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Fifth Column
With the West excusing terrorism, who needs Islamists?
2025-01-03
[IsraelNationalNews] Europe and America gave many terrorists everything: educational and job opportunities, entertainment and sexual freedom, salaries and social assistance and religious freedom. The terrorists below have never seen a day of poverty in their lives.

With Westerners excusing terrorism, who needs Islamists?

July 14, 2016, Nice. During the fireworks festival, an Islamic terrorist kills 87 people, adults and children, under a truck that claimed to be carrying ice cream to the celebration of the French Revolution.

Four days later, the famous philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, disciple and friend of Jacques Derrida, publishes an article in Libération entitled "A truck launched". Despite having gone almost unnoticed, the article has lost none of its interest:

"A truck launched to run over children - among others - gives an unbearable image of nihilism. Nihilism itself names an end: that of our history and our civilization (...) It is not enough to declare war on it. We must attack ourselves, climb aboard and dismantle the mad trucks of our supposed progress, our fantasies of domination and our commercial obesity".

Clear? Terrorists and Westerners are the same, for our little masters of thought.

The terrorist who killed 15 people with a pickup truck in New Orleans on New Year’s Day (what better way to start the year than with another Islamic massacre?) was named Shamsud-Din Jabbar.

The Wall Street Journal has a pretty good portrait: a native Texan, an Army veteran (he also served in Afghanistan), a state university graduate, and a father of three, he had worked his way up the corporate ladder. Jabbar was an attentive neighbor who regularly asked a retiree if she needed anything and had given her a vacuum cleaner, washer, and dryer when he moved in. A model citizen. The New York Times reveals that he had converted to Islam.

This time, no taqiya, like there was in the case of the attacker who drove the car into the Christmas market in Magdeburg (by the way, the security of the German market was contracted to a company called "Mecca Security" !! some stories are so absurd that they can’t be invented).

But according to the official media, a "vehicle" killed 15 people in New Orleans.

Worse than the media is the legion of Western idiots who say that Islamic terrorism is a consequence of capitalism, colonialism, Israel, white and Jewish supremacy, in short, it is our fault, the West.

The Islamic terrorist who killed the British MP David Amess in the church is the son of a former advisor to the prime minister of Somalia.

Poverty and deprivation are not, as the fatuous John Kerry said, "the main cause of terrorism." Islam is.

Syed Rizwan Farook, a thirty-year-old Muslim of Pakistani origin, and his Saudi wife Tashfeen Malik, unloaded their semi-automatic rifles on the employees of a center for the disabled in California, killing 14 people during a Christmas party, the favorite season for massacres. Farook was an American citizen and worked as an inspector at the county health department. He earned seventy thousand dollars a year.

A graduate in engineering, his father a public works employee, his sister an elementary school teacher, Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez killed four marines in a recruitment center in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Michael Adebowale, the terrorist who slaughtered British soldier Lee Regby in the heart of London, had a bright future ahead of him. At school, his teachers had chosen him as a "model student".

Take Aafia Siddiqui, one of Al Qaeda’s Amazons, she is a neurologist who graduated from MIT and was sentenced to 86 years in prison.

And don't forget the psychiatrist who, shouting "Allahu Akbar", massacred his comrades at Fort Hood. Thirteen dead. Dr. Nidal Hassan.

The son of a wealthy banker who studied at one of the most prestigious universities in the world, University College London (in terms of academic results, it is the fourth university in the world) and lived in the chic heart of the English capital - that was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the attacker of the Christmas flight Amsterdam-Detroit. He lived on the fifth floor of a building on Mansfield Street. Neoclassical columns, an Art Nouveau door with a large basket of wrought iron roses, a few blocks from Oxford Street, where an apartment costs around two million euro.

And there is Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, one of the terrorists who killed Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal journalist beheaded because he was Jewish. Sheikh is the son of a wealthy carpet merchant and had graduated from the London School of Economics.

Aqsa Mahmood, one of the most high-profile women in ISIS, lived in Pollokshields, one of the rich neighborhoods of Glasgow. Her father is the first Pakistani cricketer in Scotland. All their children went to private school.

