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Eye on Extremism
December 13, 2021
“A Somali commando unit trained by Central Intelligence Agency operatives and U.S. Navy SEALs has become so entangled in local political power struggles that it has ceased operations against the Islamist militants it was created to fight. Until last year, the 600-strong Puntland Security Force had reported directly to U.S. forces and was largely independent of Somali government control. But now the unit, the main force combating Islamic State’s Somali affiliate, ISIS-Somalia, has abandoned the front lines and returned to its headquarters in the northeastern port of Bosaso, overlooking the Gulf of Aden, according to U.S. officials and Somalis familiar with the situation. The troops have dug defensive positions around their headquarters building in a standoff with forces loyal to the state president of Puntland, a semiautonomous region, who is trying to bring the unit under his control. The unit has also halted missions against al-Shabaab, al Qaeda’s local franchise and the most powerful insurgent group in Somalia. “Already they have vacated all of their front-line positions, and ISIS and al-Shabaab have free rein to move around and expand—nobody’s stopping them,” said Mohamed Mubarak, a Somali political analyst and executive director of an anticorruption charity, marqaati.”
Associated Press: Gunmen Attack Mosque In Nigeria’s Troubled North, Killing 16
“Gunmen attacked a rural village in northern Nigeria, killing 16 worshippers at a mosque and kidnapping others, said a local official. The assault on Ba’are village in the Mashegu area of Niger state lasted for hours on Thursday, local government chairman Alhassan Isah Mazakuka said. Dozens of the assailants arrived on motorcycles and rampaged through the village, killing people praying at the mosque and looting, he said. “Those people (the gunmen) are dangerous,” he told The Associated Press in a phone interview on Friday. “They killed 16 and kidnapped many of our people. We don’t even know the number they kidnapped because they are uncountable.” Nigerian police confirmed the incident but said only nine residents were killed. The police have in the past been accused of downplaying casualty figures in such attacks. The attack is the latest in the escalating violence in northwestern and northcentral Nigeria where armed groups have been targeting remote communities, killing and abducting residents for ransoms. Earlier this week it was confirmed that 23 travelers were slain in a different part of the West African country’s troubled northern region.”
Syria
Al Monitor: Jihadis From Syria Blamed For Multiple Attacks On Iraqi Kurds
“A recent string of attacks targeting Kurdish forces in northern Iraq in areas disputed between the central government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has raised questions about where the attackers came from and how long they have been in the area. Local sources have claimed to Al-Monitor that Islamic State (IS) forces operating there now include foreign nationals. Yet another attack attributed to IS on Dec. 6 targeted Kurdish peshmerga forces in a village in the Makhmour district of Ninevah province in northern Iraq. Shortly before, the village of Liheban, in neighboring Kirkuk province and with a Kurdish population, had been entirely evacuated by the local inhabitants after IS attacks on it and other locations nearby. A joint operation between peshmerga and Iraqi security forces later reportedly secured the village. A peshmerga commander for the Qaratapa-Hamrin area had on Dec. 4 told Kurdish-language media that “over 200 militants” from the Jundallah jihadi group had recently pledged allegiance to IS in Syria and had then been “sent to Iraq to escalate attacks in all provinces.” He added, “Someone close to [defunct IS leader Abu Bakr] al-Baghdadi is leading them.”
Iraq
Kurdistan 24: SDF Hands Over 100 ISIS Detainees To Iraqi Government
“The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) has handed over 100 Iraqi ISIS detainees to the Iraqi government, the group announced on Saturday. “The process was done according to a work schedule that was prepared in advance between our forces and the Iraqi side to hand over wanted ISIS members to the Iraqi judiciary,” the SDF media center said. “The transfer took place across the official Syrian-Iraqi border, where the arrival of those members was secured by our forces to the Iraqi army.” The SDF said it has transferred several such batches of ISIS detainees who hold Iraqi citizenship to Iraq. However, hundreds of them still languish in SDF prisons across northeast Syria. In 2019, there were also reports that the SDF handed over 150 ISIS fighters to Iraq. The SDF has also handed over foreign fighters to Iraq in some cases.”
