Eye on Extremism - 03-01-21

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Eye on Extremism - March 1, 2021
By: Counter Extremism Project - 03-01-21
Re: (*) info@counterextremism.com

As of 03-01-21 ((*) Note all these inks on these subjects - are on site only)

The Wall Street Journal: More Than 300 Girls Kidnapped In Latest Nigerian School Abduction

“Gunmen kidnapped 317 girls from a boarding school in northwest Nigeria, police said Friday, the latest in a rising tide of high-school abductions across Africa’s most populous nation, where kidnapping for ransom has become a lucrative industry. Dozens of armed militants broke into the Government Girls Secondary School, Jangebe, in Zamfara state at around 1 a.m. Friday and began shooting before packing schoolgirls onto vehicles or walking them toward the nearby Rugu forest, which spreads over three states and hundreds of miles. By morning, parents and community leaders were tallying the number of people missing. The Zamfara police said security forces, backed by reinforcements, were in pursuit of the abductors. Samaila Umar was one of the parents who awoke to the sound of gunfire, but by the time he could reach the school campus the militants had abducted his 15-year-old daughter and 14-year-old niece. “I couldn’t get to there to save her because the kidnappers were shooting everywhere,” he said. “The government must do all in its powers to bring back our daughters.”

Reuters: Arrival Of “Sticky Bombs” In Indian Kashmir Sets Off Alarm Bells

“Sticky bombs”, which can be attached to vehicles and detonated remotely, have been seized during raids in recent months in the federally administered region of Jammu and Kashmir, three senior security officials told Reuters. “These are small IEDs and quite powerful,” said Kashmir Valley police chief Vijay Kumar, referring to improvised explosive devices. “It will certainly impact the present security scenario as volume and frequency of vehicular movements of police and security forces are high in Kashmir Valley.” The Indian government flooded Kashmir, already one of the world’s most militarised regions, with more troops in August 2019, when it split the country’s only Muslim-majority state into two federally administered territories. The arrival of the sticky bombs in India-controlled Kashmir - including 15 seized in a February raid - raises concerns that an unnerving tactic attributed to the Taliban insurgents in nearby Afghanistan could be spreading to the India-Pakistan conflict.”

Agence France-Presse: UN Court To Try Hezbollah Member For Lebanon Attacks

“A fugitive Hezbollah suspect will go on trial in June accused of three attacks on Lebanese politicians in the mid-2000s, a UN-backed tribunal announced on Friday. Salim Ayyash, 57, will be tried in absentia by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which in December sentenced him to life in prison for the 2005 murder of Lebanese prime minister Rafic Hariri. Hariri and 21 others died in a massive suicide bomb explosion in Beirut in early 2005 and Ayyash was one of four suspects tried by the Netherlands-based court. Ayyash’s sentence is currently under appeal, while the three other suspects were acquitted as the court ruled there was not enough evidence against them. The acquittals are also being appealed. The new trial concerns three attacks against Marwan Hamade, George Hawi and Elias Murr, said the STL, based on the outskirts of The Hague. Ayyash faced five counts including the “commission of acts of terrorism” and “intentional homicide,” the court said. The first attack in Beirut in October 2004, wounded Druze MP and ex-minister Hamade, as well as another person, and killed his bodyguard, the tribunal said. The second attack, also in Beirut, in June 2005, killed Hawi, the former leader of the Lebanese Communist Party, and injured two other people.”

United States

CNN: DHS Mandates State And Local Spending On Domestic Terrorism Prevention

“The Department of Homeland Security will require state and local grant recipients to spend funding on domestic violent extremism prevention efforts, the department announced Thursday. For the first time, the department designated combating domestic violent extremism as a “National Priority Area” for two of its Federal Emergency Management Agency grant programs. FEMA operates several grant programs to assist state and local governments prevent and recover from acts of terrorism and other threats. These grant recipients will be required to spend at least 7.5% of their grant awards on combating domestic violent extremism, which will amount to $77 million in grant funding across the US, according to DHS. “Today the most significant terrorist threat facing the nation comes from lone offenders and small groups of individuals who commit acts of violence motivated by domestic extremist ideological beliefs,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement. CNN reported last week that the Biden administration planned to lean on FEMA to help state and local authorities combat domestic extremism.”

