Eye on Extremism - May 27, 2016

Eye on Extremism May 27, 2016 The Hill: Pentagon Denies US Special Operations Forces On Front Lines In Syria “The Pentagon on Thursday said U.S. special operations forces in Syria are not taking a front-line role in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), despite recent photos that suggest otherwise. ‘They are not on the forward line,’ said Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook. Cook acknowledged there was no ‘specific measurement’ for what the ‘forward line’ is.  ‘But I think, again, our forces in Iraq and Syria, their instructions, their mission is clear that they are not at that leading edge. They're able to defend themselves, but they have to be in a position to be able to provide the kind of advice and assistance needed to help these forces, these local forces succeed,’ he said. Earlier on Thursday, Agence France-Presse distributed photos showing fully armed U.S. forces in Syria riding in the back of an armed truck known as a ‘technical.’” CNN: Iraqi Troops Retake Key Town From ISIS In Falluja Offensive “Iraqi security forces and supporting militias have retaken the key town of Karma from ISIS, the government's first significant victory in its push to reclaim Falluja, a spokesman for Iraq's Joint Operations Command said Thursday. The recapture of Karma, about 16 kilometers (10 miles) northeast of Falluja, brings most of the territory east of Falluja under government control. Iraqi government troops, backed by Shiite militias known as the Popular Mobilization Units and an air campaign by the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition, launched an offensive Monday to retake Falluja, about 65 kilometers (40 miles) west of Baghdad. It remains, along with Mosul, one of the last two Iraqi cities under the Sunni terror group's control. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi posted a statement on Facebook congratulating the people of Iraq on the ‘liberation of al-Karma’ and ordered security forces to protect civilians there.” The Guardian: Inside The Hunt For Isis Leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi “At the closest point they can reach to the Islamic State heartlands, the Kurdish Peshmerga can almost feel their enemy. Most days Isis fighters fire mortars or bullets at their frontline, 10 miles south of Sinjar, sometimes crawling through long grass for hours until they are close enough to shoot. Several miles further south, some of Isis’s most senior leaders regularly gather in the grey concrete villages of the terror group’s northern vanguard, which for more than a decade had been the safest corners of Iraq for them to come and go. Moving among the nearby towns of Ba’ej and Billij, according to the Kurds watching from the ground, and intelligence officials keeping tabs from other vantage points, is the world’s most wanted man, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.” Voice Of America: Islamic State's Ability To Inspire Violence Worries US Officials “U.S. officials are warning of Islamic State’s ability to inspire violent deeds around the world, including in the United States, without commanding or having any direct contact with terrorists. ‘We are in a new phase of the global terrorist threat,’ Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told a U.S. Senate panel Thursday. ‘We have moved from a world of terrorist-directed attacks to a world that increasingly includes the threat of terrorist-inspired attacks, one in which the attacker may never have come face to face with a member of a terrorist organization, but instead is inspired by the messages and propaganda of ISIL,’ Mayorkas said, using an acronym for the Islamic State group.” Reuters: Raided Belgian Cell Had Possible Targets In Second City Antwerp “A suspected Belgian Islamist group raided on Wednesday had potential attack targets in Belgium's second city of Antwerp including the main railway station, a source close to the investigation said on Thursday. Belgian police searched eight homes on Wednesday, mostly in the port city, and detained four teenagers who were charged with participation in the activities of a terrorist organization. Those detained are suspected of seeking to recruit people to travel to Syria or Libya. Some are also suspected of planning to join Islamic State there themselves. Belgian newspaper Nieuwsblad said the group members were in direct contact with a prominent Belgian militant in Islamic State's de facto capital Raqqa in Syria. The group received orders from Hicham Chaib, also known as Abu Hanifa al-Baljiki (The Belgian), the newspaper said. Chaib, who grew up in an Antwerp suburb, has been seen in an Islamic State video taunting his own country.” CNN: Report: Signals Detected From Egyptair Flight 804 In Mediterranean “Airbus has detected signals from the Mediterranean Sea where EgyptAir Flight 804 crashed last week, Egypt's state-run Al Ahram news agency reported Thursday. The signals were emitted by the plane's emergency locator transmitter, a device that can manually or automatically activate at impact and will usually send a distress signal. The signals from the emergency locator transmitter are different from the pings emitted by the ‘black boxes.’ Having these signals narrows down the area that the multinational search team has been focusing on -- which a few days ago was described as ‘about the size of Connecticut.’ It dramatically decreases the search area to a 5-kilometer (3.1-mile) radius, giving investigators a more specific location to detect pings from the black boxes. The missing EgyptAir plane, which had 66 people on board, was an Airbus A320 heading from Paris to Cairo.” Reuters: Afghanistan Sees Taliban Leader As Rigid Conservative Uninterested In Peace “The Afghan government is looking warily at the conservative religious scholar who has assumed leadership of the Taliban, seeing in him a rigid proponent of hardline orthodoxy who is unlikely to favor peace talks, officials said. A day after the Afghan Taliban announced that Haibadullah Akhundzada would take over after Mullah Akhtar Mansour was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan, officials on Thursday were trying to form a picture of a leader best known for relentlessly applying strict sharia, or Islamic law. In his former role as one of the Taliban insurgency's senior judges, he was responsible for issuing a series of death sentences against opponents of Mansour, according to General Abdul Razeq, police chief of Akhundzada's home city of Kandahar. Officials said he appeared to favor a return to the austere and often harsh Islamic rule in Afghanistan before the Taliban were ousted by U.S.-led forces in 2001, something that would be unacceptable to the Afghan government and its Western backers.” Reuters: Al Qaeda Still Reaping Oil Profits In Yemen Despite Battlefield Reverses “Al Qaeda may have been pushed out of the enclave it carved out in Yemen as the country descended into civil war, but the militants are still entrenched in other parts of the country's south, reaping profits from smuggled fuel. Scores of militants were killed in a Gulf Arab-backed offensive on Al Qaeda's de facto capital of Mukalla, Yemen's third largest seaport, but hundreds fled to neighbouring Shabwa province and beyond. A month later, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is thriving by joining diverse armed groups in taxing fuel delivered illicitly to remote beaches along the Arabian Sea coast, security, tribal and shipping sources say. Home to Yemen's largest industrial project, a now-shut liquefied natural gas export facility at Belhaf, Shabwa is divided among al Qaeda, government troops loyal to President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, Houthi forces and armed tribes.” The Wall Street Journal: Nigerian Schoolgirl’s Return Spotlights A Town Making Its Own Comeback “When Amina Ali Nkeki came home last week—the first of Nigeria’s 219 missing schoolgirls to go free in nearly two years—she found a town making its own long walk back to normalcy.The neighborhoods outside her boarding school—where Islamist insurgency Boko Haram seized the schoolgirls in 2014—were virtually abandoned in the months that followed, as the name Chibok reverberated through the White House and across the world’s media. Dozens of residents who remained slept in caves, terrorized by jihadist leaflets promising further attacks. In the countryside, within walking distance, Boko Haram looted and torched villages. Now, the caves are empty and the zinc-roofed houses of this mountainside town are full again. Business is back at the central market where Ms. Nkeki’s rescuers triumphantly brought her on May 18, drawing crowds around the vegetable stands a female suicide bomber destroyed this year.” Haaretz: Israeli Startup Claims To Spot Terrorists With Facial Recognition “A Tel Aviv startup called Faception has developed technology that purportedly can identify character traits, including spotting who might be a terrorist, by analyzing a person's face. The startup, founded in 2014, and which presented its technology at a high-tech accelerator conference in Mountain View, California, last week sponsored by the venture capital fund 500 Startups, claims 80 percent accuracy in identifying character traits based on analysis of photographs of faces. It has already signed up a homeland agency to help spot terrorists, according to company CEO Shai Gilboa. The technology is geared to identify a range of specific traits, beyond spotting terrorists, including, for example, identifying extroverts, people with high IQs and even professional poker players.” United States The Guardian: US Military Special Forces Pictured Aiding Kurdish Fighters In Syria “Elite US military forces have been photographed for the first time in Syria as they join largely Kurdish forces on an advance toward, Raqqa, the Islamic State terror group’s capital. A photographer with Agence France-Presse captured US special operations forces with Kurdish forces known as the YPG, part of the US-mentored Syrian Democratic