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Taliban Tag

Pakistan officials announced that the Taliban has freed an American woman, her Canadian husband, and their children after five years of imprisonment. From ABC News:
Caitlan Coleman, 31, and her husband Joshua Boyle, 34, who were abducted while hiking in Afghanistan’s Ghazni province in 2012, were secured in an exchange between Pakistani military and U.S. commandos late Wednesday in a secret operation to bring them home after one of the longest -- and strangest -- American hostage ordeals in recent history, counterterrorism officials revealed.

Sources have told The Associated Press that Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the man rescued from former President Barack Obama in exchange for Taliban members at Gitmo, is expected to plead guilty to charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy to avoid a trial. Obama showed off Bergdahl and made a big deal of his exchange deal with the Taliban, but it didn't take long for news to surface that Bergdahl actually deserted his post in Afghanistan and put other soldiers in danger.

Eliminating Islamist terrorism was high on the agenda when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Washington three months ago. “We will destroy radical Islamic terrorism,” President Donald Trump had said in his joint statement with Premier Modi. Last night, President Trump told India to take concrete steps in the region towards that final goal. President Trump’s speech outlining the new strategy in Afghanistan received wide support and approval in India. "India welcomes Trump's South Asia policy," India’s leading newspaper Times of India commented:
India today welcomed US President Donald Trump's determination to enhance efforts to overcome the challenges facing Afghanistan and confront issues of safe havens and other forms of cross-border support enjoyed by terrorists.

The UK might “face an Islamist terrorist threat for the next 30 years,” warns country’s former spy chief. According to Jonathan Evans, who resigned as Director General of MI5 four years ago, threat of Jihad to the country was a “generational problem” and won’t be going away anytime soon. "I think that we are going to be facing 20, 30 years of terrorist threats," Evans told BBC. Britain has been rocked by four Jihadi terror attacks this year. The worst of which took place at the London Bridge in the beginning of June, where three Islamic terrorists drove a van into passers-by and subsequently went into a stabbing spree, killing 8 and injuring 48 others. Most of these assailants come from Britain’s vast migrant Muslim population.

Just a little over a year ago, an employee at Yale smashed a stained glass window at the school because he was angry over the image of African Americans carrying cotton. We covered it in this post: Yale employee smashes allegedly racist stained-glass window, Yale won’t press charges Not only did Yale not press charges, they rehired the employee with much fanfare. Now another piece of campus art has been altered for the sake of political correctness.

Merkel's government wants to kick off "peace talks" with Jihadist terror group Taliban while Germany's Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel revealed his country's involvement in negotiations with Afghanistan-based terrorist group. "We are involved in finding a political solution between the hostile camps," German Foreign Minister confirmed. It is, however, unclear how Merkel government wants to "make peace" with an Islamist group that remains committed to global Jihad and seeks annihilation of all ‘infidels’. "One doesn't make peace with friends, rather with enemies," Foreign Minister Gabriel told German newspaper Bild am Sonntag. Neville Chamberlain couldn't have said it better. Ousted from power by a US-led military operation 16 years ago, Taliban has managed to make substantial gains during the eight years of Obama presidency, taking back nearly 40 percent of the country.

Marwan Barghouti is a terrorist, convicted of killing five Israeli civilians during the Second Intifada, and organizing much of the terror campaign through his control of the Tanzim group in the West Bank. Prof. Miriam Elman previously wrote a detailed profile of Barghouti, his terrorist past and political future, Terrorist Serving Multiple Life Sentences for Murder May be Next Palestinian President:
Barghouti (56)—a one-time peace activist who initially supported the Oslo Accords—served as the head of the Tanzim, one of Fatah’s armed terrorist factions, and was the founder of, and senior official in, the terrorist group known as the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. Considered among the driving forces behind the bloody second intifada, he was convicted in 2004 for multiple murders and attempted murders.

Gen. Joseph Votel, the general in charge of the U.S. Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he needs more troops in Afghanistan to break a stalemate:
“We are developing a strategy, and we are in discussions with the secretary and the department right now,” Gen. Joseph Votel told the Senate Armed Services Committee. “I do believe it will involve additional forces to ensure that we can make the advise-and-assist mission more effective.”

