ISIS

“Every day, the intelligence services, the police, gendarmes, are foiling attacks, unraveling Iraqi-Syrian networks. The threat today is maximum and we are a target, everyone understands that.”

Valls said 700 French jihadis were believed to be fighting with Islamic State in Syria, among them more than 200 women. French intelligence services were watching 15,000 people suspected of being radicalized.

Three Americans volunteered for combat alongside Kurdish militia; repatriation was a complicated affair.
Americans don’t need a visa to enter Iraqi Kurdistan, but their passports are stamped there before they are driven into Syria through YPG-controlled border checkpoints. The volunteers don’t get Syrian government visas.

When fighters die in Syria, getting them home is a far more complex affair, and an expensive one. Representatives of the Rojava government paid $43,600 dollars for the cost to return the remains of all three men this time, according to Lucy Usoyan, a Washington-based representative of a Kurdish group that helped organize the return.

Three Syrian men believed to have been sent to Germany last year by the Islamic State group as a possible “sleeper cell” were arrested in raids on Tuesday, part of efforts to root out extremists sent to Europe amid the migrant influx, authorities said. The three are accused of coming to Germany in mid-November at […]

Yesterday, a statement from Peter Cook, the Pentagon’s Press Secretary, confirmed that the US airstrike on August 30th targeting Abu Muhammad Al-Adnani, one of the Islamic State’s senior leaders was successful. Al- Adnani was responsible not only for a large part of Islamic State’s propaganda but he also recruited and facilitated most of their foreign terrorist operations. The Department of […]

French prosecutors have placed three young women under formal investigation over a foiled attack near Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Ines Madani, 19, Sara Hervouet, 23, and Amel Sakaou, 39, were brought before anti-terrorism judges on Monday. The women are suspected of plotting to blow up a car packed with gas canisters last week, and of […]

“If you have [the Islamic State’s] No. 3 in the crosshairs and he’s using human shields, would we be able to strike him or not?” the officer asked. “This is an important debate. But are we fighting a war or are we not? They are clearly waging a war against us. Are we waging a war, or are we conducting a police action?
“How do you ‘advise and assist’ someone when you are not allowed to go into combat with them?” the officer added.

A “terrorist cell” made up mainly of radicalized young Frenchwomen has been dismantled by security forces, the Paris prosecutor said on Friday, after a car filled with gas canisters was found last week in the heart of Paris. The prosecutor, François Molins, whose office handles domestic terrorism investigations, said that the women had been “guided remotely” from […]

The carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower’s crew proved Sunday that they can simultaneously deliver ISIS air strikes and babies. A third class petty officer from Carrier Air Wing 3 checked into the carrier’s medical clinic after stomach pains Saturday. Nine hours later, in the early hours of Sept. 11, she gave birth to a healthy 7-pound […]

Suicide attacks are never random, they are a cold calculation’s result that involves several factors. The most important is the capability to spread anxiety and fear among the population, not only those directly injured. Modern democracies have sophisticated weaponry, bomb military targets with drones, launch missiles at impossible distances, yet exhibit some uncertainty against the […]

The 13-year-old girl’s explanation for why she had decided to leave her happy family in London to fly East and join ISIS was frighteningly naive: “She told me, ‘Well, I was looking at photos online and I thought I was going to go live in the Islamic Disneyworld,’” quotes Yasmin Green, head of research and development at Jigsaw, the […]

“It’s like after the Afghanistan war in the 1980s,” said Neumann, citing the period after Soviet troops withdrew in 1989 and legions of foreign fighters formed a diaspora of radicalized veterans that subsequently fueled the rise of al-Qaeda. “They’ll be asking themselves, ‘What’s next?’ “

It’s not a matter of the Taliban learning their lesson. The Taliban has changed and the same original fighters do not comprise the bulk of the force. This is a question of what do they have to lose? Do they want revenge?