Forces, in a rural village less than 40 miles from Raqqa. Some US troops wear the insignia of the YPG in an apparent show of support. Peter Cook, the Pentagon press secretary, resisted commenting on the photographs and would only describe the US special operations forces’ mission in generic terms.” Reuters: U.S., Allies Target Islamic State In Falluja, Mosul: Coalition “The United States and its allies said they targeted Islamic State on Wednesday with two dozen strikes in Iraq, including four near Falluja, where Iraqi forces have launched a recent effort to retake the city from the militant group. The strikes in the city west of Baghdad hit three Islamic State tactical units and two tunnels used by the group as well as four vehicles, an artillery piece, a weapons cache and three fighting positions, the coalition leading the operations said in a statement released on Thursday. Other strikes included five near Mosul, another city where Iraqi forces, with support from the coalition, are working to retake control in the country's northern region. Targets near the cities of Habbaniya, Haditha, Hit, Qayyara, Sinjar, Sultan Abdalla and Tal Afar, the Combined Joint Task Force said.” The New York Times: U.S. Increases Antiterrorism Exercises With African Militaries “After a series of terrorist attacks on hotels and other tourist sites that raised concerns all across Africa, the United States has increased training exercises with militaries here, focusing on how to defend civilian targets on a continent that has become a significant battleground in the war against militant Islam. In Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, United States Army troops simulated an elaborate hostage rescue with West African forces this month. The combined forces stormed a building, shot mock militants and secured the hostages. In Kenya, American trainers funded by the State Department have been working with police commandos on how to respond to terrorist attacks like the Westgate shopping mall raid in 2013, when fighters with the Shabab, the local affiliate of Al Qaeda, killed 67 people and wounded 175 more.” Reuters: Nearly 1,000 Killed In Attacks On Health Workers In 2014-15 – WHO “Nearly 1,000 people were killed in attacks on health centres worldwide over the past two years, almost 40 percent of them in Syria, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Thursday in its first report on the issue. The United Nations agency documented 594 attacks resulting in 959 deaths and 1,561 injuries in 19 countries with emergencies between January 2014 and December 2015. Syria, torn by civil war since 2011, had the most attacks on hospitals, ambulances, patients and medical workers, accounting for 352 deaths. The Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank, as well as Iraq, Pakistan and Libya, followed. Some 62 percent of all attacks were deemed intentional and many led to disruption of public health services.” Syria Reuters: U.N. Envoy Tells Security Council No Syria Talks For Two-Three Weeks “There will be no new round of Syria talks for at least two or three weeks, the office of U.N. special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura said in a statement on Thursday, after he consulted the U.N. Security Council for about two and a half hours. ‘He briefed on his intention to start the next round of talks as soon as feasible but certainly not within the next two/three weeks,’ said the statement. It said de Mistura wanted to see progress on the ground, particularly relating to the cessation of hostilities and humanitarian access. ‘Meanwhile, the special envoy will maintain close and continuous contact with the Syrian parties as well as the members of the ISSG before determining the 'appropriate time' to reconvene the parties to Geneva.’ The ISSG, or International Syria Support Group, is the group of countries led by the United States and Russia that is backing de Mistura's peace efforts. It also includes regional powers such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, who are expected to press the warring parties to respect the statements made by the Security Council.” Iraq Voice Of America: Families Fleeing Iraq’s Fallujah In ‘State Of Shock’ “Residents fleeing the fierce fighting between Iraqi forces and Islamic State (IS) militants in Fallujah are in a ‘state of shock’, reeling from the gunfire and months of near-starvation. According to the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), which has teams receiving those who manage to escape, the humanitarian situation in the city is desperate. ‘Fighting has intensified, but there are still no safe routes out of Fallujah for the trapped civilians,’ NRC said in a statement Thursday. Iraqi forces are now converging on the city from three different directions.  Initial reports said the forces had met stiff resistance from IS fighters.  