Five armed Taliban were killed in a conflict by Daesh fighters in Jawzjan province, according to bakhtarnews.com.af.

Aminullah Amin governor of Qosh Tapa district, Jawzjan province told BNA, the conflict occurred between Taliban and Daesh in the mentioned district which caused killing of five Taliban and wounding of two Daesh fighters.

The source added, the clash continued between the two group and Taliban with inflecting losses fled the site.

Just as the United States redoubles its 16-year-old military effort in Afghanistan, counter-terrorism specialist are spotlighting a “code of conduct” issued by al-Qaida’s branch in the region that declares the jihadist movement’s commitment to cooperating with the Taliban and calls on Muslims everywhere to support the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan”, like reported by wnd.com.

Al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent, or AQIS, is the al-Qaida branch for Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, and as the new code of conduct indicates, also Afghanistan and Burma.

The AQIS document, which has received little attention since it was issued June 25, declares that targeting Americans and U.S. interests in Pakistan are its “foremost priority.”

In his August speech to the nation, President Trump announced a new strategy in Afghanistan that would include the deployment of more American troops and the continued training of Afghan forces, with the objective of convincing the Taliban it cannot win on the battlefield.

The al-Qaida document was the focal point of a panel at the recent World Summit on Counter-Terrorism, an annual gathering of counter-terrorism specialists hosted by the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya, Israel.

Former Department of Homeland Security counter-terrorism specialist Philip Haney, who attended the conference, pointed out that with more armed fighters pledging allegiance to the AQIS coalition, Taliban and ISIS forces have begun conducting joint operations against both civilians and the government-supported Afghan Local Police.

“This means that the conflict arena in Afghanistan will expand and that fighters from jihadist groups across the entire Indian subcontinent – not to mention from other Islamic countries that have been influenced by al-Qaida – will become involved in the AQIS-led jihad,” Haney said.

“This will put American soldiers in the middle of an increasingly complex battle environment, where it will become even more difficult to tell who our friends are, and who our enemies are.”

Haney noted Secretary of State Rex Tillerson specifically has laid out a strategy of compelling the Taliban to come to the negotiating table by countering their reasons for keeping up their fight.

The Trump administration also insists Pakistan must adopt a “different approach” to the conflict and play a central role in persuading the Taliban to come to the negotiating table, instead of supporting jihadist groups such as the Taliban and harboring known terrorists.

“With the emergence of AQIS, it seems less likely than ever that the Taliban will agree to abandon its goal of implementing Shariah law across Afghanistan and negotiate some kind of peace agreement with the current U.S.-backed government,” Haney said.

AQIS clearly hopes that the Taliban will be able to revive its state inside Afghanistan, warned Thomas Joscelyn, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the senior editor for FDD’s Long War Journal.

“The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is closer to that goal today than at any point since Sept. 11, 2001,” he wrote in an analysis of the AQIS code of conduct. “And it is a goal that AQIS is working towards.”

Coalition against ‘enemies of Shariah’

This year, some 1,200 counter-terror specialists in the academic, diplomatic, intelligence, law enforcement and military arenas from more than 30 countries attended the 17th summit in Israel, Sept. 11-14, under the theme of “The Terrorism Maze.”

At the summit, a panel of seven experts from India, Israel, the Netherlands, Pakistan and the U.K. led by ICT senior researcher Michael Barak discussed the emergence of the new coalition of Salafi Muslim groups in 2014 that is now known as AQIS.

The panelists emphasized that the central role Afghanistan and Pakistan play in both the global Islamic movement and in the international terror network has been largely overlooked by governments outside of the area and even by counter-terrorism specialists in the West, which is reflected in policy.

The AQIS code of conduct specifically authorizes attacks against American and Israeli civilians, and against the governments of the five countries in the subcontinent supporting the U.S., calling them “the enemies of Shariah” and the “global forces of infidelity.”

The document confirms a new transnational coalition of jihadist groups operating across Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Burma have  pledged loyalty to the strategic goals of both the original al-Qaida and to ISIS, which has morphed into a global coalition of at least 30 groups.

The “code of conduct” emphasizes the allegiance of al-Qaida members to Osama bin Laden’s successor, Ayman al Zawahiri, and to the emir of the Taliban, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada.

AQIS says its members are fighting “shoulder-to-shoulder” with the Taliban “mujahideen.”

The preamble states – establishing the legitimacy of engaging in war against those who reject Islam – it is “a manifest reality that one purpose of jihad is breaking the might of Kufr (infidelity) and establishing Shariah; while another one is guidance, protection, and welfare of the Muslims.”