Omar Khan Sharif, who blew himself up in a Tel Aviv cafe, attended one of the UK’s most elite schools, Foremarke Hall in Repton, founded in 1557 and whose alumni included writers such as Roald Dahl, Christopher Isherwood and the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Ramsey.

Yet, from the intellectual left to Pope Francis, it is repeated that these Islamic fanatics are being recruited from among the world’s oppressed, from those who, in the words of Karl Marx, have "only their chains to lose." No, my friends, they are religious fanatics intent on overthrowing the Western society that spawned them.

Faisal Shahzad, the terrorist behind the failed Times Square attack, had a $273,000 house and a father who is a high-ranking officer in the Pakistani army. And what about Abdelkarim Mejjati, the mastermind behind the Madrid massacres, who grew up in the exclusive Gauthier neighborhood of Casablanca to a very rich father and a mother who ran a chain of beauty salons?

Europe and America gave these terrorists everything: educational and job opportunities, entertainment and sexual freedom, salaries and social assistance and religious freedom. These terrorists have never seen a day of poverty in their lives.

The Paris terrorists rejected liberté, egalité and fraternité; the British jihadists rejected the sweet British multicultural lullabies; the Islamist who killed Theo van Gogh repudiated Dutch relativism and Palestinian Arab terrorists want to cleanse the earth of the Jewish presence.

But for those who think that the West deserves it in part and are now in the top echelons of politics, the media, and universities, it is much easier and more seductive to embrace the common belief that we are the guilty ones. Self-hatred, oikophobia, will end up killing us.

With Westerners like that, who needs Islamic terrorism?
Related:
Magdeburg: 2025-01-01 Man goes on crazed digger rampage through German town before being shot dead by cops
Magdeburg: 2024-12-31 German minister: ‘Striking signs’ that deadly car-ramming suspect is mentally ill
Magdeburg: 2024-12-27 Taqiyya: the West should know better
Related:
David Amess 02/29/2024 UK government boosts security after lawmakers targeted for stances on Israel-Hamas war; over half of Tory party members believe Islam a domestic threat, gov’t boosts security funding for Jewish communities
David Amess 02/25/2024 Who rules the UK, parliament or the mob? Intimidation over Gaza threatens British democracy
David Amess 02/01/2024 Pro-Israel MP in UK says he won’t seek reelection, notes ‘serious threats’ against him

Related:
Syed Rizwan Farook 10/25/2020 Man who bought guns used in 2015 San Bernardino terrorist attack gets 20 years
Syed Rizwan Farook 03/05/2020 Jihad Mother of San Bernardino Mass Murdering Terrorist Pleads GUILTY to Destroying Evidence
Syed Rizwan Farook 01/29/2019 Terror attack gun supplier wants to withdraw guilty plea

Related:
Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez 11/19/2015 At Least 15 US 'Citizen Terrorists' Are Also Legal Immigrants
Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez 07/23/2015 Jordan Holding Chattanooga Shooter's Uncle
Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez 07/18/2015 Suspect in slaying of U.S. Marines made 2014 trip to Mideast

Related:
Michael Adebowale 09/16/2018 Hate preacher Anjem Choudary to be freed from jail despite remaining 'genuinely dangerous'
Michael Adebowale 06/05/2017 Timeline of major terror attacks in Britain
Michael Adebowale 05/23/2017 POTUS Advisor Gorka Links Manchester bombing to 2013 Killing of British soldier

Related:
Aafia Siddiqui 12/03/2024 PM okays financial support for delegation tasked with Dr Aafia''s release, IHC told
Aafia Siddiqui 06/03/2023 Legal team working on expediting efforts to bring Aafia home
Aafia Siddiqui 10/28/2022 Man who sold gun to Texas synagogue attacker gets 8 years in prison


Related:
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab 12/23/2024 Muslims in Sweden say the country is almost conquered and that they will soon be the majority
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab 09/18/2024 Some pager boomer chemistry for those adverse to searching the web in such times as these
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab 09/12/2021 School board member whose father led mosque with ties to al-Qaeda opposes resolution to honor 9/11 victims


