• U.S. to ship arms to Iraq; France to send arms to Kurds

    The United States is planning to accelerate arms shipment to Iraq, especially as it becoming clear that divisive prime minister Nouri al-Maliki has accepted the fact that he would not continue in power. The U.S. shipments will include missiles, guns, and ammunition. The shipments will start when Haider al-Abadi officially becomes Iraq’s new prime minister. France has announced it is beginning to ship arms to the Kurds, while Spain and Italy said they would begin to do so shortly

  • ISIS militants kill 500 Yezidis, burying women and children alive, forcing 300 women into slavery

    Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, Iraq’s human rights minister, on Sunday said that Islamic State (ISIS) militants have killed 500 members of the Yazidi ethnic minority, including some women and children who were buried alive. Another 300 women were kidnapped and forced into slavery. U.S. bombing of ISIS forward units allowed Kurdish forces to recapture two towns taken by ISIS early last week. U.S. is dropping supplies to 40,000 Yezidis stranded on Sinjar Mountain. ISIS leaders announced that Yezidi “devil worshippers” faced a choice: convert to Islam or die on the mountain.

  • Iraq’s Yazidis are on the brink of genocide – who will save them?

    U.S. president Barack Obama has confirmed that the U.S. military made targeted airstrikes and carried out a humanitarian operation in Iraq, marking the deepest U.S. engagement in the country since U.S. troops withdrew in 2011. There will be no troop presence on the ground. This means that the IS [Islamic State, which is the new name adopted by ISIS] threat won’t be removed from Iraq — at least in the short term. The IS fighters will continue their massacres after the limited U.S. operation has finished. Iraq needs immediate, comprehensive and unlimited military and political assistance to eradicate IS fighters from the country. IS is not just a normal terrorist group and it is not a political opposition. Rather, it has become a professional irregular army with more than 20,000 well-trained soldiers and a very strong ideology, operating in a region from Iraq to Lebanon with many sleeper cells worldwide.

  • Morocco arrests recruiter involved with French terror network

    Moroccan security forces two weeks ago arrested a French jihadist who was operating in the country to recruit fighters in order to send them to al-Qaeda affiliated organizations. The unnamed suspect had fought in Bosnia before joining the ranks of al-Qaeda in Iraq and Syria. His arrival is believed to be connected to recent strife in Libya and coordinated by the Jabhat al-Nusra terrorist cell in Syria.

  • U.S. ready to strike ISIS targets in Iraq, drops supplies to besieged refugees

    Yesterday, President Obama authorized the U.S. military to attack ISIS targets in Iraq, at the same time that USAF transport planes began dropping food and other supply to help the 40,000 or so Iraqis who fled to the mountains in the last two days after ISIS militants took over four Christian-majority towns in north Iraq. Administration officials said on Thursday that the crisis on Sinjar Mountain in northern Iraq had forced their hand, with tens of thousands of people sheltering in the bare mountains without food, water, or access to supplies.

  • Hamas, Israel exchange fire as Gaza cease-fires collapses

    The fighting between Israel and Hamas has resumed after the 72-hour Egypt-sponsored cease-fire collapsed. Hamas has so far fired more than twenty rockets on towns in southern Israel, while Israel, in response struck the Sheikh Radwan area with air strikes and artillery fire. Thousands of Gazan have again fled their homes in anticipation of a forceful Israeli response. The talks in Cairo over a post-war arrangement in Gaza have stalled as a result of what appear to be unbridgeable differences between Israel and Egypt, on the one hand, and Hamas, on the other hand. The 72-hour Egypt-sponsored cease-fire came to an end 08:00 local time (02:00 EST). As was the case swith earlier cease-fire, Hamas fired into Israel an hour before the formal end of the truce. Hamas spokesmen said that Egyptian and Israeli proposals failed to meet Palestinian expectations. They said that the organization would resume firing rockets into Israel unless an agreement is reached.

  • Ebola outbreak could inspire African terrorist groups to weaponize the virus: Experts

    Recent discussions about Ebola have mainly focused on the disease as a public health hazard, but counterterrorism officials are concerned that the new outbreak could inspire terror groups, specifically those based in West Africa, to weaponize the virus. The fear of weaponized Ebola dates back decades to when the Soviet Union’s VECTOR program, aimed at researching biotechnology and virology, was thought to have researched the creation of Ebola for warfare. In 1992 a Japanese cult group called Aum Shinrikyo tried, but failed, to collect samples of the Ebola virus in Zaire.

  • Tens of thousands flee as ISIS militants seize Iraq's largest Christian town

    The largest Christian towns in Iraq — Qaraqosh, Tal Kayf, Bartella, and Karamlesh — emptied of their original populations as Jihadist ISIS fighters take control. Tens of thousands of the towns’ residents have fled to the autonomous Kurdish region. The towns were captured by Kurdish peshmerga forces at the same time that ISIS forces from Syria came down from Syria and captured the Sunni Anbar province to the west. Kurdish commanders said the Kurdish forces were over-stretched, and that they had to withdraw from the Christian towns in order to be better prepared for the coming drive east by ISIS militants.

  • Al Qaeda-affiliates derive most of their funding from ransom paid to free Europeans

    In its early years, al-Qaeda received most of its financing from affluent donors from the Middle East, but counterterrorism officials now believe the group finances a significant portion of its recruitment, training, and arms purchasing from ransoms paid to free Europeans. “Kidnapping for ransom has become today’s most significant source of terrorist financing,” said David Cohen, the Treasury Department’s under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence. “Each transaction encourages another transaction.”

