al-Qaeda

I was in my senior year of high school when 9/11 happened. Al-Qaeda was behind the attack, and we were now at war. I joined the Army and served in American special operations units in Iraq and Afghanistan. There, I got to see the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and other jihadi militants up close, confirming beyond any […]

Signaling the U.S. drone war against Al Qaeda in Yemen is as hot as ever, the Pentagon on Thursday revealed that U.S. forces killed 28 suspected militants linked to the terrorist group in nine separate strikes from Sept. 23 to Dec. 13. The U.S. Central Command announced the strikes shortly before the anniversary of the […]

The following is part two of a two-part Red Team exercise on a hypothetical, multi-pronged ISIS attack on the Midwest—in Kansas City, Missouri. You can read part one here. H-Day, H-Hour Assailant #1, flying in a tourist charter helicopter over Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, Missouri, attacks and kills the helicopter’s pilot while the […]

Now that Aleppo is all but wrapped up from a military point of view, we can buckle up and get ready to do it all over again in Idlib and Raqqa.  This isn’t a mistake, but rather part of a strategy.  You may have noticed that whenever the Syrian regime, the Kurds, or others pushed […]

If you were to ask a sampling of American security and intelligence officials for their pick as the gravest threat to face the United States from global jihadists, you might be surprised by the answer you would hear. If you listen to official Washington, or the establishment media, for your answer, you might hear: a […]

The following is a Red Team case study of a hypothetical terrorist attack on Kansas City, Missouri. It is an attempt to highlight what an ISIS-inspired attack might look like on a mid-size American city, located not in the Northeast Corridor, nor on the West Coast, but in the middle of the United States. The […]

The battle for Aleppo is coming to a close and we can hope that the slaughter that has resulted from rebels and terrorists fighting the Syrian military and Russian Air Force is drawing to a conclusion as well.  When I was in Syria last month, I remember being ushered into a large conference room for […]

Sub-Saharan Africa has long been one of those places on Earth that just invites trouble & conflict, dating as far back as 500 AD by then there was already an extensive network of trans-Saharan trade routes. But peace would not last for long through the discovery of the camel; this enabled tribes to expand the […]

When the U.S. returned former al Qaeda operative Khalid al Jihani to Saudi Arabia after more than three years in prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, he was ready to rejoin the terror group. Instead, the Saudi government put him in its program aimed at de-radicalizing former jihadists before they are released back into society. The monthslong program, […]

WASHINGTON — The escalating American military engagement in Somalia has led the Obama administration to expand the legal scope of the war against Al Qaeda, a move that will strengthen President-elect Donald J. Trump’s authority to combat thousands of Islamist fighters in the chaotic Horn of Africa nation. The administration has decided to deem the […]

Major General Najm al-Jubbouri, a top commander in the offensive against Islamic State in the Iraqi city of Mosul, peered through binoculars at flames after his men shot dead an Islamic State suicide bomber. It was a small victory for a man whose war against jihadists is deeply personal. “You are heroes,” he said through […]

A “senior al-Qaeda leader” in Syria was killed last week by a US air strike, according to the Pentagon. The killing of Egyptian Abu Afghan al-Masri took place near Sarmada, located in Syria’s Idlib province, on November 18, Pentagon spokesperson Peter Cook told reporters on Tuesday. Cook said that Masri had originally joined al-Qaeda in Afghanistan […]