Posted tagged ‘Islamic State’

83 killed as 2 blasts rip through Ramadan crowds at Baghdad shopping areas (PHOTOS, VIDEO)

July 3, 2016

83 killed as 2 blasts rip through Ramadan crowds at Baghdad shopping areas (PHOTOS, VIDEO)

Published time: 2 Jul, 2016 22:41 Edited time: 3 Jul, 2016 08:18

Source: 83 killed as 2 blasts rip through Ramadan crowds at Baghdad shopping areas (PHOTOS, VIDEO) — RT News

Two blasts have ripped through busy market areas in Baghdad, Iraq’s capital, killing around 80 people and injuring 160. The Islamic State militant group has claimed responsibility for one of the attacks.

Iraqi officials quoted by AP put the death toll from the first attack, in Karrada district, at 78 and said that more than 160 people had been injured.

Interior Ministry spokesman Saad Maan confirmed that the first blast had come from a car bomb.

Eyewitnesses said on Twitter that many shops burned down as a result of the explosions, and there are fears that the number of casualties could grow.

Karrada, an upper middle class district in the Iraqi capital, is mostly inhabited by Shia, but also has quite a large Christian minority. The area becomes very busy after sunset during the holy month of Ramadan.

https://twitter.com/Khaqani_M/status/749364331200978944/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Shortly after the explosion hit Karrada, eyewitnesses said that a second blast targeted the Shaab neighborhood, which is located in the northern part of the city.

AP said that at least five people were killed in that bombing and another 16 were injured. Meanwhile, Sky News Arabia said a suspected homemade explosive device was used to hit a market.

https://twitter.com/josiahalessoy/status/749381581597532161/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) has in an online statement claimed responsibility for the attack in Karrada, Baghdad.

The tactics resemble Islamic State’s signature, as the terrorists frequently choose Shia-populated civilian areas in the capital as targets.

Iraqi security officials are attempting to restore order amid the state of panic that has ensued following the attacks, Altaf Ahmad, a local journalist, told RT.

“Major roads leading to the venue of the explosion [in Karrada] have been cut off. We know that the car bomb that went off in the area that is known to be crowded at this time. After sunset, after the break of fast during the holy month of Ramadan many people start to go out… We are expecting that the number could rise to 100 casualties,” Ahmad said.

Meanwhile, Abayomi Azikiwe, editor at Pan-African News Wire, said the pattern of bombing in Baghdad reminded him of what happened in Istanbul.

“There is some affirmation that Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack. This follows a pattern for the last week with the attack in Istanbul. The sectarian divisions inside the country have exacerbated and there’s been a reaction on both sides,” Azikiwe told RT.

He also noted that Islamic State had suffered tremendous losses over the past several months and could be committing such attacks in order to avenge their retreat.

“They moved to other geopolitical regions, in Libya, for example, in western part of the country. A lot of these attacks are done for propaganda reasons,” he added. “[These attacks] definitely appear to be coordinated.”

Earlier this week, at least 12 people were killed and 32 injured in another suicide attack west of Baghdad, where an attacker wearing a suicide vest targeted a Sunni mosque in Abu Ghraib.

READ MORE: At least 12 killed in suicide attack on Abu Ghraib mosque

Islamic State was recently pushed out of Fallujah by Iraqi forces, but the terrorist group still controls Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, which is located in northern Iraq.

 

ISIS routs new US-backed Syrian force at Abu Kemal

July 1, 2016

ISIS routs new US-backed Syrian force at Abu Kemal, DEBKAfile, July 1, 2016

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A battle on June 29 between ISIS and a pro-American Syrian rebel force near the Syria-Iraq border will go down as one of the most striking defeats ever suffered by an American-backed Syrian force trained in Jordan in the annals of the war on terror.

It was not the first, say DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources. In August 2015, a force from Al Qaeda’s affiliate Nusra Front destroyed a similar rebel force called Division 30. And 12 hours earlier, on June 28, ISIS suicide bombers murdered 44 people in a bloodbath at Ataturk international airport in Istanbul.

The following timeline of events is instructive:

1. In March and April of this year, military instructors from the CIA, together with Jordanian intelligence officers and special operations units, established a new militia to fight ISIS called the New Syria Army. Most of the recruits were from Syrian refugee camps. The US furnished the militia with funds and advanced weapons.

2. They were trained by US and Jordanian military instructors at Jordan’s al-Rukban base in the Berm area on the Syrian border.

3. In May, American commanders in Jordan decided that the militia would launch its first mission in eastern Syria near the border with Iraq.

4. In June, it became clear to the Americans and the Jordanians that the time had come for the new force to go into action.