Related:
Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh 03/23/2021 Man acquitted in Daniel Pearl’s killing moved to Pakistan safe house
Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh 02/07/2021 Pearl case accused moved to new premises
Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh 02/04/2021 Pakistan orders man acquitted in Pearl murder off death row and into safe house

Related:
Aqsa Mahmood 02/25/2024 ISIS bride stuck in Syria refugee camp loses appeal over removal of UK citizenship
Aqsa Mahmood 10/09/2022 Shamima Begum: And then there was one
Aqsa Mahmood 09/16/2021 ISIS bride Shamima Begum says she'd 'rather die' than rejoin group

Related:
Omar Khan Sharif 01/01/2010 British universities: Breeding grounds for radical Islam?
Omar Khan Sharif 08/29/2006 UK-Pakistani radicals posing greatest threat
Omar Khan Sharif 07/09/2006 UK plotter linked to Tel Aviv blasts

Related:
Faisal Shahzad 05/11/2023 CTD arrests TTP militant in Sahiwal
Faisal Shahzad 07/08/2022 26 killed in suicide attack near Nadra office in Mardan
Faisal Shahzad 08/21/2020 Militant groups in Pakistan reunite to overthrow the government


Related:
Theo van Gogh 11/18/2024 Who attacked Israelis in Amsterdam? Some Dutch politicians can’t bring themselves to say
Theo van Gogh 11/09/2024 Last Night’s Pogrom in Amsterdam
Theo van Gogh 05/28/2018 Swift Injustice: The Case of Tommy Robinson

Link


Afghanistan
Aliabad district in northern Kunduz province falls in the hands of the Taliban fighters
2021-06-14
[KhaamaPress] Local officials said that Aliabad district in Kunduz province had fallen to the Taliban
...the Pashtun equivalent of men...
on Saturday night.

Haji Mohammad Omar Khan, a parliamentarian from Kunduz province, confirmed to Khaama Press that the Taliban carried offensive attacks in the center of Aliabad district of Kunduz Province on Saturday.

He also added that the Taliban captured the center of Aliabad district and a military base after hours of fighting with government forces.

Omar Khan stated that security forces abandoned their bases days before and yet it is not clear whether the withdrawal was a tactical retreat or defeat.

So far, the Security forces have not yet commented on the matter.

Aliabad was the third district to fall to the Taliban since Friday night, two districts in Ghor and Balkh provinces were seized by the Taliban late on Friday.
Related:
Aliabad district: 2019-11-14 Special Forces kill, detain 6 Taliban militants; destroy weapons caches in 4 provinces
Aliabad district: 2019-09-27 Special Forces kill, detain 11 Taliban militants in 4 provinces
Aliabad district: 2019-03-27 2 senior Taliban commanders arrested, 2 others killed in the outskirts of Kunduz city
Related:
Kunduz: 2021-06-11 Car Bomb Targets Military Base in Baghlan
Kunduz: 2021-06-05 Clashes Reported in Three Districts of Herat, 4 Soldiers Killed; 183 Talibs toes up across Afghanistan
Kunduz: 2021-06-01 5 People Freed by Afghan Forces from Taliban Prison in Kunduz
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India-Pakistan
Jaish-E-Mohammed terror module busted, 4 arrested: J&K Police
2021-03-11
[OneIndia] Police on Wednesday claimed to have busted a module of terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) by arresting four men, who were allegedly planning to carry out a car-kaboom on security forces in Kashmir
...a disputed territory lying between India and Pakistain. After partition, the Paks grabbed half of it and call it Azad (Free) Kashmir. The remainder they refer to as "Indian Occupied Kashmir". They have fought four wars with India over it, the score currently 4-0 in New Delhi's favor. After 72 years of this nonsense, India cut the Gordian knot in 2019, removing the area's special status, breaking off Ladakh as a separate state, and allowing people from other areas to settle (or in the case of the Pandits, to resettle) there....
's Pampore.

"Jaish wanted to carry out a car-kaboom and the Awantipora police was tracking this module. We have arrested four persons in this regard and have also seized the car that was to be used in carrying out the attack," police official Vijay Kumar told news hounds here.

He said JeM had motivated Sahil Nazir, a BA first-year student, through Telegram and other mobile messaging applications to procure a second-hand car for carrying out the attack.

