The #Taliban have dismissed about 3,000 members accused of abusive practices from its extremist movement in a widespread “vetting process” launched since coming to power, an official says.https://t.co/pLx0X4ht1o
...one of those Uzbeks, he was shadow provincial governor and head of the military commission of the IEA during the previous government...
a local commander of the Islamic Emirate who was detained by the government, has been brought to Kabul, officials said.
Commander Makhdoom Alam, who was based in Faryab province, was arrested last Thursday in Balkh.
The arrest of the commander sparked widespread demonstrations by residents in Maimana, Faryab's placid provincial capital.
"The person who was arrested ... is still detained by the security forces. The investigation is underway to find out the status of the case," said Bilal Karimi, deputy front man for the Islamic Emirate.
A front man for the Islamic Emirate told the BBC that the commander was involved in kidnapping.
"Remove this issue from your mind—to do something by way of demonstrations. The demonstrations are not going to change anything. The demonstration was set up by Westerners. This is what you call democracy," said the acting Minister of Agriculture Mawlawi Abdul Rahman Rashid.
Officials in Faryab said that the situation has returned to normal in the province.
"We will not allow anyone to cause such unrest in the city," Faryab Governor Qari Hafizullah said.
Mukhdom is an influential commander of the Islamic Emirate in northern Afghanistan. The Islamic Emirate denied any type of racism in the arrest of the commander.
[Garowe] On Saturday, Kenya marked two anniversaries of deadly attacks that left hundreds of civilians and security forces dead, is what caught the country unprepared and perhaps which triggered complex security operations within and along her borders.
The first anniversary was the sixth year after the deadly El-Adde attack which left hundreds of soldiers dead in one of the Forward Operating bases within the Gedo region of Somalia, perhaps the most dangerous attack on Kenya forces in the Horn of Africa.
At least 240 Kenya Defense Forces [KDF] died in the deadly attack, leading to questions about the presence of Kenyan troops in the country. After the attack, the al-Shabaab ...... the Islamic version of the old Somali warlord... turbans also attacked the Kulbiyow Forward Operating base a year later [2017], killing 70 soldiers.
The second anniversary involved the Dusit D2 complex attack in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya in 2019. This was perhaps the last large-scale attack by al-Shabaab within Kenya. The attack led to upscaling of security forces in Kenya and a robust operation against the bad boys.
Most al-Shabaab attacks taking place outside Somalia are waged in Kenya, a friendly neighboring country, which has also contributed forces for peacekeeping missions in Somalia. There are close to 3,500 peacekeepers in Somalia from KDF.
Data collected by various security analysts including the Center for Peace and Security of African Union ...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful... indicate that most al-Shabaab imported muscle are recruited in Kenya. They close over to Somalia for training before being allocated duties.
Sometimes back in 2016, al-Shabaab released a propaganda video showing Kenya fighters wearing pink socks in an unidentified location within Somalia. Kenya started a program of countering violent mostly peaceful extremism by persuading them to renounce their ideologies.
"We have given them an opportunity to surrender before we catch up with them. We know the recruiting cells and so far, we have destroyed a number of them. It's time that we urge them to surrender," President Uhuru Kenyatta said in a past event.
Some of the regions the al-Shabaab targets for recruitment include Wajir, Mandera, Garissa, and Lamu Counties just along the border. There is also some recruitment done in areas such as Nairobi, Nyeri, and Isiolo.
Kenya has tried and prosecuted several suspected al-Shabaab members, with some even convicted for their crimes. In fact, three convicts almost bravely ran away from Kamiti Maximum Prison in Nairobi before being rearrested several miles on their way to Somalia.
Andrew Franklin, a former Marine now working as a security analyst within Kenya, says the inability by Kenya to make public reports about attacks and recruitment gives al-Shabaab the ability to continue shelling the country.
"Six years after El Adde, the government has failed to issue a comprehensive report nor has KDF confirmed/denied numbers of MIA/POW. As for Dusit, much remains "unknown" and to many who should know better believe lessons were learned and that Kenya is much safer!?! Next time," he wrote.
