The security situation in the south continues to deteriorate. An Afghan official admitted security forces abandoned the governor’s compound and police headquarters in Chora district. The Taliban claims it overran all 17 security outposts and controls the district center.
On May 23, Al-Badr Media Foundation announced its presence online, saying it will work to serve the interests of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and its supporters in several ways. AQAP remains under pressure and its media output has been degraded by a US-led campaign. Al-Badr is AQAP’s latest attempt to improve the group’s security measures and boost fighter morale.
The Taliban denied that a command center was hit and claimed two civilian homes were destroyed in the strike.
As US, European, and Afghan officials cling to the idea that the Taliban will negotiate a peace settlement to end the war in Afghanistan, a recent string of news articles would lead you to believe that the Taliban is actually willing to reach a compromise. However, these stories are highly misleading and give false hope […]
The US military has conducted 27 counterterrorism strikes in Yemen in 2018, but has only provided complete information on two. One of the strikes hit an AQAP training camp in Hadramout.
Security in Ghazni province has deteriorated rapidly over the past year. Of Ghazni’s 19 districts, the Taliban control five and contest nine more, according to information compiled by FDD’s Long War Journal. The provincial capital is threatened by the Taliban.
Dana White also denied the Taliban has the initiative and touted the fact that all six Afghan Army corps are now on the offensive as a sign of success. Except all six army corps have been on the offensive since last fall, and security has continued to deteriorate.
The Taliban appears to maintain the initiative throughout Afghanistan, while the Afghan military is forced to react to Taliban offensives, such as the latest incursion into Farah City.
Months after killing four US Special Forces soldiers, the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara has been designated as a terrorist group by the US government. Its leader, Abu Walid al Sahrawi, was also designated today.
Hazrat Abbas served as a leader for both al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent and the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan. AQIS was formed to unite disparate jihadist factions to fight under the banner of the Afghan Taliban.
The assault on Farah City should put to rest claims by the US military that the Taliban is desperate and losing ground in Afghanistan. Farah has been under threat for months.
At least nine people were killed and more than 30 more were wounded in the latest attack by the Islamic State’s branch in Afghanistan.
Al Qaeda has released a message from its leader, Ayman al Zawahiri, that is timed to coincide with the Trump administration’s relocation of the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Zawahiri notes that the decision caused a “big uproar,” but he reminds listeners that Tel Aviv is also supposedly Muslim land. He calls for jihad to uproot the entire international system led by the US and the UN.
The Islamic State’s Amaq News Agency has released a video purportedly showing the young man who attacked several people with a knife in Paris yesterday. FDD’s Long War Journal cannot independently verify that the person shown was responsible for the knife attacks. However, the footage is similar to previous videos released by Amaq after a series of small-scale attacks in Europe since mid-2016.
According to authorities, an ISIS-linked family carried out suicide bombings at three churches in the Indonesian city of Surabaya earlier today. The bombings came just days after other ISIS-affiliated militants conducted a prison riot south of Jakarta. ISIS has long targeted Christians, among many others. The group previously ruled that suicide attacks aimed at churches were an acceptable way to attain “closeness to Allah.”
Since late April, Shabaab has released a series of videos emphasizing its place in al Qaeda’s global network. Two of the videos were recorded by the group’s emir, Abu Ubaydah Ahmad Umar, a normally reclusive figure. Abu Ubaydah refers to the Taliban’s emir as the “Commander of the Faithful” and Ayman al Zawahiri as the “father-emir” while addressing the mujahideen in Syria and Yemen.
The Islamic State claims that its “soldiers” were responsible for a prison riot south of Jakarta, Indonesia yesterday. A police spokesman was quick to dismiss the group’s statements, images and a video purportedly shot at the scene. Instead, he blamed the clash on a fight over food.
The Islamic State has claimed several attacks inside Somalia in the past month, further outpacing the past two years in claimed attacks in the country. While the Islamic State has had a difficult time establishing a foothold inside the country, its claimed operations paints a picture of its areas of operation and types of operations it conducts.
The Taliban overran the district of Tala Wa Barfak in the northern Afghan provinces of Baghlan. Two others have been seized by the Taliban in the past two weeks.
Since late April, the Islamic State has claimed a string of operations targeting elections in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. The group’s spokesman, Abu al-Hasan al-Muhajir, threatened Iraq’s upcoming election on May 12 and the jihadists are carrying out operations accordingly.
Since mid-April, the Islamic State and the Assad regime have been engaged in an intense battle in the southern neighborhoods of Damascus. ISIS claims to have killed or wounded hundreds of Assad’s soldiers, but its figures cannot be independently verified. Meanwhile, the so-called caliphate continues to fight the Syrian government and its allies in other areas as well, including in eastern Syria.
The Taliban is neither “desperate” nor is it “losing ground” in Afghanistan. Pollyanish press briefings cannot paper over the fact that things are currently not going well.
Intercommunal eye for an eye killings have been increasing in the past week with dozens of Tuaregs and Fulani being killed on both sides of the Mali-Niger border. The massacres come in the backdrop of ongoing counterterrorism operations against the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara.
The Taliban overran the district of Kohistan in the remote northeastern province of Badakhshan last evening after laying siege to it for several days.
In March, a state-affiliated Iranian media outlets published a speech by Lebanese Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah that it shouldn’t have. The speech, which was quickly retracted, was meant for internal distribution, thus making it a valuable document.
Two districts, one in Paktika and another in Badakhshan, that were previously assessed by Resolute Support as influenced by the government of Afghanistan are now at risk.
The Taliban continue to maintain its grip on half of Afghanistan despite US military’s reinvigorated effort to force the group from its strongholds.
The US government has designated Myrna Mabanza, an Islamic State facilitator based in the Philippines, as a terrorist. The Treasury Department identifies Mabanza as a woman in her mid-20s who has worked with some of the Islamic State’s most senior personnel in Southeast Asia and has also served as an “intermediary” to jihadists in Syria.
Two suicide bombers killed dozens inside the Afghan capital today. The first targeted a checkpoint near an Afghan intelligence building, while the second struck journalists and others who rushed to the scene. Reporters Without Borders says it “was the deadliest attack on the media since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001.”
Several groups within the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps network have eulogized Saleh al Sammad, the political leader of Yemen’s Houthis.