Elder brothers, surely. After all, they are a wholly owned subsidiary of the ISI.
[DAWN] In an exclusive interview with Dawn.com, Taliban ...Arabic for students... front man Zabiullah Mujahid has said that if the Taliban do end up having a say in the Afghan polity one day, they will approach Pakistain "as a brother and a neighbour", seeking "comprehensive ties based on mutual respect, just as we seek such relations with all other neighbours."
He acknowledged that Pakistain had remained "the most important hub" for Afghan refugees during the Soviet invasion, and that it was even considered a "second home" by Afghans.
Speaking to Dawn.com, Mujahid also outlined the motivation for talks with the US, the conditions in which they are prepared to negotiate and their vision for a new political order, while insisting that the Taliban are holding talks with the United States "on their own initiative".
Responding to a question regarding the timing of the talks, Mujahid explained that, even prior to the US invasion, the Taliban had asked Washington to engage in dialogue instead of war.
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[Rudaw] Twenty-seven Russian children from Iraq are returning to Moscow on Sunday. Their mothers are in jail in Iraq, serving time for membership in ISIS.
"Tonight a plane of the Emergency Situations Ministry will land at the Ramenskoye airport bringing back 27 children aged between four and 13," said a spokesperson for the office of Russia’s children’s rights commissioner Anna Kuznetsova, Russia’s TASS news reported.
The children will be given health checks and then handed over to relatives and guardians.
Nearly 40 Russian children are expected to be repatriated from Iraq in February.
Kuznetsova’s office has documented 699 minor Russians whose parents took them to combat zones in the Middle East.
On December 30, some 30 children of Russians who had joined ISIS were brought back to Russia.
The fathers of the children were killed during three years of fighting between the jihadists and Iraqi troops, the official said.
The Kremlin announced in early January that 115 Russian children aged below ten -- along with eight aged between 11 and 17 -- were still in Iraq.
Iraqi law allows detainees to be held with their offspring until the age of three, but older children have to live with relatives.
In November, Kheda Saratova -- an adviser to Chechnya's authoritarian leader Ramzan Kadyrov -- estimated "around 2,000" widows and children of Russian IS fighters were still in Iraq and neighboring Syria.
Around one hundred women and kiddies -- mostly from Caucasus republics -- have returned to Russia so far.
Nearly 4,500 Russian citizens had gone abroad to fight "on the side of terrorists", Russia's FSB domestic intelligence agency said last year.
More than 300 people, including around 100 foreign women, have been sentenced to death in Iraq for belonging to the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... , while others have been sentenced to life in prison.
Most of those convicted are Turks or originate from former republics of the Soviet Union.
[Al Jazeera] Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban launched his European elections campaign on Sunday calling on voters to defend "Christian" nations against immigration, which he said led to the "virus of terrorism".
Delivering a "state of the nation" speech in the capital, Budapest, Orban also announced a seven-point package of tax breaks and subsidies to encourage families to raise more children - a move he called "Hungary's answer" to its falling population instead of increasing immigration.
The benefits include a lifetime personal income-tax exemption for women who give birth and raise at least four children and a subsidy of 2.5 million forints ($8,825) towards the purchase a seven-seat vehicle for families with three or more children.
A low-interest loan of 10 million forints ($35,300) for women under the age of 40 who are marrying for the first time will also be introduced.
Orban, who has made "zero tolerance" for immigration his main theme in the past four years and was elected to a third consecutive term in April, also said May's elections for the European Parliament were a "historic crossroads" for Europe.
He framed the vote as a choice between the "new internationalism" of pro-migration Brussels babus bureaucrats under the sway of "money men" such as liberal US billionaire George Soros ...either Ernst Stavro Blofeld or Auric Goldfinger come true... and sovereign nation states defending tradition and Christianity.
And he warned against voting for pro-immigration parties.
Those who "decide for immigration and migrants colonists for whatever reason in reality are creating mixed-race nations", he said.
'WE WANT HUNGARIAN BABIES' Referring several times to Hungary's abandoning of communism in 1989, he said Hungarians were again confronted with "those who would wipe out our traditions and nation states".
He added: "Historic traditions in immigrant countries come to an end ... in such countries Christian-Moslem worlds are created with continually shrinking Christian proportions."
Orban, who has emerged as a self-styled "illiberal" figurehead for nationalist politicians in Europe, added that "immigration brings increased crime, especially crimes against women, and lets in the virus of terrorism".
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[Al Jazeera] Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan ... aka Taliban Khan, who isn't your heaviest-duty thinker, maybe not even among the top five... said his nation needed "painful" economic reforms to cut back on its debt soon after meeting the head of the IMF.
In a speech at the World Government Summit in Dubai on Sunday, Khan said his government faced a massive fiscal deficit when it took office in 2018 and was making efforts to slash it.
"I repeat the reforms are painful ... It's like a surgery. When you conduct surgery for a while, the patient suffers, but that improves," Khan said.
