A Syrian emissary from the Daesh jihadist group was among six fighters killed in the Russian Republic of Ingushetia, the Russian Anti-Terrorist Committee said Friday.

The committee confirmed earlier reports of six militants killed in the anti-terrorist campaign in the North Caucasus region without civilian or law enforcement casualties.

“Special forces neutralized four militants in the city of Nazran and two more in Gazi-Yurt. According to preliminary information, Daesh emissary Zabayri Sautiyev who arrived from Syria to resume terrorist activities in the country is among the neutralized bandits,” it said in a statement. A cache of weapons, ammunition and explosives, including two suicide vests, have been uncovered at the site of the clashes, it added.

 

sputniknews.com

Germany will build a military base in Niger to support the UN mission fighting jihadists in neighbouring Mali, Berlin’s ambassador to Niamey said Wednesday.

Bernd von Munchow-Pohl also announced in a speech to mark the anniversary of Germany’s reunification seen by AFP that German Chancellor Angela Merkel would visit Niger in the next few days.

“With the establishment of a German military airbase in Niamey in support of the MINUSMA mission in Mali, which Niger has supported since the beginning, a new chapter in our cooperation has begun,” he said, using the acronym for the UN mission in Mali.

“(Germany) is ready to engage more in the Sahel region (and) assume even more responsibility,” he said. “Niger is a central partner for us in this respect (and) a key country in the fight against terrorism and illegal migration” from West Africa. The US and France already operate bases in Niger as part of the battle against jihadists in the Sahel region — principally in Libya and Mali.

They have also deployed drones to Niamey and Agadez in the north to monitor jihadist movements. Experts say Niger, the poorest country in the Sahel, is becoming “a crucial base” for Western powers in the fight against jihadists.

 

vanguardngr.com

Belgian prosecutors say two police officers have been stabbed by a knife-wielding man in Brussels in an incident that could be terror-related.

The man stabbed one officer in the neck and the other in the abdomen in the city’s Schaerbeek neighborhood on Wednesday and then fled the scene.

The assailant was stopped by a second group of police. He broke the nose of one officer, who shot the man in the leg.

Federal prosecutor’s spokesman Eric Van Der Sypt said “we have reason to believe that it is terror-related.”

He declined to provide details or explain why prosecutors think the attack was linked to terrorism.

Belgium has been on high alert since 32 people were killed in suicide bombing attacks on the Brussels airport and subway on March 22.

 

 

ap.org

A new report released by the Paris-based Center for the Analysis of Terror has revealed that nearly 7,000 foreign fighters from the European states have joined terror groups in Syria and Iraq since 2013.

According to the report, about 2,200 French citizens or residents are engaged in Syrian-Iraqi terror networks, including 700 who are in either Syria or Iraq.

Nearly 70 percent of the 7,000 European terrorist fighters come from either France, the U.K., or Germany. France consisted of 31 percent of the total with nearly 2,200 terrorist fighters, the U.K. consisted of 12 percent of the total with 1,700 terrorist fighters and Germany with 12 percent of the total with nearly 900 terrorists. The top three countries were followed by Belgium, Sweden, and Austria as the countries with the highest number of nationals or residents leaving for terror networks in Syria and Iraq.

Meanwhile, the report said that about 1,500 of those who left for Syria and Iraq have returned to the EU countries.

Most of the foreign fighters join Daish or al-Nusra terror groups in Syria or Iraq, while some also join the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the Syrian offshoot of the PKK terror organization.

The PKK is recognized as a terror organization by Turkey, the U.S. and also the EU.

While EU states blame Turkey for the passing of foreign fighters through its border to Syria and Iraq, Ankara has repeatedly asked the European countries for closer cooperation in sharing intelligence to stop those coming to Turkey with the intention of joining terror organizations in Syria and Iraq, however, until very recently this was limited.

The government has called on the European countries to increase cooperation in the fight against all terror groups along its 911-kilometer border with Syria and 384-kilmeter border with Iraq, while criticizing the West of picking-and-choosing between terror groups.

Turkey has also built a concrete wall to stop illegal crossings along its border with Syria, which is expected to be finished by early 2017, while keeping an open-door policy towards refugees.

