#jihadist insurgency

[tearsofrefugees]

The world’s most ignored displacement crisis: Burkina Faso – in pictures

For the second year in a row, the Norwegian Refugee Council named Burkina Faso the world’s most neglected displacement crisis in 2023 as a jihadist insurgency, the military regime’s brutal response, Russian mercenaries and ethnic-based militias wreak havoc on hundreds of thousands of civilians. The photographer Emre Çaylak has documented the lives of those affected by the crisis living at camps near the capital, Ouagadougou

Photographer: Emre Çaylak

A mural in Ouagadougou depicting Traoré and Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. In June, Russia announced it would send more arms and instructors to aid Burkina Faso’s defence capabilities and combat terrorism.

[captain-price-unofficially]

Burkinabè soldiers defending Djibo, Northern Burkina Faso from attack by jihadist militants. Attack was repelled with hundreds of militants reportedly being killed. 26 Nov 2023

[victusinveritas]

From Rebecca Solnit:

"My God. I was out all day today. Bashar Al Assad, the Butcher of Syria, has fled, his infamous prison/death camp/torture center has been freed, and rebels have taken Syria as far as I can tell. What a week. Insurrectionary Georgia. Coup-repelling South Korea. Now this.

The Guardian reports: When Islamist militants swept into her home town of Aleppo little over a week ago, Rama Alhalabi sheltered indoors as fear engulfed her. Forces loyal to president Bashar al-Assad, who had sought to reassure residents that nothing was happening, suddenly deserted the city. But as the insurgency pushed south, rapidly seizing control of the city of Hama on the road to Damascus, Alhalabi’s fears about life under militia rule have slowly ebbed. Instead they have been replaced by fears that her friends in the army will be abandoned by their commanding officers as Assad’s regime loses its grip.

“People in Aleppo are feeling more comfortable now we’re further from the areas under the regime’s control,” said the 29-year-old, while still using a pseudonym in fear Assad could retake the city.

“At the same time, I have many friends serving in the army and I don’t want them to get hurt. People with power inside the regime will protect themselves, and they will leave the poor fighters who were forced to join the army to face their awful fate alone.

“Things changed insanely fast,” she added. “We can barely believe what’s happening.”

As militants spearheaded by the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) massed outside the city of Homs and rebel forces said they had entered the vast southern suburbs of the capital, rapid change swept across Syria. The Syrian army declared it had “redeployed,” its forces in two restive provinces south of Damascus in the latest thinly-veiled message of retreat, days after they withdrew from Hama. In under a week, five provincial capitals across the country were suddenly no longer under Assad’s control.

“We can hear the bombing nearby, and we are praying, hoping – and waiting,” said Um Ahmad, an elderly native of Homs, sheltering with her husband at home as the fighting drew close enough to be audible.

Assad loyalists fled the city, while people who stayed only have a couple of hours’ electricity each day and what goods are left in the shops are unaffordable. Those remaining in Homs waited to see if this might be the end of Assad’s rule, while an insurgent commander told his regime’s forces inside the city that this was their “last chance to defect before it’s too late”.

Um Ahmad was consumed by a single thought, that she might finally be able to see her sons again after a decade of separation and exile. “Most people are frightened but they fear the regime’s revenge more than anything else,” she said, as Russian and Syrian airstrikes pummelled the countryside around Homs and Hama.

When a popular uprising swept cities across Syria in 2011 calling for Assad to go, it initially looked as if demonstrations could topple another regional autocrat. But the Syrian leader swiftly turned the state’s weapons on his own people to crush dissent. As the uprising slowly morphed into a civil war, Assad freed jihadist prisoners from his fearsome detention system to alter the forces rising up against him, before relying heavily on his allies in Russia and Iran to provide the military muscle he used to reclaim control.

The civil war killed over 300,000 people in 10 years of fighting, with some estimates putting the true toll at twice that number. Tens of thousands remain in detention, including 100,000 believed missing or forcibly disappeared in Assad’s prisons since 2011, and subject to what United Nations monitors have described as systematic torture. Over 12 million people have been displaced.

Assad kept control of Syria’s major cities for years, as battle lines from the country’s years-long proxy war hardened. HTS ruled over a mountainous pocket in the northwest, cut off from the outside world. The group appeared a dim threat to Assad until they suddenly launched an offensive that saw them take control of Aleppo within days.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/07/syria-assad-damascus-hayat-tahrir-al-sham-insurgents

[mapsontheweb]

Jihadist Insurgencies in Africa, 2024.

[beardedmrbean]

Burkina Faso's military junta has announced a ban on homosexual acts, making it the latest African state to crack down on same-sex relations despite strong opposition from Western powers.

Homosexuality was frowned upon in the socially conservative West African state, but it was never outlawed.