Politico: How The Pentagon Got Inside ISIS’ Chemical Weapons Operation—And Ended It

“The Kurdish fighters dug in along Highway 47 in Kesik Kupri, Iraq, on January 23, 2015, could hear the truck from far off and knew the attack was coming. The defenders crouched behind their vehicles or squatted along a low ridge, rifles trained on the narrow road. From the ridge to the earthen barrier across the highway were perhaps 500 men, skilled veterans of Iraq’s Kurdish Peshmerga brigades as well as teenagers and elderly volunteers from neighboring villages who had come in their civilian coats, sneakers and checkered scarves to reclaim their homes from the men of ISIS. In two hard days of combat, they had seized a strategic crossroads and now effectively controlled the main route between the Iraqi city of Mosul and the Syrian frontier. The Islamists would do whatever they could to take it back. The afternoon was nearly spent when the suicide vehicle appeared. The Kurds positioned along the ridge could see it clearly: a red farm truck with steel plates welded to the front for ramming and a trailer bed stacked high with metal tanks. The truck picked up speed as it approached the Kurdish line, and from the ridge the defenders unleashed a volley of rifle fire aimed at the passenger cabin.”

The Detroit News: Ohio Man Accused Of Making Terrorism Threat Against Port Huron Police, School

“Port Huron police announced Sunday an Ohio man has been charged with making a terrorism threat against police officers and an elementary school. Police in a news release identified the suspect as Dominik Hricovsky, 32. They said Hricovsky was arraigned Sunday on charges of threat of terrorism, discharging a firearm in or at a building, two felony firearm counts, being a felon in possession of a firearm, resisting and obstructing, and being a habitual offender. The charges are tied to an incident reported Wednesday morning, according to the news release. Police said emergency dispatch for St. Clair County “received several calls from an unknown male making threats to burn down Cleveland Elementary School and shoot police officers.” Officers responded to the school, which went into a “soft lockdown,” police said. Dispatchers traced the calls to an apartment in the 2700 block of Nern Street, where officers found Hricovsky visiting his girlfriend, police said. “When he was placed under arrest, he attempted to run and fight officers who deployed a taser,” according to the release. Police allege that Hricovsky provided officers with incorrect names before they identified him via fingerprint. Police said an investigation also found that Hricovsky had fired one round out of the apartment's window.”

Syria

Voice Of America: Islamic State Exploiting Security Gaps To Step Up Violence, US Partners Warn

“The Islamic State terror group appears to be exploiting security gaps across Syria and Iraq to reposition its forces and help fuel an increase in violence that is reenergizing fighters and supporters. Officials with U.S.-backed forces in northeastern Syria tell VOA the recent surge in violence across the region, including attacks on civil servants and execution-style killings at the al-Hol displaced persons camp, are linked to an influx of operatives from areas nominally under the control of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as well as from neighboring Iraq. The assessment of U.S. partners on the ground is consistent with Washington’s own findings in recent months, which warn that IS fighters and operatives enjoy freedom of movement across much of Syria while finding ways to shape the environment to the terror group’s advantage. “ISIS is not finished yet,” Mazloum Abdi, the general commander of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), told VOA’s Kurdish service, using an acronym for the terror group. The SDF has responded with a campaign of its own, using air support and intelligence from the U.S.-led coalition to track down and eliminate IS fighters. Abdi told VOA the operations have resulted in numerous arrests.”

Voice Of America: Who Are Iran-Backed Militants Struck By US In Syria?

“The U.S. military Thursday struck facilities used by Iran-backed militia groups in eastern Syria, a decision the Pentagon said President Joe Biden authorized in response to recent attacks against U.S. personnel in Iraq. “Specifically, the strikes destroyed multiple facilities located at a border control point used by a number of Iranian-backed militant groups,” including Kataeb Hezbollah and Kataeb Sayyid al-Shuhada, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said in a statement. Here is a look at the history and some facts about the two Iranian-backed militant groups: Kataeb Hezbollah, or “Brigades of the Party of God,” is an Iraqi Shiite militia seen as the central nervous system of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force (IRGC-QF) in Iraq. Although the group was officially founded in April 2007, its leaders have been actively engaged in anti-Western, pro-Iran activities since the 1980s and expanded their influence beginning in 2003 following the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The U.S. State Department describes Kataeb Hezbollah as “a radical Shia Islamist group with an anti-Western establishment and jihadist ideology.” The U.S. State Department designated the group as a terrorist organization in July 2009.”

