Daesh launched its first attack on the Afghan security forces early Sunday with hundreds of fighters attacking police posts in eastern Nangarhar province, officials said.

Daesh, which emerged in Afghanistan in 2014 and has grown by imposing itself on the Taliban’s recruiting ground, attacked up to 10 posts in Achin district, around 150 kilometers (93 miles) east of capital Kabul.

District chief Haji Ghalib Mujahid said the attacks were launched simultaneously at 3 a.m. local time (2230GMT).

“Our forces managed to repel their attack but the fight is underway,” he told Anadolu Agency. Several militants have been reported killed and wounded while three Afghan soldiers were killed and eight others injured.

The attacks came just after the UN warned of Daesh’s growing presence in Afghanistan as a U.S.-led international security force looks to withdraw at the end of 2016.

Nicholas Haysom, UN’s envoy to Afghanistan, warned the group had established a “toehold” in Afghanistan.

Daesh has fought the Taliban repeatedly over territory in Nangarhar and targeted young men for membership in areas previously under the sway of the Taliban. The new group claims to have usurped the Taliban in five districts.

There are concerns that the emergence of Daesh could change the nature of the insurgency in Afghanistan, where 13,000 foreign troops remain following the withdrawal of most last year.

Residents and members of Baghlan provincial council claimed on Saturday that government’s incompetency has led to a number of militants, who had recently joined the peace process, rejoin the Taliban ranks.

Officials accused the government of not supporting the militants who had laid down their arms and seeing to it that the militants did not reintegrate to the Taliban.

“Government failed to give them jobs which led some of the militants to rejoin the Taliban and therefore even a single Taliban member have not joined the peace process for long,” a resident of Baghlan named Raouf said.

“Government didn’t take proper steps to prevent them from rejoining the Taliban,” another resident named Shahnawaz said.

According to them, government’s lack of support has created a mistrust among the militants.

“Government failed to provide employment to those who join the peace process and that a mistrust was created,” member of Baghlan provincial council Shamsulhaq Barakzai said.

“The numbers of individuals rejoining the Taliban are few. But the government failed to provide employment for those who joined the peace process, therefore we are struggling to overcome the issue,” head of Baghlan provincial council, Abdul Samad Stanikzai said.

According to provincial figures, up to one thousand militants have so far joined the peace process in Baghlan, since the High Peace Council established for this purpose.

The Islamic State (IS) militant group is gaining ground in Afghanistan, according to a UN report published on September 25.

The UN report says that IS has been winning over a growing number of sympathizers and recruiting followers in 25 out of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces.

“The number of groups and individuals who are openly declaring either loyalty to or sympathy with [IS] continues to grow in a number of provinces in Afghanistan,” the report said.

The report singled out IS militant Abdul Rauf Khadem, who was the former Taliban adviser to former leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, and has since formed his own group in Helmand and Farah provinces.

Almost 70 IS militants from Iraq and Syria are now a core part of the group’s branch in Afghanistan, the report said.

Malaysian authorities have arrested three people including a Syrian and an Indonesian national on suspicion of planning terror attacks against domestic and foreign targets, police and news reports said Friday.

The announcement came a day after the U.S. and Australian embassies had warned their citizens to avoid a popular Kuala Lumpur tourist area on Thursday due to an unspecified security threat.

The detainees were planning to “attack important national assets, Western assets, and public spots,” a statement by Deputy Inspector-General of Police Noor Rashid Ibrahim said.

The statement did not specify their nationalities, but Malaysian news outlets quoted Noor Rashid later telling reporters they were a Malaysian, a Syrian and an Indonesian.

The police statement said one of the foreigners had traveled frequently to Yemen.

On Thursday, the U.S. and Australian embassies warned citizens to stay away from Jalan Alor, an outdoor dining strip in central Kuala Lumpur that is packed nightly with foreigners and locals.

Malaysian news outlets quoted Noor Rashid saying the arrests were related to the Jalan Alor threat, and that the detainees were taken into custody on Thursday.

“The operation is a result from information obtained from suspects arrested previously,” the police statement said.

Muslim-majority Malaysia practices a moderate brand of Islam and has not seen any notable terror attacks in recent years.

But concern has risen in the multifaith nation over growing hard-line Islamic views and the country’s potential as a militant breeding ground.

Authorities say dozens of Malaysians have traveled to Syria to fight for the radical Islamic State group in its civil war there, and warn they may seek to return home and import its ideology.

