[Quqnoos] A top US commander in Afghanistan says an operation has been launched to drive the Taliban out of Kandahar city
The commander of foreign troops in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, says operations have begun to secure key roads and districts surrounding the city of Kandahar, a Taliban spiritual stronghold.
"That process has already begun, and it will ramp up in the weeks and months ahead and it will of course have a significant time period to it as well," the AFP quoted Gen McChrystal as saying.
Operation Kandahar was said as the next step of Operation Moshtarak in the neighbouring Helmand province, which targeted Taliban's strongholds in Marjah and Nad Ali districts.
Helmand's offensive, the first push of a 12-18 month military plan, was described as a successful push to drive the Taliban militants out of key areas in the two restive districts.
The US military commanders have predicted 2010 a bloody year for foreign troops based in Afghanistan.
[Al Arabiya Latest] Sudan's government and a Darfur rebel group, the Liberation and Justice Movement (LJM), signed Thursday a framework peace accord, as talks with a larger Justice and Equality Movement appeared to falter.
The agreement for a ceasefire and talks was signed in Doha by Ghazi Salahuddin, an adviser to Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir, and LJM leader El-Tijani El-Sissi, weeks after Khartoum signed a similar accord with Darfur's powerful insurgent Justice and Equality Movement (JEM).
JEM dismissed Thursday's deal, saying the LJM, an umbrella group of small splinter factions, had no military force on the ground, but senior JEM official al-Tahir al-Feki told Reuters his movement would not immediately act on its threat to walk out of Doha in protest at the deal.
"This is an important step which will give momentum to peace efforts in Darfur," said Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Taha, who attended the signing of Qatari-sponsored agreement.
"We reiterate the commitment of the government of Sudan to press ahead with talks following this framework agreement."
The deal with the alliance of splinter rebel factions, which was formed last month, came after a deadline set for the completion of peace talks between Khartoum and the larger rebel group JEM passed without agreement on Monday.
The target was set by a framework accord inked last month and hailed by the international community as a major step towards bringing peace to Darfur, but the talks have since run into difficulty.
Sudanese authorities re-arrested 15 JEM members on Wednesday after having released them following the wavering truce.
One key rebel group -- the Sudan Liberation Army faction of Abdelwahid Nur -- has so far refused to have any negotiations with the government and earlier this month engaged in fierce clashes with the army in the fertile Jebel Marra plateau in the heart of Darfur.
Since ethnic minority rebels first rose up against the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum in 2003, the Darfur conflict has claimed some 300,000 lives and left 2.7 million people homeless, according to U.N. figures.
Posted by: Fred ||2010-03-19 00:00 ||Comments
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File under: Govt of Sudan
[Maghrebia] An Algiers court on Tuesday sentenced a Mauritanian citizen to three years in prison for "belonging to an armed terrorist group", APS reported on Wednesday (March 17th). Mohamed Ould Moulay Esaid reportedly left Mauritania for Mali in 2007, where he was recruited by a terrorist group active in the Algeria-Mali border region. After he and 25 other terrorists were intercepted by Algerian troops in the southern region of Ouargla, he fled to Batna and joined the "Death Brigade", AFP reported. According to a judicial source, the Mauritanian and a "significant" number of other terrorists later clashed with Algerian soldiers in neighbouring Tebessa.
Posted by: Fred ||2010-03-19 00:00 ||Comments
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File under: al-Qaeda in North Africa
[Al Arabiya Latest] Yemen's Houthi rebels freed 178 government soldiers and civilians on Wednesday, a day after Sanaa accused them of dragging their feet over implementation of a truce deal to end a northern war, Al Arabiya reported.
A top Yemeni security body said on Tuesday that the northern rebels were not fully complying with a deal struck in February to end a conflict that has raged on and off since 2004 and drew in neighboring oil exporter Saudi Arabia last year.
