January 25, 2024 WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. government privately warned Iran that the Islamic State group’s affiliate in Afghanistan was preparing to carry out a terrorist attack before bombings in Kerman earlier this month that killed 95 people, a U.S. official.
The official, who was not authorized to comment and insisted on anonymity to discuss the intelligence, said the U.S. was following its longstanding policy of a “duty to warn” other governments against potential lethal threats.
[March 23 2024 7;41 pn est ]
WASHINGTON- The U.S. has intelligence confirming Islamic State’s claim of responsibility for a deadly shooting attack at a concert near Moscow on Friday, a U.S. official told Reuters.
The Islamic State’s Afghan branch known as ISIS-K have their motives for attacking Russia.
[May 25 2023 NGOs suspending their work after women excluded ]
“We have an agreement to start immediate talks on a temporary arrangement that will enable our female colleagues to work with and for women and others in Kandahar,” Egeland told The Associated Press. “If we get a provincial exemption in Kandahar, we should be able to replicate it elsewhere.”
[January 26 2023 ]
No one realistically expects the ban, announced last month, to be reversed. But it seems to have many loopholes.
Mr Griffiths highlighted “a consistent pattern of Taliban leaders presenting us with exceptions, exemptions, and authorisations for women to work”. So far, a green light has been given to crucial areas like health and community education where women’s participation is essential.
[January 16 2023 ]
“While the majority of our programmes remain on hold, we [Save the Children] are restarting some activities – such as health, nutrition and some education services – where we have received clear, reliable assurances from relevant authorities that our female staff will be safe and can work without obstruction.
[January 15 2023]
The Taliban crackdown is re-creating conditions from their first time in power in the mid-1990s, when successive edicts drove women out of schools, jobs, aid work and increasingly into their homes. Taliban leaders then ultimately ordered households to paint their windows black, so that no passersby could see the women inside. It left women and children in female-headed households little means to access money or help to stay alive.
[January 13 2023]
Britain’s U.N. ambassador, Barbara Woodward, tweeted that as of Thursday, “15% of NGOs had paused all work in Afghanistan, 68% had significantly reduced operations.” She added: “Humanitarian aid can’t happen without women.”
[Jnuary 12 2023]
After the ban, 11 major international aid groups along with some smaller ones suspended their operations completely, saying they cannot operate without their women workers. Many others have reduced their work dramatically. A post-ban survey of 151 local and international NGOs found that only about 14% were still operating at full capacity, according to U.N. Women.
[December 27 2022]
Almost all the large NGO aid agencies operating in Afghanistan have suspended almost all their work while talks continue to persuade the Taliban to rescind or clarify their decision. Tens of thousands of aid workers – many of them the chief breadwinners for the household – have been told to stay at home during the suspension, as the UN seeks to persuade the Taliban of the consequences for ordinary people in Afghanistan.
The United Nations said that some “time-critical” programs in Afghanistan have temporarily stopped. The UN agencies and aid groups – included World Vision International, CARE International, Save the Children US, Mercy Corps and InterAction.
German NGOs have joined dozens of other humanitarian organizations in suspending their work in Afghanistan, after the Taliban banned women from working for the groups. More than a year after the Taliban regained control of the country, the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan remains catastrophic. According to the WHH, 28.3 million people in the country, over two-thirds of the population, are dependent on humanitarian aid. At least 20 million are threatened with starvation.
[December 1 2022 VOA and RFE/RL banned ]
Voice of America (VOA) and the AP press agency reported that Taliban authorities banned radio broadcasting from VOA and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) in Afghanistan from Thursday.
[August 4 2022 Zawahiri dead – al-Qaeda versus Daesh – rivals ]
A senior US administration official said senior Taliban figures from the Haqqani network were aware of the al Qaeda chief’s presence in the area and even took steps to conceal his presence after the strike, restricting access to the safe house and rapidly relocating members of his family, including his daughter and her children.
[Aug 1 2022]
[Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States who is now with the Hudson Institute, said that one “question now would be, whether the Taliban enabled Zawahri’s elimination or the U.S. did it without assistance.”
[April 5 2022]
al-Qaeda has faced competition in jihadi circles from its rival, the Islamic State group. IS rose to prominence by seizing large swaths of Iraq and Syria in 2014, declaring a ‘caliphate’ and extending affiliates to multiple countries across the region.
IS’s physical ‘caliphate’ was crushed in Iraq and Syria, though its militants are still active and carrying out attacks.Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the shadowy leader of IS, Daesh (داعش, Dāʿish, IPA: [ˈdaːʕɪʃ]), was killed by US special forces in a raid in northwestern Syria in October 2019.
Osama bin Laden’s second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri has appeared in a new video in which he denounced the ‘enemies of Islam’ after a school in India banned the wearing of the hijab. Al-Zawahiri last appeared in a video last year marking the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, months after rumours spread that he was dead.
[March 10 2022 Syria: Abu Al-Hassan new ISIS leader ]
Islamic State confirmed on March 10 2022 the death of its leader Abu Ibrahim Al-hashemi Al-Quraishi and its spokesperson Abu Hamza Al-Quraishi, and announced Abu Al-Hassan Al-hashemi Al-Quraishi as its new chief
[February 3 2022 Isis leader dead after Special Forces “night stalkers” raid ]
Images and videos circulating online show the remains of a MH-60M of the 160th Special Operation Aviation Regiment (SOAR) “Night Stalkers”, recognizable from its heavily modified nose which was less damaged in the explosion.
“Last night, at my direction, US military forces in northwest Syria successfully undertook a counterterrorism operation to protect the American people and our allies, and make the world a safer place,” Biden said in a statement.