Justice Minister Edasso Rodrigue Bayala said the junta's cabinet had now approved legislation to make it a punishable offence, but he did not give further details.

The military seized power in Burkina Faso in 2022, and has pivoted towards Russia after drastically reducing ties with former colonial power, France.

Homosexual acts were decriminalised in Russia in 1993, but President Vladimir Putin's government has been cracking down on the LGBTQ community, including banning what it calls "propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations".

The doctor forced to fight jihadists in Burkina Faso

Nigeria-EU deal sparks false claims over LGBT rights

The Nigerian queer parties that offer liberation

Burkina Faso's decision to outlaw homosexual relations is part of an overhaul of its marriage laws.

The new legislation, which still needs to be passed by the military-controlled parliament and signed off by junta leader Ibrahim Traoré, only recognises religious and customary marriages.

"Henceforth homosexuality and associated practices will be punished by the law," the justice minister was quoted by AFP news agency as saying.

Capt Traoré took power in September 2022 after overthrowing another military ruler, Lt Col Paul-Henri Damiba, accusing him of failing to quell an Islamist insurgency that has gripped Burkina Faso since 2015.

Burkina Faso was among 22 out of 54 African states where same-sex relations were not criminalised.

Unlike in many former British colonies, it did not inherit anti-homosexuality laws after independence from France in 1960.

Muslims make up around 64% of Burkina Faso's population and Christians 26%. The remaining 10% of people follow traditional religions or have no faith.

Many African states have been taking a tougher stand against the LGBTQ community in recent years.

Uganda is among those that have adopted legislation recently to further crack down on the community, despite strong condemnation from local rights groups and Western powers.

In May, its Constitutional Court upheld a tough new anti-gay law that allows for the death penalty to be imposed for “aggravated homosexuality”, which includes having gay sex with someone below the age of 18 or where someone is infected with a life-long illness such as HIV.

Activists said they would appeal against the ruling.

The World Bank has halted new loans to President Yoweri Museveni's government while the US has stopped giving Ugandan goods preferential access to its markets, following the adoption of the legislation last year.

Mr Museveni defended the legislation as preserving traditional family values, and said Uganda would not allow the West to dictate to it.

The daughter of Cameroon's president drew mixed reaction after she came out as a lesbian last week.

Brenda Biya, who lives abroad, said she hoped that her coming out would help change the law banning same-sex relations in the country.

Cameroon has been ruled with an iron-hand by her 91-year-old father, Paul Biya, since 1982.

In Ghana, parliament passed a tough new bill in February that imposes a prison sentence of up to three years for anyone convicted of identifying as LGBTQ+.

However, President Nana Akufo-Addo has not signed it into law, saying he will wait for the courts to rule on its constitutionality.

The finance ministry has warned him that if the bill became law, Ghana could lose $3.8bn (£3bn) in World Bank funding over the next five to six years.

Ghana is suffering a major economic crisis and received a bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) last year.

[darkmaga-returns]

Update: BREAKING: Bashar al-Assad and family are in Moscow: Russian news agencies, via AFP

* * *

Since the overnight hours Damascus has been under the control of the Islamist militants led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and backed by Turkey. The country's President Bashar al-Assad has been overthrown, and his whereabouts are unknown, after the extremely rapid insurgent advance out of Idlib, where city after city fell starting with Aleppo in a matter of about a mere week. And just like that 50 years of Assad family rule has ended, and a new extremely unpredictable era of Syria begins. 

One thing is for sure, a US-designated terrorist has emerged as the current de facto ruler of Damascus and of Syria. At this very moment Washington has a $10 million bounty on his head, given his career as a jihadist began with al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) which was killing American troops in Iraq. 

The jihadist factions entered Damascus overnight without a fight from the Syrian Army, and videos quickly emerged of armed fighters entering both the presidential palace (or office) as well as Assad's private residence in Malki neighborhood.

State television stations broadcast a message from HTS leaders urging calm and a stable transition of power. New rules for Damascus include a curfew imposed from 4pm to 5am local time, according to the local Al Watan newspaper.

Rule by 'Al Qaeda in suits'... technocratic jihad:

While the mood on the streets has been generally jubilant, gunfire has been heard - but more likely this is from anti-Assad fighters firing in celebration into the air. Western mainstream media has also been celebratory, generally ignoring HTS' obvious Al Qaeda links past and present.

But for every scene the media highlights of a few hundred people celebrating in a central square, there are many more thousands of families huddled and fearful in their homes, not knowing what entity or Islamist faction controls the checkpoint around the block.

So far at least one central building has gone up in flames - the former government's passport and immigration building. It remains unclear why or what the precise cause was.