Yesterday, during the Senate's debate on Attorney General Jeff Sessions's confirmation, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) mentioned he wouldn't be surprised if Russia made a move to help the Taliban against us and NATO. It appears he was onto something because Gen. John Nicholson, the top U.S. general in Afghanistan, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Russia wants to "legitimize the Taliban" in Afghanistan as a way "to undermine the United States and NATO. From The Hill:
“The Russian involvement this year has become more difficult,” Gen. John Nicholson told the Senate Armed Services Committee. “First, they have begun to publicly legitimize the Taliban. This narrative that they promote is that the Taliban are fighting Islamic State and the Afghan government is not fighting Islamic State and that therefore there could be spillover of this group into the region. This is a false narrative.” “I believe its intent is to undermine the United States and NATO,” he later added.

Right after the Paris attacks of November 2015 that killed 128 people, President Obama scoffed at Republicans for being "scared of widows and orphans coming into the United States of America." But just because those "clinging to their guns and religion"  -- to use another of Obama's expression-- might be skeptical of mass-migration from Muslim dominated countries, doesn't mean Islamic terrorism isn't out to get them. According to a recent report published by a UK-based counter-extremism think tank, Islamist groups like ISIS and Boko Haram are using child recruits to infiltrate the refugee wave currently overwhelming Europe. ISIS was paying smugglers to bring child recruits across to Europe and offering up to $2,000 for each child recruited inside the refugees camps in Lebanon and Jordan, says the report issued by Quilliam International.

Military deserter Bowe Bergdahl was hoping for a pardon from President Obama which never came. Now that President Trump has taken office, Bergdahl's lawyers are claiming he can't be guaranteed a fair trial due to Trump's prior criticism of him. The Hill reports:
Bergdahl lawyers press for dismissal after Trump inauguration Lawyers for former prisoner of war and Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl made good on their promise to call for his case to be dismissed based on President Trump’s campaign comments against him, filing a motion on Inauguration Day.

Saudi Arabia is pushing ahead with its plans of creating an international Islamic army. Saudi-led Islamic Military Alliance (IMA) comprises of 39 Sunni Muslim states including nuclear-armed Pakistan. According to a report published this week by the British newspaper Guardian, former Pakistan army chief Raheel Sharif has been tapped to become the first commander of this "Muslim Nato". Saudi-led Islamic army is not backed by Iran, which is busy building a rival Muslim block by financing and arming standing armies and terrorist militias in Shia-majority countries and regions. The declared aim of this military alliance is to fight terrorism. Ironically, its leading member states are direct sponsors of Jihadi terrorism across the world. Pakistan's military actively nurtures and sponsors Islamic terrorist groups operating against Hindu-majority India, along with its long-standing ties with Taliban in Afghanistan. Gulf Arab States and Turkey have supported and funded Islamic State (ISIS) at one time or another.

The first time we wrote about Johnny Micheal “Mike” Spann was in early May 2011, in the aftermath of the killing of Osama bin Laden:
Hearing the news of Osama bin Laden’s death brought forward many emotions and memories. One of those memories for me was the story of Johnny “Mike” Spann, from Winfield, Alabama, the first American killed in ... Afghanistan..., on November 25, 2001. Spann was a CIA operative, one of a small number of Americans who landed in Afghanistan, helped coordinate local forces hostile to the Taliban, and directed bombing and other military action. The story of this small band of men has been told, but not told enough.

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite days of the year. Setting aside an entire four-day weekend to actively and collectively practice gratitude is an incredible part of our cultural heritage. Because I do so love Thanksgiving, I asked the LI team to share their thoughts on this special day. Here's what we're thankful for.

A Taliban suicide bomber managed to find his way into a U.S. military base in Kabul, Afghanistan, where he detonated a bomb and killed four Americans. The blast left 16 wounded:
The suicide bomber at Bagram Air Field had been dressed as a day laborer and detonated the explosives in the vicinity of a dining facility around 5:30 a.m., according to a foreign security source. The sprawling base, which contains tens of thousands of contractors, is often targeted by Taliban rockets and attacks on patrols near the base, but suicide bombers hadn’t previously succeeded in breaching the outer layers of security.