In September 2014, the UNSC adopted the Resolution 2178, urging all member states in the U.N. to work towards stopping the “recruiting, organizing, transporting or equipping of individuals who travel to a State other than their States of residence or nationality for the purpose of the perpetration, planning of, or participation in terrorist acts.”

According to official sources, through intelligence sharing Turkey added nearly 28,000 foreign terrorist fighters to the no-entry list in 2015, and more than 16,000 as of September in 2016. Meanwhile, as of September 2016, 51,976 individuals have been banned from entering Turkey due to suspicion of terror links since 2011.

The sources also said that as of September 2016, a total of 3710 foreign terrorist fighters have been deported from Turkey after the successful operations by the security forces.

Since 2014, the authorities deported 3165 foreign terrorists (as of September 2016) after being caught by the security forces, according to sources.

 

 

 

dailysabah.com

Hungary was used as a transit country by terrorists collaborating in the Brussels and Paris attacks, but they never used any city as a logistics base, the head of Parliament’s national security committee said after hearing a report from police leaders.

Terrorism suspects and perpetrators of the actual attacks used the migration wave and human smugglers as a way of getting into Europe and Hungary, Zsolt Molnár told the press after a meeting of the committee. “Terrorists neither carried out recruitment in Hungary, nor did they set up a logistics hub here,” Molnár said.

On the subject of the explosion in central Budapest targeting two police officers last week, the committee found that the most likely motive was to attack the police itself. Molnár said “there is no ideological background of any kind; there is definitely no Islamist basis to the attack.

Bernadett Szél, an LMP delegate of the committee, added that based on details of the investigation, she could confirm that no signs of a jihadist or terrorist connection had emerged in the case.

 

 

politics.hu

Europe’s attention to its southern flank is absorbed by cascading disaster. In the face of war in Syria, Iraq and Libya, the migration crisis and the proliferation of terrorism, Europe’s all-absorbing goal is stability. In most cases, this means preventing bad things from getting worse.

But alongside its important crisis management, Europe needs to think much more boldly in terms of what it can do differently to pre-empt violent turmoil in the first place. What about those places that have remained relatively stable and therefore garnered less attention? Does the European Union still have a positive goal for its southern flank?

The EU Global Strategy launched by High Representative Federica Mogherini in July 2016 aims to build “resilience”, defined as “the ability of states and societies to reform, thus withstanding and recovering from internal and external crises”.

Yet little of this is visible in current European policies, which are largely driven by containing security spillover from Middle Eastern conflicts.

Shortcut strategy

Europe’s efforts to support lasting stability in the Middle East and North Africa have often been thwarted by a trade-off that involves tolerating domestic paralysis for the sake of regional cooperation. This trade-off, however, is a fallacy.

Resilient political systems – those able to withstand crises by their openness to reform – are more likely to produce predictable partners. They are less at risk of triggering coups or popular uprisings. The regional policies of such governments are not driven by the erratic quest for regime survival that lies at the heart of many conflicts flaring in the Middle East today.

Linking up domestic resilience with regional commitment, Europe must invest much more boldly in countries like Tunisia, Morocco and Jordan. Over time, they could become “resilient anchors” for Europe’s relations with the Arab world and Africa.

These anchors are not to replace but to complement traditional alliances. Determining priority alliances on the basis of regional influence, but largely disconnected from the ally’s domestic resilience, has amply proven to be an unwise investment.

The 2011 uprisings have provided abundant evidence that regimes that feed off domestic stasis are unfit to constitute the main pillars of Europe’s Middle Eastern engagement. Propping up such regimes for the sake of their regional influence may seem like a shortcut to solving policy impasses today, but it is prone to create bigger problems tomorrow.

While picking the wormy fruit, therefore, Europe needs to sow more resistant seeds of partnership. It can start doing so by helping to build the regional players of tomorrow that are willing and able to work with Europe towards a sustainable future.

Scare choices

Such an investment would hold numerous strategic benefits for Europe. In a region of turmoil, islands of sustainable stability will be highly valued in and of themselves. The diminishing negative spillover into the neighbourhood and into Europe will be welcome.

The positive reverberations the inspiration of a genuine Arab democracy such as Tunisia would have across the Middle East are significant both on the symbolic level (safeguarding one success from the 2011 Arab uprisings and belying Arab exceptionalism) and on the practical level (neighbours watching Tunisia picking the fruit of democratic development).