The prisoners were handed over in the northern province of Saada that was the scene of most of the fighting, and they would be transported to Sanaa on Thursday, Al Arabiya quoted officials in a mediation committee as saying.
Sanaa, struggling to stabilize a fractious country, came under heavy pressure to end the northern war to focus on fighting al-Qaeda after the group's Yemen-based arm claimed responsibility for a failed December attack on a U.S.-bound plane.
Western governments and neighboring Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, fear al-Qaeda is exploiting instability on many fronts in Yemen to recruit and train militants for attacks in the region and beyond.
Analysts say the truce agreement between the government and rebels, who belong to the minority Zaydi sect, was unlikely to last as it does not address the insurgents' complaints of discrimination by Sanaa.
A rebel spokesman denied on Tuesday that the insurgents were using delay tactics and promised to free captive Yemeni soldiers within 48 hours, Al Arabiya reported at the time. Al Arabiya said those freed on Wednesday included foot soldiers, officers and civilians.
Sanaa is also trying to contain violence in its south, where clashes between separatist protesters, often armed, and government security forces have left a trail of dead and wounded on both sides.
[Al Arabiya Latest] Yemen has beefed up security around oil and maritime installations for fear of retaliation by al-Qaeda after several strikes against the jihadist network, the interior ministry said on Wednesday.
"Yemeni authorities have increased security measures around oil and maritime installations, in addition to securing the routes of oil tankers," the ministry website said.
"Firm orders have been given to security bodies and the coast guard to up their alert levels in order to counter any possible terror attack by al-Qaeda elements," it added.
Retaliation attacks
It said that attacks could take place "in retaliation to the qualitative and severe strikes that targeted terror hideouts in several provinces."
Security forces in the southern provinces of Abyan, Aden, Hadramut and Shabwa, as well as Hudayda and Taez further north, were ordered to "double coastal surveillance to spot suspicious boats that could be used by terrorist elements in revenge attacks," it said.
Al-Qaeda has in the past targeted oil facilities in Yemen, which produces less than 300,000 barrels of oil a day, more than half of which is exported.
The impoverished country also has a gas terminal in Balhaf, in the south.
Yemen said it killed three members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula -- the local branch of the global network, in Sunday air strikes on suspected hideouts in Moudia, in Abyan.
It said the AQAP chief in Abyan, Jamil Nasser Abdullah al-Ambari, 25, who figured on a list of 152 wanted militants, was killed in the attacks.
The air force targeted a suspected al-Qaeda training camp in the same area on Monday, the defense ministry said.
A brief statement said the raids were carried out in Moudia, but did not specify whether anyone was killed or wounded in the latest strike.
"Targeting terrorist cells"
On Wednesday, the ministry elaborated that the Sunday air strike "targeted a terrorist cell in the village of Jizat al-Qinan, in Moudia, which was plotting terrorist attacks."
It said that the "severe strikes" against AQAP were forcing militants to flee to "remote areas" claiming that the authorities have succeeded in "isolating the elements of al-Qaeda in Abyan, Shabwa and Maarib, and other provinces."
"These elements are not able to leave their hideouts or appear in public," it claimed.
Yemen has intensified operations against the local al-Qaeda branch since December, when air strikes killed 34 suspected members of AQAP on Dec. 17 in an attack on an alleged training camp in Abyan.
The same number of militants were allegedly killed in another strike on Dec. 24 which targeted a meeting of AQAP militants in Shabwa.
AQAP claimed responsibility for a failed attempt to blow up a US airliner on Christmas Day.
Top U.S. general David Petraeus said last month that al-Qaeda is becoming less of a threat across much of the Middle East and south Asia with the clear exception of Yemen.
"Saudi Arabia and the other peninsula countries have continued to make gains with the obvious exception of Yemen," Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, told NBC television's "Meet the Press" program.
The United States has reportedly supplied Yemen with intelligence and other support in its operations against the jihadists.