[ptseti]

MUSEVENI: HOW NATO SCUPPERED AFRICAN MISSION TO SAVE LIBYA

Thirteen years ago today, NATO doomed Africa’s richest nation to failure - as it launched its intervention to topple Pan-African leader Muammar Gaddafi from power. This didn’t just spell disaster for Libya, which was eventually overrun by extremists who brought back open slave markets, but for the wider region as well, as the security crisis spilled over into the Sahel, leaving a trail of tens of thousands of African bodies. To this day, the likes of Burkina Faso and Mali are having to fight jihadist insurgents as a result of NATO’s 2011 regime change.

The worst of it is that it could all have been prevented - if, as Uganda’s president explains in this clip, Africans had been left to their own devices.

Yoweri Museveni relates how six African presidents had decided to fly over to Libya to mediate peace. But NATO stopped their plane mid-flight and ordered them to turn back - even though it was going from Africa to Africa via African airspace!

The impromptu peace mission was conceived at the residence of the president of Mauritania, who was hosting other African heads of state at the time, including the chair of the African Union.

Museveni tells his audience it’s a sign of just how much contempt the West has for us. The fact that the plane did as it was told, he says, shows how weak some African leaders still are. It’s the kind of weakness that saw us colonised in the first place, he claims.

He peppers his tale with a few jokes to take the sting out.

Libya is still suffering today from NATO‘s actions. When will bodies like the African Union learn stand up to outside meddling? Even now, member state Kenya looks adamant on doing America’s bidding in Haiti. Or think of how West African bloc ECOWAS did the West’s bidding over Niger.

Have a watch of Museveni telling his tale,

[workersolidarity]

[ 📸 U.S. troops go on patrol at al-Tanf air base in eastern Syria. The Syrian government considers the United States presence in its eastern third as an illegal occupation, and wants U.S. soldiers out of the country.]

🇺🇲⚔️🇸🇾 🪖 🚨

US TO CONSIDER WITHDRAWAL FROM SYRIAN OCCUPATION

The United States is considering a withdrawal of its forces from Syria, according to an article published in Foreign Policy, an online news periodical with ties to the U.S. Defense establishment.

Citing four sources from within the U.S. departments of State and Defense, Foreign Policy claims active internal discussions are ongoing within the Biden administration on a troop withdrawal from Syria, a notoriously illegal occupation of nearly one-third of Syrian territory, which the United States has used to siphon tens of billions of dollars worth of oil out of the country.

The piece was written by senior fellow and director of the Syrian Counterterrorism and Extremism Programs at Middle East Institute, Charles Lister.

The organization itself, the Middle East Institute, is funded by a who's-who of U.S. proxy-governments, Intelligence sources, elite Universities, and giant corporations including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, ExxonMobil, George Soros's Open Societies Foundation, Morgan Stanley, and Princeton University.

The article itself presents the decision on the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria as an impending disaster, warning that the Islamic State is waiting in the wings for an opportunity to take back control over the Levant, with the title of the published article "America is planning to withdraw from Syria- and create a disaster."

Lister warns that the withdrawal should be "cause for significant concern" and that, while no decision has yet been reached by the Biden administration, the White House is "no longer invested in sustaining a mission that it perceives as unnecessary."

"Notwithstanding the catastrophic effect that a withdrawal would have on U.S. and allied influence over the unresolved and acutely volatile crisis in Syria, it would also be a gift to the Islamic State. While significantly weakened, the group is in fact primed for a resurgence in Syria, if given the space to do so," Lister summerized.

Lister claims that the United States's "unprecedented intervention" launched in 2014 by the Obama administration, alongside "80 partner nations," was "remarkably successful," without ever mentioning Iran's intervention to organize a strong resistance to the Islamic State in Iraq, nor the Russian Intervention to strengthen and reinforce Syria's military and air defenses.

Lister claims the situation in Syria is "more complex" than that of Iraq's, adding that "with approximately 900 troops on the ground, the United States is playing an instrumental role in containing and degrading a persistent Islamic State insurgency in northeastern Syria, working alongside its local partners, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)."

Again, Lister ignores the role played by the Russian military in providing air cover and tactical strikes on behalf of the Syrian military, warning that the threat from IS remains a serious cause for concern.

Lister points to a rocket attack launched against a prison maintained by U.S. proxy-forces to warn of the dangers in Syria, elaborating on the heroic defense of the so-called "Syrian Democratic Forces," comprised of a mix of jihadist groups, some with ties to al-Qaeda, that ran amok, sowing chaos and destabilizing Eastern Syria, until the Russian Intervention in September 2015, when U.S. proxy-forces were largely sequestered into the illegally U.S.-occupied territory in the eastern-most third of Syria.

Lister goes on to raise alarms over the security situation in western Syria too, where Syrian government forces, with the help of the Russian military, have since regained control of much of its territory formally under the control of jihadist groups.