Currently, there are close to 7,000 active al-Shabaab fighters across the region but most of them are domiciled in Somalia according to statistics released by the US Africa Command. The Command has been working closely to fight al-Shabaab within East Africa.
[SANA.SY] Sudan’s Information Ministry on Sunday decided to close the office of 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... -based (Al Jazeera Mubasher) TV channel in Khartoum, in addition to withdrawing the license from its correspondent as the channel has negatively affected "the country’s higher interests and national security".
"In view of Al Jazeera Mubasher channel’s unprofessional approach to the developments in Sudan, which works to strike the social fabric in the country by broadcasting media content that violates the behavior, norms and ethics of the profession and the morals of the Sudanese people, it was decided to withdraw the license granted to the channel’s office in Khartoum," Undersecretary of the Ministry of Information, Nasr El-Din Ahmed Mohammed Khaled was cited by Sudanese News Agency (SUNA) as saying in a statement on Sunday.
The decision affirmed that "Al Jazeera Mubasher channel broadcasted obscene words and showed inappropriate videos and old scenes, which harmed the country’s higher interests and its national security," stressing that the channel did not commit to the conditions included in the granted license.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/17/2022 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11127 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Sudan
The value of #Sudan's currency fell by more than three percent to 465 pounds to the dollar on the black market, traders say, as demand for dollars surged amid continuing political uncertainty following a coup in October.https://t.co/OpeNc2MQeh
[SUDANTRIBUNE] South Sudanese government and an SPLA-IO splinter group will sign a peace agreement on Sunday, January 16, announced the Sudanese government.A South Sudanese security delegation led by Presidential Adviser for Security Affairs Tut Gatluak and a delegation of the SPLA/IO Kitgwang faction led by General Simon Gatwich Dual resumed peace talks in Khartoum on January 11.
Sudanese military authorities in an invitation to the media said the signing ceremony of a peace agreement and the cessation of hostilities between the government of South Sudan and a dissident movement from Machar’s faction, will take place at the Higher Academy for Security and Strategic Studies in Suba suburb.
The ceremony is expected to take place in the afternoon.
The talks had been suspended after the coup d’etat last October.
President Kiir had proposed to transfer the talks to Juba but the breakaway group rejected the offer.
The agreement will pave the way for the belated enforcement of the security arrangements and end tensions at the border area between the two Sudans.
Sudan is the guarantor of the September 2018 peace agreement which was negotiated in Khartoum.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/17/2022 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11130 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Sudan
[Garowe] A renowned British terrorist who is being sought by Interpol and various security agencies around the world has reportedly ditched her fourth husband and subsequently, moved to Yemen ...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of... after spending a couple of years in an unknown location in Somalia.
Samantha Lewthwaite
...who also used the fake South African identity of Natalie Faye Webb, converted to Islam at age 15, then worked her way bed by bed husband after husband up the Al Shabaab and Al Qaeda organizations. Though decidedly female, she reportedly was the key organizer of various jihadi plots in England and the Horn of Africa ...
alias the Black Widow, originally from Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, is among the world's most wanted women. She is a mother of four according to security officials.
At 38, Samantha was previously linked to London's 7/7 bombing
...via first husband Germaine Lindsay, the British-Jamaican terrorist who carried out one of the deadly kabooms in London on July 7, 2005. Former Kenyan naval officer turned terrorist Abdi Wahid wore her wedding ring next, I think. Al Qaeda henchman Fahmi Jamal Salim, also known as Marco Costa, followed, fathering two of her children, then the one she just fled....
before fleeing to South Africa. Later, she crossed to Tanzania in 2011 and then Kenya, before Sherlocks tracked her to an al-Shabaab ...... the personification of Somali state failure... stronghold in Somalia.
The infamous Black Widow was linked to a string of attacks across the world which may have resulted in the death of over 400 people. She's currently the most sought female terrorist around the world, The Daily Mirror reports.
Most recently, she spent seven years with her fourth husband, a Somalia warlord known as 'Sheikh Hassan',
... Hassan Maalim Ibrahim to his mother...
before splitting from him and fleeing to Yemen, reports The Mirror.
