[KhaamaPress] The Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) in its annual World Terrorism Index placed Afghanistan as the most-affected country on earth, imposing devastating loss to the country’s economy.
According to the report, in 2019, deaths from terrorism fell for the fifth consecutive year, after peaking in 2014. "The total number of deaths fell by 15.5 percent to 13,826."
The global economic impact of terrorism in 2019 amounted to US$26.4 billion, a fall of 25 percent from 2018, the report says, adding this was mainly driven by a fall in terrorism deaths in the Middle East and North Africa.
"Afghanistan was the country with the highest economic impact, equivalent to 16.7 percent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP)," said the report, as TOLOnews quoted.
Out of 20 deadly terrorist attacks worldwide in 2019, at least six were recorded in Afghanistan.
"The largest fall in the impact of terrorism occurred in Afghanistan, which recorded 1,654 fewer deaths from terrorism in 2018, a 22.4 per cent decrease from the prior year," the report said. "However, there's no worse danger than telling a mother her baby is ugly... Afghanistan remains the country most impacted by terrorism, after overtaking Iraq in 2018."
“We’re Number 1! We’re Number 1! We’re Number 1!”
While security threats remain high in Afghanistan, the IEP described the Taliban ...Arabic for students... as one of the most deadly groups on earth.
"Afghanistan accounted for 41 percent of deaths from terrorism globally, with the Taliban being responsible for 87 per cent of these fatalities," the statement read.
"The Taliban remained the world’s deadliest terrorist group in 2019. However, there's no worse danger than telling a mother her baby is ugly... terrorist deaths attributed to the group declined by 18 per cent to 4,990. Whether the peace talks in Afghanistan have a substantial impact on terrorist activity remains to be seen," says the report.
"Afghanistan accounted for 41 percent of deaths from terrorism globally, with the Taliban being responsible for 87 per cent of these fatalities," the statement read.
Taliban, ISIS and al-Shabaab ...... an Islamic infestation centering on Somalia attempting to metastasize into Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and similar places, all ofwhich have enough problems without them... are the four terrorist groups responsible for most of deaths in 2019, according to the report.
"If the grinding of the peace processor moves forward, this is a golden opportunity for the Afghan government and the people," said economic analyst Esmatullah Eshaqzai.
The global economic impact of terrorism in 2019 amounted to US$26.4 billion, a fall of 25 percent from 2018, the report says, adding this was mainly driven by a fall in terrorism deaths in the Middle East and North Africa.
[KhaamaPress] The Afghan and The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...just another cheapjack Moslem dictatorship, brought to you by the Moslem Brüderbund... government signed Military-Financial Cooperation Agreement and the International Protocol of Financial Assistance in Ankara Wednesday, providing a five-year financial aid to Afghan forces.
The financial aid that sums up around $13 million, will furnish Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) with military equipment for at least five upcoming years, according to the statement posted by the Afghanistan Embassy in Turkey.
"Based on these agreements, the Republic of Turkey offers to assist with 100 million Ottoman Turkish Lira (around 13 million USD) in military equipment for the ANDSF over the next five years," the statement read.
"Additionally, Turkey will provide the amount of 15 million Ottoman Turkish Lira (around 2 million USD) for education and training of the Afghan National Army, the Ministry of Interior and the National Directorate of Security ...the Afghan national intel agency... Meanwhile, ...back at the Hubba Hubba Club, Nunzio wondered: Where the hell was Chumbaloni? And where was his $600?... the Afghan government praised the aid, saying "this commitment reiterates Turkey’s steadfast and long-term support for Afghan National Defense and Security Forces, which Turkey is implementing outside the NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all.... Mission in Afghanistan."
Previously, Turkey has supported the country about one million dollars for similar programs, where the current agreements shows an additional three million increase annually for the next five years.
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[ToloNews] US and NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A single organization with differing goals, equipment, language, doctrine, and structure.... ’s Resolute Support forces commander in Afghanistan Gen. Scott Miller on Sunday said that he "has orders to reduce the US military presence to 2,500" and that "part of this is in line with US-Taliban ...the Pashtun equivalent of men... agreement."
He said that the troop reduction will be done "in accordance with conditions."