"While U.S. troops and their SDF partners have managed to contain the Islamic State’s recovery in Syria’s northeast, the situation is far more concerning to the west—on the other side of the Euphrates River, where the Syrian regime is in control, at least on paper," Lister claims.

Lister, pushing for the U.S. to remain in Syria, says that "In this vast expanse of desert, the Islamic State has been engaged in a slow but methodical recovery, exploiting regime indifference and its inability to challenge a fluid desert-based insurgency."

Lister's alarmism goes on, describing the supposed regrouping of IS in various government-held regions of Syria, even going so far as to claim that the Islamic State has only been quiet in recent months due to employing a strategy of concealing its operations, never pointing to specific examples that might back those claims.

"For the past several years, the Islamic State has purposely concealed its level of operation in Syria, consistently choosing not to claim responsibility for attacks that it was conducting," the article claims, inversely suggesting the absence of activity by the extremist group is actually evidence of their malfeasance.

Lister also claims that the situation in the Gaza Strip is fueling the groups return, stating that the "war in Gaza and a spiraling regional crises are adding fuel to its fire and creating opportunities for the terror group to exploit the situation for its own advantage," without ever giving any concrete examples of how, where and in what way the group is returning, only citing research from his own shadily-funded organization's projects as evidence.

"According to the Counter Extremism Project, in 2023 alone, the Islamic State conducted at least 212 attacks in Syria’s central desert region, killing at least 502 people. As covert threats and overt attacks increase, reports are emerging with increasing frequency of desertions within regime ranks," Lister says.

Lister then claims that the United States is the only thing holding the region together even as he admits there's little the U.S. can do within territories controlled by the Syrian government.

That claim, that the U.S. is the glue holding Syria together, flies in the face of the countless warnings by both the Syrian and Russian governments that say the United States is in fact the source of instability in the region.

"While there is little that U.S. forces can do to alter Islamic State activities within the regime-controlled regions of Syria, U.S. troops are the glue holding together the only meaningful challenge to the Islamic State within a third of Syrian territory. Were that glue to disappear, a significant resurgence in Syria would be all but guaranteed, and a destabilizing spillover into Iraq a certainty."

Interestingly, Lister goes on to point to Iraq as an important player in the future of the Islamic State group, admitting that increased tensions created by the U.S. occupation in Iraq, along with the U.S support for Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza, is creating a new push in the country to remove U.S. forces from Iraq by its parliament, creating a supposed opening for extremist groups in the region.

Lister puts the blame squarely on Iran for these openings, and for Iraq's growing impatience with Washington, adding that a troop withdrawal would be a bad idea, even invoking the collapse of U.S. proxy-forces in Afghanistan to warn of the dangers of a troop withdrawal from Syria.

"Ultimately, events since October have placed the U.S. deployment in northeast Syria on a fraying thread—hence recent internal consideration of a Syria withdrawal," Lister says, adding that "Given the disastrous consequences of the hurried exit from Afghanistan in 2021 and the impending U.S. election later this year, it is hard to grasp why the Biden administration would be considering a withdrawal from Syria."

Lister concludes that "no matter how such a withdrawal was conducted, it would trigger chaos and a swift surge in terror threats."

"There can be no denying the clear sense in policy circles that it is being actively considered—and that it has been accepted as an eventual inevitability," Lister claims.

Lister emphasized that anyone considering a collaborative approach with the Syrian government are making a big mistake, because "that would not only be a phenomenal boon to the Islamic State, but simply impossible on its own terms."

Lister explained that "part of the SDF may have periodic contact with Assad’s regime, but they are far from natural allies. The regime would never allow the SDF to sustain itself, and Turkey would do everything possible to kill what remained [of Washington's proxies]."

"The last time that the Islamic State surged in Syria, in 2014, it transformed international security in profoundly negative ways. Should a U.S. withdrawal precipitate a return to Islamic State chaos, we will be relegated to mere observers, unable to return to a region that we will have placed squarely under the control of a pariah regime and its Russian and Iranian allies."

#source

#OnListersOrganizationsFinances

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[ivoryminitower]

Echoes of Home: 78 - Tsu'na ("conflict")

Echoes of Home: FFXIV AU OC – WoLs on Earth

"Russian sleeper agent":

"A sleeper agent is a spy who is placed in a target country or organization not to undertake an immediate mission but to act as a potential asset if activated"

"Russia is the largest country in the world by area, covering over 17 million square kilometers, with a population of 146 million."

incidents of espionage, murder, political destabilization and military invasion

- "political destabilization": "the action of making a government, area or political group lose power or control, or making a political or economic situation less strong or safe, by making changes or problems"

nuclear weapons

"Coerced by the Chinese government":

"coerce": "persuade to do something by using force or threats"

"China is the world's most populous country, with a population of more than 1.4 billion people, covering an area of approximately 9.6 million square kilometers."

incidents of espionage, citizen repression, military action around borders

nuclear weapons

"Al-Qaeda sympathizer":

"Al-Qaeda is a multinational militant Sunni Islamic extremist network composed of Salafist jihadists."

