In the aftermath of the Paris attacks, media coverage has seen familiar patterns: uncritically repeat government claims, defend expansive state power, and blame the Muslim community for the acts of a few. We discuss media fearmongering, anti-Muslim scapegoating, ISIL’s roots, and war profiteering with Glenn Greenwald, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and co-founder of The Intercept. "Every time there’s a terrorist attack, Western leaders exploit that attack to do more wars," Greenwald says. "Which in turn means they transfer huge amounts of taxpayer money to these corporations that sell arms. And so investors are fully aware that the main people who are going to benefit from this escalation as a result of Paris are not the American people or the people of the West —-— and certainly not the people of Syria — it is essentially the military-industrial complex."
24 Oct 2015
Uyghur Families Colonize Syrian Village
Uyghurs fighting alongside ISIS and Jabhat Al-Nusra in Syria. A Syrian village was being transformed into "a settlement for hundreds of Uyghur Turkistani families who are fleeing China,"
7 Oct 2015
Nuclear Smugglers Tried Selling Radioactive Materials To ISIS
In the backwaters of Eastern Europe, authorities working with the FBI have interrupted four attempts in the past five years by gangs with suspected Russian connections that sought to sell radioactive material to Middle Eastern extremists, The Associated Press has learned. The latest known case came in February this year, when a smuggler offered a huge cache of deadly cesium — enough to contaminate several city blocks — and specifically sought a buyer from the Islamic State group.
Criminal organizations, some with ties to the Russian KGB's successor agency, are driving a thriving black market in nuclear materials in the tiny and impoverished country of Moldova, investigators say. The successful busts, however, were undercut by striking shortcomings: Kingpins got away, and those arrested evaded long prison sentences, sometimes quickly returning to nuclear smuggling, AP found.
Moldovan police and judicial authorities shared investigative case files with AP in an effort to spotlight how dangerous the nuclear black market has become. They say the breakdown in cooperation between Russia and the West means that it has become much harder to know whether smugglers are finding ways to move parts of Russia's vast store of radioactive materials — an unknown quantity of which has leached into the black market. "We can expect more of these cases," said Constantin Malic, a Moldovan police officer who investigated all four cases. "As long as the smugglers think they can make big money without getting caught, they will keep doing it."
4 Sept 2015
Vladimir Putin confirms Russian military involvement in Syria's civil war
Russia is providing “serious” training and logistical support to the Syrian army, Vladimir Putin has said, in the first public confirmation of the depth of Russia’s involvement in Syria's civil war. Commenting on reports that Russian combat troops have been deployed to Syria, the Russian president said discussion of direct military intervention is “so far premature,” but did not rule out that such a step could be taken in future.
“To say we're ready to do this today - so far it's premature to talk about this. But we are already giving Syria quite serious help with equipment and training soldiers, with our weapons,” the state-owned RIA Novosti news agency quoted Mr Putin as saying when asked about Russian intervention in Syria during an economic forum in Vladivostok.
"We really want to create some kind of an international coalition to fight terrorism and extremism," Mr Putin said. "To this end, we hold consultations with our American partners - I have personally spoken on the issue with US President Obama."
4 Aug 2015
Raqqa: An Inside Story
A firsthand account of how Islamic State militants took over the city of Raqqa in northern Syria, declaring it their capital.
Part of a larger multimedia story on Mashable.com
26 Jun 2015
Terror attacks on 3 continents, including 37 in Tunisia
Gunmen killed at least 37 people at a beachfront Tunisian hotel on Friday, the same day terrorists lashed out brutally in France and bombed a mosque in Kuwait.
Tunisia's health ministry reported those deaths as well as 36 injuries in and around the Hotel Riu Imperial Marhaba in the coastal Tunisian city of Sousse, according to the state-run TAP news agency. There were three attackers -- one of whom was killed, one arrested and one escaped -- Interior Ministry spokesman Mohammed Ali Aroui told reporters.
Tunisia's nightmare came on the same day as at least two deadly terrorist attack in other countries.
One person was beheaded and two injured at a gas factory near Lyon in south-eastern France, according to French President Francois Hollande. And ISIS has claimed responsibility for an apparent bomb blast at the Shiite-affiliated Al-Sadiq mosque in Kuwait's capital during Friday prayers, leaving at least 25 dead and more than 200 injured.
3 Dec 2014
ISIS Newbies Hilariously Regret Career Choice
Many young French jihadist fighters who joined the Islamic State militants have started questioning what they are really doing with them. Their lawyers say they want to come home but dread possible criminal charges, France’s Le Figaro has reported.
21 Nov 2014
Life After Qaddafi — Libya: A Broken State
Three years after the Libyan revolution and the subsequent downfall of its dictator Muammar Qaddafi, the country has descended further into chaos and insecurity. Rebel militias, radical Islamists and former Qaddafi commander Khalifa Haftar are among the different groups vying for power and oil wealth, creating a vacuum in which violence and militancy reign supreme.
6 Nov 2014
31 Oct 2014
UN: Foreign Fighters Joining Terror Groups On 'Unprecedented Scale'
A new United Nations report says the world faces a challenge of foreign fighters in terror groups on an "unprecedented scale," with about 15,000 in Syria and Iraq alone. The report by a panel of experts monitoring al-Qaida and the Taliban, obtained Friday by The Associated Press, has been submitted to the U.N. Security Council.
"Numbers since 2010 are now many times the size of the cumulative numbers of foreign terrorist fighters between 1990 and 2010 - and are growing," the report says. The panel was set up to support the council's al-Qaida sanctions committee. The panel says fighters from more than 80 countries working with al-Qaida associates in Syria and Iraq "form the core of a new diaspora that may seed the threat for years to come," and that domestic terrorism could rise as fighters return to their home countries.