Police sources said she fled from a 'no-go' zone in Somalia where they have been hiding and is believed to have crossed over to Yemen. She is now believed to reside in a jihadi-sympathising stronghold in neighbouring Yemen, where she wears a full niqab and gloves to conceal her identity.
One security source told the Mirror: '[Lewthwaite] and Sheikh Hassan are no longer together — it is thought they are divorced. She had protection from his family in a no-go area in Somalia. 'But now she is not welcome and has gone back to al-Qaeda-controlled Yemen. She got there in a dhow sailing vessel.
But despite this latest development, there are no intelligence reports which are exclusively reporting about her whereabouts. Yemen has been in turmoil for several years and there is a possibility that she crossed over unnoticed.
Lewthwaite, originally of Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, was the wife of 7/7 bomber Germaine Lindsay and is thought to be behind scores of suicide kabooms across Africa and the Middle East.
Interpol issued a Red Notice warrant for her arrest after she was linked to the 2013 Westgate Mall attack in Kenya, which left five Britons and 66 other people dead and injured around 200 others.
London University graduate Lewthwaite reportedly altered her appearance through plastic surgery and piled on weight in a bid to remain unrecognised. She has pledged to raise all of her four children, who have three different fathers, as jihadists.
...more formally Mustafa Kamel Mustafa. Abu Hamza is a popular nickname for jihadis, so he’s the Abu Hamza al-Masri in solitary in the Florence, Colorado supermax prison, connected to more planned and executed terror plots and jihadis around the world over the past several decades than you can shake a stick at, some of them Al Qaeda ...
six sons have convictions: Tito ibn Sheikh (born Hamza Mustafa Kamel), 35, Mohammed Kamel Mostafa, 40, Yasser Kamel, 31, Imran Mostafa Kamel, 29
However the remaining two sons also have a track record with extremism: Sufyan Mustafa, 27, and Othman Mustafa Kamal, 33
They, along with stepbrother Mohssin Ghailam, collectively chalked up 40 years in British jails
Career crook Tito ibn Sheikh appeared in the dock at Southwark Crown Court this week. But his crime — plotting to launder hundreds of thousands of pounds of stolen money for which he was sentenced to nearly four years — was perhaps less shocking than his notorious family background.
[BREITBART] Kari Lake, a candidate for Governor in Arizona, told Breitbart News Saturday that she plans to enter into an interstate compact with other states to circumvent federal immigration and border policies.
Before politics, Lake covered the state of Arizona as an anchorwoman for 27 years. Now, Lake is taking on the political battle in Arizona because the state needs a governor “who will stand for the people and not the special interest.”
[WIRE] Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Fox News on Saturday evening that the hostage situation that unfolded on Saturday afternoon at a synagogue in Texas was part of a "perfect storm brewing" and that it was a "religious war."
Graham’s remarks come after a man took several hostages at Congregation Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville and demanded the release of a convicted Islamic terrorist who he claimed was his sister.
"This is a religious war," Graham told Fox News host Judge Jeanine Pirro. "What did I say on your show when we withdrew from Afghanistan? That this is a perfect storm brewing. The rise in terrorism by the Taliban taking back over; al Qaeda roams freely in Afghanistan. ISIS is alive and well over there, and the border is broken — it’s just a matter of time before terrorists over there come through our border and kill a bunch of Americans. I don’t know about the fact pattern here, but also this week, the Ayatollah’s people, the people around him, released a video indicating a desire to kill President Trump on a golf course. ... And the Biden administration hasn’t done a damn thing."
The hostages were later all freed after a hostage rescue team breached the area where they were being held and the suspect was killed. There is no official word on whether the suspect killed himself or whether law enforcement killed him.
The FBI claimed that "the hostage taker was specifically focused on an issue not directly connected to the Jewish community and there was no immediate indication that the man had was part of any broader plan," the Associated Press reported.
#10
More "Trump badmouthing DeSantis" stuff. You could say it's the media, which hates DeSantis anyway, liking the story. You could say it's overblown. Still, it's coming out of Trump's mouth and I don't dig it. YMMV. Some will say it's Trump playing 3-D chess. Sorry, the guy had so many backstabbers in his administration that I don't see it. In any event, DeSantis seems to just smile and say "people are going to say all kinds of things. I have work to do."