Afghanistan
Al Jazeera: Deadly Blasts Hit Afghan Capital Kabul
“At least two people have been killed and four others injured in two separate bomb explosions in the Afghan capital Kabul, according to the Taliban government. “Two civilians have been killed and three others were wounded” when a bomb exploded on Friday on a minibus in the Dasht-e-Barchi district of Kabul, the Taliban’s interior ministry spokesman Sayed Khosti told reporters. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks. Dasht-e-Barchi is largely populated by the mostly Shia Hazara community, which for years has been the target of violence by the Islamic State in Khorasan Province, ISKP (ISIS-K), an affiliate of the ISIL (ISIS) armed group. In November, a similar bomb attack on a minibus in Dasht-e-Barchi killed two people and wounded five others. That attack was claimed by the ISKP. The ISKP claimed an October suicide attack on a Shia mosque in Kandahar in which at least 60 people were killed and scores others injured. That attack came a week after another deadly mosque blast claimed by the group in northern Kunduz province killed more than 60 people. Who are ISKP, the Taliban’s most serious threat in Afghanistan? The Taliban has promised to crack down on the armed group, attacking their hideouts, especially in the country’s south and east.”
Pakistan
Voice Of America: Militants Kill Policeman Guarding Pakistan Polio Team
“Officials in northwestern Pakistan said Saturday militants shot and killed one police officer and seriously injured another as they were escorting polio vaccinators. The attack in Tank, a remote district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on the border with Afghanistan, came during a five-day drive to vaccinate 6.5 million children against the polio virus, said a provincial government spokesman. Local police and witnesses told reporters the assailants riding a motorcycle targeted the polio security team and no health worker was hurt. The outlawed Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, known as the Pakistani Taliban, took credit for the attack. Its spokesman, Muhammad Khurasani, claimed the attack had killed two police personnel, although the group is notorious for issuing inflated details for such attacks. Saturday’s violence came two days after the TTP called off a 30-day cease-fire with the Pakistani government, accusing the other side of not honoring the deal’s terms. The TTP denounces the polio vaccination campaign as a government instrument of spying on them while some Islamic groups in Pakistan see the vaccine as a Western conspiracy to sterilize Muslim children. Afghanistan and Pakistan are the only two countries where the wild polio virus still infects and cripples children.”
Yemen
“The Saudi-led Arab coalition to Restore Legitimacy in Yemen continues to support the Yemeni national army and popular resistance with airstrikes targeting the Iran-backed Houthi militias in the oil-rich Marib province. More than 145 Houthi militants were killed and 16 military vehicles got destroyed in 29 operations in Marib during the past 24 hours, the coalition announced, SPA reported. Also, Yemen’s Information Minister Moammar Al-Eryani said that a Hezbollah military expert Akram Al-Sayed died when Yemeni army troops shelled Houthi positions south of Marib, inflicting a blow to a Houthi militia push to seize control of Marib city. “Sayed, 35, entered Yemen in August 2017 as part of a group of terrorists affiliated with Hezbollah. On December 3, he was sent with several Hezbollah experts to Marib’s southern fronts to lead operations and implement an Iranian scheme to escalate the pace of confrontations in the province,” the minister explained. The Hezbollah expert was killed alongside Houthi militia commander Abu Ashraf al-Asadi and eight other Houthi members, he noted. “His corps was evacuated in an ambulance to the al-Jouba area before being transferred to the Saada governorate, where the bodies of dozens of Iranian and Hezbollah experts and fighters are buried in full secrecy.”
Middle East
The National: New Agreement To Combat Money Laundering And Terrorism Financing Among Non-Profits
“The UAE’s Ministry of Community Development established a joint mechanism with the UAE Financial Intelligence Unit for the co-ordination of efforts to combat money laundering, financing of terrorist groups and illicit organisations in the non-profit organisations sector, reported state news agency Wam. The move was announced by Hessa bint Essa Buhumaid, Minister of Community Development, and Minister of State Ahmed Al Sayegh. The co-operation will also enable the exchange of information on NPOs with relation to cases of money laundering, financing of terrorist groups and illicit organisations and aim to establish a secure electronic link for the purpose of exchanging information, reported Wam. The UAE, the Arab world’s second-largest economy, has strict laws to prevent money laundering and the financing of terrorism and has issued several regulations over the past couple of years to clamp down on financial crimes. Earlier this year, the country established the Executive Office of Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing, an agency to deal with money launderers, organisations and people suspected of financing terrorists and organised crime. In November last year, the Ministry of Economy set up an anti-money laundering department, while a court was established in Abu Dhabi to tackle money laundering and tax evasion.”