There were five reasons:

A. After the capture of the Iraqi city of Fallujah from ISIS, the pro-Iranian Shiite militias that participated in the campaign, namely the Popular Mobilization Forces and the Badar Forces, had started moving west toward the Iraq-Syria border (see map).

B. Syrian army and Hizballah forces had embarked on a parallel eastward movement from the vicinity of Deir ez-Zor toward the Iraqi border (see map). Their goal was to link up with the Iraqi Shiite militias on the Syrian-Iraqi border and create a land bridge for the use of all pro-Iranian forces in the two countries.

C. Washington and Amman regarded this development as dangerous and resolved to preempt it.

D. To that end, the New Syria Army was to be sent into action to take the town of Abu Kamal near the border.

E. The commanders assumed that the loss of Abu Kamal would deal a blow to ISIS forces in eastern Syria and plant a pro-American wedge against the linkup of the two pro-Iranian forces and so foil their projected land bridge athwart Iraq and Syria. .

5. On June 21, an ISIS suicide bomber driving a stolen Jordanian military truck blew himself up in the area of Jordan’s al-Rukban base on the Syrian border, in an attempt to avert the coming Abu Kemal attack by inflicting heavy losses on the new militia.  Most of those killed were Jordanian border guards.

6. After the attack, US and Jordanian helicopters airlifted the new militia combatants to a forward base set up at al-Tanf inside Iraq, 230 kilometers from Abu Kamal. They were attacked twice by Russian air strikes in an effort to thwart the pro-US militia’s return to Syria.

7. On June 29, the new Syrian force nonetheless launched its attack, under the direction of Jordanian special operations and military intelligence officers, and the supervision of American elite forces officers at the US-Jordanian war room north of Amman.

8. However, the new Syrian militia was speedily ambushed by ISIS, which apparently was tipped off about the impending attack and its routes of approach. Dozens of Syrian militiamen were killed or wounded, and the force fled from the battlefield. Those unable to flee were shot dead or decapitated.

9. The Jordanian officers who commanded the force were among those who fled.

10. ISIS videos of the battle showed that advanced US military equipment provided the militiamen had fallen into the terrorist organization’s hands, recalling the sights from Iraq of two years ago, when ISIS captured as booty masses of American military hardware from fleeing troops.

The US and Jordan once again failed to establish a Syrian force capable of fighting ISIS. They also lost the chance to gain control of the situation in eastern and southern Syria.

No official in Washington was ready to comment on the battle.

More airports under ISIS threat after Istanbul

June 29, 2016

More airports under ISIS threat after Istanbul, DEBKAfile, June 29, 2016

istanbul-dead

The US, Europe and the Middle East are again refusing to connect the dots of the terrorist threat, recalling the denial that marked the peak period of Al Qaeda’s atrocities in the early 2000’s.

When the US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter trumpeted the Fallujah victory over the Islamic State on June 27, he neglected to disclose that the real victors were Iranians – not Iraqis. The next day, an ISIS suicide attack on Istanbul’s Ataturk airport overshadowed that success, killing at least 41 people including 13 foreign nationald and injuring more than 230.

As the Obama administration labored to conceal from the public in the West its strategy of using Shiite forces to hammer ISIS in Iraq and parts of Syria, the Sunni terrorists retaliated in Istanbul – and not just there.

Seven ISIS suicide bombers, some on motorcycles, exploded on Monday, June 27, in a Christian village in the Lebanon Valley near Baʿalbek. A week earlier, an ISIS suicide bomber blew himself up at the gates of a large Jordanian military base on the Syrian border.

The connection between the ISIS arenas and cause and event is there for anyone who wants to see it.

ISIS has a ready store of suicide bombers who are willing to blow themselves up, not just because they are ‘extreme fanatics’ or “thugs” as President Obama insists on defining them, but because they believe they are fighting a religious war: Sunnis against Shiites, Sunnis against Christians and Sunnis against Jews.

On this point, Obama is in denial.

Turkey’s Sunni President Tayyip Erdogan was swiftly punished for concluding a political-military-intelligence agreement with the Jewish state. That same day, three suicide bombers, probably waiting for months at a safe house near the Istanbul airport, were ordered from ISIS Syrian headquarters in Raqqa, to go into action.

Neither the dense US intelligence net in the region, nor Turkish and Israeli intelligence managed to intercept the order.

DEBKAfile intelligence sources point out that the highly secure Ataturk airport, the third largest in Europe, is not the only one on the continent at which ISIS suicide units are lurking ready to strike.

American-European intelligence input points to their presence near at least two or three other airports in Europe. The problem is that the intel is very general, pointing to intent, with no specifics on countries or airports.