The diversity of countries means wider sharing of skills and training on the ground in Syria and Iraq, the report warns. "There are instances of foreign terrorist fighters from France, the Russian Federation and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland operating together," it says.
Must see documentary:
13 Oct 2014
Watch live coverage of the Turkey border with Syria near embattled Kobane
Watch a live video feed from Turkey's southeastern province of Sanliurfa near the key Syrian border town of Kobane, which Jihadists have been trying to seize for weeks. The town was the scene of continued fighting over the weekend:
Kurdish defence forces in Kobane managed to repel Islamic State jihadists on Saturday morning after a night of heavy clashes.
6 Oct 2014
2 Oct 2014
26 Sept 2014
"Certain intelligence agencies" created ISIS
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani addressed the UN General Assembly on Thursday, and used his speech to accuse the West of inciting extremism and unjustly interfering in other nations’ affairs. Although not specifically mentioning any names, the Iranian leader said that certain states and intelligence agencies are making the world a less safe place by supporting terrorism.
25 Sept 2014
Syrian Woman Secretly Films Life in Raqqa under ISIL
A Syrian woman agreed to carry a hidden camera to film how life is like inside Syria's northern city of Raqqa, which has been under the control of the Islamic State (aka ISIL or ISIS). The report was aired on France 2. It shows some French women who decided to move indefinitely to Syria while abandoning their previous lives in France.
23 Sept 2014
U.S.-led coalition strikes ISIS in Syria
The United States has begun airstrikes against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in Syria, U.S. officials told Reuters on Tuesday.
“U.S. military and partner nation forces are undertaking military action against [ISIS] terrorists in Syria using a mix of fighter, bomber and Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles,” said Rear Admiral John Kirby, Pentagon press secretary.
U.S. Central Command said Bahrain (see al-monitor.com), Jordan (see Newsweek), Qatar (Wikipedia), Saudi Arabia (The Atlantic) and the United Arab Emirates (Voice of America) had either participated in or supported the strikes, without elaborating.
21 Sept 2014
Kurdish Fighters From Turkey Head To Syria To Fend Off ISIS Attack
Hundreds of Kurdish fighters raced from Turkey and Iraq into neighboring Syria on Saturday to defend a Kurdish area under attack by Islamic State militants. As the fighting raged, more than 60,000 mostly Kurdish refugees streamed across the dusty and barren border into Turkey, some hobbling on crutches as others lugged bulging sacks of belongings on their backs.
The large-scale displacement of so many and the movement of the Kurdish fighters into Syria reflected the ferocity of the fighting in the northern Kobani area, which borders Turkey. Militants of the extremist Islamic State group have been barreling through the area for the past three days, prompting Kurdish leaders to plead for international help. Civilians seeking safety began massing on the Turkish border on Thursday. Turkey did not let them in at first, saying it would provide them with aid on the Syrian side of the border instead. By Friday, it had changed its mind and started to let in several thousand.
The numbers grew quickly as more entry points opened, and by late Saturday afternoon, more than 60,000 had poured across the frontier, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said. Even by the standards of Syria's bitter war, it was unusual for so many refugees to flee in such a short time. Their numbers add to the 2.8 million Syrians who have become refugees in the past three years, and another 6.4 million who have been displaced within their own country — nearly half of Syria's pre-war population of 23 million.
19 Sept 2014
Pope Assassination Imminent
ISIS is planning to kill the Pope in one of his overseas trips, Iraq Ambassador to Vatican Habeeb Al Sadr warns. He said that the terrorist group had spoken of its plan to assassinate the pope as he was vocally supporting U.S.' intervention in Syria and Iraq. He underlined that the ISIS has foreign members - Canadian, American, French, Britain and even Italians. The group can instruct these members to kill the pope when the opportunity arises.
"What has been declared by the self-declared Islamic State is clear - they want to kill the Pope. The threats against the Pope are credible," Al Sadr said during an interview with Italian newspaper La Nazione.
Al Sadr's warning come before the Pope's visit to Albania on Sunday to celebrate the resurrection of Christianity from the destruction of Communist dictator Enver Hoxha. In 1967, Hoxha had declared Albania as the world's first atheist state. Pope's Sunday visit is a way of showing that Catholics, Orthodox and Muslims could live in peaceful co-existence
13 Sept 2014
The Strange Irony Hidden Among The Highest Ranks Of ISIS
As the Islamic State group continues to wreak havoc across Syria and Iraq, the group has become synonymous with extreme religious zealotry. Yet the militant group ironically has strong alliances with members of former dictator Saddam Hussein's Baath regime and its highest ranks are filled with former Saddam loyalists. "Baathism is fundamentally a secular, pan-Arab movement, which the pan-Islamist movements have been at odds with for decades. This is not a natural alliance," Brian Fishman, a counterterrorism expert at the New America Foundation, told The WorldPost.
While the Islamic State, formerly known as ISIS or ISIL, wants to create a religious regime across national borders, the Baathists want to reassert the power they had before the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. But they both claim to champion Sunni interests in opposition to former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's autocratic and sectarian leadership. The pragmatic alliance has been a major force in helping the Islamic State achieve its goals. When the group seized a string of cities in Iraq earlier this year, it was the former generals of Saddam's army who provided much of the military expertise.
The Islamic State's extremism, however, is now causing rifts in the alliance, with Baathist and Islamic State fighters competing for dominance. In July, a group of former Saddam followers released a statement denouncing the persecution of minorities, which served to distance the group from the Islamic State's tactics, analysts told Foreign Policy. And in late August, the news site Niqash reported that Sunni militia and tribal leaders were plotting to wrest control of the city of Fallujah from their Islamic State allies and roll back the group's extremist mandates.