"Using technical as well as human intelligence, police nabbed Sahil, who revealed the plot about the car-kaboom. Kaiser, Younis and Yasir Ahmad Wani, who were involved in hatching the plot, have also been arrested," Kumar said, adding that the car was seized from the house of Younis.

The senior police official further said that Sahil has confessed to his involvement in the plot and also admitted that he had thrown a grenade at security forces in the Pampore area of Pulwama district on January 25.

Kumar said the police have also arrested an overground worker (OGW) of terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba
...the Army of the Pure, an Ahl-e-Hadith terror organization founded by Hafiz Saeed. LeT masquerades behind the Jamaat-ud-Dawa facade within Pakistain and periodically blows things up and kills people in India. Despite the fact that it is banned, always an interesting concept in Pakistain, the organization remains an blatant tool and perhaps an arm of the ISI...
(LeT) and seized 25 kilograms of explosives from his house in Pampore.

"On the instructions of Omar Khanday, who joined the krazed killer ranks last year, the LeT had planned to carry out a fidayeen (suicide) attack or an IED blast at the municipal committee building in Pampore," he added.
Related:
Jaish-e-Mohammed: 2021-01-03 LeT leader Lakhvi arrested from Lahore on terrorism financing charge: CTD
Jaish-e-Mohammed: 2021-01-01 3 Pak linked terror associates nabbed, terror plot to attack Temple averted
Jaish-e-Mohammed: 2020-11-22 Nagrota, Kashmir: Big attack aimed at diverting Imran Khan’s problems back home
Related:
Kashmir: 2021-03-06 Mathura court issues warrant to produce two terror accused PFI activists before it from Lucknow jail
Kashmir: 2021-03-06 Mirwaiz Umar Farooq released from house arrest
Kashmir: 2021-03-03 The radicalisation menace in Tamil Nadu was brushed aside for too long, until the NIA exposed it in 2014
Related:
Pampore: 2021-02-07 LeM chief arrested in Jammu; major terror strike foiled
Pampore: 2020-06-19 One terrorist gunned down in a fierce gunfight with security forces in Meej Pampore area of Awantipora in Pulwama district
Pampore: 2018-02-06 Jammu And Kashmir Police Arrests Five Jaish-e-Mohammad Over Ground Workers For Awantipora Attacks
Related:
Lashkar-e-Taiba: 2021-02-22 Terror groups trying to shift focus from Kashmir valley to Jammu: Jitendra Singh
Lashkar-e-Taiba: 2021-02-21 Two associates of Lashkar arrested in J&K
Lashkar-e-Taiba: 2021-02-21 Pakistan has 69 Banned Groups, it Sponsors Half of India's Proscribed Outfits
Related:
Pulwama district: 2021-02-07 LeM chief arrested in Jammu; major terror strike foiled
Pulwama district: 2020-06-19 One terrorist gunned down in a fierce gunfight with security forces in Meej Pampore area of Awantipora in Pulwama district
Pulwama district: 2020-01-13 Three wanted Hizbul terrorists killed in Pulwama encounter
Link


Afghanistan
Suicide attack foiled in Charikar city in North of Afghanistan
2016-10-19
[Khaama (Afghanistan)] A suicide kaboom plot by the Talibs group was foiled by the Afghan cops in Charikar city, the picturesque provincial capital of northern Parwan province.

The Afghan Intelligence, National Directorate of Security
...the Afghan national intel agency...
(NDS), said the intelligence operatives locked away
Maw! They're comin' to get me, Maw!
a would be jacket wallah before he manage to carry out a suicide attack using a cycle of violence packed with explosives.

NDS further added that the bomber has been identified as Mohammad Khan son of Omar Khan.

The Talibs group has not commented regarding the report so far.

This comes as the Afghan intelligence operatives thwarted a coordinated suicide attack plot by the Talibs group in eastern Laghman province of Afghanistan, NDS said Monday.

NDS further added that a group of three snuffies belonging to Taliban group were arrested before they manage to carry the attack in Mehtarlam city, the picturesque provincial capital of Laghman.

According to a statement by NDS, the group was looking to carry out the attack by initially detonating a rickshaw packed with explosives and a magnetic bomb.