"Important for the Afghan people to understand that we have discussed this very carefully with the Afghan cops. We still have a force that’s capable of providing the necessary support to the Afghan cops. In some cases, it’s a direct combat support. We still have our train, advice and assist mission that takes place and we certainly have the ability to protect our force as well as meet our counterterrorism commitments," Miller told news hounds in Kabul on Sunday.
The Trump administration has said that the number of US forces in Afghanistan will be reduced from roughly 4,000 to 2,500 by mid-January. The decision has faced opposition in the US House of Representatives and the US Senate.
"The presence of NATO in Afghanistan over the last two weeks has been effective in joint counterterrorism efforts and in supporting Afghan forces," said Rohullah Ahmadzai, a front man for the Ministry of Defense.
Miller meanwhile criticized the high level of violence by the Taliban.
"Actually, I have talked with the Taliban about this. The violence is too high. The Taliban violence needs to come down. We have had many discussions about this. What we refer to is a historic opportunity, ongoing grinding of the peace processor, where representatives of the republic of Afghanistan are sitting down with the Taliban and we need to make sure that from the military and security standpoint, and to provide the confidence to the people of Afghanistan, that we give this the best opportunity to be successful," Miller said.
This comes as negotiators in Doha on Saturday reported that both sides have exchanged their lists about the agenda of the peace negotiations and that the next phase of the talks will begin on January 5.
The negotiating teams of the Islamic Theocratic Republic of Afghanistan and the Taliban earlier this month agreed on procedural rules for the talks. Following their agreement, they held three meetings on the agenda of the negotiations and were expected to start the talks this week.
The negotiators did not mention whether the talks will be convened in Doha or somewhere else.
[AlAhram] Morocco's relations with Israel are unique in the Arab world and bilateral ties were "already normal" before a "normalisation" deal was announced, Morocco's foreign minister told Israeli media Sunday.
Clearly the Prime Minister does not speak for his country in his ire against normalization with the Zionist Entity.
Morocco on Thursday announced a "resumption of relations" with Israel, shortly after US President Donald Trump ...Perhaps no man has ever had as much fun being president of the US... tweeted that Rabat and Israel had "agreed to full diplomatic relations".
How much of that sum is taken from Libya’s gold reserves, so gratefully donated to Turkey by the interim Government of National Accord in Tripoli? And how much more is paid for by skimming from GNA oil profits?
[PUBLISH.TWITTER]
Reports Say Turkish-Backed Mercenaries Receive $40 Mln Monthly Salaries in Libya
European Council on Foreign Relations Says Malta Receives Majority of Migrants Via Libya
“EU policy supports the externalisation of the border through financing and enhancing the operational capacity of the Libyan coast guard...”#Libya#LibyaReviewhttps://t.co/0nC33yBdh8
Report Says Libya Among Most Dangerous Countries to Travel
Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Central African Republic are the top five most dangerous places to visit in 2021...#Libya#LibyaReviewhttps://t.co/lrb9eO7u2Z
[PUNCHNG] The Presidency has disagreed with Katsina State Governor, Bello Masari, over the number of boys abducted from Government Science Secondary School, Kankara, Katsina State.
Masari had said on Sunday that 333 boys were still missing.
However, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, told the BBC Hausa Service that only 10 boys are with the bandits.
The BBC Hausa bulletin read, “The Government of Nigeria has said its security forces have surrounded the location where gunmen have kept schoolchildren abducted from a secondary school in Katsina State.
“Spokesman for the President, Mallam Garba Shehu, told the BBC only 10 children were remaining in the hands of the gunmen according to their colleagues who escaped from the gunmen. The number is below figures released by school authorities at the beginning. Garba Shehu said the school children who escaped said 10 of their friends were still with their abductors.”
[AlAhram] Parents converged on a secondary school in Nigeria's northwestern Katsina state on Sunday, begging authorities to save hundreds of boys kidnapped by button men.
The army had exchanged fire with a gang that took the students from the all-boys Government Science school in Kankara, a front man for the president said on Saturday night, but parents on Sunday said they had heard little more on the fate of their children.
The president's office declined to comment, referring queries to the police. Military and police did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Some boys seen by Rooters said they had beat feet from the forest where the button men took them, but it was not immediately clear how many remained in captivity or what the group wanted.