Over the past year, police have arrested numerous suspects whom they say were IS sympathizers plotting attacks.

Last month, police said 10 Malaysians were arrested for fostering suspected links with the Islamic State and planning attacks in the country.

Opposition lawmakers, however, say the terror arrests over the past year have been shrouded in secrecy, making it difficult to gauge the actual threat level.

Resolution of the Karabakh conflict on the basis of a compromise is possible only within the framework of collective scheme of interaction between the major states in the region – Russia, Turkey and Iran, Russian political scientist, associate professor of St. Petersburg State University, candidate of historical sciences Alexander Sotnichenko told Trend Sept. 25.

He made the remarks commenting on the upcoming meeting of foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia in the lobby of the UN General Assembly in New York.

He said that no major world power wanted to submit a real compromise program of solution to the crisis yet and, therefore, took no responsibility for work with the parties.

“Russia is the most important partner of Armenia, both a political and economic one,” Sotnichenko said. “Russian investments ensure the functioning of the Armenian economy in the state of almost a regional blockade. Iran, for its part, also has good relations with Armenia while remaining an important partner of Azerbaijan. Turkey has a big influence in Azerbaijan. The problem can be solved in conjunction given a joint search for solutions between Moscow, Tehran and Ankara.”

He went on to add that the United States is generally satisfied with the state of frozen conflict, moreover, there is quite a strong Armenian lobby there, and the White House doesn’t want to quarrel with it.

“The European Union, judging by the activity of the Minsk Group, isn’t interested in the early resolution of the conflict, either,” the expert said. “Russia is also generally satisfied with everything, but, unlike the other sides, Moscow has real leverage.”

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The two countries signed a ceasefire agreement in 1994. The co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, Russia, France and the US are currently holding peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented the UN Security Council’s four resolutions on the liberation of the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding regions.

trend.az

U.S. and allied defense officials, increasingly wary of White House plans to scale back the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, are reviewing new drawdown options that include keeping thousands of American troops in the country beyond the end of 2016, Reuters reports citing the Wall Street Journal.

Quoting U.S. and allied officials, the Journal said U.S. Army General John Campbell, the top international commander in Afghanistan, had sent five different recommendations to the Pentagon and to North Atlantic Treaty Organization officials.

The options include keeping the current U.S. presence at or near 10,000; reducing it slightly to 8,000; cutting the force roughly in half; and continuing with current plans to draw down to a force of several hundred troops by the end of 2016, the Journal reported.

Some officials worry that too large a cut could cause the Afghan government to come under increased pressure from the Taliban and other militants, the paper said.

There has been no formal Pentagon recommendation on changes in the troop presence in Afghanistan, the Journal reported.

The lessons of the Iraq withdrawal in 2011 and the rise of the Islamic State militant group loom over the Afghanistan debate, the Journal said. Some officials believe that Iraq’s military would have been able to better fight off Islamic State’s advance last year had the United States maintained a force of at least several thousand advisers in the country.

Members of the Afghan Taliban left Pakistan after warnings from the Islamabad authorities against using its territory to attack the neighboring country, official sources revealed.

The rebels began their exodus after the notice received, said to The Express Tribune an official who requested anonymity.

Kabul has consistently accused Islamabad authorities of giving shelter to the Afghan Taliban, which has always been denied by Pakistan, notes the newspaper.

However, it considers that the recognition about the presence of some members of this armed group on Pakistan by a senior official is unprecedented.

For the moment, we will not promote any initiative, said the source when asked on the peace process between the Taliban and the Afghan government, a project aborted after the death of Mullah Omar, spiritual leader of this formation.

We made these discussions easier, the first step should be given now by Kabul, he stressed.

The tension between the two neighbors escalated last week after an assault by the Pakistani Taliban against an air base near the city of Peshawar, which caused 42 deaths.

Several government officials and senior military officers said that the attackers came from Afghanistan, which was denied by Kabul.

On the contrary, early last month, President Ashraf Ghani blamed the Pakistani government for the attacks suffered those days by the Afghan capital, which left 56 dead.

The calculus of Islamist terrorism is undergoing a transformation, from a state controlled strategy, through al Qaeda’s Millenarianism, to culminate in the Islamic State’s (formerly, Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham, ISIS) apocalyptic vision that actively seeks an end of world confrontation between ‘believers’ and ‘unbelievers’. Millenarian and apocalyptic Islamism accepts no limits to its violence, and has brought new levels of virulence and barbarity to contemporary conflicts. Abruptly acts of the most extreme brutality are choreographed and broadcast across the world through a multiplicity of media, making distant nightmares impossible to ignore, and worse, inciting others to participate in and emulate these.