Posted by: Fred ||2010-03-19 00:00 ||Comments
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File under: al-Qaeda in Arabia
[Dawn] The Philadelphia-area woman who authorities say dubbed herself "Jihad Jane" online pleaded not guilty on Thursday in federal court to a four-count indictment charging her in an overseas terrorist plot.
She was arrested in October 2009 in Philadelphia while returning to the United States.
LaRose spent most of her life in Texas, where she dropped out of high school, married at 16 and again at 24, and racked up a few minor arrests, records show.
After a second divorce, she followed a boyfriend to Pennsylvania in about 2004 and began caring for his father while he worked long hours, sometimes on the road. In federal court to a four-count indictment charging her in an overseas terrorist plot.
Colleen LaRose, 46, of Pennsburg, appeared in court wearing a green jumpsuit and corn rows in her blond hair. A May 3 trial date was set.
She was accused of conspiring with jihadist fighters and pledging to commit murder in the name of a Muslim holy war. Authorities say she wanted to kill a Swedish artist who had offended Muslims.
Authorities say she grew acquainted online with violent co-conspirators from around the world. They say she posted a YouTube video in 2008 saying she was "desperate to do something" to ease the suffering of Muslims.2005, she swallowed a handful of pills in a failed suicide attempt, telling police she was upset over the death of her father -- but did not want to die.
As she moved through her 40s without a job or any outside hobbies, her boyfriend said, she started spending more time online.
Though her boyfriend, Kurt Gorman, did not consider her religious, and she apparently never joined a mosque, LaRose had by 2008 declared herself "desperate" to help suffering Muslims in the YouTube video.
"In my view, she sort of slipped sideways into Islam.... There may have been some seduction into it, by one or more people," said Temple University psychologist Frank Farley.
LaRose and Gorman shared an apartment with his father in Pennsburg, a quaint if isolated town an hour northwest of Philadelphia. Just days after the father died last August, she stole Gorman's passport and fled to Europe without telling him, making good on her online pledge to try to kill in the name of Allah, according to the indictment.
From June 2008 through her Aug. 23, 2009, departure, the woman who also called herself "Fatima Rose" went online to recruit male fighters for the cause, recruit women with Western passports to marry them, and raise money for the holy war, the indictment charged.
She had also agreed to marry one of her overseas contacts, a man from South Asia who said he could deal bombs and explosives, according to e-mails recovered by authorities.
He also told her in a March 2009 e-mail to go to Sweden to find the artist, Lars Vilks.
"I will make this my goal till I achieve it or die trying," she wrote back, adding that her blonde American looks would help her blend in.
Vilks questioned the sophistication of the plotters, seven of whom were rounded up in Ireland last week, just before LaRose's indictment was unsealed. Still, he said he was glad LaRose never got to him.
Although she had written the Swedish embassy in March 2009 to ask how to obtain residency, and joined his online artists group in September, there is no evidence from court documents that she ever made it to Sweden.
Instead, she was arrested returning to Philadelphia on Oct. 15.
#1: D *** NG IT, WHATZ A GIRL TO DO - She can't find herself a PROPER MILTERR KILLER to love, abuse her in righteous anti-US indignation; nor can cook PENN STATE FAST FOOD.
NUTHIN TO DO SAVE WIPE OUT THE 'BAMA "CRIMSON TIDE"....
[Dawn] The charming Pakistani-American man accused of scouting out the deadly 2008 Mumbai siege and plotting to kill a Danish cartoonist pleaded guilty to terrorism charges in a Chicago court.
David Coleman Headley, 49, admitted to using a friend's immigration company as a cover for surveillance activities in India and Denmark on behalf of two different Pakistan-based terrorist groups.
The Washington-born son of a former Pakistani diplomat and American woman, Headley reportedly befriended Bollywood stars and even dated an actress during his lengthy surveillance trips.
