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Eye on Extremism
June 16, 2021
The New York Times: White House Unveils Strategy To Combat Domestic Extremism
“The Biden administration on Tuesday unveiled a national strategy to combat domestic extremism, calling for aggressive steps such as hiring more intelligence analysts and screening government employees for ties to hate groups. The 32-page plan highlights a shift in the government’s approach to counterterrorism, which for decades has prioritized fighting foreign terrorists. But violent attacks by American extremists are growing, a problem laid bare by the deadly Capitol riot on Jan. 6. “We cannot ignore this threat or wish it away,” President Biden wrote in the strategy document. “Preventing domestic terrorism and reducing the factors that fuel it demand a multifaceted response across the federal government and beyond.” Mr. Biden ordered the review of how federal agencies addressed domestic extremism soon after coming into office, part of an effort to acknowledge white supremacists and militia groups as top national security threats. The strategy, which aims to coordinate efforts across the government, outlines four priorities: improving information sharing among law enforcement agencies, preventing recruitment by extremists groups, investigating such groups and confronting the longstanding drivers of domestic terrorism: racism and bigotry.”
Reuters: At Least 15 Killed In Somalia Suicide Bombing Claimed By Militants
“At least 15 people were killed on Tuesday in a suicide bombing in the Somali capital that targeted recruits who were lined up outside an army camp, a Reuters witness who counted the bodies at Madina Hospital said. Officials at the hospital confirmed that the bodies were those killed in an attack at a checkpoint outside the General Degaban military training camp in Mogadishu. Al Shabaab's radio Al Andalus said the Islamist group's fighters carried out the attack. Al Shabaab, which wants to unseat the government and impose its strict interpretation of Islamic sharia law, frequently carries out such bombings. Dozens of people crowded outside Madina Hospital searching for their missing relatives. “My son is dead. I have seen with my eyes. Many boys perished. They were asked to come for recruitment and then bombed. The government is still hiding other casualties,” said Amina Farah, sobbing into the arms of family members. Government officials could not immediately be reached for comment. Army recruit Ahmed Ali, who was struck in the head by shrapnel, told Reuters at the hospital: “The place was overcrowded with new recruits and soldiers when the blast occurred.” Military officer Odawaa Yusuf Rage had told state media earlier on Tuesday at least 10 new recruits had been killed and 20 others wounded when a suicide bomber detonated explosives.”
United States
“Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas says that domestic violent extremism now constitutes the greatest terrorism threat to the United States, exceeding that from al-Qaida, the Islamic State or other radical jihadi groups. “I consider it and I think we consider it collectively the most significant terrorism-related threat impacting the homeland,” Mayorkas said in an interview with Yahoo News. Mayorkas made those comments as he unveiled the U.S. government’s first national strategy for combating the domestic terror threat — a problem the Trump administration was accused of downplaying but that has taken on new urgency in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The document pledges greater information sharing among federal and state agencies and steps up monitoring of social media in order to thwart “online terrorist recruitment” and identify so-called insider threats, including extremists serving in the U.S. military as well as in state and local law enforcement agencies. “I will tell you that we see incendiary language that gives us cause for concern,” Mayorkas said when asked whether he is receiving intelligence reports indicating that domestic extremist groups are planning further attacks.”
Military Times: Pentagon’s Anti-Extremism Moves Now Part Of A Larger National Strategy
“The White House on Tuesday announced a national effort for countering domestic extremism, which includes moves the Defense Department put into action earlier this year. Among them are initiatives to better screen potential recruits, monitor extremist activity while in uniform and better educate new veterans about the possibility of being targeted for recruitment into an extremist group. The White House strategy would like to see those measures extended to law enforcement, according to a Tuesday release. “While domestic law enforcement agencies take the lead, the Department of Defense will do our part to support this important strategy,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement. “That includes maintaining the Department’s robust relationship with federal law enforcement as well as refining our policies to better address this issue within the Department.” The strategy builds off of a study released to Congress in March, a senior administration official told reporters on Monday. “... it found that domestic violent extremists, motivated by a range of ideologies, pose an elevated threat to our country in 2021, with racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists — and specifically those who espouse the superiority of the white race — and anti-government militia violent extremists posing the most lethal threat,” the official said.”