“Thanks to the skill and bravery of our Armed Forces, we have taken off the battlefield Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi — the leader of ISIS. All Americans have returned safely from the operation,” Biden added, using another acronym for IS.
Biden was scheduled to make public remarks early Thursday on the operation.
A senior US administration official said al-Quraishi was killed in a raid. “At the beginning of the operation the terrorist target exploded a bomb that killed him and members of his own family, including women and children,” the administration official said.
His real name was Amir Mohammed Saeed Abdul-Rahman al-Mawla, an Iraqi in his mid-40s, born in 1976 and believed to be an ethnic Turkman from the northern Iraqi town of Tel Afar. He held a degree in Islamic law from the University of Mosul.
[September 12 2021 Ayman al-Zawahiri could still be dead ]
Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri appeared in a new video marking the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, months after rumors spread that he was dead.
‘He could still be dead, though if so, it would have been at some point in or after Jan 2021,’ tweeted Rita Katz, SITE’s director.
[September 14 2021 Hamza bin Laden dead ]
In a statement, the leadership of al-Qaida on August 23 2019 alleged “treacherous Pakistani forces” captured Ayman al-Zawahiri’s wife and others as they left the former Taliban stronghold of Waziristan Pakistan bordering Afghanistan about a year ago due to continuous airstrikes.
[August 1 2019]
[2011] OBSERVATION POST MUSTANG, AFGHANISTAN – SEPTEMBER 02: Mortar men from the U.S. Army 2-27th Infantry Regiment fire on a Taliban position from Observation Post Mustang on September 2, 2011 in Kunar Province, Afghanistan. The area, in the Hindu Kush mountains in northeastern Afghanistan near the Pakistan border, is considered a major infiltration route by Taliban fighters coming across from Pakistan and has seen some of the heaviest fighting of the war
August 1 2019: The reports say he was killed in a military operation in the last two years and the US government was involved, but the exact date and time were unclear.
July 31, 2019,
WASHINGTON — The United States has obtained intelligence that the son and potential successor of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, Hamza bin Laden, is dead, according to three U.S. officials.
Children with first wife Najwa, 59
Abdullah bin Laden, aged 43
Abdul Rahman bin Laden, aged 41
Sa’ad bin Laden, died aged 30 in an American drone strike in Pakistan in 2009
Omar bin Laden, aged 38, married British-born Jane Felix-Browne in 2006 after they reportedly met while horseback riding in Egypt. In 2008 Jane said Omar wanted to be ‘an ambassador of peace’ between Muslims and the West
Mohammed bin Laden, aged 36
Osman bin Laden, aged 36
Fatima bin Laden, aged 32
Laden bin Laden, aged 30
Iman bin Laden, aged 29
Rukhaiya bint Laden, aged 22
Nour bin Laden, aged 20
Wife Khadijah Sharif, 71
Ali bin Laden, aged 33
Amer bin Laden, aged 29
Aisha bin Laden, aged 27
Wife Khairiah Sabar, 69
Khalid bin Laden
Hamza bin Laden, aged 30
Wife Siham Sabar, age unknown
Miriam bin Laden, aged 29
Sumaiya bint Laden, aged 27
Khalid bin Laden, who was killed aged 23 in the SEAL Team 6 raid with his father in 2011
Wife Amal al-Sadah, 36
Safiyah bin Laden, aged 18
Aasiah bin Laden, aged 16
Ibrahim bin Laden, aged 15
Zainab bin Laden, aged 13
Hussein bin Laden, aged 11
[March 02 2019 based near the Afghan-Pakistan border ]
Hamza bin Laden, a son of the late al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is emerging as the new leader of the militant group, according to the State Department. Saudi Arabia has revoked the citizenship of Hamza bin Laden.
The United States is offering a reward for information on Hamza bin Laden, thought to be about 30 years old and based near the Afghan-Pakistan border, of $1 million.
The State Department’s Counter-Terrorism Rewards Program posted the reward on its website late Thursday. “He has released audio and video messages on the Internet, calling on his followers to launch attacks against the United States and its Western allies, and he has threatened attacks against the United States in revenge for the May 2011 killing of his father by U.S. military forces,” the State Department said.
Hamza bin Laden is married to the daughter of Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker and a mastermind of al-Qaeda’s Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center.
web chatter:
Mohamed Atta had an American girlfriend with whom he lived for two months in Venice, FL., a lingerie model named Amanda Keller. You haven’t heard her story
…more web chatter
He apparently marries and has a child, a daughter, before 9/11.
still from video released by the CIA of Hamza bin Laden at his wedding
Khalid Shaykh Muhammad and Abu Zubayda, two key al Qaeda operatives, were caught in Pakistan’s urban centers. Mullah Omar lived within walking distance of a US base in Afghanistan, a remote hamlet, little more than a cluster of houses, beside a river that sometimes ran dry, around 20 miles south-east of Qalat, in Shinkay district and nearby the US built a base just three miles away, FOB Wolverine.
[February 18 2019 Afghan Taliban & MBS? Nope. ]
The Taliban has called off a planned round of peace talks in Pakistan, saying that most of the members of its negotiating team are unable to travel because they are subject to U.S. and UN sanctions. The statement was issued on February 17
The Taliban trip to Pakistan would have coincided with a two-day visit to the South Asian country by Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, who arrived on February 17.
In the February 14 announcement about the planned session in Pakistan, the Taliban also said its negotiators would meet with U.S. officials.[February 16 2019]
“Though it is top secret so far, there are strong indications representatives of the Afghan Taliban will meet Prince Salman during their visit of Pakistan on 18 February,” one Pakistani official in Islamabad said. Foreign Office said, “His Royal Highness Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Crown Prince, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will visit Pakistan on 17-18 February 2019.”
Crescent Shift 