Terrorism and counterterrorism

Pennsylvania emergency professionals receive WMD training
The Center for Domestic Preparedness (CDP) in Alabama hosted more than a hundred emergency professionals from the Pennsylvania South Central Mountains Regional Task Force’s Health and Medical Committee for in-depth response-to-WMD training.
- Read more
Hezbollah increases role as protector of the Assad regime
With the anti-regime uprising in Syria evolving into a full-fledged ethnic conflict between the Alawite minority and the Sunni majority, the Assad regime relies more and more on Shi’a allies – Iran, Hezbollah, and the al-Maliki government in Iraq — to stay in power. Over the last three months, Hezbollah has been playing a growing, and more open, role in shoring up the regime.
- Read more

Canadian company provides software to U.S. intelligence agencies
A Canadian company has spent the last few years locking up contracts to provide security software to U.S. federal agencies such as the NSA, CIA, and FBI. The company moved from the United States to Canada because the Canadian government gives tax credits for high-tech companies coming to Canada, and Canadian government agencies help the company break into new markets by sponsoring his company in international conferences. It was in one of these conferences that he once met “some NSA folks.”
- Read more
U.S. sharply disputes UN official's claim that Syrian rebels used chemical weapons
The United States sharply challenged claims by a UN official – who is not a member of the UN investigative commission looking into to the possible use of chemical weapons in Syria – that the rebels, rather than the Assad regime, used sarin nerve gas near the city of Aleppo on 19 March. The UN investigative commission looking into the incident distanced itself from the official’s comments.
- Read more

Heavy Israeli air strikes near Damascus destroy Iranian missile shipment to Hezbollah
Israel launched heavy airstrikes Friday and Sunday on a military base near Damascus, destroying shipments of sophisticated Iranian Fateh-110 missiles to Hezbollah. These were the second and third such strikes in as many months. Israel’s first strike on Syrian targets took place on 30 January. That strike destroyed advanced SA-17 surface-to-air missiles the Assad regime was trying to ship to Hezbollah on orders of Iran.
- Read more
Chicago-area would-be terrorist to remain in jail
Last Friday a federal judge reversed the ruling of another judge and ordered that a Chicago-area teen accused of attempting to join al Qaeda-linked militants in Syria be kept in jail until his trail rather than be released to his family.
- Read more

U.S. to keep Cuba on list of states sponsoring terrorism
The State Department said Wednesday that the Obama administration will not remove Cuba from the list of states sponsoring terrorism. Other countries on the list include Iran, Syria, and Sudan. The list is updated annually. Cuba sheltered Colombian and Basque terrorists, but with peace negotiations in Colombia, and with the Basque separatists announcing the end of their armed struggle, some analysts thought Cuba would be removed from the list this year.
- Read more
House panel to hold hearings on marathon bombing
Representative Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said theHouse Homeland Security Committee will meet next week to hear testimony from Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis and discuss the Boston Marathon bombing response methods and its implications for homeland security. “This will be the first in a series of hearings, as part of a broader investigation into the Boston Marathon bombings,” McCaul told reporters.
- Read more

Woman who killed N.J. trooper in 1973 makes the FBI’s most wanted list

Joanne Chesimard, a former member of the Black Liberation Army who killed a New Jersey state trooper in 1973, has become the first woman to make the FBI’s most wanted list. The reward for her capture and arrest has doubled to $2 million. In 1979 Chesimard escaped jail, and since 1984 has been living in Cuba, using the name Assata Shakur.
- Read more
Three of Dzhokhar’s friends charged with destroying evidence (Updated)
Three college students have been arrested on suspicion that they helped Dzhokhar Tsarnaev destroy evidence which would have provided details about his and his brother’s preparations for the marathon bombing. One of the three then lied to police when asked about their actions. The three are likely to face charges of conspiracy to obstruct justice. One of three will also be charged with lying to federal investigators.
- Read more

Three friends of Dzhokhar arrested, charged with destroying evidence
Three college students have been arrested on suspicion that they helped Dzhokhar Tsarnaev destroy evidence which would have provided details about his and his brother’s preparations for the marathon bombing. One of the three then lied to police when asked about their actions. The three are likely to face charges of conspiracy to obstruct justice. One of three will also be charged with lying to federal investigators.
- Read more
Canada considered deporting train terror suspect – but he was stateless
Raed Jaser, who is accused of planning an “al Qaeda supported” bomb attack aiming to derail a Canadian passenger train, was arrested nine years ago in Toronto and was facing deportation because he had a criminal record. Jaser is a Palestinian who grew up in the UAE. The UAE never gave his family a UAE citizenship, and they refused to take him back. The Canadian authorities say his case is not unique.
- Read more