- "Jihadism has been applied to various insurgent Islamic extremist, militant Islamist, and terrorist individuals and organizations whose ideologies are based on the Islamic notion of jihad."

-- "Jihad": "a struggle or fight against the enemies of Islam"

incidents of terrorism, slaughter and murder

- "terrorism": "the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims"

"ISIS operative":

"Islamic State (IS), Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is a militant Islamic group that follows the Salafi jihadist branch of Sunni Islam."

incidents of terrorism, slaughter and military action

"domestic terrorist":

"a person who commits terrorist acts in their own country against their fellow citizens"

incidents of domestic terrorism in the United States.  Includes Oklahoma City Bombing.

"religious fanatic":

incidents of terrorism, murder, property damage and poisonings in the United States

"political extremist":

"someone whose beliefs fall outside mainstream societal values and on the fringes of the ideological spectrum.  In the U.S., the typical political extremist is motivated by anger, fear and hatred – most commonly toward the government and people of different races, ethnicities and nationalities."

incidents of terrorism, murder, property damage and hate crimes

- "hate crime":

-- "crime committed on the basis of race, color, and religion; may also include crimes committed on the basis of sexual orientation, gender, gender identity and disability"

-- "often a violent crime, such as assault, murder, arson or vandalism, or threats to commit such crimes, or conspiring or asking another person to commit such crimes, even if the crime was never carried out"

"sociopath":

"a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience"

- "murder-suicide": "an act in which an individual kills one or more people before (or while) killing themselves"

- "suicide attack": "any violent attack, usually entailing the attacker detonating an explosive, where the attacker has accepted his own death as a direct result of the attacking method used"

- "spree killer": "someone who commits a criminal act that involves two or more murders or homicides in a short time, in multiple locations"

- "going postal": "becoming extremely and uncontrollably angry, often to the point of violence, and usually in a workplace environment"

Husband taught me more about this world's politics in the five minutes he talked with Sam than in the several weeks in this world he has talked with me.

Few of these ideas were truly new to me.  There were instances of many of them in different forms in Eorzea.  Though I had not heard of an instance of "going postal".  Certainly the moogles did not seem to kill each other.

Husband once quoted a video called Broken Arrow: "I don't know what's worse, that it happens at all or that it happens enough that there's a name for it."  There were no scholars in Eorzea writing articles about such things in Wikipedia, since there was no Wikipedia.  Perhaps there were names for them in a book somewhere in the Great Gubal Library.  I did not notice such a thing in my visits there.

Nuclear weapons are not news to me.  Husband described them when he compared the demonstration of the Ultima weapon in the Praetorium to a nuclear explosion.  He said there were single nuclear bombs that could destroy entire cities, things the size of cars that could be dropped from airships or flown on rockets across seas and continents.  He probably meant an Earth city, of which apparently there are far larger than Tulsa.

He said he thought the Ultima weapon could fit in a beer keg.

Wikipedia says the United States has many nuclear weapons, as do Russia and China, more than enough to kill all the people in all three countries and perhaps damage the entire world.  And China is not kind to its people, and Russia is not kind to its neighbors, and the United States leadership changes often and who the United States is kind to can change with it.

And there are other countries with nuclear weapons, and countries with chemical weapons like Black Rose, and countries and former countries and potential countries with guns and bombs and spies and willingness to do harm.  And this is the state of the world without people like us in quantity who can lift cars and use magic and teleport and carry guns and poison and nuclear weapons in their inventory.

Husband perhaps should have mentioned this when he spoke of confused and upset hyur.

Superman is older than nuclear weapons, but even before them the idea of a hero must have been appealing to people, one who could fly and who could not be shot or blown up.  The minstrels in Eorzea did well with stories of heroes.

But for a story of a hero to be interesting, there must be a target for his heroism.  The primals we fought in Eorzea were our targets.  If we had not fought primals, there would not have been as many stories about us.

Likewise, the superheroes in the comic books have supervillains to fight.  The people who invent superheroes invent supervillains too.  Perhaps the conflict is the reason for the stories rather than the superheroes themselves.  Perhaps people like stories about conflict.

Is that why there is so much violence in this world?  Do people here like conflict?

We can do things most people cannot.  Are we superheroes?  Must we expect conflict and supervillains?

I asked Husband about this as we settled in to bed after work.  He told me to add Spiderman to my reading.

[mariacallous]

Despite attempts by President Vladimir Putin and Russia's state-controlled media to pin the blame for Friday's deadly Moscow theatre attack on Ukraine, more details are emerging about the jihadist group IS-K that has claimed it was behind it.