The public in the West and Middle-East are not told either about the ‘small’ victories scored by ISIS on the battle field. For instance, ISIS forces managed to block the Syrian-Hizballah advance towards the highway leading from Palmyra to Raqqa, inflicting heavy losses despite Russian air cover.

In Israel, where security awareness is usually high, no one was told about the successful ISIS engagement at the Syria-Jordan-Israel border junction bordering on the Israeli Golan against US-trained and armed Syrian rebels, who fought under artillery cover from Jordan.

In other words, ISIS has established itself on the Israeli border, a few kilometers away from the Sea of Galilee and Tiberius.

The Islamic State is fully geared to respond to such losses as Fallujah by going for strategic gains on the ground and inflicting horrible retribution on its victims by remotely activating sleeper cells of suicide killers.

Rather than being degraded, as Obama claims, ISIS is fully equipped to target its victims across several continents.

On Tuesday Istanbul airport was its chosen target. Now, we must wait and see who is next.

ISIS is a Footnote: The Real Threat is Sharia and Islamic Supremacism

June 29, 2016

ISIS is a Footnote: The Real Threat is Sharia and Islamic Supremacism, CounterjihadShireen Qudosi, June 29, 2016

Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a top North American Muslim Reformer, sees Muslim reformers “as the most essential head of spear in the battle against Islamic theocracy.” The largest collective of Muslim Reformers are presently in the United States.

“Ideas of freedom can happen in the laboratory of America,” adds Dr. Jasser. The West offers Muslim voices for humanity a level of freedom that is unmatched in any other part of the world, making Western Muslim reformers critical in this battle against radical Islam — particularly because truthful conversations on faith are painted as persecution, courtesy of the regressive left.

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The battle against radical Islam isn’t an ‘over there’ fight confined to the wastebin landscape of some forgotten town. It’s a ubiquitous problem that takes place on American soil in two forms. The first is through direct jihadi attacks as we most recently saw in Orlando; the second takes the form of political warfare.

Yesterday, the battle of ideas took place on the floor of a Senate hearing spearheaded by Senator Ted Cruz. The “Willful Blindness” hearing, attended by Dr. Zuhdi Jasser,Philip Haney, and Andrew McCarthy among others, offered testimony to better understand barriers to combating radical Islam.

Other witnesses included soft-Islamist Farhana Khera, President and Executive Director of Muslim Advocates, who refused to admit that jihad or radicalization had absolutely anything to do with radical Islam. In fact, Senator Cruz’s attempt to engage Khera in dialogue yielded a minimum of 6 instances of denial within five minutes, with Khera defaulting to a regressive left narrative that the conversation is somehow empowering ISIS.

National security consultant Chris Gaubatz debunks the myth of an all-powerful and seeing ISIS:

“The global Islamic movement is made of terrorist groups and nation states; all seeking to impose sharia.”

ISIS is a footnote at best, not the bogeyman that Islamists try to threaten free speech with. The real threat is sharia and a mindset of Islamic supremacism.

Testimony was also provided by Michael German, a fellow of the Brennan Center for Justice and a former FBI Special Agent. German sees radical Islam as a problem but not in the context we would assume is logical based on the facts and common sense. In the same line of thinking as Khera, German denounces a theological association with violent acts of terror under a political doctrine.

German’s reasoning fails. He is neither expert in nor a student of Islamic theology. Had he an objective mind and trained scholar in both academic and traditional Islam, he would see that Islam has become a highly political system that forms and orchestrates national movement. The version of radical Islam adopted by terror groups is not that different than the version of Islam adopted by Islamic states – and to go further – the version of Islam that Islamists identify with. All versions ultimately hold Islam as supreme, paving the way for what is an undeniable theological supremacy. In other words, Islamic supremacy. And that understanding of Islam is adopted by billions of adherents.

In the same vein of thought as Islamists, German believes “radical Islam” is used to smear a faith group. He further argues “collective national security [is not achieved] by undermining security of others.” For German, “Ideas cannot be killed and ideologies cannot be destroyed.” He points to Nazi ideology that while defeated, was not destroyed.

However, radical Islamic ideology can be challenged and destroyed…from within. A growing movement in partnership with allies is already underway by Muslim reformers. Reformers are the new wave of Muslim scholars appearing nearly a millennia after the original Muslim free thinkers, the Mu’tazilites. The waves of movement in Islamic critical thought from the time of the Prophet, through his passing, and till today, shows that Islam is not the monolith German and Khera try to depict.

Andrew McCarthy, a former Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney, understands Islam has seen a struggle to define itself from its earliest days. As McCarthy points out, Muslims “have not settled the question what is an authentic Islam.”

Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a top North American Muslim Reformer, sees Muslim reformers “as the most essential head of spear in the battle against Islamic theocracy.” The largest collective of Muslim Reformers are presently in the United States.

“Ideas of freedom can happen in the laboratory of America,” adds Dr. Jasser. The West offers Muslim voices for humanity a level of freedom that is unmatched in any other part of the world, making Western Muslim reformers critical in this battle against radical Islam — particularly because truthful conversations on faith are painted as persecution, courtesy of the regressive left.

For McCarthy, the focus needs to shift to the supremacist interpretation of Islam that is fundamentally at odds with Western values. A clash of civilizations between Islam and the West is not a case of multiculturalism where room can be made for both. Islamic supremacism in its nature allows for only one ideology: its own.

So while German underscores that radical Islam is not a problem – that it is a misnomer – McCarthy points to history which shows us something entirely different. He summarizes that a struggle in Islam has been “ongoing for fourteen centuries supported by centuries of scholarship,” adding that “Islam is less a religion than a political radicalization with a religious veneer.”

McCarthy doesn’t see this as something the U.S. can fix, but it is something that we need to understand and not obscure – particularly because as Chris Gaubatz added, “We can kill every member of Al-Qaeda tomorrow, but it won’t end.”

Zuhdi Jasser added that America has “a sophisticated whack-a-mole system” of combatting terrorism. These are key assessment recognizing that ultimately we need to target the ideology and develop a system that moves beyond a fear of might trigger ISIS – a running theme for both Khera and German.

Khera along with German were both supported by Senator Dick Durbin who brought up a failed ongoing argument that needs to die: Westboro and the KKK are no more Christian than ISIS is Islamic. A cheap, tired trick, it shows a fundamental lack of knowledge about both Islam and Christianity.

Westboro and KKK are not acting in the footsteps of Jesus. However, ISIS is in many ways following the post-Medina violent warring behavior of its prophet, Muhammad. If we’re to see whether something is Islamic or Christian, we need to look at the verses and the leadership. Christianity did not have a violent Jesus and the teachings of Christ himself do not advocate violence. On the other hand, Islam has a violent version of Muhamad, which however justified in whatever context, is still violent and includes violent rhetoric that justified jihadi and supremacist agendas.

Germans builds on the back and forth highlighting Nazi Germany was defeated in part by criminalizing the ideology, something he feels can’t be done with Islam because the ideology can’t be scrubbed. I would argue we’ve already scrubbed so much: over 900 instances of references to jihad and Islam from official documents in what is a systematic purge of intelligence in a critical war.

Let’s go further still and get to the actual problem: the ideology. We need to do the same to political and violent doctrines in Islam, while supporting alternate voices found in reformers who are well on their way by outrightly challenging the theology or through grassroots efforts calling for modernized adaptations.

 

EXCLUSIVE – Islamic State Supporters Celebrate Deadly Istanbul Airport Attack

June 29, 2016

EXCLUSIVE – Islamic State Supporters Celebrate Deadly Istanbul Airport Attack

by Aaron Klein and Ali Waked

29 Jun 2016

Source: EXCLUSIVE – Islamic State Supporters Celebrate Deadly Istanbul Airport Attack – Breitbart

TEL AVIV – The Islamic State has not claimed official responsibility for Tuesday’s deadly Istanbul airport attack as if this writing, but users in an encrypted messaging forum for Islamic State fighters and supporters are praising the triple assaults and hoping IS was behind the carnage that left 41 people dead and wounded more than 239.

Breitbart Jerusalem has gained insider access to the encrypted Telegraph forum, which consists of known IS leaders, lower and mid-level IS fighters, IS supporters, and propagandists. Some members utilize their own names, while others use screen names. The forum serves as a Twitter of sorts for IS and its supporters.

Inside the forum, users explained with great conviction why they hope and believe the attack was IS “retaliation” against Turkey.

Abu Usama Almagrebi, a Moroccan jihadi, wrote: “Friends, Turkey has become a member of the axis of infidel countries fighting and showing hostility against us. They kill our brothers on a daily basis by launching airstrikes on our country, and the blessed bombings that we hope our brothers are responsible for is a natural reaction and only a small part of the price Turkey has to pay for its policy against our brothers.”

abu usama almagrebi

“She (Turkey) should know that she will pay for participating in the attacks against us just like any other infidel country,” he added.