DHS chemical plant security program hobbled by problems, poor oversight
A DHS program responsible for the security of chemical facilities, such as the West Fertilizer Company plant in Texas, has been ineffective owing to a number of issues, leading federal investigators to wonder “whether it can achieve its mission, given the challenges the program continues to face.”
- Read more
Female DNA found on Boston bomb fragments
FBI investigators found female DNA on fragments from the bombs used in the Marathon attack. The finding was first reported in the Wall Street Journal. Mikhail Allakhrdov, a man who some of Tsarnaev’s family members and friends described as the mysterious “Misha” who radicalized Tamerlan, said that he had not been in contact with Tsarnaev for several years, and that he never encouraged him to take up violence. Allakhrdov, a Ukrainian Christian who converted to Islam, admitted that a few years ago he was Tsarnaev’s “spiritual tutor.”
- Read more
FBI looking for a “person of interest” who may have helped the Tsanaev brothers
Lawmakers with knowledge of the investigation into the Boston marathon bombing said over the weekend that law enforcement agencies are looking for a “person of interest” who may have been involved with the Tsarnaev brothers in preparing the attack. The lawmakers highlighted the fact that law enforcement agencies are not convinced that the brothers acted alone, without any help of one or two more people.
- Read more

The long view

ISIS has sufficient quantities of arms to carry on fighting for two years: UN
A new report prepared for the United Nations Security Council warns that Islamic State (ISIS) has in its possession sufficient reserves of small arms, ammunition, and vehicles to wage its war for Syria and Iraq for up to two years. The size and diversity the Islamist organization’s arsenal allow the group durable mobility, range, and a limited defense against low-flying aircraft. The report notes that even if the U.S.-led air campaign continues to destroy the group’s vehicles and heavier weapon systems, such a campaign “cannot mitigate the effect of the significant volume of light weapons” Isis possesses.
- Read more
U.S. new Syria strategy to seek removal of Assad in parallel with defeat of ISIS
President Barack Obama’s national security team has been reviewing U.S. policy in Syria after concluding that any meaningful progress in the campaign against ISIS, let alone the defeat of the Islamist organization, may not be achievable without being accompanied by a plan to remove President Bashar al Assad from power. The United States began its air attacks on ISIS in early August as part of an “Iraq first” strategy, the thrust of which has been to emphasize the degradation of ISIS military capabilities in Iraq first, while regarding any operations against ISIS in Syria merely as an effort to influence and shape conditions in Iraq. The administration was hoping that this approach would give the United States time and space to vet, train, and equip an effective moderate Syrian rebel fighting force to take ISIS on. Administration sources now admit that the initial strategy of trying to confront ISIS first in Iraq and then take it on in Syria, without at the same time also focusing on the removal of the Assad clan from power, was a miscalculation which has backfired. The fundamental problem the United States and its Western allies face is that they appear to be willing to use their military might to defend Iran’s allies — the Shi’a regime in Iraq and the Alawite regime in Syria – at the expense of the Sunni majority in Syria and the substantial Sunni minority in Iraq. That perception prompted thousands of Sunni volunteers from around the world to rush to join ISIS ranks, and has led major regional Sunni countries such as Turkey tacitly to support ISIS campaign (the Qatari government, and wealthy individuals in the Gulf States, have been supporting ISIS not so tacitly). Sunnis in the region also note the U.S. apparent acquiescence to three more developments which have enhanced Iran’s sway and influence in the region: the de facto creation of a Shi’a state-within-state in Lebanon under Hezbollah, the takeover last month of Sana’a, Yemen’s capital, by the pro-Iranian Zaydi Shiites from the Houthi clan, and the apparent willingness of the United States to allow Iran to retain a residual nuclear weapons-related capability. The cumulative effect of these developments and perceptions has been to cause the regional Arab anti-ISIS coalition to begin to fray, and calls for formulating a realistic strategy to remove Assad from power to grow louder.
- Read more
Turkish jets bomb Kurdish positions