Iran

The New York Times: With Strikes In Syria, Biden Confronts Iran’s Militant Network

“Since President Biden entered the White House, Iranian-backed militants across the Middle East have struck an airport in Saudi Arabia with an exploding drone, and are accused of assassinating a critic in Lebanon and of targeting American military personnel at an airport in northern Iraq, killing a Filipino contractor and wounding six others. On Thursday, the world got its first glimpse of how Mr. Biden is likely to approach one of the greatest security concerns of American partners in the region: the network of militias that are backed by Iran and committed to subverting the interests of the United States and its allies. United States officials said that overnight airstrikes ordered by Mr. Biden hit a collection of buildings on the Syrian side of a border crossing with Iraq on Thursday and targeted members of the Iran-backed militia Kataib Hezbollah and an affiliated group. A Kataib Hezbollah official said that one of his group’s fighters had been killed in the airstrikes. A statement by the group later described the dead fighter as a member of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, a collection of paramilitaries that includes Kataib Hezbollah and is officially part of Iraqi government security forces.”

Iraq

Asharq Al-Awsat: Once Ravaged By ISIS, Iraq's Sinjar Caught In New Tug-Of-War

“Nearly six years since Iraq's Sinjar region was recaptured from militants, a tangled web of geopolitical tensions risks sparking a new conflict that could prolong the dire situation of minority Yazidis. The ISIS group overran Sinjar in 2014 and pursued a brutal, months-long campaign of massacres, enslavement, and rape against Yazidis in what the UN has said could amount to genocide. Sinjar is wedged between Turkey to the north and Syria to the west, making it a highly strategic zone long coveted by both the central government in Baghdad and autonomous Kurdish authorities of the north. The tensions have terrified the few Yazidis who returned to their ruined towns, only to face the specter of a new displacement. “We're living in the middle of so many different threats,” said one of them, 46-year-old Faisal Saleh. “Sinjar's people are terrified that clashes will break out,” he told AFP as he drove from his hometown in Sinjar into the adjacent Kurdish region to rent an apartment in case he needed to flee an escalation. Sinjar was retaken from ISIS in 2015 by fighters from the autonomous Kurdistan region's Peshmerga and from Syrian Kurdish units, backed by the US-led coalition. Iran-backed units from within the Iraqi Hashed al-Shaabi network of militias also took surrounding territory.”

Afghanistan

The New York Times: ‘I Wake Up And Scream’: Secret Taliban Prisons Terrorize Thousands

“The Taliban prison is a ruined house, a cave, a filthy basement in an abandoned dwelling, or a village mosque. Beatings or worse are a certainty, and the sentence is indefinite. Food, if there is any, is stale bread and cold beans. A bed is the floor or a dirty carpet. The threat of death — screamed, shouted, sometimes inflicted — is ever-present. Malik Mohammadi, a calm 60-year-old farmer, watched the Taliban put to death his 32-year-old son Nasrullah, an army officer, in one such prison. Over a period of nine days last year, Nasrullah, an epileptic, was refused medicine by his captors. He was denied food. His father saw blood coming from his mouth, and bruises from beatings. On the 10th day, he died. “The Taliban beat him,” Mr. Mohammadi said quietly. “I watched the killing of my son.” Such repression is part of the Taliban’s strategy of control in the territories under their rule. While the Afghan government and Taliban negotiators in Qatar fitfully talk about meeting for talks, even as the idea of real peace recedes, the reality is that the insurgents already hold much of the country. An approaching U.S. withdrawal, coupled with a weak Afghan security force scarcely able to defend itself, means the group is likely to maintain this authority and its brutal ways of invoking submission.”

Voice Of America: Afghans ‘Disappointed’ One Year Into US-Taliban Deal

“A year into the U.S.-Taliban agreement, Afghan leaders say they are frustrated with the continued rise of violence by the militant group that has taken a toll on civilians. The agreement, signed on Feb. 29, 2020, asks for the withdrawal of all U.S. forces by May 2021, but only if the Taliban keep their promises of cutting ties with terrorist groups and participating in intra-Afghan talks for a permanent cease-fire and a political roadmap for Afghanistan. “The increase in violence has disappointed Afghans,” said Shukria Barakzai, a former member of the lower house of Afghan parliament. “The Taliban promised that they will reduce violence; and would make peace with the Afghan government, but unfortunately they have not done so.” More than 3,000 civilians were killed, and 5,800 others were injured in Afghanistan in 2020, according to a report published Tuesday by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan. UNAMA said civilian casualties rose 45% after the start of the intra-Afghan negotiations on Sept. 12 in Doha, Qatar. Referring to the stalled talks in Doha, Barakzai said the Afghan government representatives, despite months of effort, were unable to make progress toward peace because “the Taliban are not willing to talk to them.”