Who or what is IS-K?

IS-K is an abbreviation of Islamic State-Khorasan - a regional affiliate of the Islamic State group, which has been proscribed as a terror organisation by governments across the world.

It is focused on Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan and into Central Asia.

The group has given itself the name Khorasan as that was part of an historic Islamic caliphate spanning that region.

IS-K has been around for nine years but in recent months it has emerged as the most dangerous branch of the Islamic State group, with a long reach and a reputation for extreme brutality and cruelty.

Along with what is left of the group's wider leadership in Syria and Iraq, IS-K aspires to a pan-national Islamic caliphate ruled through an ultra-strict interpretation of Sharia, Islamic law.

In Afghanistan it is waging a sporadic but still deadly insurgency against the country's rulers, the Taliban, who it opposes on ideological grounds.

Has IS-K carried out attacks before?

It targeted the chaotic evacuation from Kabul airport in 2021 with a suicide bomb, killing 170 Afghans and 13 US servicemen.

The following year it targeted the Russian embassy in Kabul, killing at least six people and injuring others.

The group has carried out indiscriminate attacks on a maternity ward, bus stations and policemen.

In January this year, IS-K carried out a double bombing of a shrine in Kerman, Iran, killing nearly 100 Iranians.

In Russia it has carried out numerous small-scale attacks, the most recent being in 2020 - and already this year the FSB, Russia's internal security service, says it has stopped several terror plots.

Who were the Moscow attackers?

According to Russian state media the four men captured and charged are all Tajiks from the Central Asian republic of Tajikistan, which used to be part of the Soviet Union.

It is obvious from their battered and bruised appearance in court that they have been especially harshly interrogated to the point of torture.

The problem with that is according to international norms, their confessions will be worthless - people will say anything to make the pain stop, including confessing to a narrative that is simply untrue.

Reports have emerged that one of the men was seen carrying out surveillance of the venue in early March, around the time the US warned Russia there was an imminent threat of a terrorist attack on a public space - a warning the Kremlin dismissed at the time as "propaganda".

Another report says at least two of the attackers arrived in Russia recently, implying that this was a "hit team" sent by IS-K, rather than a sleeper cell of residents.

Why did they target Russia?

There are several reasons.

IS-K consider most of the world to be their enemies. Russia is high up on their list, along with the US, Europe, Israel, Jews, Christians, Shia Muslims, the Taliban and all rulers of Muslim-majority states, who they consider to be "apostates".

Islamic State's hostility to Russia goes back to the Chechen wars in the 1990s and early 2000s, when Moscow's forces devastated the Chechen capital Grozny.

More recently, Russia entered the Syrian civil war on the side of its ally, President Bashar al-Assad, and the Russian air force has carried out countless bombings of rebel and civilian positions, killing large numbers of Islamic State group and Al-Qaeda-linked fighters.

In Afghanistan, IS-K view Russia as being an ally of the Taliban, which is why they attacked the Russian embassy in Kabul in 2022.

They also bear a grudge for the 10 years of brutal Soviet occupation of that country from 1979-89.

Then there is the situation inside Russia itself.

Russia is viewed by IS-K as very much a Christian country and their video posted after the Moscow attack talks about killing Christians.

Tajik and other Central Asian migrant workers are sometimes subject to a degree of harassment and suspicion by the FSB as it seeks to head off terrorist attacks.

Finally, Russia - a nation currently distracted by its full-scale war with its neighbour Ukraine - may simply have been a convenient target of opportunity for IS-K, a place where weapons were available and their enemy's guard was down.

What do we still not know about the Moscow attack?

There remain a number of unanswered questions about this whole episode.

For example, why were the attackers able to wander at will for nearly an hour around the Crocus Hall with absolutely no apparent sense of urgency?

In a country where the police and special services, notably the FSB, are omnipresent, these gunmen behaved as if they knew they were not going to be interrupted by a police SWAT team.

Then there are the weapons - not just handguns but powerful, modern automatic assault rifles. How were they able to acquire these and smuggle them undetected into the venue?

Their swift capture is also surprising.

Unlike many jihadist gunmen on a raid like this, these men were not wearing suicide vests or belts, in the manner of those who prefer death to capture.

And yet, it did not take long for the Russian authorities - the same Russian authorities who failed to stop the worst terror plot in 20 years unfolding beneath their noses - to round up the suspects and put them on trial.

All this is prompting some analysts to speculate about some sort of so-called "inside job" by the Kremlin, or a "false flag operation" to garner popular support for the war on Ukraine.

However, there is no hard evidence to support that theory and US intelligence has confirmed that in their view, it was Islamic State behind this hideous attack.

[warningsine]

At least 18 people were killed and 19 seriously wounded in suicide attacks targeting a wedding, a hospital and a funeral in northeastern Nigeria on Saturday, authorities said.