The city has been under siege for almost six months, and little or no aid has gone in.” Turkey Reuters: Reformist Deputy PM's Wings Clipped In New Turkish Government “Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek, an economic reformer whose reappointment this week had initially reassured investors, will see his responsibilities shrink in the new cabinet, with some transferred to an ally of populist President Tayyip Erdogan. Simsek's reappointment on Tuesday relieved investors nervous that economic management might increasingly fall into the hands of Erdogan advisers, who champion growth policies at the expense of badly-needed reforms. But while the former Wall Street banker will continue to oversee the Treasury and central bank, he will no longer be in charge of regulating commercial lenders or the capital markets, government spokesman Numan Kurtulmus said late on Wednesday. Those responsibilities will instead pass to fellow Deputy Prime Minister Nurettin Canikli, who has close ties to Erdogan.” Yemen Reuters: Yemen's Warring Sides Agree Prisoner Swap Before Ramadan “Yemen's warring parties have agreed to a prisoner exchange before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in early June, sources from both delegations told Reuters on Thursday. The decision was a show of goodwill between the Iran-allied Houthis and Yemen's Saudi-backed exile government as peace talks in Kuwait aimed at ending a year-long war dragged into a second month. However, the two sides appeared to differ on the number of prisoners to be released. Sources from the Houthi militia's delegation said 1,000 prisoners would be swapped, while a government source said the agreement entailed the release of ‘all detainees,’ who number more than 4,000.” Egypt Reuters: Egypt Rights Activist Says Banned From Travel “An Egyptian human rights activist said on Thursday that airport security officials prevented him flying to Tunisia and told him he was banned from travel. Mohamed Zaree, the Egypt office director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, told Reuters he was banned from travel due to his involvement in a high profile case where authorities accuse NGOs of receiving foreign funds to sow chaos. ‘I went to the airport this morning at 6 a.m. Cairo time and went through passport control. They made a phone call then told me I was on a travel ban list at the orders of an investigative magistrate,’ Zaree told Reuters. He said the reason was his involvement in the NGO foreign funding case, which dates back to 2011. The case was revived in recent months with many rights defenders being summoned for questioning, banned from travel or having their assets frozen.” Libya Voice Of America: Around 20 Feared Dead As Migrant Boat Sinks Off Libya's Coast “Around 20 people are feared dead after a migrant boat capsized Thursday off Libya's coast. Officials say more than 80 people were rescued in the second such incident in two days. The Libyan coast guard reported that four bodies were found floating in the Mediterranean along with two empty boats, suggesting that more people drowned as smugglers take advantage of the warm weather to transport a larger number of migrants to Europe on unsafe vessels. Separately, a Libyan navy spokesman tells the Associated Press that the coast guard rescued more than 760 migrants who were found in two groups, one of which was near the western city of Sabratha and the other off Zwara.” United Kingdom BBC: Hundreds More DNA Records Of Terrorism Suspects Deleted “Errors that led to fingerprint and DNA records of hundreds of terror suspects being deleted were more widespread than thought, it has emerged. The Biometrics Commissioner said two months ago that 450 profiles had been wrongly deleted from a police database in England and Wales. But in an updated report, Alastair MacGregor revealed the figure was 810. The Home Office, which released the report, said steps were being taken to fix the issue. Under a new system introduced in 2013, DNA and fingerprint profiles of people who are not convicted of a crime have to be removed from a counter-terrorism database. However, the records can be kept in the interests of national security - such as in cases where someone has been suspected of having links to terrorism - when a senior officer makes a national security determination (NSD). But Mr MacGregor said the 810 profiles had been deleted because police officers had failed to make NSD applications in time.” Reuters: Britain Plans To Send Warship To Fight Smuggling Of People, Arms Off Libya: Cameron “Britain plans to send a navy warship to help battle the smuggling of both people and arms off the coast of Libya, Prime Minister David Cameron will tell G7 leaders on Thursday. The European Union this week agreed to help rebuild Libya's shattered navy and coastguard to tackle migrant smugglers after a plea for aid from the new U.N.