The tensions and acrimony between Turkey and the U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS have risen to new heights in the last two days. No other country in the region bears as much responsibility as Turkey does for the rise and continuous success of ISIS, and on Monday, Turkey went a step farther in its effort to protect ISIS: Its air force conducted heavy bombing raids against targets of the Kurdish group PKK, one of the more capable Kurdish forces fighting to hold off ISIS and its advances. We should not assume that Turkey’s leaders, pious Muslims though they are, actually espouse or support the extremist version of Islam for which ISIS stands. Rather, Turkey sees ISIS as a tool which, if properly protected, and provided it does not get out of hand, can be used to harass, weaken, or even defeat Turkey’s main adversaries in the region. Turkey’s refusal to contribute to the weakening of ISIS is now running the risk of creating a humanitarian crisis of historical proportions: ISIS forces are closing in on the Kurdish town of Kobani, just inside Syria across from the Turkish border. ISIS has publicly announced that it will kill the 200,000-300,000 Kurdish citizens in the besieged city unless they converted to ISIS version of Islam.
- Read more
A framework for destroying ISIS and creating stability in the Middle East
In responding to the barbarism of ISIS, the United States must develop and articulate a political strategy that keeps America out of an inter-ethnic civil war, relies on local Arab armies to defeat ISIS, reduces Iran’s influence in the region, strengthens Israeli security, and prevents terrorist groups like ISIS from ever again establishing a political or geographic foothold in Syria and Iraq. The current U.S. policy of arming the overwhelmingly Shiite Arab Iraqi government army, the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga forces, and the hodgepodge Free Syrian Army is not going to achieve these goals. Instead, the United States should pursue a strategy based on diplomatically recognizing the already-existing partition of the region into its natural divisions — the “Five State” partition. The Five State approach aims to re-partition the two failed states of Syria and Iraq into more stable and cohesive states which will exclude Iranian influence, provide a stable and potentially powerful Sunni Arab state that can ally with the pro-Western Sunni Arab states, and accommodate the security concerns of the major regional non-Arab powers, Israel, Turkey, and the concerns of neighboring Russia.
- Read more
Concerns about use of Ebola as a bioweapon exaggerated: Experts
The stabbing of a federal air marshal with a syringe at the airport in Lagos, Nigeria, three weeks ago has raised concern about the possibility that the Ebola virus could be harvested by terrorists and used as a bioweapon. Security experts say that worries about the Ebola being used as a weapon by terrorists are exaggerated, since it would be very difficult for terrorists to grow large quantities of the virus and then turn the virus into an effective, dispersible weapon to cover a wide area in order to infect and kill a large number of people. Still, experts say the possibility of Ebola as a terror weapons cannot be completely discounted – especially small-scale attacks on individuals, like the attack on the air marshal at Lagos airport. Potentially even more dangerous would be a bioattack by suicide infectors – individuals who deliberately infected themselves for the purpose of carrying the virus out of an epidemic zone in order to infect people in other areas or even other countries.
- Read more
FBI: Lawmakers should mandate surveillance “backdoors” in apps, operating systems
FBI director James Comey said that the agency was pushing lawmakers to mandate surveillance functions in apps, operating systems, and networks, arguing that privacy and encryption prevent or disrupt some of the agency’s investigations. According to Comey, new privacy features implemented by Google and Apple in the wake of the Snowden revelations, automatically encrypt user communication and data, making it difficult for law enforcement to gather evidence and connect links among suspected criminals and terrorists.
- Read more

Head of U.K. surveillance agency: U.S. tech companies have become terrorists' “networks of choice”
The new director of Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the U.K. intelligence organization responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance to the British government and armed forces, said that privacy has never been “an absolute right.” Robert Hannigan used his first public intervention since becoming head of Britain’s surveillance agency to charge U.S. technology companies of becoming “the command and control networks of choice” for terrorists.
- Read more

Head of U.K. surveillance agency: U.S. tech companies have become terrorists' “networks of choice”
The new director of Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the U.K. intelligence organization responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance to the British government and armed forces, said that privacy has never been “an absolute right.” Robert Hannigan used his first public intervention since becoming head of Britain’s surveillance agency to charge U.S. technology companies of becoming “the command and control networks of choice” for terrorists.
- Read more

Terrorism and counterterrorism

Terrorism and counterterrorism

More headlines

The long view