“Both purposes are necessary and interdependent on each other. A lapse in moving towards one of the two objectives, makes advancing towards the other impossible,” the document states.

“Considering the current state of affairs, there is a need – more than ever – for a jihadi movement in this region of the world that advances forward without losing sight of either of these two objectives, while holding the two purposes equally important.”

AQIS says such a movement “would undoubtedly be a mercy and blessing for the Muslims of the Subcontinent; and would also result in turning this dark night of oppression and corruption into a bright morning of Shariah.”

“Hence, it is a religious obligation upon every mujahid and every jihadi organization to make the aforementioned objectives, the focus of all their jihadi activities.”

AQIS said it “invites the Muslims of the subcontinent to pledge their allegiance to the Islamic Emirate and to support it.”

Joscelyn noted the new code of conduct explains that AQIS fighters are integrated into the Taliban’s chain-of-command.

“The mujahideen associated with the Jama’ah [AQIS] … are present on the ground under the emirate’s flag, and are actively participating in battles against the enemies of sharia,” the text reads.

He said the integration explains why AQIS has produced only minimal propaganda from the battlefields in Afghanistan, even though it is clearly contributing to the fight.

Weighing the enemy’s assessment

AQIS says an American withdrawal from Afghanistan, signifying Western defeat, would be a boon for the jihadis’ cause throughout the Indian subcontinent.

“It is our conviction that the defeat of America and its agents would result in victory for the religious forces in this entire region,” says the document.

Joscelyn commented that while the war in Afghanistan “is America’s longest, and there are many reasons to be skeptical about the future of the country, the enemy’s assessment must be weighed when assessing military options going forward.”

“And AQIS thinks that an American defeat would be a clear victory for the jihadists, with effects that ripple throughout the neighboring countries.”

 

About 900 Azerbaijani citizens have joined the Islamic State over the past five years, head of the Azerbaijani State Security Service Madat Guliyev said according to armradio.am.

“Over the past five years, a certain number of Azerbaijani citizens have believed in the black propaganda and joined the Islamic State terrorist organization,” Guliyev told reporters.

He specified that the total number of Azerbaijani nationals that joined the jihadist group was around 900.

“Of them, 85 were detained by law enforcement agencies and are in prison, 195 were stripped of Azerbaijani citizenship, and the majority of them died in battles,” Guliyev added.

In addition, Azerbaijani special services are looking into information about 300 citizens that were reportedly killed in Iraq during an anti-terror operation, head of the Azerbaijani State Security Service Madat Guliyev said on Sunday.

“In the area with dense population of Azerbaijanis in Iraq, around 300 Azerbaijanis were killed. Our employees are currently in Iraq and are looking into the credibility of this information,” Guliyev told reporters.

At least 15 Taliban insurgents were killed in an Afghan security forces operation in central Logar province on Sunday, local officials claimed according to tolonews.com.

In addition, 12 other insurgents were wounded.

The operation was launched in Barak-e-Barak district of the province after insurgents attacked the security check posts in the district, provincial police chief Esmatullah Alizai said.

However, he did not provide further details about the operation.

The Taliban has not yet commented over the incident.

Shelling along the disputed border between Pakistan and India killed six civilians, and wounded an additional 30 people, officials from the two sides said on Friday, in the latest confrontation between the two nuclear-armed countries, like reported by reuters.com.

The firing took place across the frontier separating Pakistan’s Punjab province from Indian-administered Kashmir’s Jammu region, and most of the casualties were reported on the Pakistani side.

Pakistan’s military said six civilians were killed and 26 wounded.

“Pakistan Rangers Punjab befittingly responded on posts targeting civil population,” the Pakistan army’s public relations wing said in a statement.

Indian Police officials in Jammu said the ceasefire was violated by Pakistani forces, who injured four civilians on the Indian side.

Both countries claim Kashmir, and have fought two of their three wars over the Himalayan region, which they have disputed since partition and independence from British colonial rule in 1947.

In July, four soldiers were killed when Indian shelling from across the Line of Control (LoC) that separates parts of Kashmir held by both countries struck a Pakistani army vehicle. Indian officials denied any knowledge of the incident.

In May, India accused Pakistani forces of killing two soldiers patrolling the LoC and mutilating their bodies. Pakistan’s military denied the allegations and said it had not committed ceasefire violations.

Both sides have previously accused each of violating the ceasefire and of beheading soldiers in the past.

The introduction of UH-60 assault helicopter is included in the plans for the expansion of the Afghan Air Force, the NATO-led Resolute Support Mission has said, like reported by khaama.com.