Egypt
Al Monitor: Sinai Tribes Hunt Islamic State Bomb Makers
“An association of Sinai tribes allied with the Egyptian army is hunting down the explosives experts of the Islamic State (IS) branch in this Egyptian territory, which will potentially weaken the branch even more and deprive it of its last survival technique. IS has resorted to planting explosives on roads used by Egyptian army troops and policemen fighting them in northern and central Sinai. The terrorist organization succeeded in killing a sizeable number of army troops using this method. However, the Union of Sinai Tribes, which consists of most of the tribes in northern and central Sinai, works to deprive IS of this tactic by tracking those making the explosives and also those who plant them. It has so far succeeded in killing several explosives experts and locating explosive devices that would have cost the Egyptian army and police many lives. The union says it will maintain this drive to the end. “We are now focused on the people making and planting these explosives, given the heavy human and material toll they cause,” a federation official told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media. “We will keep pursuing these people until Sinai is totally safe,” he added.”
Nigeria
Sahara Reporters: Boko Haram Attacks Civilian Joint Task Force Base In Borno, Kills Two Vigilantes
“Militants from the Islamic State-backed faction of Boko Haram, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), formerly known as Jamā'at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da'wah wa'l-Jihād have attacked a Civilian Joint Task Force base at Mainok, Borno State, killing two officers. Mainok is about 60 kilometres west of Maiduguri, the Borno State capital. File photo used to illustrate story. Sources told SaharaReporters that the terrorists who disguised themselves as military men and came in what looked like a military convoy, went straight to the base and attacked the personnel. They said many other vigilantes fled into the bush during the attack. Since the death of JAS leader, Abubakar Shekau, ISWAP has been consolidating its grip on locations around Lake Chad. Just recently, it appointed Wali Sani Shuwaram, a 45-year-old as the new leader (Wali) of ISWAP in Lake Chad. The sect’s membership has swollen with the defection of hundreds of Boko Haram fighters previously under Shekau. The terror group has caused over 50,000 deaths and displaced millions of Nigerians mainly in Adamawa, Borno, and Yobe states.”
Africa
Associated Press: Burkina Faso, Niger Force Says It Has Killed 100 Extremists
“Burkina Faso’s military says that its joint operation with Niger’s army has killed at least 100 extremist rebels. The Burkina Faso armed forces said on Friday that its joint force with neighboring Niger also arrested 20 suspects and seized significant equipment from the rebels in the past two weeks. At least 13 soldiers were killed during this time and seven others were wounded, it said. The report on the militaries’ campaign against extremist rebels comes amid weeks of anti-government protests in Burkina Faso in which crowds have demonstrated against the government’s inability to stem attacks by groups allied to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group across the West African nation. Burkina Faso President Roch Marc Christian Kabore sacked his prime minister earlier this week in what analysts say was an attempt to show a stronger response to the extremist violence. Escalating jihadi attacks in Burkina Faso this year have killed thousands and displaced more than 1 million people. Last month saw the deadliest violence against the country’s security forces in recent memory, with more than 50 gendarmes killed in the Sahel region.”
Reuters: Suspected Islamists Kill 16 People In Eastern Congo
“Suspected Islamist militants killed 16 people this week in two rural towns in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a local official, a civil society leader and a resident said on Friday. They said the attackers belonged to the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a militia linked to Islamic State that is accused of killing hundreds of civilians in eastern Congo since 2019 and carrying out a string of recent bombings in Uganda. The attack took place on Wednesday night in the rural commune of Mangina and nearby Masiriko in Congo's North Kivu province, the sources said. An unknown number of people were also kidnapped, said Freddy Mbayayi, deputy mayor of Mangina. “It was horrible to see mothers, children and elderly people fleeing the cruelty of the ADF,” said Pelka Josaphat, a resident of Mangina. “The victims were killed by machetes and within my family four people are not responding to calls because they were carried away by the enemy,” he told Reuters. Congo and Uganda last month launched joint military operations against the ADF, with Uganda mounting air and artillery strikes against their bases and sending thousands of troops across the border.”
United Kingdom
BBC News: Wissam Ziad: 'Dangerous' Man Admits Spreading Terror Material
“A man who encouraged support for terrorist groups has been sentenced. Wissam Ziad's electronic devices contained a “colossal” number of files with propaganda for extremist groups, police said. He was arrested after using social media groups to share material. The 20-year-old was sentenced at Manchester Crown Court for three years and five months in a youth offenders' institute after admitting eight charges under the Terrorism Act. They included six counts of disseminating terrorist publications, one count of encouraging terrorism and another of supporting a proscribed organisation. Officers from Counter Terrorism Policing North West (CTPNW) said Ziad first came to their attention when one of his acquaintances was stopped at London Stansted Airport in September 2019. They found links to Islamic extremist material on a chat group called 'Roma Pizza', which was administered by Ziad. Police said the conversations ranged from general chat to the sharing of terrorist material and views about the Islamic State group (ISIS). Ziad, who has dual British and Jordanian nationality, was arrested in May 2020 and his phone and computer seized, police said.”
