State has upped the reward for Abu Bakr al Baghdadi as the Islamic State has been under significant pressure in Iraq. The $25 million reward puts Baghdadi on par with Ayman al Zawahiri, the emir of al Qaeda.
The Islamic State threatened further attacks in its “war on polytheism,” meaning against Christians and Jews, in Egypt and elsewhere. The group and its predecessor, the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), have assaulted Coptic Christians in the past.
The Taliban bring another influential wayward commander back into the fold. Mullah Abdul Razaq Akhund served as the Taliban’s interior minister and chief of police in Kabul. He also served as a member of the Quetta Shura and was an adviser to Mullah Omar.
US Central Command released footage of a massive air raid that destroyed scores of Islamic State oil tankers near the Syrian city of Palmyra.
The Afghan Special Police Force, a unit assigned to the Interior Ministry, captured an al Qaeda “financier” during a raid in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar on Dec. 8.
According to CENTCOM, Islamic State fighters were using the Al Salem hospital complex as “a base of operations and command and control headquarters.”
When the Taliban assaulted the district of Ghorak in Kandahar last month, it seized a number of US-made weapons that were supplied to the Afghan security forces from a base that was overrun.
The Taliban said 100 mujahideen have graduated from its Khalid bin Walid Camp and 50 more from its branch, the Abu Dujana Camp. The Taliban claimed that the Khalid bin Walid Camp has 12 branches throughout Afghanistan.
Abdullah Ahmed al Meshedani manages foreign fighters as they enter Iraq and Syria, while Abdelilah Himich and Basil Hassan are planners for the Islamic State’s external operations network.
The claim cannot be independently verified, but Ghorak district has been hotly contested and Taliban has overrun it in the past. Security in Kandahar province also appears to be deteriorating.
The attack is the second of its kind in the Afghan capital by the Islamic State in the past six weeks.
The Taliban denied reports that Mullah Attaullah was killed by police forces. The Afghan government has a spotty track record when reporting on the deaths of Taliban commanders.
Afghan officials confirmed a helicopter encountered problems in Logar province, but said it “made a hard landing due to technical problems.”
The Taliban suicide bomber who killed two American soldiers and two contractors at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan’s central province of Parwan on Nov. 12 had joined the Afghan government’s “peace process” and reconciled in 2008.
The Taliban and the Islamic State have issued competing claims for attacks in Afghanistan in the past. The Taliban has had some success in shooting down US and Afghan military helicopters.
The base has been the focus of high-profile Taliban and jihadist attacks in the past. Resolute Support did not say how a Taliban suicide bomber was able to penetrate security at Bagram Air Base.
The Taliban claimed that it attacked the German consulate to avenge those killed in an airstrike in Kunduz, but another consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif was targeted in a similar assault earlier this year. That attack highlights the interlinking web of jihadist networks.
The US soldiers were operating as part of Resolute Support’s “train, advise and assist mission.”
The US military’s estimate does not explain how the Taliban is able to support multiple concurrent offensives across the country and threaten five provincial capitals. Additionally, the military claims that only 3 of Helmand’s 14 districts are threatened by the Taliban.
A Taliban spokesman released a video of an interview of fighters from the base. Like the recent ambush in Helmand’s capital, the Taliban fighters clearly are not concerned about either a counterattack or airstrikes.
There have been at least 31 airstrikes against AQAP in Yemen in 2016, according to data compiled by The Long War Journal.
Islamic State’s Khorasan province and the Karachi faction of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan both claimed credit for the attack on a police academy in Quetta that killed more than 60 cadets. Pakistani officials claimed the suicide assault was executed by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi al Almi.
The military said it is attempting to deny al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula “a haven” in Yemen. The group still controls rural areas in the south.
Six provincial capitals now are threatened by the Taliban. On Oct. 16, the Taliban assaulted Maimana, Faryab’s capital from three directions and attacked the city’s airport and an Afghan Army base, but were repulsed by Afghan forces.
The shooter is said to have been wearing an Afghan Army uniform. If the shooting is confirmed to be a green-on-blue or insider attack, where Afghan police or soldiers target Coalition personnel, then it would be the first recorded incident since April 2015.
The fight in Iraq, as in other jihadist theaters, ebbs and flows. For the Islamic State, it is currently retreating from many of the cities it once held. But do not expect a lasting defeat of the Islamic State.
A Taliban video documents the aftermath of last week’s ambush on Afghan security personnel on the outskirts the provincial capital of Helmand which resulted in scores of troops killed and dozens more captured.
The Taliban threatens two capitals in the north (Kunduz City and Pul-i-Khumri), two in the south (Tarin Kot and Lashkar Gah), and one in the west (Farah City).
Reports from Afghanistan indicate that hundreds of police and soldiers were killed, captured, or defected to the Taliban after they tried to negotiate a withdrawal.
The Islamic State’s Khorasan province has embraced Abu Muhammad al Adnani’s call for the targeting of Shia.