The response, globally, has been disturbing. Estimates of up to 30,000 fighters, possibly a third of ISIS’ strength (approximations vary from 100,000 to over 260,000 total fighters), from over 100 countries, have travelled to Iraq and Syria to join the ‘jihad’ there, even as others gear up to acts of terrorism on home soil. Astonishingly, a number of Western countries, some of them with tiny Muslim minorities, have contributed disproportionately to this apparent ‘flood’ of foreign fighters in ISIS. Belgium is the leader, relative to its tiny population of Muslims, with 440 volunteers from the country joining ISIS. Other countries with disproportionate representation include Denmark and Norway, with each seeing 150 fighters joining ISIS, while 250 have gone from Australia, 600 each from UK and Germany, and over 1,200 from France.

There are evident grounds for concern in India, with its large Muslim population, and a protracted process of radicalization, backed by Pakistani agencies and proxies, as well as funding and ideological inputs from West Asia. These concerns are naturally exacerbated by each new exposure of Indian nationals joining, attempting to join, or otherwise associating themselves with ISIS activities. The latest, in some sense most sensational and relatively inexplicable disclosures include the efforts of a Hindu girl, a graduate from Delhi University who had gone to Australia for further studies, to join ISIS; as well as the presence of two Hindus, among ten who have been deported from UAE, because of linkages with ISIS activity. Estimates of the total number of Indians who have joined ISIS vary between 17 and up to 50. Within the country, several youth have been prevented from travelling to join ISIS, often after information was provided by their own families and friends. Occasional arrests, demonstrations by youth waving ISIS flags, the appearance of ISIS posters and literature, have also been reported from different parts of the country.

Disturbing as these reports, among others, are, it is useful to note that this incidence is microscopic in an Indian population of over 1.25 billion, and including over 180 million Muslims. Of the Indians who are reported to have actually joined ISIS, only four are confirmed to have gone directly from India; all the others were long term residents abroad and were likely radicalized in their host countries.

Clearly, however, there is a number of youth who are also being seduced by the ISIS ideology within India as well, though most of them have been thwarted before they could realize their designs to engage in ISIS’ jihad. Agencies and the policy establishment are rightly concerned about these, and about the possibility of these numbers growing abruptly as the result of an unpredictable constellation of developments. The motives, psyche and circumstances of those who are attracted to ISIS are, consequently, of critical importance.

Experience suggests that among the most significant factors in radicalization is an environment in which extremist ideologies flourish. Crucially, states that have directly been complicit in the Islamisation-radicalization process are now the sources of the largest human resource base of jihadi movements. For us, Pakistan is the obvious example; though the number estimated to have joined the fight in Iraq-Syria is relatively small – about 500 – several factions of existing terrorist formations in Pakistan have declared their allegiance to ISIS, and have been encouraged to stay back in the AfPak region to wage jihad in ISIS’s imagined ‘Khorasan’.

Within the West Asian context, Saudia Arabia, the source of the global ‘Wahabi’ movement, with the most regressive Islamist regime, and despite extraordinary repression directed against any act of domestic extremism and massive (albeit belated) efforts to suppress ISIS, accounts for the largest segment of foreign fighters, over 2,500.

This cannot, however, explain the disproportionate numbers that are contributed to ISIS ranks by a number of advanced Western nations – unless we take a closer look. The truth is, across Europe, Canada and the US, and for decades now, Governments have been giving asylum to extremist leaders and ideologues who have fled their own countries, on the grounds that they are ‘freedom fighters’ and ‘victims of oppression’. These extremists have, then, created subcultures of radicalization in ethnic and communal ghettos across the West, taking fullest advantage of the freedoms of liberal democracy, to preach, uninterrupted, their ideologies of hatred and violence. It is in these subcultures, and from specifically targeted programmes of ‘mentoring’ vulnerable individuals, that the volunteers for jihad have multiplied.

India has substantially escaped these processes. While populations are, no doubt, communally ghettoized, they are not as isolated as the racially and ethnically discriminated populations of the West, and there is a continuous process of interaction and of accommodation across communal lines, despite sporadic confrontations. Crucially, the subcultures that produce terrorism have been vigorously opposed by the leadership even of the most conservative Muslim organizations, who have denied the contemporary ideologies of Islamist jihad the legitimacy that they have secured in other countries.