Germany
Deutsche Welle: German Police Foil Terror Plot In Hamburg
“German police revealed on Friday that they prevented a planned Islamist attack in the northern city of Hamburg over the summer. Andy Grote, top security official for the city, which like the cities of Berlin and Bremen is a state in its own right, said that the plot had been “very, very serious.” On August 26, police arrested a 20-year-old German-Moroccan man after he tried to buy a firearm and hand grenade on the dark web — unwittingly from an undercover investigator. The man had “numerous contacts to the Salafi-Islamist scene,” Grote said in a press conference. The suspect has been in detention since August after a judge ruled that he had been planning to carry out an attack, police said. Investigators later searched a flat used by the man and found an array of chemicals and shrapnel used in bomb-making. Such a bomb could have caused “serious or evenly deadly injuries” according to the police. Authorities also found Islamist propaganda videos and instructions for building a bomb at his parents' flat. Further raids were carried out on suspected contacts across Germany resulting in the confiscation of phones, tablets and hard drives. The man faces up to 10 years in prison. According to Hamburg's chief prosecutor Jörg Fröhlich, he was yet to comment on the allegations.”
Canada
“John Letts, the father of a Canadian who has spent years in detention in Syria for allegedly joining the Islamic State, is urging the federal government to repatriate his son, saying he should be allowed to stand trial in Canada. Mr. Letts, who is from Canada but lives in Britain, is in Ottawa this week meeting with Members of Parliament to advocate for his son Jack’s return. Jack was a dual U.K.-Canada citizen, but Britain stripped his citizenship in 2019. Mr. Letts told The Globe and Mail his son converted to Islam when he was 15. At 18, Jack left the family’s home in Oxford for what he said would be a vacation in Jordan, but he never returned. He studied Arabic in Kuwait, then went to Iraq and Syria. Jack admitted to joining ISIS in an interview with the BBC in 2019, but Mr. Letts said his son was under duress during the television appearance. In the interview, Jack said he made a mistake. Mr. Letts said Jack once told him that he spoke out against the Islamic State in Syria. For the past four years, Mr. Letts said, he has had almost no contact with Jack. “You can’t sit and have that conversation, like, ‘What the hell did you do, kid? Why did you make this decision?’ I’ve never had that chance.”
Southeast Asia
The Straits Times: Singaporean ISIS Fighter Urged Friend To Stage Terror Attacks On Crowds, Police
“They were in the same secret society when they were in their early 20s and spent time together every day. But Yan (not his real name) lost contact with Megat Shahdan Abdul Samad when Shahdan, then 24, was sentenced to six years' jail for burglary in 2002. In 2015, Yan was surprised to receive a message on social media from Shahdan. It was the start of a two-year reconnection that saw Shahdan try to radicalise his old friend and persuade Yan to stage lone wolf terror attacks here such as driving a truck into a crowd and attacking a police station. By then, Yan had come into contact with officers from the Internal Security Department (ISD), who guided him on how to engage Shahdan in a bid to get information on the radicalised Singaporean and steer him away from causing harm in Singapore. Yan learnt that Shahdan, who began sending him messages on religion, had moved to the Middle East for work in 2014. After they reconnected, they stayed in touch almost every day, often into the wee hours. Soon, Shahdan - who came under the radar of security agencies after appearing in an Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) propaganda video in 2017 - let on that he was in Syria. “I thought he was working at a mosque or an Islamic organisation,” Yan told The Straits Times in a recent phone interview, recalling the conversations they had after they reconnected.”
Technology
“Earlier this year, as Twitter raced to roll out Spaces, its new live audio chat feature, some employees asked how the company planned to make sure the service didn’t become a platform for hate speech, bullying and calls to violence. In fact, there was no plan. In a presentation to colleagues shortly before its public launch in May, a top Twitter executive, Kayvon Beykpour, acknowledged that people were likely to break Twitter’s rules in the audio chats, according to an attendee who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal matters. But he and other Twitter executives — convinced that Spaces would help revive the sluggish company — refused to slow down. Fast forward six months and those problems have become reality. Taliban supporters, white nationalists, and anti-vaccine activists sowing coronavirus misinformation have hosted live audio broadcasts on Spaces that hundreds of people have tuned in to, according to researchers, users and screenshots viewed by The Washington Post. Other Spaces conversations have disparaged transgender people and Black Americans. These chats are neither policed nor moderated by Twitter, the company acknowledges, because it does not have human moderators or technology that can scan audio in real-time. “Dear @TwitterSafety, ISIS recruiters are active on Twitter Spaces.”
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