"The worst thing that can happen for society is that you keep postponing reforms because of the fear that you would have opposition, the vested interests stand up and you don't do reforms."
Before taking the stage, Khan met the head of the IMF Christine Lagarde.
'STRONG PACKAGE' Pakistan has about $100bn in external debt and liabilities, according to the State Bank of Pakistan.
"I reiterated that the IMF stands ready to support Pakistan," a statement from Lagarde said.
"I also highlighted that decisive policies and a strong package of economic reforms would enable Pakistan to restore the resilience of its economy and lay the foundations for stronger and more inclusive growth."
Pakistan, a regular borrower from the IMF since the 1980s, last received an IMF bailout in 2013 to the tune of $6.6bn.
Forecasts by the IMF and World Bank suggest the Pakistani economy is likely to grow between 4.0 and 4.5 percent for the fiscal year ending June 2019, compared with 5.8 percent growth in the last fiscal year.
The annual World Government Summit sees global leaders cross paths at a luxury hotel near Dubai's iconic, sail-shaped Burj al-Arab hotel.
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Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) ‐ Approximately 1.8 million people are estimated to be internally displaced persons in Iraq, equating to 18 percent of the Iraqis who live in conflict-affected areas, and more than 5 percent of the overall population.
According to an assessment carried out in 2018 by the UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS), 22% of the internally displaced persons in camps cite explosive hazards as a main reason for not intending to return to their areas of origin, rising up to 52% in some governorates.
In addition, 12% of out-of-camp internally displaced persons cite the same.
UNMAS Iraq, working in tandem with its implementing partners, continues to maintain a weighted presence in Iraq, especially in the areas liberated from the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (IS).
Through strategic partnerships and engagement of both internal and external stakeholders, UNMAS has so far cleared over 1,100 sites of critical infrastructure. These include bridges, water plants, power plants, hospitals, schools, etc. that were once the strongholds of IS and which were littered with explosive hazards after their defeat.
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[IsraelTimes] After Paleostinian suspect was incarcerated Please don't kill me! two years ago attempting to enter Temple Mount with a knife, he told Sherlocks he was trying to get sent to prison
The Paleostinian man accused of murdering the Israeli teen Ori Ansbacher was arrested by the Shin Bet security service two years ago, and told his interrogators that he ultimately aspired to become a "martyr" or be incarcerated in an Israeli prison, Channel 13 reported Sunday.
Arafat Irfayia was arrested at the entrance to the Temple Mount holy site in Jerusalem, armed with a large kitchen knife, in 2017, and indicated that if released, he would "come back here with a knife."
In transcripts from Irfayia’s Shin Bet interrogation from 2017, obtained by the TV channel, the 29-year-old Hebron resident expressed support for Hamas, a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",, telling Sherlocks that the Gazoo terror group was "defending the Paleostinian people with weapons."
According to the transcripts, Irfayia changed his story several times during his interrogation. At first, he insisted that he was not planning to attack Israeli security forces guarding the flashpoint holy site, but then he appeared to express willingness to carry out an attack against Israelis.
"I will do it again, I want to be martyr," Irfayia told Sherlocks, according to the report. "I would do whatever it takes to go to prison, and if you let me go, I’ll come back here with a knife so that I will either get sent to prison or become a martyr."
"I would kill to go to prison. It’s better there," he said.
Irfayia told Shin Bet interrogators that he went to the Jerusalem holy site armed with a knife because he was upset about an ongoing conflict with his parents, but that ultimately he was not capable of hurting anyone.
Asked by the interrogator how he planned to carry out an attack, Irfayia then backtracked on his earlier remarks.
"I would do anything, but I couldn’t kill," he said, according to the report.
At the time, the Jerusalem’s Magistrate Court determined that Irfayia exhibited dangerous behavior, and sentenced him to six months in prison.
Earlier on Sunday, the Shin Bet announced that Irfayia had "nationalist" motives when he fatally attacked Ansbacher on Thursday in a forest on the outskirts of Jerusalem, indicating it considered the incident to have been terrorism.
The intelligence agency said he reenacted the murder in front of interrogators and "implicated himself definitively in the incident."
Most details of the case remain under police gag order.
Ansbacher’s murder sparked outrage across Israel, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledging to freeze money transfers to the Paleostinian Authority over the killing.
The Knesset passed a law last year slashing the Paleostinian tax funds that Israel transfers to the PA by the amount Ramallah pays to convicted murderous Moslems and the families of Paleostinians killed while carrying out attacks.
The law was opposed by Israeli security officials, who fear further cuts to the PA budget could hurt security cooperation or destabilize the West Bank and lead to new terror attacks against Israelis.
Israel has yet to freeze any of the transfers, but politicians have faced public increasing pressure to crack down on the PA’s payments, which are viewed in Israel as incentivizing terror attacks.