Iraq
Voice Of America: Iraq Finds Remains Of 123 People In IS Mass Grave
“Iraq announced over the weekend that it had excavated a mass grave containing the remains of more than 100 people killed by the Islamic State (IS) terrorists in a facility located in the northwest of Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul. Officials believe the remains belong to Shiite prisoners executed by the group in 2014. The Sunni extremists massacred more than 600 people in that facility. “This mass grave belongs to the residents of the Badush Prison,” said Ziya Karim, Director of Iraqi Government’s Martyrs Foundation. “They were killed by [IS] fighters after they controlled the prison. The first stage ended with excavating 123 corpses.” In 2017, the Iraqi government announced that it had found and identified the remains of nearly 500 inmates from the prison. If identified, the latest discovery could put an end to the search for the facility’s missing. “God willing, in the coming days, we will create a database to identify the victims through autopsy examinations,” said Hasan Wasiq, director of Mosul’s Autopsy Hospital. Wasiq added that authorities will ask presumed family members of the victims to “get blood samples and find DNA matches to identify the victims we have found in the mass grave.”
Afghanistan
Associated Press: Attacks Target Polio Teams In East Afghanistan, 5 Killed
“Gunmen on Tuesday targeted an anti-polio drive in eastern Afghanistan, killing at least five members of two vaccination teams in separate attacks, officials said. No militant group immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks that took place in the city of Jalalabad and the nearby districts of Khoyani and Surkhrud, according to Attaullah Khogyani, spokesman for the governor in Nangarhar province. Jalalabad is the provincial capital. Along with the five killed, at least four members of the polio vaccination teams were wounded, said Dr. Jan Mohammad, who coordinates the anti-polio drive for the country’s east. Khogyani called the attacks cowardly, adding that two of the wounded were in critical condition. The polio vaccination campaign in Nangarhar province was suspended later Tuesday, said Najibullah Kamawal, operational chief for the eastern provinces. It wasn’t clear when or if it would resume. Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan are the only two remaining countries in the world where polio is endemic, after Nigeria was last year declared free of the virus. In March, the Islamic State group said it shot and killed three women who were part of a polio vaccination team, also in Jalalabad, the capital of Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province.”
France 24: 'With Masters Defeated, The Slaves Can't Fight': Taliban Eye Victory After US Exit
“With Afghan troops in retreat and soon to lose vital American air support, Taliban commanders are voicing exuberance about quickly seizing full control of the country and re-establishing their version of an Islamic state. Unprecedented peace talks between the insurgents and Afghan government continue to flutter, and as violence rages across Afghanistan, militants claim to have taken nearly 30 districts since the US began its final troop withdrawal in early May. With supply lines stretched, Afghan forces have been clobbered by Taliban fighters in recent weeks, forcing the country's military leaders to strategically retreat from a number of rural districts. “The arrogant Americans thought they could wipe the Taliban from the face of the earth,” said Mullah Misbah, an insurgent commander in violence-wracked Ghazni province, during a recent interview with AFP. “But the Taliban defeated the Americans and their allies, and, God willing, an Islamic regime will be established in Afghanistan now that they are leaving.” In recent weeks, the Taliban have taken two districts in Ghazni, a key province straddling the highway connecting the capital with the former insurgent stronghold of Kandahar to the south.”
