Category: War on Terror

Frank Crimi in FrontPage Islamist terrorists have long used women as suicide bombers, but now their combatant role has expanded with al-Qaeda’s formation of an all-female jihadist fighting unit whose primary mission is purportedly to attack Coalition targets in Afghanistan. The discovery of the all-girl military group, dubbed the “Burkha Brigade,” came to light in a recent online video that showed a bevy of fully covered women firing off a wide selection of heavy weaponry, including machine guns, assault rifles, and rocket-propelled grenades. The women enlistees are thought to have been recruited from Chechnya, the semi-autonomous republic in the Russian Federation and a state which has long provided fertile ground for producing female jihadists. That disturbing history was most notably on display in 2002 when bomb-strapped Chechen women were among 50 Islamist militants who held over 800 people hostage in Moscow’s Dubrovka Theater. In that assault nearly 130 civilians were killed. While Muslim women, dressed as males, have in the past fought alongside Islamist militants, the creation of an all-female fighting force adds a new twist in the escalating use

Frank Crimi in FrontPage Al-Qaeda’s Iraqi affiliate, the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), is making a viscous return to terror prominence as it launches a bloody offensive against the Iraqi government, joins the fight in Syria, and threatens to commit terrorist strikes inside the United States. In a recording posted July 22 on a jihadist website, the ISI announced its official return atop the terrorist totem pole when it unveiled its new strategic terror plan, “Destroying the Walls,” one whose overarching aim is to reestablish the group’s power in Iraq by retaking the territory it had lost during the war. To achieve that end, ISI leader Abu Bakr El-Baghdadi promised a violent campaign against the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government, one focused on bombing military installations and police posts, assassinating Iraqi judges and prosecutors, and breaking Islamist prisoners out of Iraqi jails The following day, the promised jihadist blitzkrieg began in earnest as the ISI launched a coordinated series of roadside and car bomb attacks in 19 cities throughout Iraq, a deadly assault which killed over 110 people and wounded more than

Frank Crimi in FrontPage Jihadists from as far away as Afghanistan and Pakistan are flocking to northern Mali to train al-Qaeda-linked terrorist groups and Islamist insurgents, turning the region — an area the size of Texas — into the next epicenter of international terror. Terrorism in the African Sahel — the sub-Saharan stretch of desert that includes the West African nations of Mali, Niger, Burkino Faso and Mauritania — has been gathering in intensity since the collapse of Muammar Gadhafi’s Libyan regime in October 2011. At that point an influx of mercenaries and looted weaponry, including missile launchers, armored vehicles and anti-aircraft missiles, have flooded into the Sahel and into the hands of a rogue’s gallery of al-Qaeda, Islamists, and criminals long engaged in rampant terrorist attacks, arms dealing, drug trafficking, and ransom kidnapping. This collection of Islamist killers and gangsters has been able to move relatively unchallenged throughout the Sahel, and the recent seizure of northern Mali by both Islamist and separatist forces has opened the window for northern Mali to become a permanent training base and safe haven

Frank Crimi in FrontPage Despite the Haqqani Network’s decade-long murderous assault on American-led troops and Afghan civilians, the Obama administration is refusing calls to designate the Taliban-allied and al-Qaeda linked insurgent group a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). The most recent call to formally label the Pakistan-based Haqqani an FTO came from a bi-partisan coalition of leading lawmakers, whose ranks included Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Republican Representative Mike Rogers, chair of the House Intelligence Committee. In a letter to President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton, the lawmakers said the Haqqani Network — named after its leader, Jalaluddin Haqqani –is “continuing to launch sensational and indiscriminate attacks against US interests in Afghanistan,” and, therefore, had more than met the FTO threshold. To be fair, however, the Haqqani Network had long ago exceeded the threshold for indiscriminate terrorist violence, barbarism that has escalated in intensity ever since the group fled Afghanistan to Pakistan’s North Waziristan tribal region following the Taliban’s ouster from power in 2001. Since then, the Haqqani Network, with an estimated 15,000 fighters —

Frank Crimi in FrontPage An Iraqi court recently ruled that Ali Musa Daqduq, a Lebanese Hezbollah terrorist accused of helping to coordinate the 2007 abduction and murder of five American soldiers in Karbala, Iraq, should be released due to “lack of evidence.” The decision comes only months after the Office of Military Commissions started filing charges of murder, terrorism and espionage against Daqduq, marking the Hezbollah terrorist as the first potential defendant without connections to al-Qaeda or the Taliban to be tried before an American military commission. The Iraqi court’s decision, however, comes as little surprise to the many American intelligence officials and lawmakers who expressed grave concern in December 2011 when, as the remaining American troops exited from Iraq, Daqduq was the last of 1,000 US detainees handed over to the Iraqi government. That concern was pointedly expressed by Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss, vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, who said, “Given Iraq’s history of releasing detainees, I expect it is only a matter of time before this terrorist (Daqduq) will be back on the battlefield.” Those

Frank Crimi in FrontPage Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), aided by a flood of weapons and mercenaries from Libya, has turned the Sahara into the newest epicenter of terrorist activity, one that threatens to produce a new wave of terror in North Africa and beyond. For years, the nations of the African Sahel — the Sub-Saharan stretch of desert that includes Niger, Mali and Mauritania — have been plagued by rampant terrorist attacks, arms dealing, drug trafficking, and kidnapping by AQIM’s Islamic militants. Now, AQIM has expanded its terrorist network through an alliance with Africa’s two other al-Qaeda linked terror groups: Somalia’s al-Shabab and Nigeria’s Boko Haram. General Carter Ham, head of the US Africa Command, recently claimed the three al-Qaeda terrorist organizations had linked up to coordinate their terrorist activities. As Ham noted, “We’ve definitely seen a cross-pollination, certainly of … techniques, tactics and procedures across the organizations.” According to Ham, such a terrorist partnership not only presented a “significant” regional threat, but also a serious threat to the West in general and the United States in particular.