The statement further added that the detained individuals have been identified as Bilal, Zikrullah, and Ferdows.
Link


India-Pakistan
Senior Taliban leader reported killed in New Year's Eve strike
2010-01-02
Hat tip to the Long War Journal:
The US killed a senior Taliban leader in an airstrike in the Mir Ali region in North Waziristan, Pakistan, on New Year's Eve, 2009.

Haji Omar Khan, a senior Taliban leader in South Waziristan who strong ties to Mullah Omar, was killed in the Dec. 31, 2009 airstrike on a safe house in the town of Machi Khel, according to his family. The body is being repatriated to his home town in South Waziristan.

The New Year's Ever strike is also said to have killed the son of Karim Khan, the tribal leader who ran the safe house, and two other people, according to The Frontier Post.

Link


Britain
British universities: Breeding grounds for radical Islam?
2010-01-01
The case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man accused in the attempted bombing of a U.S. airliner, has reinvigorated a debate about whether British universities are being used as breeding grounds for radical Islam.

For three years, Abdulmutallab made the short journey from his apartment in central London to an 11-story brown brick building at University College London (UCL), where he was enrolled as a mechanical engineering student. Before him, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who was convicted in connection with the 2002 murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, attended the London School of Economics. British citizens Asif Mohammed Hanif and Omar Khan Sharif were enrolled at King's College London before launching a suicide attack in Tel Aviv in 2003.

While those cases -- and others -- hardly suggest that extremists have infiltrated Britain's campuses, experts say there is evidence that Muslims who adopt radical ideologies frequently do so during their formative years in college.

Abdulmutallab, now 23, was president of UCL's Islamic society. And according to Anthony Glees, a professor of security and intelligence studies at the University of Buckingham, he is the fourth president of a university Islamic society to be linked to terrorism-related offenses in recent years. One of the former presidents, Waheed Zaman, is being retried for his alleged connection with a plot to bomb transatlantic airliners in 2006.

Like many university organizations, Islamic student societies fill an important social role for students, said Usama Hasan, a former Islamic society president at three British universities and now a university lecturer. But he said that they can also foment fundamentalist ideas and can be aided by guest speakers who "are very narrow-minded and extreme."

Hasan said that Islamic societies have scratched off many of the most radical Islamic preachers from their speaking rosters. The voice of Anwar al-Aulaqi, for example, the Yemen-based cleric who has come under scrutiny in the Christmas Day plot, is banned from Britain. Even so, he can still be heard frequently on some British campuses via video link during conferences and other events. "It's worrying," Hasan said. "He is charismatic, and some students listen to him."

Abdulmutallab graduated with an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering and business finance in June 2008. Less than a year later, he sought a second visa to study in Britain -- a course in "life coaching," according to British media reports -- but was turned down for applying to a nonexistent institution. During his time at UCL, he organized a conference called "War on Terror Week" at the university. One event at the conference was billed as "a lecture on the Islamic position with respect to jihad and other issues."

It remains unclear when Abdulmutallab underwent an ideological transformation. He was far from being described as a firebrand radical, and his former teachers, classmates and acquaintances in London have expressed surprise about the allegations against him.

Some Britons have used Abdulmutallab's case to call for universities to take a closer look at their student bodies.

UCL, the first university in Britain to be founded solely on a secular basis, is known for its liberalism and championing of free speech. But in the past week, some people have urged that the school's Islamic society be closed. Grant, UCL's provost, said such a step is unnecessary.

"To shut it down, that implies the society is a hotbed of radicalization," he said. "It isn't. It's a student society, and as far as I am concerned we have a responsibility to the community not to interfere with freedom of speech."

Grant said he is not sure what, if anything, UCL could have done differently in its handling of Abdulmutallab. "At the moment, we see no evidence to suggest any wider involvement of radicalization," he said. The university will conduct an internal investigation if necessary, he said, "but first you need something to inquire into."
Link


India-Pakistan
Suspected US missile strike kills 20 in Pakistan
2008-11-01
A mid-level al-Qaeda leader, identified as an Iraqi, was among up to 20 people killed on Friday in a suspected missile strike by U.S. spy drones in northwest Pakistan, a Pakistani intelligence official said.