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/17/2022 12:51 Comments ||
Top||
#11
Trump would be wise to keep his yap shut about DeSantis or anybody else for that matter. Plenty to talk about without cruising the gutter.
#12
#10 Yahoo News, Axios, unattributed quotes. All of us on this site know how this stuff works. If Trump wasn't the leading contender the knives would be out for Desantis.
[SHAFAQ] The President of the Kurdistan region, Nechirvan Barzani, and Prime Minister Masrour Barzani, congratulated Nouri al-Maliki for being elected as Secretary-General of the Islamic Dawa Party.
"On this occasion, we stress the need for cooperation and common understanding between all parties and communities of Iraq, to overcome the problems and address the difficulties", President Barzani said.
For his part, PM Barzani said, "On the occasion of the success of the eighteenth conference of the Islamic Dawa Party, and choosing you as a Secretary-General of the party, I offer my sincere congratulations, wishing you and the brothers in the Dawa Party progress and success."
Posted by: Fred ||
01/17/2022 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11126 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iraq
[SHAFAQ] Iraqi security forces started an investigation into the simultaneous explosions that targeted two banks in al-Karrada, downtown the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, the Security Media Cell (SMC) said on Sunday evening.
SMC confirmed in a statement that the two sonic kabooms targeted the Cihan bank, near the National Theater, and the Kurdistan Bank, near al-Watheq square, earlier today.
Two citizens sustained light injuries due to the attack, a source revealed on Sunday.
The two banks are owned by a business man from the Kurdistan Region.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/17/2022 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11126 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iraq
[JPost] "Shhhh...it's a secret. That we had yesterday?"
The US State Department denied that the US had brokered an energy deal between Israel and Lebanon on Sunday, after Israeli media reported on Saturday that Israel may supply natural gas to Lebanon through Jordan.
Earlier on Sunday, the Lebanese Energy Ministry issued a "categorical denial" of the report, saying that the agreement being reached with Egypt would have Lebanon receive natural gas from Egypt, with the gas transported through Jordan and Syria.
Egypt receives millions of cubic feet of natural gas from Israel every day. The Lebanese Energy Ministry did not mention if it had requested that Egypt not use this gas in the supply which will be provided to Lebanon.
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/17/2022 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11126 views]
Top|| File under:
[IsraelTimes] Judiciary claims Fariba Adelkhah broke the terms of her detention ’despite repeated warnings from judicial authorities’.
French-Iranian academic Fariba Adelkhah was tossed in the calaboose I ain't sayin' nuttin' widdout me mout'piece! anew for breaking house arrest restrictions, an official from the Islamic Theocratic Republic’s judiciary authority said on Sunday.
Her Gay Paree-based support group had on Wednesday announced "with great shock and indignation" her reincarceration, which comes during sensitive talks in Vienna aimed at reviving a 2015 nuclear deal which offered Tehran sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program.
"Ms Adelkhah... has unfortunately knowingly violated the limits of house arrest dozens of times," Kazem Gharibabadi, deputy head of the judiciary, was quoted as saying by Mizan Online, the authority’s news agency.
"She has insisted on doing so despite repeated warnings from judicial authorities. So now, like any other prisoner who has violated the same rules... she has been returned to prison," he added.
Adelkhah, 62, an expert on Iran ...The nation is noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence... and Shiite Islam at La Belle France’s prestigious Sciences Po university, was arrested on June 5, 2019, at Tehran Airport.
She was sentenced in May 2020 to five years’ imprisonment for conspiring against national security, accusations her supporters have always denounced as absurd. In October of that year, she was placed under house arrest with an electronic bracelet.
The French foreign ministry said the reimprisonment "can only have negative consequences on the relationship between La Belle France and Iran and reduce confidence between our two countries."
French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday called the decision "entirely arbitrary," adding that "the whole of La Belle France" was "mobilized for her release."
Gharibabadi insisted that Adelkhah is "a citizen of the Islamic Theocratic Republic of Iran," adding that Tehran "firmly condemns the intervention of other countries in [its] judicial process."
Iran does not recognize dual nationality, so it has denied French consular staff access to Adelkhah.