In a plot that reads like a movie thriller, Headley spent two years casing out Mumbai, including taking boat tours around the city's harbor to scope out landing sites for the attackers who killed 166 people, including six Americans.
Charging documents also indicated Headley was so eager to kill a Danish cartoonist who sparked outrage with cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed that he began working seriously on that plot two months before the bloody 60-hour Mumbai siege which began on November 26, 2008.
India and Washington blamed the deadly rampage on Pakistan's banned militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). The attacks stalled a fragile four-year peace process between the two nuclear-armed south Asian rivals.
Headley -- who said he began working with LeT in 2002 -- also had Bollywood and one of India's most sacred Hindu temples in his sights as he began plotting a second India attack during a March 2009 surveillance trip.
Prosecutors said the potential targets also included the National Defense College, Chabad Houses in "several cities" in India Prosecutors and Shiv Sena, a political party in India with roots in Hindu nationalism.
Headley told prosecutors after his October arrest that he changed his name from Daood Gilani in 2006 so he could "present himself in India as an American who was neither Muslim nor Pakistani," charging documents said.
Indian media have reported that Headley befriended Bollywood stars and developed a reputation as a fitness fanatic while staying in an expatriate enclave in south Mumbai near the US consulate during five lengthy surveillance trips.
He reportedly lived a more devout Muslim life in Chicago with his wife and children and prosecutors said he attending LeT terror training camps in Pakistan in 2002 and 2003.
Headley began working with an Al-Qaeda-linked group in Pakistan called Harakat-ul-Jihad-Islami on the Danish plot after LeT became distracted with the final planning for the Mumbai attack, charging documents said.
He was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare airport in October as he was on his way to deliver 13 surveillance videos he obtained after pretending to be interested in buying ads in Jyllands-Posten, Denmark's highest circulation daily.
Headley was later charged in the Mumbai attacks, as was his old friend from military school in Pakistan, Tahawwur Hussain Rana.
Rana, who owns the Chicago-based First World Immigration Services that Headley allegedly used as a cover, insists he is a pacifist who was "duped" by his friend. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
#1: TOPIX/PAKISTANI DEFENCE FORUM > TERROR CLOUDING REGION. US, UK, RUSSIAN SPY CHIEFS FLOCK TO INDIA [West-South Asia];
and
TOPIX/TIMES OF INDJUH > [Maoist Politburo Member] KISHANJI THREATENS COUNTER-ATTACK, i.e.
VIOLENT COUNTER-REVOLUTION. Also calls for 48-Hout gener strike in 7 major Cities-Regions.
#2: NEWS KERALA > HEADLEY ATTENDED FIVE TERROR TRAINING CAMPS IN PAKISTAN, + HEADLEY CASE POINTS TO THREATS FROM HOME-GROWN TERRORISTS [ + International].
* SAME > ANTONY: PAKISTAN "NOT TOUGH ENOUGH" IN DEALING WITH TERROR/MILITANTS CAMPS OPERATING FRM ITS OWN SOIL.
* SAME > INDIA WAITING ON HEADLEY'S STATEMENT.
*** cough *** cough ***... methinks USA, INDJUH [etal] MAY NOT WANT TO FIND OUT THE TRUTH?
[Dawn] Suspected member of Tehreek-e-Taliban, Ismail Mehsud has been arrested from Sohrab Goth area of Karachi.
Security forces told DawnNews that Ismail Mehsud has been nabbed by intelligence agency after a report that he had been preparing to carry out terror attacks within the city.
Security Agency claim to have recovered arms and ammunitions in his possession.
The suspect has been shifted to unidentified locations for further investigation.
Officials said the U.S. military was ordered to divert a shipment of smart bunker-buster bombs from Israel to a military base in Diego Garcia. They said the shipment of 387 smart munitions had been slated to join pre-positioned U.S. military equipment in Israel Air Force bases.
"This was a political decision," an official said.