Middle East
“The IDF carried out a series of airstrikes throughout the Gaza Strip early Wednesday morning in response to over two dozen fires in southern Israel caused by incendiary devices launched from the coastal enclave. Footage posted by Palestinian media outlets in Gaza showed explosions lighting up the sky in both the northern and southern Strip overnight Tuesday-Wednesday, with reporters saying sites belonging to Hamas’s military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades were among those targeted. No Gazans were injured in the strikes, the Hamas-affiliated Palestinian media center initially reported. The IDF later released a statement saying its fighter jets had struck military targets that housed Hamas operatives in Khan Yunis and Gaza City. “Terrorist activity took place in the attacked compound,” the IDF said, adding that the strikes were in response to the launching of incendiary devices at southern Israel earlier in the day. “The IDF is prepared for all scenarios, including the resumption of hostilities, in the face of continued terror acts from the Gaza Strip,” the army added. The air raids were the first since an Egyptian brokered ceasefire ended an 11-day round of violence between Israel and Palestinian terror groups in Gaza.”
Nigeria
Reuters: Ten Captives Freed By Islamist Militants In Northeast Nigeria -Sources
“Ten people who had been held captive by Islamist militants were freed this week in northeast Nigeria's Borno state, three security sources and two close associates of those released told Reuters. The people, including aid workers, had been taken by Boko Haram over the past year, the sources said. They were released at around noon (1100 GMT) on Monday and were taken to a hospital in Borno state capital Maiduguri. The sources said the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), a rival militant group to Boko Haram, had released the hostages after finding them in a Boko Haram camp, but it was not immediately clear why they released them. An army spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. UNHCR spokesman Roland Schoenbauer confirmed that one of their staff workers, Idriss Abubakar Garba, who was abducted on the Maiduguri-Damaturu highway road in January, was among those released. “We are relieved at his safe return,” Schoenbauer said when reached by phone. Earlier this month, a person purporting to be ISWAP leader Abu Musab al-Barnawi said in an audio recording that the leader of Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, had died around May 18 after detonating an explosive device when he was pursued by ISWAP fighters following a battle.”
The Punch Nigeria: Pastor Kidnapped By B’Haram Eight Months Ago Freed In Borno
“After seven months in Boko Haram captivity, a pastor with the Church of Christ in Nations, Rev Polycarp Zongo, has regained his freedom. Zongo, who presides over a branch of the church in Jos, Plateau State, was kidnapped by the terrorists on October 19, 2020. He was on a journey to a ministers’ conference in Gombe State when he was abducted by the insurgents. About 12 days after the abduction, his church members and well-wishers gathered on the church premises at the Low Cost area of Jos in jubilation when the news of his release filtered in, but the information turned out to be untrue, a development which left the people and his family members traumatized. Zongo’s abductors, according to the President of COCIN, Rev Dachollom Datiri, had demanded a “huge” ransom, which the church could not afford, and since then, the leadership of the church had been calling for his unconditional release until Monday, when the pastor eventually regained his freedom. A peace advocate and President of the Gideon & Funmi Para-Mallam Peace Foundation, Rev Gideon Para-Mallam, confirmed Zongo’s release to our correspondent in Jos on Tuesday. Para-Mallam, who said he had spoken to the pastor, added that he was freed in Maiduguri, Borno State, by his abductors alongside others victims.”
Somalia
The New York Times: Pentagon Weighs Proposal To Send Dozens Of Troops Back To Somalia
“The Pentagon is developing a proposal to send dozens of Special Forces trainers back to Somalia to help local forces combat Al Shabab, the terrorist group affiliated with Al Qaeda — a step that would partly reverse President Donald J. Trump’s abrupt pullout of nearly all 700 American troops from the country in January. Mr. Trump’s order to withdraw ground forces from Somalia underscored his desire to end long-running military engagements against Islamist insurgencies in dysfunctional states in Africa and the Middle East, a grinding mission of low-intensity warfare that has spread since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The desire by some military policymakers to return to Somalia offers a glimpse into the challenges the Pentagon could face in advising Afghan forces from a distance after carrying out President Biden’s order to withdraw the last 3,500 American troops from Afghanistan, especially if the Taliban then make serious gains there. John F. Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, declined to comment on the Somalia proposal. The proposal has not yet been presented to Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, officials said, and it is not clear whether Mr. Biden would approve such a plan.”
