Afghanistan
Pakistan close Torkham gate at Pak-Afghan border
Pakistan close Torkham gate at Pak-Afghan border
The US has stepped up drone strikes in the eastern province of Hadramout this year.
Abu Muhammad al Julani sends “a greeting of love and loyalty to our pure and pious emigrant brothers” who are waging jihad in Syria.
Islamists’ Harsh Justice on Rise in Northern Mali
A police lieutenant was shot and killed at his home near Benghazi by an unknown assailant; the policeman’s mother was injured in the attack. The Interior Ministry announced plans to investigate complaints against policemen, after a video surfaced on YouTube allegedly showing signs of torture on a suspect arrested in Benghazi.
More than one-fifth of the drone strikes in Pakistan this year have taken place in the remote valley in North Waziristan.
Iraq Sunni rallies gather steam
Coordinated raids by the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan on checkpoints outside of the provincial capital of Peshawar also resulted in the deaths of at least two soldiers.
The Rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran in the Middle East
Algeria prepares for ‘guerrilla’ warfare
The Taliban killed three policemen in an assault on a checkpoint in Uruzgan and another in an attack on the governor’s convoy in Faryab. The NDS found a car bomb in Parwan.
Al Azhar rises in new Egypt
Insurgents killed three Iraqi soldiers in an IED attack in Hamdaniya, north of Mosul. Security forces arrested five al Qaeda operatives, including a wanted “slaughterer,” in a raid in Fallujah.
Syrian moderates fear being edged out of uprising
A jihadist identified two of the five al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula fighters who were killed in a Dec. 24 drone strike in Hadramout as Abdullah Bawazir and Nabil al Kaldi. Both men escaped from a prison in Mukallah in June 2011.
UN envoy Brahimi proposed a peace plan that included a transitional government with executive powers until new elections could be held. The National Coalition said it would agree to any plan that excludes President Assad. Russia sought to revive an earlier peace plan without the stipulation.
Israel’s internal security service arrested 10 members of an armed cell of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Two suspects are charged with plotting to kidnap an Israeli soldier; the other eight face related terror charges.
Prosecutors ordered an investigation into opposition leaders over allegations that they planned to overthrow the government. An Islamist group in Sinai threatened to launch a crusade against drug use and cigarette smoking. Two ministers resigned over economic reforms.
Ibragim Dudarov, a deputy mufti in North Ossetia, was shot and killed by unknown gunmen near Vladikavkaz. His mufti said Islamist militants were not active in North Ossetia. The attack is the seventh this year against Islamic leaders in Russia. Police shot and killed Alim Lampezhev, a wanted militant leader in Kabardino-Balkaria, along with two […]
Algerian army, air force, national gendarmerie, and special operation forces are conducting guerilla training exercises near the southern border to prepare for possible clashes with armed Islamists in northern Mali. Algeria is also tightening border controls, to curb the “co-operation and co-ordination between smuggling gangs, armed terrorist groups and arms trade mafia along the border […]
The al Qaeda-linked Ansar Dine destroyed the last of the mausoleums of the Sufi saints in Timbuktu. Ansar Dine’s Islamic police say the destruction of the tombs is unrelated to the UN’s approval of a military intervention in Mali.
The sack of Timbuktu: “What can we do against armed men?”
ISAF to monitor Afghan policewoman investigation process
Syrian Jund al Sham says it will support “everyone who raised the banner of monotheism and jihad.”
Betrayed While They Sleep, Afghan Police Are Dying in Numbers
The high cost of disengagement
CIA’s Global Response Staff emerging from shadows after incidents in Libya and Pakistan
Only son of Pakistan’s murdered Bhutto launches political career
“Two mujahideen brothers Abdullah Bawazir and Nabil al Kaldi” were killed in the Dec. 24 drone strike in Hadramout province.
The Pentagon has proposed selling four Northrop Grumman RQ-4 “Global Hawk” drones with enhanced surveillance capabilities to South Korea. Seoul, which has grown increasingly wary of North Korea’s military buildup, has wanted the systems since at least 2008.