The region has been scarred by more than a decade of violence by jihadist group Boko Haram, which did not immediately claim responsibility for the string of attacks.

In one of three blasts on Saturday in the town of Gwoza, a woman with a baby strapped to her back detonated explosives in the middle of a wedding ceremony, according to a state police spokesman.

"At about 1545 (1445 GMT) a woman carrying a baby on her back detonated an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) she had on her at a crowded motor park," Borno State police spokesman Nahum Kenneth Daso said.

Women suicide bombers also targeted a hospital in the same town, which lies across the border from Cameroon. Another attack was later carried out at the funeral for victims of the wedding blast, authorities said.

At least 18 people were killed and 42 others injured in the spate of attacks, according to the Borno State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA).

"So far, 18 deaths comprising children, men, females and pregnant women" have been reported, agency head Barkindo Saidu said in a report seen by AFP.

Nineteen "seriously injured" people were taken to the regional capital Maiduguri, while 23 others were awaiting evacuation, Saidu said in the report.

A member of a militia assisting the military in Gwoza said two colleagues and a soldier were also killed in a separate attack on a security post, though authorities did not immediately confirm this toll.

Although Boko Haram has lost ground in recent years, jihadists continue to attack rural communities in Nigeria on a regular basis.

Over the course of the insurgency, Boko Haram has repeatedly deployed young women and girls to carry out suicide attacks. 

The group seized Gwoza in 2014 when its militants took over swathes of territory in northern Borno.

The town was taken back by the Nigerian military with help from Chadian forces in 2015 but the group has continued to launch attacks from mountains near the town.

Boko Haram has carried out raids, killing men and kidnapping women who venture outside the town in search of firewood and acacia fruits.

The violence has killed more than 40,000 people and displaced around two million in Nigeria's northeast.

The conflict has spread to neighbouring Niger, Cameroon and Chad, prompting the formation of a regional military coalition to fight the militants.

(AFP)

[odyssej]

Still thinking of this Lebanese film a co-worker and I saw in the cinema last Thursday. He asked me to recount the beginning since he fell asleep, and I said they - the former insurgent and the jihadist in war-torn Syria - might’ve been friends at one point, with their mothers being the best teacher and the best student… a sentimentality so strong it shatters a mirror.

We both agreed Broken Keys was average at best. Actually, I’d call it slightly above average… not just because of its incredible filming location (i.e. the bombed Mosul in Iraq) but also because it ‘gets’ me, you know what I mean? With the way these scenes played out, down to even his casual attire — blue, as if he were a drop of hope. Dream. Freedom.

[ausetkmt]

Burkina Faso Confirms Telling France To Withdraw Troops

Armel Baily

The Burkina Faso government confirmed Monday that it has asked ex-colonial ruler France to pull its troops out of the insurgency-hit country within a month, but Paris called for clarification from coup leader Ibrahim Traore himself.

France deploys about 400 special forces soldiers in junta-ruled Burkina, but relations have deteriorated and tensions have soared in recent months.

"We are terminating the agreement which allows French forces to be in Burkina Faso," government spokesman Jean-Emmanuel Ouedraogo told Radio-Television du Burkina.

"This is not the end of diplomatic relations between Burkina Faso and France," he said. "This termination is normal and is foreseen in the terms of the agreement."

The junta and all the country wanted "to be the prime actors in the recapture of our territory", he added, echoing Captain Traore's rallying call to reclaim as a priority swaths of land occupied by jihadists.

Burkina Faso's state news agency had unveiled the request late on Saturday.

AFP obtained on Sunday a copy of the Burkinabe foreign ministry's note sent to Paris and dated last Wednesday, asking to "terminate and close the agreement in its entirety".

In Paris, foreign ministry spokeswoman Anne-Claire Legendre told AFP in writing on Monday that the note had been received from Ouagadougou.

President Emmanuel Macron said Sunday that he was awaiting clarifications from Traore over the call for a pullout, claiming there was "great confusion".

France was still "waiting for the transitional Burkinabe president to clarify the meaning of this note," Legendre said.

Several sources said Paris was seeking confirmation from Traore because the Burkina government is divided over whether to keep French troops in the country.

The Burkina government spokesman said earlier Monday: "At the present stage we don't see how we can make it more clear."

Since the latest military regime seized power in September, several demonstrations have taken place calling for the departure of the French ambassador, as well as the French troops.

Protesters attacked the French cultural centre in the capital Ouagadougou in October.

The French foreign ministry acknowledged that the junta had asked it to replace ambassador Luc Hallade after he ruffled feathers with reports on Burkina's worsening security situation.

At the same time Burkina Faso, like its neighbour Mali, appears to be turning increasingly towards Russia as a partner.