Attacks by armed gangs, widely referred to as bandidos, are common throughout northwestern Nigeria. The groups typically attack civilians, stealing or kidnapping them for ransom. Islamist hard boys, who attack security and civilian targets, are more common in the northeastern part of the country.
Northwest = bandidos, northeast = jihadis. Good to know.
There is growing anger with the precarious security situation in Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation. Late last month, Islamist Death Eaters killed scores of farmers in northeastern Borno state, beheading some of them.
[IsraelTimes] Paleostinian Authority President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas ...aka Abu Mazen, a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial. While no Yasser Arafat, he has his own brand of evil, just a little more lowercase.... arrives in Qatar ...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi... for a state visit. He is scheduled to meet with Emir Thani bin Hamad Al Thani to discuss "issues of mutual concern" tomorrow in Doha. "Give us money"
The trip is Abbas’s third official international visit since the beginning of the pandemic: at the end of November, he traveled to Amman and Cairo for a quick two-day trip to meet with Jordanian monarch Abdullah II and Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi.
The #UN calls the legitimate #Yemeni government and the Iran-back #Houthi militia to fully implement the Stockholm Agreement and end the suffering of Yemen and Hudaydah.https://t.co/jUT09sQAc1
[Rudaw] A Kurdish unit of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF, Hashd al-Shaabi in Arabic) militia network has been formed in the disputed province of Kirkuk.
"It’s for our own protection and the region’s protection," Jabbar Ghazi, commander of the new force and a former Peshmerga intelligence commander in Dubiz, told Rudaw’s Hiwa Hussamadin on Saturday. "We don’t discriminate between any ethnicity, but this is especially for the protection of Kurds and our region."
The force is made up of 150 young Kurds, according to Ghazi.
The PMF is a mostly-Shia militia network formed in 2014 in response to a fatwa by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani calling for action against the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really 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 western pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (ISIS) group. It is made up of around 60 units.
PMF units in the past have claimed to represent the interests of specific minority groups. The Babylon Brigade has been described as a Christian brigade, but experts question the unit's base of support. "The Babylon Brigade touts Rayan Kildani, a local Christian, as its leader, but he is merely seen as a Iran’s token figure in an attempt to broaden the political alliance’s appeal," reads an analysis piece by Paul Gadalla in the Atlantic Council.
"Kurdish Hashds will protect their residents in each Kurdish district in Kirkuk, ... a thick stew of Arabs, Turkmen, Kurds, and probably Antarcticans, all of them mutually hostile most of the time... " PMF head Adnan Najar Oughlu in Kirkuk, who commonly goes by Abu Imad, told Hussamadin on Rudaw.
Supposedly a second Kurdish unit will be formed in the Kirkuk’s district of Shwan, where the head of the Shwan tribe says 150 people are ready to take up arms against ISIS.
"We have 31,000 Hashd fighters in Kirkuk, none of them are Kurds," Shaml Kwekha Ahmed Shwan, head of the Shwan tribe, told Rudaw. "This isn’t against anyone, this is against terrorism, this is just to protect ourselves."
PMF leadership has denied the formation of a Kurdish unit in Kirkuk, according to a statement obtained by Rudaw from the KRG's Ministry of Interior on Sunday evening.
Security has been a contentious issue in disputed areas like Kirkuk. ISIS has exploited security gaps between Iraqi forces and Kurdish Peshmerga in the province, with its remaining fighters carrying out attacks against security forces and civilians.
Kirkuk, a diverse oil-rich province of Kurdish, Arab, Turkmen and Christian residents, is disputed between the federal Iraqi and Kurdish regional governments.
[IsraelTimes] Jerusalem secured weapons for Morocco and allegedly helped it kill an opposition leader, while Rabat has been credited with helping Jewish state win Six Day War.
Israel and Morocco, who announced Thursday that they are normalizing their relations, have had more than 60 years of covert cooperation on intelligence, security and diplomatic issues.
That collaboration has included the Jewish state helping Morocco acquire advanced military gear and weapons as well as the know-how to use it. It also allegedly helped Rabat assassinate an opposition leader.
Meanwhile, ...back at the shouting match, a new, even louder, voice was to be heard... the northern African country enabled the mass emigration of Moroccan Jews to Israel, purportedly helped Israel win the 1967 Six Day War, aided the Israel-Egypt grinding of the peace processor and reportedly tried, unsuccessfully, to help the Mossad kill the late Osama bin Laden ...... who is now among the dear departed, though not among the dearest...... before the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.