Nevertheless, there are exceptions, and it is crucial to understand what draws them into ISIS’ web. A correct understanding of individual motivations can only arise out of detailed interrogations and profiling. At a general level, however, most such individuals are likely to be deeply isolated, socially dysfunctional in significant measure, out of place in their social milieu, and desperately searching for the belonging, community and intimacy that an extremist subculture and the fraught co-dependency of a conspiratorial environment can offer.

Broadly, moreover, it is useful to understand that, in every population, there are always elements with a strong proclivity to violent extremes. In ‘normal’ circumstances, they would join gangs or take to a life of crime; in some cases, they enter professions that offer sanctioned –though limited – expression to their urges, such as militaries and the police; others take to domestic or social violence. Where wider movements or ideologies offer ‘opportunities’, however, such elements naturally gravitate to these – the particular ideological orientation of such movements is irrelevant; depending on accidents of location, they could become Maoists, ethnic militants, or Islamist terrorists.

These individuals are not ‘radicalized’ by extremist Islam; extremist Islam, among other ideologies of violence, offers them the opportunities to express their sociopathic urges. The beheadings and unspeakable brutalities that provoke a natural revulsion in most of us are what attract such individuals to ISIS.

firstpost.com

India has accelerated plans to buy drones from Israel that can be armed, defence sources said, allowing the military to carry out strikes overseas with less risk to personnel.

The news comes weeks after Pakistan first reported using a homemade drone in combat when it attacked militants on its soil, raising the prospect of a new front in the nuclear-armed neighbours’ standoff over Kashmir that has twice spilled into war.

The plan to acquire Israeli Herons was first conceived three years ago, but in January the military wrote to the government asking for speedy delivery, the sources said, as Pakistan and China develop their own drone warfare capabilities.

India has already deployed the Israeli unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) along the rugged mountains of Kashmir for surveillance, as well as on the disputed border with China where the two armies have faced off against each other.

In September, the Indian government approved the air force’s request to acquire 10 Heron TP drones from Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) that can be fitted with weapons to engage targets on the ground, an air force official with knowledge of the matter said.

He added that he expected the agreement to be inked soon.

The Indian Defence Ministry declined to comment. The plan to buy Herons in a deal estimated at $400 million would open the option of covert cross-border strikes.

Currently, the two armies exchange fire across the de facto Kashmir border at times of tension, but do not cross the Line of Control (LoC) by land or air.

“It´s risky, but armed UAVs can be used for counter insurgency operations internally as well across the borders; sneak attacks on terrorist hideouts in mountainous terrain, perhaps,” said an army officer in the defence planning staff. Gurmeet Kanwal, a former head of the government-funded Centre for Land Warfare Studies in New Delhi, said the armed Herons due to enter Indian service by late 2016 will give the air force deep-strike capability. The United States has carried out hundreds of drone strikes inside Pakistan, targeting al Qaeda and other militants in its northwest. Pervez Hoodbhoy, a leading weapons proliferation expert in Pakistan, said: “It is likely that drones would be used in a surreptitious mode close to the LoC, far away from populated areas.” In July, the Pakistan Army said it had shot down a small Indian spy drone in Kashmir. India did not comment.

Michael Kugelman, South Asia specialist at the Washington D.C.-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said the arrival of lethal drones in the region could heighten mutual suspicion at a time when ties are strained. A delegation from state-owned IAI has been holding talks with the Indian defence ministry to determine the possibility of local manufacture of the Heron TP as part of the “Make-in-India” programme, IHS Jane´s said.

Israel does not confirm or deny using or producing armed drones. IAI declined comment on the proposed sale of the Herons, as did Israel´s Defence Ministry, which oversees such arms exports. IAI is one of several Israeli companies manufacturing drones or related technologies. At least one of them has sold armed drones to a foreign country other than India, a person involved in the deal said, without elaborating on the client, model or manufacturer of the aircraft.

Such deals are handled directly between the governments of Israel and the purchasing country, with mutual secrecy agreements, the person added.

It is not clear what kind of weapons will be fitted to the Heron TPs that India plans to buy. India has been trying to develop its own combat drone, but the defence research organisation has struggled to integrate a missile onto the proposed Rustom series of UAVs.

thenews.com.pk