Another IS activist, writing under the pseudonym “Attacking Barriers,” wrote: “Our friends and dearly beloved, the community of mujahedeen, for us an American Muslim is better than an Arab supporting the infidels. Don’t forget the teachings of Ibn Taimiyah [an Islamic cleric who serves as an inspiration to IS] who said: ‘If I side with the infidels kill me, even if I do it carrying the Quran…’ There are Muslims among the infidels.”

attacking barriors

Kassura Aljazrawi wrote: “The Turkish ruler who pretends to be a caliph leads his country to oblivion. He joined a war that’s not his out of support for the infidels, opened the doors to his military bases for them to raid our brothers, and now realizes what price he has to pay for his stupidity.”

kassura aljazrawi (1)

Telegraph user “Tyrant Shaker” mentioned the normalization pact Turkey had signed with Israel just one day before Tuesday’s attack. “I think that the operation is a message from our State that if you think you sign a deal with the Jews to help your economy, it actually depends on our suicide bombers.”

tyrant maarid

“Ironclad Determination” wrote: “Erdogan entered the gates of the world of infidelity and therefore bears the brunt of our Islamic fighters. He started this war by attacking our brothers, and it’s time for him the pay the price. We pray to Allah that this attack was the work of our brothers, and with Allah’s help the mujahedeen will take control of Turkey just like the Prophet promised.”

iron determination

IS is being implicated in the attack in which three suspected suicide bombers opened fire and then detonated themselves in Istanbul’s main airport.

Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.

Saudis Kept Two Jihad Terror Groups Tied to Huma Abedin Off U.S. List

June 26, 2016

Saudis Kept Two Jihad Terror Groups Tied to Huma Abedin Off U.S. List

By  Pamela Geller on June 26, 2016

Source: Saudis Kept Two Jihad Terror Groups Tied to Huma Abedin Off U.S. List | Pamela Geller

Unconscionable. This is the malignant influence that another Clinton presidency would allow to continue to assert itself in the White House. It has to end. The Saudi/Muslim Brotherhood power over U.S. policymaking must be confronted, rejected and defeated.

“Saudis Kept Two Terror Groups Off U.S. List,” by Matthew Vadum, FrontPage, June 20, 2016:

The Saudi Arabian government apparently had so much clout with previous U.S. administrations that they refused to designate as terrorist organizations two terror-funding Islamofascist groups linked to Huma Abedin, now the vice-chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

Abedin is joined at the hip to Hillary. She is to Mrs. Clinton what Valerie Jarrett is to President Obama.

That two deadly terrorist groups avoided proper scrutiny for years is a chilling reminder of how close Mrs. Clinton’s political network is to the brutal Muslim Brotherhood, possibly the Left’s favorite Islamist operation. It also underlines the extent to which Islamist enemies of the United States have infiltrated the American political establishment. And it takes on added importance now that polls show the pathologically dishonest Alinskyite radical who wrote the communitarian manifesto It Takes A Village has a significant lead over presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.

Sifting through archived media reports, Breitbart’s Lee Stranahan discovered it was known in the weeks following the 9/11 attacks that the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) and its parent entity the Muslim World League (MWL), both of which are directly funded by Saudi authorities, were financial backers of al-Qaeda.

“The Saudis have probably done more to penetrate Al Qaeda than any other foreign intelligence service, but Al Qaeda in turn has penetrated the Saudi regime,” Newsweek reported the month after 9/11.

Although the IIRO, whose website calls the group the International Islamic Relief Organization of Saudi Arabia (IIROSA), and MWL “have been used by bin Laden to finance his operations,” they were “left off the list of groups sanctioned by the United States last week, U.S. officials hinted … in order to avoid embarrassing the Saudi government.”

The League acknowledges on its website that it is “engaged in propagating the religion of Islam” and “elucidating its principles and tenets.” It also engages in strategic lying, known in the Islamic world as taqiyya. The League “is well known for rejecting all acts of violence and promoting dialogue with the people of other cultures,” its website claims, adding that it does “not intend to undermine, dominate or practice hegemony over anyone else.”

It claims on the site that it has “external centers,” “external offices,” and “Islamic centers” in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Bosnia Herzegovina, Brazil, Burundi, Canada, Congo, Denmark, Egypt, France, Hungary, Indonesia, Italy, Jordan, Malaysia, Mozambique, Netherlands, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sudan, Sweden, United Kingdom, and other countries.

IIRO describes itself as “a charity organization emanating from the Muslim World League.”

Its annual report from 2011/2012 indicates that “thousands of mosques have been built with an average of one mosque a day” and that it has “1,222 staff” worldwide. Under its “Holy Qur’an and Da’wa Program” it has “8,044 male and female students memorizing Qur’an and learning Islamic studies in 306 centres and Qur’an circles.” IIRO has “304 Qur’an teachers and supervisors” in “these centres in 29 countries around the world” and sponsors “338 Islamic preachers” in those 29 countries.