Africa
Yahoo News: UN Experts Warn Of IED Proliferation In DRCongo
“A group of UN experts overseeing sanctions in the Democratic Republic of Congo has warned of a proliferation of homemade bombs in the country's northeast, in an annual report seen by AFP Tuesday. In suggestions to the Security Council, the group encouraged the UN's MONUSCO peacekeeping mission to increase its capabilities “including its awareness, search, detection and response capacities on improvised explosive devices.” A frequent weapon of choice for armed groups spanning from Afghanistan to the Sahel, IEDs have seen a recent uptick in the DR Congo. “The group recommends that the Security Council mandate MONUSCO to improve its capacity to counter improvised explosive devices,” the document said. The Security Council meanwhile warned against the potential for violence in the country to hinder delivery of humanitarian aid, particularly in the wake of an eruption of the Nyiragongo volcano, which briefly flared to life on May 22. In a unanimously approved declaration, the Security Council called on “all armed groups to cease immediately all forms of violence, in order to enable the safe, unhindered and sustained delivery of humanitarian assistance and post-disaster reconstruction.”
i24 News: Burkina Faso Army Kills 10 'Terrorists' In Operations In Response To Massacre
“Burkina Faso's army said Monday that troops had killed around 10 “terrorists” in security operations following the deadliest massacre in the country's six-year jihadist insurgency. More than 7,000 people fled northern Burkina Faso after the attack on the village of Solhan in early June left at least 132 people dead, according to the government. Local sources put the death toll at 160. “The units deployed carried out offensive reconnaissance as well as sealing-off and search operations which allowed them to neutralize around 10 terrorists,” an army statement said, referring to operations conducted between June 7 and 13. Solhan lies in the “tri-border area”, one of the bloodiest flashpoints in the Sahel region's jihadist conflict, where the borders of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger converge. The Solhan attack is the deadliest since Burkina Faso's jihadist insurgency emerged in 2015, leaving at least 1,400 dead and forcing an estimated one million people to flee their homes. The Sahel country has been hit by increasingly brutal attacks in recent years by groups affiliated with the Islamic State group and Al-Qaeda. Prime Minister Christophe Dabire has promised that the massacre “would not go unpunished.”
United Kingdom
BBC News: Pair Arrested Over Princes Street Gardens Package After Terrorism Probe
“A man and woman have been arrested in connection with a suspicious package left in Edinburgh, following a counter terrorism police investigation. The item was subject to controlled explosion after it was found in Princes Street Gardens over three years ago. It was the size of shoe box and was discovered by a council park ranger on 11 January 2018. Police said a 35-year-old man and a 32-year-old woman were arrested on Tuesday. The man was arrested on George IV Bridge and the woman was arrested in Granton Road. Det Ch Supt Stuart Houston, Police Scotland's head of organised crime and counter terrorism said: “Since the discovery of the item, officers from Police Scotland's counter terrorism unit have carried out extensive enquiries, including with European partners and law enforcement agencies. “They have been absolutely committed to this protracted and challenging inquiry to identify those believed to be responsible. This has resulted in the arrest of two people today.” Ch Supt Sean Scott, of Police Scotland, added: “Inquiries by Police Scotland are ongoing and I want to re-assure the public that the activity in Granton Road and on King George IV Bridge was pre-planned and intelligence-led.”