Nudged by right-wing political rivals ahead of the elections, Netanyahu told journalists before the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday that the law would be out into effect by the end of the week.
Paleostinian officials have argued that payments to security prisoners seek to mitigate what they call an unfair Israeli military court system.
On Sunday, Paleostinian civil affairs minister Hussein al-Sheikh said that the PA would not go along with Israel withholding any part of the tax money due.
"The Paleostinian Authority will refuse to receive any cleared funds if Israel deducts a penny from it," he told AFP in Arabic, but did not indicate what the PA’s next step would be.
Oh? Quite possibly the Israelis are willing to give minister al-Sheikh what he demands.
[IsraelTimes] Sunday Express says nuclear scientist with knowledge of program in wake of 2015 deal was eventually transferred to US.
Israel’s Mossad spy agency pulled a nuclear scientist out of Iran and helped get him to Britannia in a joint operation with the UK’s MI6 and the American CIA, the British Sunday Express newspaper reported.
The technician was a long-time Israeli agent who was said to have played a part in the 2012 liquidation of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, an Iranian nuclear scientist and director of Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment facility, who was blown up by a bomb attached to his car in Tehran, sources told the weekly.
Continued on Page 49
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#1
"We were reassured during our interview Iran seems to be sticking by the terms of the JCPOA," the source was quoted as saying. "This is good news."
[ALMASDARNEWS] The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Council told the Bas News Agency on Sunday that peace negotiations with Damascus were to resume in the near future.
Speaking to Bas News on Sunday, SDC councilmen Azad Birazi said that the Syrian government has shown positive signs about self-governance in northern Syria.
The report did not delve further into the issue; however, in the past, the peace talks have stalled due to disagreements about federalization and Kurdish autonomous rule in the al-Hasakah Governorate.
In regards to the U.S. withdrawal from Syria, Birazi told Bas News that the Syrian Democratic Forces, the armed wing of the SDC, that the Americans have shown no concrete signs of leaving the country.
This coincides with the latest reports about the U.S. military increasing their troop presence inside Syria, despite U.S. President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... ’s vow to withdraw his armed forces from the country.
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[ALMASDARNEWS] Israel is allegedly spying on Iran via the U.S. air force base some 75 miles from the Iranian border, the Tasnim News Agency reported.
According to the Tasnim report, the Israeli forces are collecting intelligence on the Iranian military movement around the Persian Gulf region.
Quoting Israeli military expert Semyon Tsipis, Sputnik’s Urdu section corroborated these reports, adding that the Israeli forces were specifically operating out of a U.S. Air Force base in Shindand in western Afghanistan, some 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the Iranian border.
"Of course the proximity to an enemy state is the principle reason for carrying out such an operation and also provides legitimacy. But beyond that, another objective of the mission is to acquire experience in combat in the local ground conditions and activity against the local population," Tsipis said, according to the reports.
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[ALMASDARNEWS] The Arabic-language website of the Sputnik News Agency quoted a source as saying on Sunday that His Supreme Immensity, Caliph of the Faithful and Galactic Overlord, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi ...the head of ISIS, or what remains of it, and a veteran of the Abu Graib jailhouse. Looks like a new messiah to bajillions of Moslems, like just another dead-eyed mass murder to the rest of us. So far he has been killed at least four times, though not yet by a stake through the heart... is presently being protected by the American forces in a secret place in the eastern Euphrates region.
The Sputnik source said that the U.S. is waiting for an opportunity to conduct a heliborne operation in southeastern Deir Ezzor and declare the capture of al-Baghdadi and end of ISIS on film.
The source insisted that the time for the "above-mentioned theater is close", adding that the American forces have held SDF back from further advances in ISIS-occupied regions in Eastern Euphrates to play the scenario.
US President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... said on Wednesday that the country would likely announce next week that all of the ISIS terrorist group caliphate had been retaken in Syria and Iraq.
"It should be formally announced, sometime probably next week, that we’ll have 100 percent of the caliphate," Trump stated during his remarks at a ministerial meeting of US-led coalition member states.
Earlier, the American president said during his second State of the Union address that it was time to return US troops deployed in Syria back home.
In December, Trump declared the ISIS terrorist group defeated in Syria, and announced the US troop pullout from the country but gave no timeline.
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#1
20 years ago I would have laughed at this. Today with all the $#it going on I don't know what to believe.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Rudaw] Twenty-seven Russian children from Iraq are returning to Moscow on Sunday. Their mothers are in jail in Iraq, serving time for membership in ISIS. 
either Ernst Stavro Blofeld or Auric Goldfinger come true...
[IsraelTimes] Sunday Express says nuclear scientist with knowledge of program in wake of 2015 deal was eventually transferred to US.
...the head of ISIS, or what remains of it, and a veteran of the Abu Graib jailhouse. Looks like a new messiah to bajillions of Moslems, like just another dead-eyed mass murder to the rest of us. So far he has been killed at least four times, though not yet by a stake through the heart...