Clinton protégé and campaign vice-chairman Huma Abedin, her parents, and her siblings all have intimate ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim World League has reportedly taken in more than $1.3 billion since 1962 from the Saudi government to promote Wahhabism. The League, warns Andrew C. McCarthy, is the Brotherhood’s “principal vehicle for the international propagation of Islamic supremacist ideology.”

Abedin, who is married to disgraced former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), has never publicly explained her disturbing connections to the people who killed 3,000 Americans on 9/11 or why, despite those ties, she ought to be trusted with state secrets. And when courageous politicians like former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) have tried to sound the alarm about who Abedin really is, they have been relentlessly mocked by the media and politicians from both parties. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) famously suffered from an acute outbreak of faux chivalry on the Senate floor when congressional colleagues dared to ask legitimate questions about Abedin’s loyalty to this country.

Few recall that when Bill Clinton was president in 1996, the CIA believed the International Islamic Relief Organization helped to underwrite six terrorist training facilities in Afghanistan. Harper’s reported in 2004 that the former head of IIRO’s office in the Philippines, who happened to be Obama bin Laden’s brother-in-law, “had been linked to plots to ‘target the pope and U.S. airlines.’”

The year 1996 was also eventful for Abedin. That year the young Michigan-born woman returned to the U.S. after years of living with her jihadist parents and soaking up the militant Islamic culture of Saudi Arabia. She promptly began working for then-first lady Hillary as an intern in the White House. At the same time Abedin was a member of the executive board of the George Washington University chapter of the Muslims Students Association, which was created by the MWL in the 1960s. In 1996 Abedin also began working as assistant editor at the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, an Islamist publication of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs (IMMA).

The Institute was founded in 1979 by the entrepreneurial Islamist Abdullah Omar Naseef who at the time was vice president of the prestigious King Abdulaziz University in Saudi Arabia. Naseef, who became MWL secretary-general in 1983, hired the late Dr. Zyed Abedin, Huma’s father, as managing editor of the Journal, and the Abedins relocated to the repressive Saudi kingdom. Huma’s mother is the publication’s editor-in-chief and her brother and sister also work there as editors.

The Harper’s article from 12 years ago added that the U.S. intelligence community believed MWL employees took part in the bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998. Even though both MWL and IIRO funded al-Qaeda, Newsweek reported in October 2001, the Bush administration “left the two organizations off the list of designated terrorist groups in order to spare the Saudi government from embarrassment.” It’s not clear why the Clinton administration suppressed the truth about the two organizations.

Stranahan is optimistic that despite the frantic lies of the Left, the facts about Hillary and Huma will receive proper attention in the current election cycle.

“Defenders of Clinton and Abedin have attempted to spin concerns about Abedin’s disturbing connections as a crazed right-wing conspiracy theory, but the facts are coming out, and with America focused on the presidential race and terrorism, it is just a matter of time before the truth comes out.”

Meanwhile, even as the nation grieves for the 49 innocent Americans gunned down June 12 by Muslim terrorist Omar Mateen at a gay club in Orlando, Fla., members of the media seem blissfully unaware that for five years Hillary Clinton had a real live jihad-loving terrorist on the payroll at her family foundation.

Gehad el-Haddad, an Islamic terrorist leader who jumped straight from his job at the terrorist-friendly international cash-for-favors clearinghouse known as the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation to a post with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, received a life sentence back home last year for seditious Islamist activities.

The professional propagandist may have learned about forcing Sharia law on Egyptians while he was “city director,” a senior communications post, at the Clintons’ charity from August 2007 to August 2012. (Note: Gehad is the Egyptian version of the Arabic word jihad.) Haddad was the lead English-language spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood and a frequent apologist for the since-ousted President Mohamed Morsi’s violent crackdowns on civil liberties. He put his spin doctoring skills to use downplaying Brotherhood supporters’ attacks on women and children.

Hillary Clinton, of course, headed the U.S. Department of State during the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 that ousted longtime U.S. ally and anti-Islamist Hosni Mubarak and cleared the way for Morsi, an Obama ally.

It beggars belief that Clinton didn’t know about Haddad’s employment with the Brotherhood. A mere month after Haddad quit his Clinton Foundation job for full-time employment with the Brotherhood in 2012, Morsi received an invitation to deliver a major address at the Clinton Global Initiative, a high-profile project of the foundation.

These things are all just incredible coincidences, Clinton’s defenders will insist.