The intelligence official identified the al-Qaeda leader as Abu Akash and said he was believed to have been Iraqi. "He is a mid-level al-Qaeda man who was leading a high-profile life in Mir Wali," said the official, who declined to be identified, referring to the second biggest town in the North Waziristan region on the Afghan border. Local residents said the strike hit the house of a Pakistani tribesman named Amanullah Dawar.

Two missiles were involved in the strike, which destroyed a vehicle and a house in North Waziristan tribal region that is a known hub of al-Qaeda and Taliban militants on the area bordering Afghanistan.

The attack came just two days after Pakistan, a key ally in the U.S.-led "war on terrorism", summoned Washington's ambassador to Islamabad to receive a strong protest over a number of similar strikes.

Sunday's strike killed senior Taliban commander Haji Omar Khan, a lieutenant of veteran Afghan Taliban chieftain and former anti-Soviet fighter Jalaluddin Haqqani. It was the 17th such strike in the past 10 weeks, according to an AFP tally. All of them have been blamed on U.S.-led coalition forces or CIA drones based in neighboring Afghanistan.

The attacks have sharply raised tensions between Washington and nuclear-armed Pakistan. Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has promised zero tolerance against violations of his country's sovereignty. The attacks have also become an election issue in the U.S. presidential campaign.
Link


India-Pakistan
Haji Omar Khan is no more
2008-10-28
A Pakistani Taliban commander accused of launching cross-border attacks in Afghanistan was among 20 people killed in a suspected U.S. missile strike, a senior official said Monday. The commander, Haji Omar Khan, died when at least two missiles slammed into a training camp in the South Waziristan tribal region near the Afghan border on Sunday night, local administration official Mawaz Khan told AFP.

"The death toll has gone up to 16 as six more bodies have been recovered from the site. Senior Taliban commander Haji Omar died in the strike," Khan said.

Another government official quoting local sources said up to 20 people were killed, mostly Pakistani Taliban fighters, adding that a team was on its way to the area to investigate.

The slain commander was a senior member of the group of veteran Taliban chieftain Jalaluddin Haqqani, residents added. Many of the recent U.S. missile strikes in Pakistan have targeted Haqqani and his followers.
Khan was active in attacks against the border, local residents said. The slain commander was a senior member of the group of veteran Taliban chieftain Jalaluddin Haqqani, residents added. Many of the recent U.S. missile strikes in Pakistan have targeted Haqqani and his followers.

Suspected U.S. drones have carried out more than a dozen such missile attacks on militant targets on the Pakistani side of its border with Afghanistan since the beginning of September, killing dozens of people.

"Two missiles were fired, they hit two houses in Shakai and up to 20 militants were killed," said one of the Pakistani intelligence agency officials, referring to an area in the South Waziristan region that is a stronghold of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud.

Mehsud is Pakistan's most notorious militant commander, blamed for a string of suicide bomb attacks in Pakistan including the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in December last year. He also supports Taliban militants battling U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.

A bit more detail, from Pak Daily Times
Muhammad Omar, a commander of Taliban leader Jalaluddin Haqqani, was among the 20 men killed in Sunday's suspected US missile strike in South Waziristan, officials said. Two lower-level commanders -- Waheedullah and Nasrullah -- and five Taliban from North Waziristan who had come to meet Omar also died.

Omar was active in attacks on US-led and NATO troops in Afghanistan's Khost, Paktia and Paktika provinces. He was a cousin of Taliban commander Nek Muhammad who was killed in 2004 in the first such US missile strike. A Taliban leader told Reuters by telephone the strikes were 'very accurate'. "The missiles struck rooms where the guests were having dinner. None survived."
Link


Afghanistan
23 Afghan police, soldiers killed
2008-01-01
Taliban militants attacked a police checkpoint in southern Afghanistan and killed 16 officers, the Interior Ministry said Monday. Seven Afghan police and soldiers were reported dead elsewhere as the country's bloodiest year since the Taliban was deposed from power -- by United States-led forces in 2001 -- drew to a close.
More than 6,500 people -- mostly militants -- died in 2007.
More than 6,500 people -- mostly militants -- died in 2007, according to an Associated Press count based on figures from Afghan and Western officials. Also in 2007, 110 U.S. soldiers were killed in the country -- the highest American death toll since the 2001 invasion.

