While Iranian-backed parties are moving to form a government in Baghdad that could force the US to exit the country, they face growing public anger over governance failures that threaten the viability of the system.
The State Department has released its Country Reports on Terrorism 2017. As in past reports, State says that “Iran has allowed AQ [al Qaeda] facilitators to operate a core facilitation pipeline through Iran since at least 2009, enabling AQ to move funds and fighters to South Asia and Syria.”
US Africa Command targeted a Shabaab fighting position outside of Mogadishu after the al Qaeda branch attacked US and Somali forces operating in the area.
The Taliban overran the Kham Ab district center in Jawzjan province in the last 24 hours as the group continues to pressure Afghan forces in the north.
The New York Times map compares assessments from the US military and FDD’s Long War Journal on Taliban controlled and contested districts in Afghanistan.
Shabaab has managed to launch 418 attacks of different types during the six-month timeframe in support of its persistent and ongoing insurgency against Somalia’s weak central government and allied African Union forces.
The United States has conducted a total of 34 strikes in Yemen in 2018, all of which targeted Al Qaeda barring one strike against the Islamic State in Jan. 2018. However the military is not likely to top last year’s high.
The United States has conducted 21 strikes against Shabaab in Somalia so far this year, meaning it is on track to meet or exceed last year’s record high.
This is the first strike since early June, when the United States targeted both the Islamic State and Al Qaeda in separate strikes in Bani Walid.
The Afghan military continues to struggle to hold onto districts in remote areas of the country. The fall of Ghormach was all but certain after the Taliban overran a large base in the district on Aug. 11 and killed and captured nearly 100 Afghan soldiers.
At a Pentagon press conference, General Nicholson again gave a Pollyannish assessment of the state of Afghanistan. He claimed the peace process is working and the Taliban’s offensive is failing, and took credit for a Taliban victory over the Islamic State.
An assailant stabbed a small number of people in Trappes, west of Paris, earlier today. The Islamic State quickly claimed via its Amaq News Agency that the attacker was one of its “fighters.” Authorities are investigating the incident, and the possibility it was a family dispute turned violent. Some reports say the two people killed were the “attacker’s mother and sister.”
The strike is the second against Shabaab, which is al Qaeda’s branch in East Africa, in Somalia that has been reported by U.S. Africa Command this month.
The Taliban has released a new statement attributed to its emir, Hibatullah Akhundzada, who says there will only be “peace” when America leaves Afghanistan. Akhundzada blasts the current Afghan government as a “corrupt regime” and portrays the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan as the only legitimate authority.
In addition to Ajristan and Khwaja Umar, the districts of Nawur, Jaghatu, and Deh Yak have fallen to the Taliban. Meanwhile, Resolute Support has intentionally misled the the public about the status of seven of Ghazni’s districts. Resolute Support claimed these districts were under government control; in reality the Taliban physically controlled the terrain while the Afghan government operated the government remotely from Ghazni City.
AFRICOM noted that Shabaab, which is al Qaeda’s branch in East Africa, continues to maintain “training camps” and “safe havens throughout Somalia and the region.”
The majority of coalition strikes over the past three months have been concentrated in Abu Kamal, a critical border crossing on the southern border between Iraq and Syria.
Resolute Support continues to invent new terminology to obfuscate the extent of Taliban control in Afghanistan.
The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for an attack on a school for midwives in Jalalabad, Afghanistan yesterday, saying the target was a headquarters for USAID. Despite a focused, US-led counterterrorism campaign against Wilayah Khorasan in Nangarhar, the group retains an operational footprint in eastern Afghanistan.
In 2017, LWJ reported unprecedented levels of airstrikes in Somalia and Yemen. Thus far in 2018, the United States has sustained its high strike tempo in Somalia and improved transparency on its air campaign in Yemen. Strikes in Pakistan have leveled off, however press restrictions make tracking operations there difficult. In Libya, the U.S. has targeted jihadists sparingly.
Ansar al-Islam raided an Assad regime military position in the Latakia province yesterday, killing more than two dozen Assad loyalists. The attack was widely celebrated on Sunni jihadist social media channels. Ansar al-Islam is a small jihadist group that originated in Iraq, but has fought in Syria for years.
The deadly bombing is the first major attack executed by the Taliban group since Mufti Noor Wali Mehsud assumed command of the group in late June.
The US Department of State added Saraya al Ashtar, an Iranian-supported group that openly flaunts its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps affiliation, to its list of global terrorists.
The Pentagon and the US intelligence community have been consistently wrong about al Qaeda’s strength in Afghanistan, and evidence of strategic ties between the two groups does indeed exist.
While no group has claimed responsibility yet, it was most likely conducted by al Qaeda’s Group for Support of Islam and Muslims.
Burkina Faso’s wanted list gives more information into the inner-workings and operations of Ansaroul Islam, a relatively under-researched and little understood al Qaeda-linked jihadist group.
The TTP appears to be returning to its roots by selecting Mufti Noor Wali Mehsud, a prominent commander from the Mehsud tribe, to lead it. The TTP also confirmed the death of Mullah Fazlullah.
Combined Joint Force Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR) announced today that four members of the Islamic State’s illicit gas and oil network were killed during “operations” on May 26. They were targeted in the Middle Euphrates River Valley. Separately, CJTF-OIR’s local partners seized and destroyed $1.4 million dollars worth of drugs from the so-called caliphate in southern Syria.
US-backed Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) reportedly killed the Islamic State executioner Talip Akkurt, known by his nom de guerre Abu Talha al Turki, who burned two Turkish soldiers alive in Syria in 2016. Al Turki was reported dead following a June 7 SDF attack in Deir Ezzor’s Hajin town. Since Feb. 2018, al Turki was […]
The Afghan Ministry of Defense claims Mullah Fazlullah was killed in a US airstrike in Kunar on June 13. His death has not been confirmed by the US or the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan. Fazlullah’s death, if confirmed, may not be as impactful as US, Pakistani, and Afghan officials would like to believe.