The Jerusalem Post: UK Fascist, Neo-Nazi, Ex-UKIP Member Sentenced To 23 Years For Terrorism
“A former member of Britain's Ukip (UK Independence) Party and self-declared fascist and neo-Nazi has been sentenced to 23 years in prison for terrorism offenses, according to a police statement. Dean Morrice, 34, was a former driver in the British army and was a member of the Ukip Party, a right-wing political party led by Nigel Farage. However, he had left a few years ago and became increasingly more radical in recent years. During his trial, despite denying the charges levied against him, Morrice described his current political views by saying: “I think it's fair to say I have fascist and neo-Nazi views,” the BBC reported. Originally he had described himself as “apolitical,” but later admitted to having lied to police as, according to him, he thought his right-wing views were illegal. Though he claimed he did not advocate for violence or wish to encourage terrorism, Morrice was nonetheless charged and convicted on 10 counts of terrorism, which included disseminating terrorist publications, encouraging terrorism and possessing explosive substances. Upon his arrest in his home in Paulton on August 20, 2020, Morrice was discovered to be in possession of manifestos of far-right extremist terrorists and had a video of the Christchurch mosque shooting, with a clip of himself playing the guitar as the massacre took place superimposed in the video.”
Germany
Deutsche Welle: Pandemic Spurred Extremism, Says German Domestic Intelligence
“German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said that both right-wing and left-wing extremism had risen in Germany over the past year, as he presented the domestic intelligence agency's (BfV) annual report in Berlin. Most alarmingly, Seehofer said that 40% of the 33,300 far-right extremists in the country were categorized as “violence-oriented,” the highest proportion ever. There had also been a 10% rise in the number of far-right violent crimes over the past year to 1,023, of which 842 were cases of physical assault. The BfV also registered a rise in left-wing extremists: 34,300 in 2020, compared to 33,500 in 2019, of whom 9,600 were considered potentially violent. There was also a significant rise in the number of violent far-left crimes, the BfV said — 1,237 were registered. Of these, 423 were cases of physical assault. Seehofer said that the coronavirus pandemic had exacerbated the dangers of extremism over the past year, with various extremist groups exploiting anti-lockdown protests to promote their agenda. “This is not just a special health situation, this is also a special security situation,” Seehofer said of the pandemic, before highlighting the role played by so-called Reichsbürger — a group of conspiracy theorists who deny the legitimacy of the German state.”
Australia
Brisbane Times: Terror Plotters Drew Inspiration From 2018 Bourke St Attack, Court Told
“On a Friday night in 2018, as Melbourne reeled from the terror attack hours earlier in Bourke Street, Ertunc Eriklioglu excitedly told his brother and their friend about what he had seen and read in the news. “That’s amazing,” Eriklioglu said of Hassan Khalif Shire Ali’s actions in setting his ute alight and then stabbing three men before he was fatally shot by police. Much-loved restaurateur Sisto Malaspina, one of the men stabbed, died. “Let’s do something, yeah? Let’s do something,” Eriklioglu said to younger brother Samed and their friend, Hanifi Halis, in the garage of Ertunc’s Dallas home. From that night and for the following 10 days the trio began planning and preparing to conduct their own terror attack on Melbourne, based on buying a .22 semi-automatic assault rifle with an intention to shoot and kill as many people as possible. The three men drew inspiration and motivation from Shire Ali’s actions in their wish to conduct jihad and advance extreme Islam by gunning down “non-believers”, prosecutor Darren Renton told the County Court at Tuesday’s plea hearing. They were prepared to die as martyrs and went as far as paying a $450 cash deposit for the rifle, Mr Renton said, but never got their hands on the weapon before their arrests on November 20, 2018.”
Technology
The Hill: Wray Suggests Limits On FBI Social Media Tracking A 'Lesson Learned' After Jan. 6
“FBI Director Christopher Wray on Tuesday suggested possibly revisiting limits on the agency’s ability to monitor social media for potential threats. Wray, testifying before the House Oversight and Reform Committee, pointed to limits on government surveillance as a possible “lesson learned” in the months following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. “We have very specific policies that have been at the department for a long time that govern our ability to use social media. And when we have an authorized purpose and proper predication there's a lot of things we can do on social media, and we do do and we aggressively do. But what we can't do on social media is without proper predication and an authorized purpose just monitor — just in case — on social media,” Wray said in response to a question from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). “Now if the policies should be changed to reflect that — that might be one of the important lessons learned coming out of this whole experience. But that's not something that currently the FBI has either the authority or certainly the resources frankly to do.”
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