The policemen were manning a checkpoint in the Maywand district of Kandahar province on Saturday when a large group of militants attacked them, said Zemerai Bashary, the Interior Ministry spokesman. "We still have not found the bodies, but police in Kandahar have launched a search operation," Bashary said. A Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, said the militant group was responsible for the killings.

Taliban fighters have shied away from attacking international military forces and the Afghan army, which is better trained and better equipped than Afghan police.
The militants have repeatedly attacked the checkpoint -- situated near Highway 1, Afghanistan's main thoroughfare -- over the last year, which is part of the reason that so many police were stationed there. The acting police chief of Kandahar province, Omar Khan, said police were investigating and he could not give any details about the attack. Taliban fighters have shied away from attacking international military forces and the Afghan army, which is better trained and better equipped than Afghan police.
Link


India-Pakistan
500 rushed to hospital after vaccination
2007-07-01
At least 500 people were rushed to the hospital after they fell unconscious, allegedly due to the administration of faulty vaccines, in the flood-hit Regi locality of Peshawar on Saturday.

The patients had been administered the TAB vaccine by health workers to protect them from TB and cholera after floods. The Khyber Teaching Hospital (KTH) was flooded with women, children and elderly people complaining of fever after getting the vaccines. “I received the vaccine at 11am and at 1pm, I fell unconscious. The next moment I found myself in a hospital bed,” said Omar Khan, 45. Mehrunisa, 60 said she had got the vaccine at 10am and lost consciousness at 11pm.

Doctors said the problem was caused by panic. Dr Mosem Khan, executive district officer (EDO) for health, said the vaccine could cause drowsiness, skin rashes, low blood pressure and vomiting, but these symptoms were not reported, showing that the reaction to the vaccine was caused by mass panic. People in Regi made announcements on loudspeakers asking residents to avoid vaccination and to rush those who had already been vaccinated to hospital. They also held nine health workers hostage, including one doctor, two nurses, five technicians and one store-keeper.

“We have suspended the ongoing anti-TB and cholera vaccination in the flood-hit areas across the province,” said Health Minister Inayatullah Khan at an emergency press conference at the KTH.

The minister said that nine health workers involved in the vaccination campaign in Regi had been suspended and a committee had been formed to investigate the causes of the incident.
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Britain
UK-Pakistani radicals posing greatest threat
2006-08-29
The biggest threat to US security emanates not from Iran or Iraq or Afghanistan, but rather from Great Britain, America’s closest ally because of Pakistan-oriented young Islamists in that country, according to two noted terrorism experts. Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank write in the current issue of New Republic that for terrorist organisations like Al Qaeda, which has reconstituted itself in Pakistan, ethnic Pakistanis living in the United Kingdom make perfect recruits, since they speak English and can travel on British passports.

There is anecdotal evidence for the influence of Muslim extremism on British Pakistani communities. The two authors found strong jihadi sentiments at a fitness centre in East London, frequented by Muslims, five of whose regulars are included among those arrested this month in England and Pakistan on terrorism charges. The authors point out that many of Britain’s young Pakistanis are filled with contempt both for the moderation of their parents and for a British society that won’t quite accept them. For many, this leaves a vacuum in their identities that radical Islamist preachers have been all too glad to fill. Young British Pakistanis are also unemployed and thus especially vulnerable to the temptations of radicalism.

Bergen and Cruickshank write that it is primarily in Pakistan - not the United Kingdom - where British citizens are being recruited into Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. About 400,000 British Pakistanis per year travel back to their homeland, where a small percentage embark on learning the skills necessary to become effective terrorists. According to a government report released this year, British officials believe that the lead perpetrators of the 2005 attacks in London - Mohammed Siddique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer - met Al Qaeda members in Pakistan. Several individuals allegedly involved in a 2004 plot to explode a fertiliser bomb in Great Britain also spent significant time in Pakistan. In April 2003, Omar Khan Sharif, whose family immigrated to Great Britain from Kashmir, attempted to carry out a suicide attack in a bar in Tel Aviv after visiting Pakistan.