In 2008, the United States approved an Israeli request for bunker-busters capable of destroying underground facilities, including Iranian nuclear weapons sites. Officials said delivery of the weapons was held up by the administration of President Barack Obama.
Since taking office, Obama has refused to approve any major Israeli requests for U.S. weapons platforms or advanced systems. Officials said this included proposed Israeli procurement of AH-64D Apache attack helicopters, refueling systems, advanced munitions and data on a stealth variant of the F-15E.
"All signs indicate that this will continue in 2010," a congressional source familiar with the Israeli military requests said. "This is really an embargo, but nobody talks about it publicly."
Under the plan, the U.S. military was to have stored 195 BLU-110 and 192 BLU-117 munitions in unspecified air force bases in Israel. The U.S. military uses four Israeli bases for the storage of about $400 million worth of pre-positioned equipment meant for use by either Washington or Jerusalem in any regional war.
In January 2010, the administration agreed to an Israeli request to double the amount of U.S. military stockpiles to $800 million. Officials said the bunker-busters as well as Patriot missile interceptors were included in the agreement.
The decision to divert the BLU munitions was taken amid the crisis between Israel and the United States over planned construction of Jewish homes in Jerusalem. The administration, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has warned that Washington could reduce military aid to Israel because of its construction policy.
In 2007, after its war in Lebanon, Israel requested 2,000 BLU-109 live bombs from the United States. The 2,000-pound bomb, produced by Boeing and coupled with a laser guidance kit, was designed to penetrate concrete bunkers and other underground hardened sites.
Israeli ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, was quoted as saying that his country faced its biggest crisis with the United States since 1975. A pro-Israel lobbyist said Oren was referring to the current U.S. embargo, which echoed a decision taken 35 years ago by then-President Gerald Ford after Israel's refusal to withdraw from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. Oren has since denied the remark.
#1: He's gonna do this sort of #### to the West all through the movie, isn't he?
Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain|| 2010-03-19 00:06 ||CommentsTop||
#2: I imagine then the Isrealis will have to develop their own version of the bunker buster. And it will be just as effective, plus no Bamawafflestrings will be attached, either.
#5: I think Bambi and his ilk were just waiting for an excuse to lambaste Israel. They got it when Biden was humiliated. Now all the anti-zionist parts of the modern dhimocratic party can come out into the open.
#6: He's gonna do this sort of #### to the West all through the movie, isn't he?
Not to sound alarmist, but I think there's something wrong with him. Go back and look at the exchange between him and Brett last night on Fox News. Mixing up Hawaii and Haiti??? Seriously? He's blamed other gaffs (57 states, 10K dead in a tornado) on campaign exhaustion, but I'm beginning to think something else is going on. Really.
#8: So The One has denied the Israelis bunker busters.
I hear that the Israelis have other weapons that can take out bunkers.
It would be very interesting if the Israelis used them.
#10: Fail to see how this a snub to Israel, more like spreading possible responsibility when/if the Iranian strikes occur. Now the Israelis can say "It wasn't us, the US didn't give us the proper munitions, see???"
I hear the Russians have pretty advanced bunker busters and thermobaric bombs, and nuclear armed Chechan terrorists, who wants that?
#11: Not to sound alarmist, but I think there's something wrong with him
Redirect alert. This is red meat for the Kos/MoveOnner crowd, but for the rest of the nation it serves as a foreign-policy distraction from Obama's domestic incompetence and failures.
#12: If this is indeed a political move it is a very stupid move. In the short term it will force Israel to use Nukes in the imminent attack on Iran due to shortage of bunker busters.
In the long term, it will lead to increased R&D and mastery of BBs technology and manufacturing by Israel's military industries which will hit the US below the belt in many ways.
If this is not political but a part of a long term strategy to weaken Israel and to deprive Israel of offensive capabilities it is even more stupid because it will eventually achieve the opposite effect by forcing israel to stop relying on the US as an ally who can be relied on at times of military trouble and striving to achieve improved self-sufficiency of Military abilities by more self reliance and seeking alliences with other powers like China.