Furthermore, lasting domestic stability would likely pave the way for an enhanced and more constructive regional engagement of these countries. With the right positioning, smaller states with limited geopolitical capital can play an important regional role. In this sense, resilient societies could become valuable assets as regional partners to Europe. Finally, states that are domestically resilient are more likely to constructively explore opportunities in their own neighbourhood through cooperative regional orders.

Arguably, the pool of choices for such investment is scarce. The future orientation of Turkey, until recently Europe’s key Middle Eastern anchor hope, is wide open. At the same time, the fading notion of Turkey as a bridge between Europe and the Middle East enhances the importance of developing other constructive partnerships in the region.

Israel’s antagonistic relations with most of the Arab world cancels out any meaningful regional shaper role. By contrast, Tunisia, Morocco and Jordan, while not first-tier regional players, have been held up by EU policy circles as the most promising southern partners in terms of their ability to reform.

Small but key

Jordan and Morocco, and more recently Tunisia, have been viewed in the EU as the hopeful three of EU-Mediterranean relations. While in better shape than most of their neighbours, none of them currently appears as particularly resilient, and none has decisive regional influence.

Yet, a closer look reveals the relationships’ promising potential. The three countries’ relative lack of regional influence is likely to be an asset rather than a weakness as the lower risk of outside interference makes them more predictable partners for Europe to rely upon. Europeans, however, fail to view Tunisia  especially through a lens of European interests and grossly underestimate the practical value of a democratic Arab partner in North Africa.

The southern neighbourhood has been the Achilles heel of EU foreign policy. Over the past two decades, analysts have proposed countless combinations of aid allocations, market access, mobility and political cooperation schemes.

Instead of bold moves that could make a difference in southern partner countries, however, numerous lame reshuffles of the same parameters have failed to produce the desired quantum leap in Europe’s Mediterranean influence. Europe’s unwillingness to utilise any of these instruments to their fullest potential has kept their impact tame.

Looking across the Mediterranean today, the limits of fragile anchors are as obvious as are the potential benefits of resilience. Europe has been visibly struggling to adapt to the post-2011 panorama. The special status bestowed on promising partners has been half-hearted and falls short of the bold political and economic investment in these countries that a resilient anchor would require. This is the EU’s own doing: by holding back incentives, the EU sits on a dormant leverage potential.

Investment in stability

If the EU is serious about wanting to build the kind of resilience that envisages a healthy sustainability of government, state institutions and society alike as the basis for a stable neighbourhood, it needs to make sure its actions contribute to resilience at all of these three levels, equally and simultaneously.

Tunisia is where the EU could easily do more, including by complying with financial commitments made in the aftermath of the Tunisian revolution; by explicitly raising Tunis’s political profile, and by dropping agricultural protectionism as full market access could become a game-changer for Tunisia at a comparatively small price for Europe.

Morocco’s downward trend might be reversed by a timely and decided EU investment coupled to systemic reform. Jordan, by contrast, is not the EU’s domain, and less so while the refugee challenge is at its peak.

By sequencing investment in Tunisia and Morocco, while multiplying efforts to help Jordan to shoulder the refugee challenge, Europe may still help to lay the groundwork for healthier partnerships in the region.

 

 

 

middleeasteye.net

 

 

 

Interior minister Jan Jambon said most of those monitored have fought with jihadists abroad

Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon on Thursday said security services have deemed 57 residents of Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek radicalized and put them under surveillance.

Most of the people under surveillance have fought with jihadists groups abroad, the minister said, adding that 27 of those, marked as radicalized, are about to travel to Syria and are likely to join extremist groups there.

“It’s possible that not all of them pose a serious threat,” Jambon told localmedia. “The list will be adapted and those who are no longer a risk [to society], will be taken off.”

Authorities identified the individuals as part of efforts to combat radicalization, extremism and terrorism after the March bombings in Brussels.

Jambon said that as part of the plan, authorities conducted 5,000 searches of homes and mosques in the past six months.

Molenbeek, a district of about 96,000 people, has become known as a ‘terrorism hotspot‘ because, some of the attackers, who bombed Brussels and Paris, had either lived or operated in the area.