Benjamin Netanyahu on how to beat Islamism

June 26, 2016
Published on Nov 10, 2015

H/T E.J. Bron
(www.ejbron.wordpress.com)

Brexit – Backlash from mass migration and ISIS

June 25, 2016

Brexit – Backlash from mass migration and ISIS. DEBKAfile, June 24,2016

BREXIT_23.6.16

In a historic referendum, millions of British citizens voted Thursday, June 23, to leave the European Union after 43 years by a margin of 52 to 48 percent. Many were undoubtedly moved into approving this pivotal step by three seismic world events:

1. The mass migration flowing into Europe from the Middle East and Africa under the EU aegis. Forebodings in the UK were fueled by figures released a week before the referendum showing an influx of 330,000 migrants to Britain in 2015.

2. The war on the Islamic State which poses a peril which most Western governments avoid addressing by name as World War III in the making.

3. The inability of those governments, beyond empty words, to grapple with the war on ISIS or cope with the  mass of migrants expected to beat on the gates of Western societies for many more hard years.

Many Americans and Europeans are dissatisfied and resentful of President Barack Obama’s approach to the war on ISIS, which is to dismiss the enemy as a minor band of fanatics and thus, rather than a war against Islam. Neither do they accept German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s magnanimous invitation to take refugees in – 1.5 million in two years – as her country’s moral responsibility.

This popular disgruntlement has thrown up such antiestablishment figures as Donald Trump in the US and Boris Johnson in Britain and contributes to the rise of far right-wing movements and extremist violence on both continents.

Those two leaders, though different in most other ways, owe much of their popularity to the pervasive fear in their countries that surging immigration will forever alter the fabric of their societies.

Such social upheaval is the result of a trap deliberately set for the West by two Muslim leaders: ISIS “caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and Turkish President Tayyip Reccep Erdogan.

Al-Baghdadi conceived the idea of flooding the western world with waves of immigrants from Africa and the Middle East as a way to achieve three targets:

a) To change the composition of the population of Western countries by expanding the Muslim increment.

b) To plant networks of ISIS terrorists in the West.

c) To boost ISIS Middle Eastern arms, people and drugs smuggling networks as the organization’s main source of income. Migrants are willing to pay an average of between 5,000 and 10,000 dollars to reach the West even though they know that many never make it alive.

Al Baghdadi made up for the revenue shortfall caused by the US bombing of ISIS-held oil fields and money reserves by pushing over a new wave of immigrants.

President Erdogan’s motives are quite different.

He allowed the waves of immigrants to pass through Turkey on their way to the US and Europe – just as for years, he allowed Western jihadists joining ISIS to reach Siria via Turkey – because he was consumed with the desire to punish the US, namely, the Obama administration, for refusing to back up his hegemonic aspirations in the Middle East; Europe was punished for denying Turkey EU membership year after year.

The victory of Boris Johnson’s “leave” campaign – in the face of Obama’s personal championship of Prime Minister David Cameron’s bid to keep his country in, supported by the Democratic presumptive nominee Hilary Clinton – was a loud and clear signal for politicians running in future elections in the West, including the US presidential vote in November.

Republican candidate Donald Trump’s call to stop Muslim immigration into the US until proper screening measures are in place may sound like an unformed idea, but no other US politician has dared put it on the table, or directly challenge the hollow words and self-righteous hypocrisy of Obama and Clinton on the issues of terror, wars in the Middle East and mass immigration. This alone gives Trump a popular edge in widening circles in the USA over his rival.

Trump is not likely to lose votes either by his pledge to rebuild NATO for leading the West in the war against Islamic terror.

During the five months up until the US presidential election, the West can expect more large-scale ISIS terror coupled with dramatic events in the wars raging in at least seven countries  – Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Libya and Afghanistan. Refugees in vast numbers will continue to batter down the doors of countries that are increasingly unable and unwilling to accept them.

Wars in general and religious wars in particular, have throughout history thrown up massive shifts of population displaced by violence, plague, falling regimes, famine and economic hardship.

The year 2016 will go down as the year in which Middle East crises spilled over into the west, bringing social change and far-reaching political turmoil in their wake.

And this is only the beginning.

Satire | Shi’a death squads liberate Fallujah from Sunni death squads

June 22, 2016

Shi’a death squads liberate Fallujah from Sunni death squads, Duffel Blog, June 22, 2016

iraq-army-fallujah-1000x600Members of the Iraqi Army pass in review. (USMC photo.)

FALLUJAH, Iraq — Shi’a death squads have resumed patrols on the streets of Fallujah, “restor[ing] a sense of normalcy” to the beleaguered Iraqi city, residents say.