"Russia is a reasonable choice in this dynamic," Burkinabe Prime Minister Apollinaire Kyelem de Tembela said last week after talks with the Russian ambassador and a December visit to Moscow.

"We think our partnership has to be strengthened," he added.

Burkina Faso is reeling from jihadist violence that swept in from neighbouring Mali in 2015.

The insurgency has claimed the lives of thousands and driven at least two million others from their homes.

Paris has been concerned about a repeat of its disastrous falling-out with Mali, from which it had to remove its troops last year.

If French forces were to pull out of Burkina, Paris's preferred option looks to be redeployment to the south of neighbouring Niger, where nearly 2,000 of its soldiers are already stationed.

Niger, the poorest state in the world on the UN's Human Development Index, is struggling with two jihadist emergencies and seeking to boost the numbers of its armed forces.

[newsclickofficial]

Benin forces have suffered heavy losses in an attack near the border with insurgency-hit Niger and Burkina Faso, authorities have said. Colonel Faizou Gomina, the national guard's chief of staff, said one of Benin's most well-equipped military positions had been hit in the north on Wednesday evening. "We've been dealt a very hard blow," Col Gomina added.It is not clear yet who is behind the attack but the country has in recent years witnessed increasing attacks in the northern region blamed on jihadist groups based in neighbouring countries. More than 120 Beninese military officers were killed between 2021 and December 2024, a diplomatic source told the AFP news agency. Last month, gunmen killed three soldiers and wounded four others who were guarding an oil pipeline in the north-east.Col Gomina did not provide a death toll for Wednesday's attack, but the main opposition party, The Democrats, said about 30 soldiers had been killed in the Alibori region, Reuters news agency reports. A security source put the death toll at 28, according to AFP. "We are continuing cleaning-up operations. Forty assailants have been neutralised so far," the military source added. Col Gomina said the position attacked had been "one of the strongest and most militarised" and called on military commanders to improve their operational strategies in order to counter security threats."Wake up, officers and section chiefs, we have battles to win," he said. In 2022, Benin deployed nearly 3,000 troops to curb cross-border incursions and reinforce security in the north.

[beardedmrbean]

Benin forces have suffered heavy losses in an attack near the border with insurgency-hit Niger and Burkina Faso, authorities have said.

Colonel Faizou Gomina, the national guard's chief of staff, said one of Benin's most well-equipped military positions had been hit in the north on Wednesday evening.

"We've been dealt a very hard blow," Col Gomina added.

The country has in recent years witnessed increasing attacks in the northern region blamed on jihadist groups based in neighbouring countries.

More than 120 Beninese military officers were killed between 2021 and December 2024, a diplomatic source told AFP news agency.

Last month, gunmen killed three soldiers and wounded four others who were guarding an oil pipeline in the north-east.

Col Gomina did not provide a death toll for Wednesday's attack, but the main opposition party, The Democrats, said about 30 soldiers had been killed in the Alibori region, Reuters news agency reports.

A security source put the death toll at 28, according to AFP.

"We are continuing cleaning-up operations. Forty assailants have been neutralised so far," the military source added.

Col Gomina said the position attacked had been "one of the strongest and most militarised" and called on military commanders to improve their operational strategies in order to counter security threats.

"Wake up, officers and section chiefs, we have battles to win," he said.

In 2022, Benin deployed nearly 3,000 troops to curb cross-border incursions and reinforce security in the north.

[darkmaga-returns]

What  Is Going On in Syria and What Does It mean?

Paul Craig Roberts

The explanations we are given make no sense, neither Washington’s, Putin’s, nor Iran’s. How did terrorists whose leaders had $10 million bounties on their heads become “democratic jihadists” who comprise Syria’s “interim government” with Washington’s and Putin’s support?

Interim for who?  The most likely answer to the question is for Greater Israel.

How does Syria exist when it is partitioned into three parts between Israel, Washington, and Turkey? The Israeli government has already said that it is in Syria to stay as Syria is part of Greater Israel. Turkey is holding on to the north in order to eliminate the Kurds, allegedly under America’s protection. Washington has the oil territory and the money.

The first thing Israel did was to destroy every Syrian arms depot and arms manufacturing facility to make certain that the “democratic jihadists” had no weapons with which to oppose the incorporation of Syria into Greater Israel. 

The Americans have the oil, so how is Humpty Dumpty going to be put back together again?

It is not going to happen. Syria, like Palestine, no longer exists. 

Why does Putin describe the destruction of Syria as a victory for Russia?

Why did the battle-hardened and previously victorious Syrian army refuse to fight the CIA’s insurgents it had previously defeated? Who payed off the Syrian generals?

Why did Putin allow the remnants of those defeated elements of “democratic jihadists” to recoup in the untouched American occupied part of Syria?