CNN: Biden Administration Resumes Taliban Peace Talks

“The US is sending negotiators to the Middle East to restart peace negotiations with the Taliban for the first time in the Biden administration, the State Department announced Sunday. US Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad will travel to Afghanistan and Qatar, where he will meet with Afghan government officials on the trip as well as with Taliban representatives. “(Khalilizad) will resume discussions on the way ahead with the Islamic Republic and Afghan leaders, Taliban representatives, and regional countries whose interests are best served by the achievement of a just and durable political settlement and permanent and comprehensive ceasefire,” the statement said. Khalilzad was the US top negotiator with the Taliban during the Trump administration, and CNN previously reported the Biden administration kept him on board to, in part, demonstrate the Biden administration's fidelity to the Doha agreement that was signed by the US and the Taliban last year, which Khalilzad helped negotiate. That agreement, negotiated under the Trump administration and signed in February 2020, calls for the militant group to reduce violence and cut ties with terrorist organizations, among other demands.”

Pakistan

Associated Press: Pakistan Expert: Religiosity Aiding Spike In Militancy

“Militant attacks are on the rise in Pakistan amid a growing religiosity that has brought greater intolerance, prompting one expert to voice concern the country could be overwhelmed by religious extremism. Pakistani authorities are embracing strengthening religious belief among the population to bring the country closer together. But it’s doing just the opposite, creating intolerance and opening up space for a creeping resurgence in militancy, said Mohammad Amir Rana, executive director of the independent Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies. “Unfortunately, instead of helping to inculcate better ethics and integrity, this phenomenon is encouraging a tunnel vision” that encourages violence, intolerance and hate, he wrote recently in a local newspaper. “Religiosity has begun to define the Pakistani citizenry.” Militant violence in Pakistan has spiked: In the past week alone, four vocational school instructors who advocated for women’s rights were traveling together when they were gunned down in a Pakistan border region. A Twitter death threat against Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai attracted an avalanche of trolls. They heaped abuse on the young champion of girls education, who survived a Pakistani Taliban bullet to the head.”

Nigeria

Reuters: Nigerian Schoolboys Freed As Forces Search For 300 Abducted Girls

“Gunmen in Nigeria on Saturday released 27 teenage boys who were kidnapped from their school last week in the north-central state of Niger, while security forces continued to search for more than 300 schoolgirls abducted in a nearby state. Schools have become targets for mass kidnappings for ransom in northern Nigeria by armed groups. On Feb. 17, 27 students, three staff and 12 members of their families were abducted by an armed gang that stormed the Government Science secondary school in the Kagara district of Niger state, overwhelming the school’s security detail. One boy was killed during the raid. After their release, boys were seen by a Reuters witness walking with armed security through a dusty village, some struggling to stand and asking for water. A government official said the boys were aged between 15 and 18. The release comes just a day after the raid on a school in Zamfara state where gunmen seized 317 girls. Police on Saturday mounted a hunt for the girls, while parents waited in the school compound for news on their daughters.”

Mali

Reuters: Eight Killed In Attacks On Central Malian Security Bases

“Unidentified attackers killed eight people in twin attacks on a Malian military post and a gendarme base of the central town of Bandiagra late on Thursday, the army said. The assailants attacked the base at 2120 local time, setting buildings alight and stealing weapons and four vehicles, a local official said on Friday, speaking on condition of anonymity. Islamist groups linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State regularly attack Malian security forces and U.N. peacekeepers in the area, which the militants use as a base for attacks across the Sahel region south of the Sahara Desert. Five were wounded in addition to those killed, the army said in a statement, without giving further details on the attack.”

United Kingdom

Reuters: Runaway Schoolgirl Who Joined ISIS Cannot Return To U.K., Top Court Says

“A British-born woman who went to Syria as a schoolgirl to join the Islamic State militant group should not be allowed to return to Britain to challenge the government taking away her citizenship because she poses a security risk, the U.K.'s Supreme Court ruled Friday. Shamima Begum left London in 2015 when she was 15 and went to Syria via Turkey with two schoolfriends where she married an ISIS fighter. Begum, 21, who is being held in a detention camp in Syria, was stripped of her British citizenship in 2019 but the Court of Appeal previously agreed she could only have a fair appeal of that decision if she were allowed back to Britain. But the country's top court overturned that decision, meaning that although she can still pursue her appeal against the decision to take away her citizenship, she cannot do that in Britain. The British government had argued that the intelligence agencies concluded those who aligned with ISIS posed a serious current risk to national security. “If a vital public interest — in this case, the safety of the public — makes it impossible for a case to be fairly heard, then the courts cannot ordinarily hear it,” the Supreme Court judges concluded.”