  • Opportunities for regional realignment not likely to be seized

    After the first twenty-four hours, the 72-hour Egypt-sponsored Gaza cease-fire appears to be holding – something which could not be said for the previous five cease-fires, which were violated by Hamas within minutes of supposedly going into effect. The Israeli delegation yesterday flew to Cairo to begin negotiations on a longer-term arrangement. The reason why this cease-fire is likely to hold has to do with the realization by Hamas Gaza leaders of their isolation and the growing destruction Israel’s attacks were inflicting on Hamas’s war machine and Gaza’s already-dilapidated infrastructure. A militarily weakened Hamas, a moderate Arab block hostile to militant Islam, and a convergence of interests between Israel and the moderate Arab states provide the foundation for profound strategic transformation in the region. It is doubtful, however, that the Netanyahu government will seize the opportunity for a breakthrough in Israel-Palestinian relations, on which such a transformation depends. During the month-long war, Netanyahu has given no indication that he sees this round of Israel-Hamas war in anything other than tactical terms, and has offered nothing to show that he plans to exploit the military results of the war, together with the changing political context in the region, for a bold and creative initiative which would change Israel’s relations with the PA, transform Israel’s strategic position, and realign regional politics.

  • U.S. law enforcement agencies perceive Sovereign citizen movement as top terrorist threat

    Sovereign citizen, Islamist extremist, and militia/patriot groups are perceived by U.S. law enforcement agencies to pose the greatest threats to their communities, according to a new study. While sovereign citizens were the top concern of law enforcement, assessments about whether most groups were a serious terrorist threat actually declined for most groups (for example, the KKK; Christian Identity; Neo-Nazis; Racist Skinheads; Environmental Extremists; Animal Rights Extremists) when compared to a previous study. The authors conducted in-depth interviews with officers representing 175 state, local, and tribal (SLT) law enforcement agencies, and found that the Sovereign Citizen movement was the most highly ranked threat, with 86 percent of respondents agreeing or strongly agreeing that it was a serious terrorist threat. Approximately 67 percent agreed or strongly agreed that Islamist extremists were a serious terrorist threat.

  • A 72-hour cease-fire to go into effect this morning

    Both Israel and the Palestinian delegation to Cairo, which includes Hamas representatives, have accepted an Egyptian proposal for a 72-hour cease-fire to begin at 08:00 Middle East time (02:00 EST) today (Tuesday).

    This is the same proposal Egypt put forth two weeks ago, which Israel had accepted but which was rejected by Hamas. It is not clear whether the cease-fire will go into effect, or will go into effect and then violated. Six earlier humanitarian cease-fires were violated by Hamas within minutes of going into effect. Israel, in the meantime, has concluded the destruction of thirty-one Hamas tunnels which reached inside Israel. Hamas was planning to use the tunnels for a Mumbai-like simultaneous, coordinated attack on Israeli kibbutzim near the Gaza Strip for the purpose of killing Israeli civilians – possibly hundreds of them – and capturing scores to be brought back into Gaza to be used as bargaining chips to extract concessions from Israel.

  • Top Hamas official: Jews use blood of non-Jewish children for Passover matzos

    Hamas is an avowedly and openly anti-Semitic movement, and the group’s loathing of Jews is part and parcel of its charter and what it teaches young Palestinians in the schools it controls. Hamas leaders, when they speak to Western audiences, are usually careful not to highlight this facet of the group’s ideology, but the other day one of Hamas’s leaders, in a televised interview, used the centuries-old “matzo blood libel,” asserting that Jews kill non-Jewish children in order to use their blood to make matzos for Passover. He linked the death of Palestinian children in Gaza during the Israel-Hamas war to the Jewish thirst for killing non-Jewish children.

  • Israel announces 7-hour cease fire, continues withdrawal of forces from Gaza

    Israel declared a seven-hour “humanitarian window” in parts of Gaza on Monday, while withdrawing most of its ground forces from northern Gaza following the destruction of tunnels leading into Israel. International criticism continues following what appeared to be a deadly Israeli attack on a UN school sheltering displaced Palestinians. Initial Israeli investigation indicates that it is doubtful the Israeli airstrike against three Islamic Jihad fighters who were located about forty or fifty meters from the school had anything to do with the bodies of the dead in the schoolyard: Israel continuously monitors the area from drones and blimps, and initial video footage shows the bodies of the three Islamic Jihad fighters being dragged from where they were killed to the school yard — and that at least one schoolgirl is seen getting up and walking away after lying on the floor, covered in red dye and pretending to be dead. All previous cease-fires have collapsed after Hamas continued to its rocket launching into Israeli towns.

  • Gaza reconstruction would cost at least $6 billion

    Reconstruction in Gaza, where heavy Israeli bombardment in a war with Islamist militant group Hamas, has destroyed thousands of buildings, damaged water, sewage, and power infrastructure, and displaced about 300,000 people, will cost at least $6 billion, the Palestinian deputy prime minister says. This time, Mohammed Mustafa said, Palestinians hope donors to the reconstruction effort will make good on aid pledges. In 2009, only a fraction of the nearly $5 billion in funds pledged at an international conference after a three-week war between Israel and Hamas actually arrived in Gaza.