The two authors believe that what motivates many of these young men is Kashmir since a disproportionate number of Pakistanis living in Great Britain trace their lineage back to Kashmir. For the small number of British Pakistanis who want terrorist training, the facilities of Kashmiri militant groups have become an obvious first choice - as well as a gateway to Al Qaeda itself. Al Qaeda’s ties with Kashmiri militant groups date to the Afghan war against the Soviets, when bin Laden’s forces fought alongside Pakistani groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). Since September 11, the relationship between Al Qaeda and Kashmiri groups has only deepened.

Bergen and Cruickshank believe that the danger to the United States of the nexus between British Pakistanis, Al Qaeda and Kashmir is becoming clear. One of the alleged ringleaders of the plot to blow up transatlantic flights is Rashid Rauf, a Pakistan-born British citizen whose family immigrated to Great Britain from Kashmir. This should raise two concerns for American officials. The first is that American Pakistanis could pose a similar threat. They add, “Yet it seems unlikely that radicalism in the American Pakistani community could pose as large a threat as radicalism in the British Pakistani community. American Muslims are, on average, more politically moderate than their British counterparts.”

The two authors maintain that of more concern is the likelihood that British Pakistanis will continue to target Americans - both in the United States and abroad. To address this problem, the Bush administration should encourage the British government to monitor more closely the activities of UK-based extremist groups. Simply banning these organisations is not enough. In addition, Great Britain must step up efforts to identify its own citizens who attend Kashmiri or Al Qaeda training camps in Pakistan. The British government will need help from moderate Muslims, some of whom are waking up to the threat posed by the radicals in their midst. According to London imam Ghulam Rabbani, “These people are ill. I say very categorically and very clearly that they are misguided and they don’t know the basics of Islam.”
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Britain
UK plotter linked to Tel Aviv blasts
2006-07-09
THE suspected ringleader of the July 7 attacks in London last year was linked to two other British suicide bombers, one of whom blew himself up outside an Israeli bar in 2003, The Sunday Times has reported. The newspaper quoted Kursheed Fiaz, a businessman who runs an information technology company in Manchester, northwest England, as saying he had four or five meetings with Mohammed Sidique Khan from 2001. He said Khan was initially accompanied by Omar Khan Sharif and later by Asif Mohammed Hanif and the men wanted to indoctrinate young Muslims and take them to Pakistan, Syria and Afghanistan for training. Hanif, 21, blew himself up and killed three other people at a busy seafront pub in Tel Aviv in 2003. The body of Sharif, 27, was later found in the sea. He is believed to have fled after failing to set off his own device.
Whereupon Hamas bumped him off. Failure wasn't an option.
Fiaz's account features in a BBC television programme "Britain's First Suicide Bombers" to be broacast on Tuesday, according to The Sunday Times, which said he had not been interviewed by police. In the programme, Fiaz, 46, is said to recount how Khan came to his office seeking to spread "Dawa", a form of evangelical preaching of Islam. Khan, who had secured a position as a primary school teaching assistant in his home town of Leeds, northern England, reportedly asked whether any of Fiaz's staff wanted to learn about Islam. "We need to teach them certain things," Khan is alleged to have said, without elaborating.
"What sort of things?"
"Certain things."
Fiaz reportedly told the programme that his nephews and some other young men who took up the offer became suspicious when Khan and his friends talked about taking them abroad "to enhance the training".
"Really, you gotta see Pakistan. It's an Islamic wonderland!"
"They got training camps there?"
"No, no! Certainly not!"
"We got the impression they were looking for some gullible people. Youngsters... that would fall for whatever they were trying to preach or practise," he was quoted as saying.
"So, tell me: You got anybody stupid working here?"
The Sunday Times said Fiaz's account raises questions not only about the links between the three men, who all left video messages justifying their actions, but whether Khan was a co-conspirator in the Tel Aviv bombing.
Ummm... Lemme think. Yes.
It cited confirmation from Israeli police that he visited the country briefly two months before the attack. Fiaz said he did not contact police after the Tel Aviv bombings because both Sharif and Hanif were dead while he did not link Khan to them until after the July 7 attacks.
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