by ISIS on social media, the militants also captured U.S. Humvees and Blackhawk helicopters from the Iraqi forces. So far this week, ISIS forces have captured Tikrit -- the former home of Saddam Hussein and his political movement -- and Mosul, Iraq's second largest city.  As ISIS forces converged on Mosul on Tuesday, U.S.-trained Iraqi forces collapsed and fled the city.  Tikrit is less than 100 miles from Iraq's capital of Baghdad, while Mosul is just 225 miles to the northwest from Baghdad.
"The city of Mosul is outside the control of the state and at the mercy of the militants," an interior ministry official told the Agence France Presse news agency, saying soldiers had fled after removing their uniforms. Several residents told the Associated Press that the militants were now touring the city with loudspeakers, announcing that they had "come to liberate Mosul and would fight only those who attack them."
Reports from Mosul detail mass beheadings of residents by the ISIS terrorists and a flood of hundreds of thousands of refugees out of the city. The al-Qaeda aligned ISIS organization now effectively controls a region from the eastern Syrian city of Raqaa, over the through the western Iraqi desert up to northern Iraq and less than 100 miles from Baghdad.

Posted by David Gerstman on January 23, 2014 11 Comments
It was reported yesterday that Israel's internal security agency, the Shin Bet broke up an al Qaeda cell operating in Jerusalem. According to the report, three men in Jerusalem were recruited by an al Qaeda operative in Gaza to carry out three attacks: targeting the Jerusalem-Maale Adumim bus line, the Jerusalem convention center and the American embassy in Tel Aviv. (Last year, in an apparently unrelated case, Israel arrested an Iranian national photographing the embassy.) The Jerusalem Post notes:
The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) said an al-Qaida operative in Gaza, named as Ariv al-Sham, recruited the men separately as three independent terrorist cells. Senior Shin Bet sources said they believed Sham received his orders directly from the head of al-Qaida, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Using Skype and Facebook, Sham was able to recruit Iyad Khalil Abu-Sara, 23, of Ras Hamis of east Jerusalem, who has an Israeli ID card. During questioning, Abu-Sara, who was arrested on December 25, admitted to volunteering to carry out a “sacrifice attack” on an Israeli bus traveling between Jerusalem and Ma’aleh Adumim. In the planned attack, terrorists would shoot out the bus’s tires, causing it to overturn, before gunning down passengers at close range and firing on emergency responders.
One of them was planning to arrange to bring foreign terrorists to Israel posing as Russian tourists to aid in the execution of his plans. The report in USA Today explained why this discovery is a big deal:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 13, 2013 13 Comments
The murder trial of two Islamic radicals who hacked British soldier Lee Rigby to death on the street continues. We noted how the murderer pictured in so many of the newpaper covers holding a bloody machete argued in his defense that he was a "soldier of Allah" and that he was in a war, Killer of British soldier Lee Rigby: “I am a soldier and this is war” The second murderer decided to offer no defense evidence, as reported by the Daily Mirror, which has a live blog of the proceedings:
The second man accused of hacking Fusilier Lee Rigby to death has refused to give evidence. Michael Adebowale, 22, was due to take the stand to explain the attack on the 25 year-old soldier near Woolwich Barracks in south London. His co-defendant Michael Adebolajo, 28, has already told the court that he tried to decapitate Lee Rigby to protest against British foreign policy. Abbas Lakha, representing Adebowale, told the court: "I call no evidence on behalf of Mr Adebowale." ... The judge sent the jury of eight women and four men away for the weekend and told them the court will contact them by mobile phone when they should return to court. He said there was more legal argument to sort out before closing speeches start but said the case was still due to conclude by Christmas.
Here's video of his capture immediately after the attack:

Posted by David Gerstman on December 12, 2013 4 Comments
One of President Obama's pitches for re-election was "Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive." Or as the President said, slightly more elaborately, in a speech shortly before his re-election:
Remember, in 2008, we were in the middle of two wars and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Today, our businesses have created nearly 5.5 million new jobs. (Applause.) The auto industry is back on top. (Applause.) Home values are on the rise. (Applause.) We’re less dependent on foreign oil than any time in the last 20 years. (Applause.) Because of the service and the sacrifice of our brave men and women in uniform, the war in Iraq is over. The war in Afghanistan is winding down. Al Qaeda is on the run, and Osama bin Laden is dead. (Applause.) So we’ve made real progress these past four years.
Yes, Al Qaeda is on the run.

To Yemen:

Yemen which has been in a state of political turmoil since the ouster of its long time dictator, Ali Abdullah Saleh, is facing two insurgencies in the north: one are the Iran backed Houthi separatists and the other are Salafists. Both groups are fighting each other as well as Yemen's central government.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 19, 2013 7 Comments

There was a double suicide bombing targeting the Iranian Embassy in Beirut earlier today. There are at least 25 dead, including one diplomat. An al-Qaeda linked group is claiming credit, but the Iranians are blaming Israel. The bobming is assumed to be in retaliation for Iran's involvement in...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 07, 2013 80 Comments

There are very good arguments against intervention in Syria, even if I disagree with the conclusions reached from those arguments.  I haven't denigrated those who disagree, although I can't say the same is true in reverse. Unfortunately, regardless of how you come out on the issue,...

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