This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Terror War

  • Jihadists are homesick

    Jihadists are homesick

    According to the Daily Beast, jihadists who left their homes in Europe to join the Islamic State in the Levant are homesick now that it seems the caliphate is collapsing, so they want to come home and they’re trying to use the press to cushion their return;

    Just last week two fighters contacted TV shows in the Netherlands to announce their return to Dutch soil, a third contacted the police.

    The grim irony of such a ploy is obvious. Many would-be holy warriors from European backgrounds have been associated with organizations that took journalists hostage, ransomed some, tortured and beheaded others. When they thought their groups were on a roll, jihadists bragged to their Western enemies “we love death as you love life.” And all too many times in France, Britain, Belgium, and Germany they have slaughtered innocents by the score.

    The article says that there may have been as many as two thousand jihadists that left Europe to fight with the various groups in Syria and their return home creates a security problem.

    With the jihadists’ stories trickling in, the Dutch security services try to gauge the security risk involved if they return. Even if the men are found not guilty of participation in war crimes and/or membership of a terrorist organization, which is unlikely, they are still suffering from PTSD. Letting them loose on the society they rejected would be risky business, and not just for the Netherlands.

    “We have a responsibility toward other countries, too,” says Daan Weggemans, a terrorism expert attached to Leiden University….

    Yeah, well, if you plant potatoes, you get potatoes. If you let them leave and then let them come back, you’ll get the problems that come back with them. If the media wants to take up their cause, they aren’t really concerned with public safety.

  • Pentagon stops payments to Pakistan

    Foreign Policy Magazine reports that the Pentagon stopped a $300 million payment to the Pakistan government for it’s participation (or the lack thereof) in the war against terror.

    Defense officials and congressional aides have for months said that the new strategy won’t focus solely on Afghanistan, but take a more regional approach. This includes stepping up pressure on Pakistan to dismantle Taliban and Haqqani sanctuaries in western Pakistan, both of which use the mostly ungoverned area to launch attacks into neighboring Afghanistan.

    At issue is over $300 million in funding that U.S. officials say will be used to fund other priorities.

    “The funds could not be released to the Government of Pakistan at this time because the secretary could not certify that Pakistan has taken sufficient action against the Haqqani Network,” Adam Stump, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement.

    Of the $900 million originally marked for Pakistan, $550 has already been disbursed.

    The decision stems from the release of a State Department report which claims that Pakistan hasn’t taken “substantial action” against the Haqqani Network of terrorists, or the Taliban. The report also claimed that Pakistan is a safe haven for the terrorists. It also resulted from the new Defense Secretary’s view of the war in Afghanistan as a regional conflict rather than focused solely on Afghanistan.

    Pakistan rejected the charges on Thursday. “We have taken indiscriminate and all out action against terrorists,” Foreign Office Spokesperson Nafees Zakaria told reporters.

    Well, then let’s see the severed heads, Pakistan.

  • Ikaika Kang indicted

    Ikaika Kang indicted

    Stars & Stripes reports that Ikaika Kang was indicted by a Federal Grand Jury yesterday in Honolulu, Hawaii for four counts of attempting to provide material support to ISIS. He was arrested on July 7th and he’ll be arraigned on Monday in federal court.

    [Kang’s court-appointed attorney, Birney] Bervar said he is working on getting Kang a mental health evaluation and that his client may suffer from service-related mental health issues.

    A “turning point” for Kang’s mental state seems to be a 2011 deployment, Bervar said. “He’s a decorated American soldier for 10 years, goes to Afghanistan and comes back and things start going off the rails.”

    […]

    Federal officials say Kang met with undercover FBI agents he thought were with the terror group and provided classified military documents to the agents.

    The FBI said in their criminal complaint that Kang wanted to commit a mass shooting after pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group.

    Kang was an air traffic controller for the Army. I’m not sure how that job would make him want to kill a lot of people or pledge allegiance to a group of terrorists, but I’m sure they’ll find a doctor somewhere who can explain that to us.

  • With friends like these….

    According to the Military Times, Turkey’s state-run media broadcast the locations of our secret bases in northern Syria;

    Turkey’s state-run news outlet, the Anadolu Agency, on Tuesday published detailed information on the location of U.S. bases in northern Syria.

    The base locations that were disclosed are on the front lines of the U.S.-led effort to take down the Islamic State stronghold and de facto capital in Raqqa, Syria.