What Bambi and Clinton don't understand is that the last thing they want to do now is to encourage the symptoms of our MASADA COMPLEX. If pushed too far, Israeli public opinion will eventually push our government into an all out nuclear decapitation strike on Iran (and possibly Siria) because of estimates that Israel will not be able to sustain the long term damages of a prolongd war onour/five fronts (Iran on the east, Syria and Lebanon/hizballa on the north and Egipt/Hamas in the south + the possibility of a third intifada by fifth colum Israeli Arabs within Israel).
When realizing that the non-return date for nuclearized Iran is only a few months in the future it seems we may indeed be living in interesting times for sure (as the old Chinse "blessing" goes).
Posted by: Elder of Zion|| 2010-03-19 06:13 ||CommentsTop||
Israeli fighter jets have bombarded at least two sites in the Gaza Strip shortly after a Thai agricultural worker was killed when a rocket fired from the besieged coastal enclave struck the northern Negev.
The eyewitnesses said Israeli F-16 fighter jets targeted an open area north of the Gaza City. The warplanes also fired missiles at an open area in the central Gaza Strip.
One of the warplanes broke the sound barrier in the skies of northern and central Gaza Strip, causing panic through the crowd, especially women and children.
Staff members of multiple Palestinian organizations had to evacuate their buildings in fear of their lives following the airborne assaults. There were no reports of casualties in the incident.
A migrant worker in the northern Negev was killed when a rocket fired by Palestinian fighters from the Gaza Strip hit the greenhouse where he was working.
The rocket struck Moshav Netiv Ha'asara Thursday morning, killing the 30-year-old Thai worker.
This is the third rocket fired from Gaza in the past 24 hours. Five rockets have struck southern Israel in the past two days, according to the Israel Defense Forces.
The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade -- the armed wing of the Fatah movement -- claimed responsibility for the Thursday rocket launch.
The resistance movement said the projectile was fired in response to new Israeli plans for the construction of more Jewish housing in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood in the predominantly Arab eastern sector of Jerusalem al-Quds, and the decision to renovate a synagogue in the Old City near the al-Aqsa Mosque compound.
[Al Arabiya Latest] The U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions on Thursday against two firms in Gaza -- Islamic National Bank and al-Aqsa Television -- for their ties to the ruling Hamas movement.
The Treasury said the sanctions prohibit Americans from transactions with the entities and seek to freeze any assets they may have under U.S. jurisdiction. The Treasury lists Hamas, which rules Gaza, as a "specially designated global terrorist" organization.
It said the sanctions were imposed against Islamic National Bank, opened by Hamas in April 2009, for providing financial services to Hamas members and employees, including members of its military wing.
The Treasury said the bank lacks a legal license from the Palestinian Monetary Authority and operates outside the legitimate financial system. In May 2009, the Treasury said Hamas' finance office in Gaza moved 1.1 million euros into the Islamic National Bank and used the funds to pay salaries of Hamas military wing members who held accounts at the bank.
The Treasury said al-Aqsa Television station is financed and controlled by Hamas and serves as a primary Hamas media outlet that airs programs "designed to recruit children to become Hamas armed fighters and suicide bombers upon reaching adulthood."
It said Hamas leadership raised initial capital for the station in 2006 and late last year allocated hundreds of thousands of dollars for its operating budget.
Hamas pioneered rocket strikes from Gaza on Israeli territory and backs armed struggle against Israel.
"Treasury will not distinguish between a business financed and controlled by a terrorist group, such as al-Aqsa Television, and the terrorist group itself," said Stuart Levey, the Treasury's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, in a statement.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
128.48.120.100
171072234
[Al Arabiya Latest] The U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions on Thursday against two firms in Gaza -- Islamic National Bank and al-Aqsa Television -- for their ties to the ruling Hamas movement.