The Shi’a patrols follow the flight of Sunni death squads, religious police, and bootleg pornography vendors who had dominated the largely Sunni city since the Islamic State conquered it in 2014. The rapid departure of ISIS has paved the way for a welcome return to sectarian tension, corruption and graft.

Iraqi government forces announced new rules, heralding an end to the barbaric reign of ISIS.

“We are delighted to announce an end to the Sunni-on-Sunni rape that has so typified Daesh rule,” said Brig. Gen. Haider al-Obeidi of the Iraqi Federal Police/Iranian Revolutionary Guard. “From now on, brutal violence against women and children will be conducted under the rule of law.”

Fallujah’s embattled population expressed their gratitude at their liberation from slavery to second class citizenship.

“We’re just so grateful!” exclaimed repatriated resident Amira Albu Issa. “I thought we’d surely be killed for being Christian, but now, we only have to worry about being killed for going outside on Friday nights.”

Shopkeepers in Fallujah were equally overjoyed. “We will no longer pay ten percent zakat to the religious police, but only two percent for the protection racket instead! Allahu Akbar!”

Prime Minister Haider al-Badi also expressed his gratitude to the Iraqi Army, Popular Mobilization Units and militia that may or may not have been trained by Iran that backed them.

“Fallujah has returned to the embrace of the nation,” al-Badi said. “Now we must begin the rough task of providing security, rooting out heretics, punishing collaborators, and avenging Hassan.”

“We’re sending the very best personnel to aid in this undertaking.”

Prime Minister Al-Badi went to detail a security package featuring members of Asaib Ahl Haq, the Mahdi Army and the Iranian Qods Force, who would be taking point.

“I am excited to have this opportunity.” said Akram Abbas al Kabi, a former senior commander of Asaib Ahl Haq and current militia member. “We won’t let the Prime Minister or our country down.” Al-Kabi then called “dibs” on the first woman to “show some ankle.”

 

Jordan’s enemy within defies US anti ISIS wall

June 22, 2016

Jordan’s enemy within defies US anti ISIS wall, DEBKAfile, June 22, 2016

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The terrorist attack that ISIS carried out on the Jordan-Syria border on Tuesday, June 21, in which a suicide bomber blew up the vehicle he was driving against a Jordanian border patrol, seriously alarmed Amman, Washington and Jerusalem on five counts:

1. The terrorist, who killed six Jordanian soldiers, came from inside Jordan, not across the border from Syria, meaning that ISIS had succeeded in setting up a terror network or networks inside the kingdom.

Suspicion was first raised after the June 6 attack on Jordanian intelligence headquarters in Ain el-Basha near Amman, in which five intelligence officers were killed, by the absence of any claim of responsibility. It now transpires that the ISIS commanders in Jordan had decided to leave no traces for the national security and intelligence services to follow in their investigation.

2. The jihadists’ success in pulling off two attacks in two weeks in Jordan – one in the center and the other in the north near the Syrian border, attests to several networks in play across a widely spaced-out region.

3. The attack on Tuesday took place tellingly at Ruqban, where a large exercise by a new brigade of the Jordanian military established to fight ISIS has been taking place for the last few days. The brigade, the first of its kind among Middle Eastern armies, is armed and trained by US counterterrorism advisors, and its structure modeled on that of the ISIS military. The entire brigade travels in new Toyota minivans atop which heavy guns are fixed.

The exercise is therefore preparing for both Jordanian and ISIS forces to fight by means of fast-moving armed convoys when they engage in their next battle in the desert areas between Jordan, Iraq and Syria.

But the Jordanians will have the advantage of air cover by attack helicopters.

That ISIS penetrated the site of a joint Jordanian-US military drill with a truck bomb attests to the upgrading of ISIS operational capabilities in the kingdom.

4. DEBKAfile’s intelligence and counterterrorism sources estimate that about 3,000 Jordanians have now joined ISIS and are fighting in its ranks. These homegrown terrorists have the family connections and local knowledge that enable them to move easily around the country. Most ISIS religious leaders and mentors are likewise locals, another advantage for drawing new recruits.

5. The Jordanian military, in cooperation with the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency, is currently completing a $500-million project to build a 442-kilometer defensive fence on the country’s borders with Syria and Iraq as well as around its bases including those hosting American forces (see map). Its purpose is not only to protect the Hashemite throne, but also to transform the 89,000-square-kilometer kingdom into one of the most important US military outposts in the Middle East in the war against ISIS. The fence will also serve as a barrier between Israel and the forces of ISIS, Iran, Iraq and Syria.

Tuesday’s attack, however, raises questions about the entire fence project. Washington and Amman are investing huge sums to keep ISIS out of Jordan when the terrorist peril is creeping up dangerously from within.