-backed unity government in Tripoli. A U.N. Security Council resolution would be needed to go after arms traffickers on the high seas, ministers said at the time. A government spokesman said that during a session on foreign affairs on Thursday evening, Cameron would set out Britain's plans to increase its involvement in the region, where it already has four ships.” Germany Reuters: INSIGHT-'Living In Germany': A Testing Time For Merkel's Migrants “In an east Berlin classroom, a group of migrants is taking a ‘Living in Germany’ practice test. From a list of holidays that includes Easter, Christmas and Labour Day, they must identify which ones are Christian; they must determine whether foods like white sausage, pizza and doner kebabs are German or foreign; and they must pick out the types of insurance they need here. For many of Germany's new arrivals, numbering more than 1 million last year, a new law will mean that attendance at such classes will determine whether they get full access to the state benefits they hope will launch them on new lives in the country. Germany took in far more migrants than any other EU country. The success or failure of its integration drive could be crucial in dealing with Europe's biggest migrant crisis since World War Two, which has strained security and social systems and bolstered support for anti-immigration parties.” France Reuters: France Sends Underwater Probes To Egyptair Search Zone “A French naval vessel was en route to the eastern Mediterranean on Thursday to join the hunt for black boxes from a crashed EgyptAir jet, equipped with three specialist probes from a French company recruited to accelerate the search. France's BEA air crash investigation agency said French naval survey vessel Laplace had left Corsica earlier on Thursday and was heading toward the search zone north of the Egyptian port of Alexandria, where it would begin operations within days. A week after the Airbus A320 crashed with 66 people on board, including 30 Egyptians and 15 from France, investigators have no clear picture of its final moments. But Egyptian investigators said a radio signal had been received from an emergency distress beacon usually located in the rear of the cabin. This could help narrow the search area for that part of the fuselage, near the tail where ‘black box’ fight recorders are held, to a 5-km (3-mile) radius, they said.” The Wall Street Journal: France Girds For Security Challenges At Euro 2016 Soccer Championship “When soccer fans set off smoke bombs and firecrackers at the Stade de France last Saturday, the explosions did more than add to the drama of a French cup final between bitter rivals. They exposed gaps in France’s efforts to tighten security just two weeks before hosting Euro 2016, the continent’s largest sporting event. Still in a terror-induced state of emergency after 130 people were killed in the November attacks, French authorities are preparing to manage 8 million fans and secure around 100 locations for the European soccer championships. The breaches highlighted the unprecedented challenge France faces in securing Euro 2016, a sprawling tournament that will run in 10 French cities from June 10 to July 10 and overlap with the three-week Tour de France bicycle race, for which security is also being beefed up.” Europe Sputnik: Netherlands Approves Extradition Of Terror Suspect To France - Reports “A court in the Dutch capital of Amsterdam approved the extradition of Anis Bahri, who allegedly had links to the Islamic State (ISIL or Daesh) jihadist group and was involved in preparing terror attacks. The Dutch authorities approved on Thursday extradition of a French national, who was detained in March, on suspicion of terror activities, to France, French media reported. According to the Ouest-France newspaper, a court in the Dutch capital of Amsterdam approved the extradition of Anis Bahri, who allegedly had links to the Islamic State (ISIL or Daesh) jihadist group and was involved in preparing terror attacks. The Dutch court had not found any reason to leave Bahri in Netherlands, despite his lawyer's objections, the newspaper added. According to the newspaper, the 32-year-old French national, was detained during a counterterrorism raid in the Dutch city of Rotterdam in March at request of Paris.” The Economist: Europe’s Murky Deal With Turkey “It was meant to be a game-changer. When a deal between the European Union and Turkey was struck in March with the aim of limiting the numbers of asylum-seekers coming to Europe, many in Brussels felt cautiously optimistic. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, claimed it offered a ‘sustainable, pan-European solution’. In exchange for visa-free travel for some of its citizens, €6 billion ($7 billion) in refugee aid and revived talks on possible future accession to the EU, Turkey was to take back migrants who had made their way to Greece and try to secure its borders. Faced with perhaps another million refugees making their way to Europe this year, it appeared to be the only way to bring some order to the chaos. The number of refugees coming to Europe has indeed dropped (see chart). Yet the agreement is looking more and more murky. It risks undermining both the reputation of the EU and its relationship with Turkey, from whose shores hundreds of thousands of refugees set off last year on their journey to Europe.”