 

 

politico.eu

Officials say police in Spain, Belgium and Germany have arrested five people that allegedly formed part of a cell that spread propaganda and sought to recruit militants for the Islamic State armed group.

The Spanish Interior Ministry said the five arrested Wednesday worked for the Islamic State group by spreading information on several internet sites, among them a Facebook page called “Islam en Espanol” (Islam in Spanish), which was managed by two suspects arrested in Belgium and Germany. It said the site had 32,500 followers.

A ministry statement said three of the cell members were arrested in Spain.

It said the group used the sites to encourage jihad attacks, praise the Islamic State armed group and seek recruits.

There were no immediate details on the identities of the five.

ap.org

The ministry said one of the accused had planned on joining the Islamic State group in Syria and had travelled to the country’s border with Turkey to meet a member of the organisation to be trained before returning to Europe to take part in an attack.

The man was arrested by Turkish police before crossing the border and was returned to Spain once released where he continued efforts to join the militant group, the ministry said.

The other man is accused of helping the first in his attempts to travel to the war zone in Syria and of training him after he returned to Spain.

The accused are residents in the southern Spanish city of Murcia and the northern city of Valladolid.

It comes as French police arrested two young women from the city of Nice for suspected ties to the ISIS militant Rachid Kassim, the Paris prosecutors’ office said yestrday.

The teenagers, aged 17 and 19, were being groomed to carry out an attack on “specific targets” in France in retaliation for the recent death of the Islamic State’s spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, a source close to the investigation said.

The pair used the Telegram encrypted messaging system to communicate with Kassim, who is suspected of having participated in several attacks or attempted attacks in France.

Security experts have warned that authorities often turn a blind eye to women jihadis because they are not deemed to be a high risk.

Writing in a report entitled Studies in Conflict and Terrorism: Countering Female Terrorism, Dr Karla Cunningham said female terrorism was “rarely acknowledged” because officials “fail to anticipate the emergency and range of female militant actors”.

 

 

express.co.uk

Fears of a new wave of female recruits have been growing in France since authorities made several arrests of women who had pledged allegiant to the twisted terror network.

Earlier this month French police arrested two young women from the city of Nice for suspected ties to the ISIS militant Rachid Kassim, the Paris prosecutors’ office said on Sunday.

The teenagers, aged 17 and 19, were being groomed to carry out an attack on “specific targets” in France in retaliation for the recent death of the Islamic State’s spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, a source close to the investigation said.

The pair used the Telegram encrypted messaging system to communicate with Kassim, who is suspected of having participated in several attacks or attempted attacks in France.

Security experts have warned that authorities often turn a blind eye to women jihadis because they are not deemed to be a high risk.

Writing in a report entitled Studies in Conflict and Terrorism: Countering Female Terrorism, Dr Karla Cunningham said female terrorism was “rarely acknowledged” because officials “fail to anticipate the emergency and range of female militant actors”.

She added: “While women who head to ISIS controlled territories may be limited to support roles, women who are attracted to groups like ISIS are often interested in, and capable of, full operational support.

“We should expect groups like ISIS to either directly or indirectly incite, inspire or direct women to participate in terrorist attacks against targets throughout the world.”

The French teenagers admitted considering the attack, before abandoning the idea, it was reported.

At least four other teenagers, all suspected of having plotted to kill in the name of the Islamic State, were arrested in about 10 days in early September by the General Directorate for Internal Security, a French intelligence agency, which spotted the suspects on social networks.

All were in contact via Telegram with Kassim, who is currently located in the Syrian-Iraqi region, according to police sources.

US researchers recently found that female terrorists do a better job then men at maintaining networks and communicating with fellow operatives.

And figures released by the UK government show that female terror arrests are on the rise in the UK.

A record number of suspected female terrorists were detained by British police last year, amounting to 14 per cent of all arrests on terrorism charges.

Samantha Lewthwaite, known as ‘the White Widow’, was one of the most high profile female jihadis to flee the UK.

Jihadi bride Sally Jones is another of the estimated 56 British women and girls who have travelled to Syria to join the blood thirsty terror group.

Among those were three schoolgirls from east London who travelled to Syria last year.

Shamima Begum, Kadiza Sultana and Amira Abase fled the UK and married ISIS fighters in the Syrian city of Raqqa.

 

 

express.co.uk