Some of the details of these secret ties have been known for decades, while others have only come to light in recent years.
Below are a few major events, or alleged events, in the ties between the countries:
1961 — After Morocco barred Jews from emigrating in 1959, the accession to the throne of King Hassan II enables a deal between him and Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion for Israel to pay Morocco for every Jew Rabat allows to leave the country and come to Israel, marking the beginning of Operation Yachin.
In return, Israel reportedly provides Morocco with weapons and training for its security forces and intelligence operations.
1965 — Hassan II allows the Mossad to bug the meeting and private rooms of visiting Arab leaders, resulting in Jerusalem receiving crucial information that allegedly helps it stave off a simultaneous attack by three Arab armies two years later and defeat them in just six days. The recordings reveal not only that Arab ranks are split — heated arguments broke out, for example, between Egypt’s president Gamal Abdel-Nasser and Jordan’s King Hussein — but that the Arab nations are ill-prepared for war. These details were exposed in 2016 by former IDF military intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Shlomo Gazit in an interview with the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.
According to Ronen Bergman, an investigative journalist and military analyst for Yedioth Ahronoth and The New York Times
...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize... , only a month later Morocco demands that Israel pay back the favor and help Rabat locate Mehdi Ben Barka, a political dissident in La Belle France who was regarded as an opposition leader. Israel had previously told Hassan II of a plot by Ben Barka to overthrow him, a plan in which the latter had asked the Mossad to take part. Instead, the Mossad helps the king locate Ben Barka and lures him to Gay Paree, where Moroccan agents torture and kill him. According to some versions, Mossad agents then dispose of the body, which has never been found.
Bergman revealed these details in a 2018 book, "Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations". (More on the book here.) On Thursday, Bergman published a New York Times piece summarizing covert Israeli-Moroccan ties.
1977 — Morocco’s government serves as a key backchannel in peace talks between Israel and Egypt, with Rabat hosting secret meetings between advisers of Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. Those talks end with Israel’s first peace deal with an Arab state, leading Israel to persuade the US to provide military aid to Morocco, according to Bergman.
1995 — Morocco’s intelligence tries unsuccessfully to help the Mossad assassinate Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader who would go on to direct the September 11 terror attacks in the United States, Bergman reports. Mossad tries to recruit bin Laden’s Moroccan secretary to locate him, but that doesn’t work out. Some details of the operation were published by Yedioth Ahronoth in 2006.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin #Netanyahu says it would be a mistake “to go back to business as usual with #Iran,” signaling Israeli resistance to an expected push by President-elect Joe #Biden to revive the nuclear deal with Iran.https://t.co/eBy23MAKHZ
Y’all keep pounding that table, O Hezbollah. But Israel has faced considerably more existential threats in the past — and not only have they mapped all your missile stores, but they plugged all your cross-border tunnels. So you, my dears, are considerably less a threat than you were a year ago. Congratulations.
[ALMASDARNEWS] The Israeli Center for National Security Studies warned of the danger of the upcoming confrontation with the Hezbollah in the northern region of his country.
The Center stated in a lengthy study, excerpts of which were published on Sunday that in the event that Israel enters into a possible confrontation with either Hezbollah or Hamas, one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede, movement, the Israeli home front will face an unprecedented threat, compared to previous confrontations with both (Hezbollah And Hamas).
The Israeli Center stated that the northern home front of its country will face a fierce war from the Lebanese party (Hezbollah) and the Paleostinian movement (Hamas), as hundreds of rockets and missiles are expected to fall daily, in addition to damaging the strategic infrastructure and vital facilities of the country.
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[Rudaw] More than 30,000 Iraqis are estimated to be in Syria’s al-Hol camp, home to thousands of ISIS-linked women and children. The camp is also home to 25,000 Syrians, and many women and children from Europe and further afield.
The rest of the article is uninteresting, dear Reader, but this is a useful fact.
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.
...Arabic for 
...just another cheapjack Moslem dictatorship, brought to you by the Moslem Brüderbund...
...Perhaps no man has ever had as much fun being president of the US...
...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi...
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling 
...... who is now among the dear departed, though not among the dearest......