    For the safety of U.S. forces overseas, Military Times is not publishing the base locations.

    Ten bases, including two with air strips, were identified in a map by Anadolu Agency’s English website. The Turkish version includes some troop counts and a detailed map of the U.S. armed forces’ presence….

    According to a reporter of the Anadolu Agency, the locations and intel hadn’t been released by the Turkish government, but from reporters’ own eyes and from Kurdish social media posts. The reporter blames US cooperation with the Kurds.

  • The media notices “bacha bazi”

    For the last eight years or so, the media has been ignoring “bacha bazi,” the practice of Afghan chiefs to keep young boys as sex slaves – a symbol of power in the culture. Well, now, suddenly, it’s a reason for concern at the Washington Post;

    As the United States sinks deeper into the Afghan quagmire, preparing to send additional troops into a seemingly endless war, it is glossing over this hidden but pervasive abuse of children by its local allies. U.S. tolerance of this egregious inhumanity sends out the message that it is acceptable for U.S.-backed forces to keep child sex slaves.

    It brings to mind the case of SFC Charles Martland who was being considered for elimination from the Army because he struck a child-raping “ally” in Afghanistan. He was cleared of wrong-doing and allowed to remain in the Army, but only because of grassroots support, not because of any outcry from the mainstream media.

    From The Post;

    Security is a legitimate concern, but turning a blind eye to crimes such as bacha bazi amounts to a serious contravention of America’s Leahy amendment, which bans U.S. assistance or training to foreign military units that fail to honor basic human rights.

    The United States needs to deploy the leverages at its disposal in a country heavily dependent on it for aid to end this overriding culture of impunity. Additional troops and financial assistance must be contingent upon urgent reform and prosecution of abusers.

    To win in Afghanistan, America cannot afford to lose its humanity.

    While I agree with those sentiments, where were they eight years ago? This “bacha bazi” didn’t start on January 20, 2017.

  • Maarik al-Tawaiha sentenced to life in prison

    AFP reports that Maarik al-Tawaiha was sentenced to “hard labor for life” in a Jordanian court for the murder of three Americans.

    In its ruling, the court said the incident had happened when vehicles carrying the trainers approached the gate of the base.

    At that moment, there was “a low sound of gunfire from a distant and unknown source”.

    Tawaiha, who was in a guard post at the gate, told the court he had opened fire on the cars carrying the American trainers because he suspected an attack on the base.

    The court said he “fired a full magazine of ammunition… intending to kill them after it was clear to him who they were and that they were American personnel”.

    It said he had disobeyed orders by failing to follow rules of engagement before opening fire.

    The incident left three Americans dead and wounded a Jordanian soldier.

    According to the article “hard labor for life” usually means 20 years imprisonment in Jordan, but it could mean life in prison sometimes.

  • Pentagon: Abu Sayed, leader of ISIS-Khorasan, dead

    According to CNN, the Pentagon has announced that Abu Sayed, the leader of ISIS-Khorasan, the Islamic State in Afghanistan was killed in a drone attack on their headquarters on July 11th;

    US Navy Captain Bill Salvin, spokesman for US Forces Afghanistan provided additional detail of how Abu Sayed was killed. Salvin said he was killed in an airstrike by a US drone. The initial Pentagon statement described Sayed being killed in a “raid”.

    Secretary of Defense James Mattis told reporters on Friday that the death of a leader like Sayed “sets them back for a day a week, a month, it’s about who it is and what kind of people are below them. It is obviously a victory on our side in terms of setting them back, it’s the right direction.”

    I guess his retirement package rolls over to the next guy. Killing the leaders hasn’t had a lasting effect on these terrorist groups, but every little bit helps, I suppose. The only good terrorist is a dead terrorist. If we can’t dissuade them from their corrupt ideology, the only option is to kill them all.

  • US and Somali joint raid frees detainees

    According to Military Times, two helicopters brought US and Somali troops that raided an al-Shabbab detention center, killing a number of the al-Qeada-linked group and freeing detainees found in the rebel-held town in the southern part of Somalia.

    There was no immediate comment from the U.S. Africa Command. Both the U.S. and Somalia recently stepped up military efforts against al-Shabab.

    Al-Shabab says via its Andalus radio arm that its fighters foiled an attempted raid by U.S. and African forces.