"It is very unfortunate that the French authorities... by issuing hasty statements, make baseless and unfounded remarks that are definitely unacceptable," Gharibabadi said.
Adelkhah is one of at least a dozen Western nationals believed to be held in Iran who rights groups abroad say are being detained for political reasons to extract concessions from the West.
Talks between Tehran and global powers on the 2015 nuclear deal entered the New Year with positive signals emerging, including the European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... saying on Friday that a deal remained possible.
Iran’s foreign ministry front man last week cited "good progress," but French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian on Friday reiterated his view that the talks were progressing "much too slowly to be able to reach a result."
On Sunday, a new batch of Syrian families are preparing to leave the Hawl Camp, Hasakah eastern countryside, to go to their hometowns in Deir ez-Zor.
"The batch consists of 53 families with 217 individuals," Munir Muhammad, member of the camp’s management said.
The batch will be the 22nd of Syrian families to leave the Hawl Camp voluntarily following a decision by the Executive Council of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) to take out the Syrian families wishing to leave.
In 2020, the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC) launched an initiative in coordination with dignitaries and tribal leaders to take out the Syrian families from Hawl Camp.
"The camp’s management will keep on evacuating the Syrian families wishing to leave in accordance with a program by the management to evacuate as many Syrian families as possible," Muhammad added.
Ali Mohammed, 72, who had been put in the al-Hol camp since 2018, returned home on Sunday.
Mohammed was acting as a preacher within the ranks of ISIS and seven of his cousins who also had links within the organization were killed during clashes with Kurdish forces and campaigns of the counter-ISIS coalition in the north and east of the country
Mohammed claims he is not an extremist, nor is he linked to any radical ideology, but that all he wants is a peaceful life at home.
"I am a Muslim. I am not associated with any organizations or armed groups," Ali Mohammed, an elderly former ISIS member, told Rudaw as he was preparing to live the camp along with his family to Deir ez-Zor's outlying village of Diblane.
Camp authorities say that in coordination with local officials in Deir ez-Zor, they will monitor the behavior of the returnees.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/17/2022 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11128 views]
Top|| File under: Islamic State
Turkish-backed opposition factions in #Syria’s #Afrin mobilize fighters preparing for infighting as one of a faction’s leader will be prosecuted over charges of corruption and violation. #Turkeyhttps://t.co/cAyGAa0Pvr
Internet services were disrupted in #Lebanon because of diesel shortages, according to the state provider, adding another essential service to the list of casualties of the country’s snowballing economic crisis.https://t.co/F0anWmPSbC
Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force Commander Esmail Qaani visited the grave of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a commander in the pro-Iranian Popular Mobilization Forces, as well as other graves in the city of Najaf, Iraq on Sunday, according to Iranian media.
حضور سردار قاآنی در کنار مزار شهید ابو مهدیالمهندس و شهدای خانواده صدر در نجف اشرف pic.twitter.com/g89dUzh7YM
Al-Muhandis was killed in 2020 in the US drone strike which targeted then IRGC Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad. The visit by Qaani comes after a string of rocket and drone attacks targeting US advisers in Iraq and Syria in early January. At least some of the attacks were blamed on pro-Iranian militias.
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/17/2022 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11124 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran Proxies
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.
[TOLONEWS] 
...... the Islamic version of the old Somali warlord...
...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...
[SUDANTRIBUNE] South Sudanese government and an SPLA-IO splinter group will sign a peace agreement on Sunday, January 16, announced the Sudanese government.A South Sudanese security delegation led by Presidential Adviser for Security Affairs Tut Gatluak and a delegation of the SPLA/IO Kitgwang faction led by General Simon Gatwich Dual resumed peace talks in Khartoum on January 11.
...... the personification of Somali state failure...
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] 
[WIRE] Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Fox News on Saturday evening that the hostage situation that unfolded on Saturday afternoon at a synagogue in Texas was part of a "perfect storm brewing" and that it was a "religious war."
[SHAFAQ] The President of the Kurdistan region, Nechirvan Barzani, and Prime Minister Masrour Barzani, congratulated Nouri al-Maliki for being elected as Secretary-General of the Islamic Dawa Party.
...The nation is noted for 