According to a short statement posted online by the alliance “The world is taking notice of Afghan Air Power and its success against the enemy. The Afghan Air Force will more than double their fleet of aircraft over the next seven years.”

The statement further adds “Along with the new arrival of UH-60 Blackhawks this week, plans include the introduction of AC-208 light attack and surveillance aircraft, A-29 attack aircraft and additional UH-60 assault and MD-530 attack helicopters to the force.”

This comes as the first batch of the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters for the Afghan Air Force arrived in southern Kandahar province on Monday.

The Afghan government and the country’s international allies including US and NATO have stepped up efforts to bolster the capabilities of the Afghan force and Air Force.

President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani earlier this month informed regarding the investment plans worth billions of dollars on the Afghan Air Force as he expressed optimisms that the announcement of the new US strategy for Afghanistan will pave the way for further expansion of the NATO-led Resolute Support Mission’s activities to boost the capabilities of the Afghan forces.

President Ghani further added that six billion dollars will be invested on the Air Force in the next four years.

Heru Kurnia, an Indonesian who joined Islamic State in Syria, is describing watching children kick around the head of someone decapitated by IS militants.

He hadn’t seen the execution but saw a crowd gather at the clock tower in the Syrian city of Raqqa. “People were watching. I went closer, but oh my God, the man was already dead and the body was being treated like that”.

An IS guard left the body there and adults stood by and did nothing while kids treated a human head like a soccer ball. Later Heru’s voice shudders as he spits out: “IS are sadists.”, like reported by brisbanetimes.com.au

Heru is among 18 Indonesians who returned in August after reportedly escaping from a living hell that was a world away from the idealised Islamic society IS recruiters spruik online.

One man, Dwi Djoko Wiwoho, recounts IS militants asking to be informed of when his daughter began menstruating.

“We were told schools would be free there, but once we were there we were asked to marry her,” he says. Heru and Djoko both appear in a slickly-produced video released this week by the Indonesian government’s counter-terrorism unit, BNPT, titled “Stories of IS deportees”.

The government clearly intends the video, with its melodramatic music score and ghastly anecdotes, to convey an unequivocal message: don’t buy the IS hype.

More than 500 Indonesian IS supporters are still believed to be in Syria. Hundreds more have been deported back to Indonesia, returned voluntarily or killed. Another 30 Indonesians are believed to have fought with IS-linked militants in a much closer theatre of war: Marawi, on the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines. None have yet returned.

The threat to Indonesia posed by battle-hardened returned fighters, equipped with new skills and radical ideology, has long exercised authorities.

“The thing that would lead to a marked increase in the threat level would be skilled jihadists suddenly being back, circulating in those networks in Indonesia, imparting their skills in bombmaking and operations,” says Australian National University terrorism expert Greg Fealy.

“Also the fact these people would have the prestige of having fought in the battlefield, whether the battlefield is Marawi or whether it is in Syria, they would attract quite a following. So that could be the thing that suddenly gives a dramatic step up in the ability of terrorists to launch attacks. That’s what’s really been the missing factor so far.”

Weak terrorism laws hamstring the government: no current legislation outlaws travelling to join IS or declaring support for the extremist group.

Fairfax Media has been unable to interview the returnees and verify their accounts. BNPT spokesman Hamidin insisted no one had been paid to provide their video testimonial.

But this is not the first group of Indonesians to return from Syria citing disillusionment with IS.

“Indonesians aren’t high-ranking in the fight in Syria. They come back disillusioned a lot of the time after cleaning toilets, doing crappy jobs,” an intelligence source tells Fairfax Media.

But terrorism analyst Nava Nuraniyah says IS sympathisers mostly cheer about IS on encrypted chat groups on the Telegram app. “On the rare occasion when people complain about things in Syria or have doubts, they are immediately silenced,” she says.

Ms Nuraniyah believes the returnees who feature on the government video are genuine “but it doesn’t necessarily represent the majority of Indonesian fighters or deportees”.

“A lot who choose to remain in Syria still believe in it.”

This is consistent with the experience of C-SAVE Indonesia, a network of civil society organisations addressing violent extremism.

Since January, C-SAVE has been assisting Indonesians deported while trying to join IS in Syria to return to their homes. As of late July they had assisted more than 160 people.

Of these about 90 per cent wanted to go back to Syria, according to C-SAVE executive director Mira Kusumarini.

“They want to live under a caliphate, where Islamic sharia is implemented completely,” Ms Kusumarini says.

She says many refused to sign a document agreeing to abide by Indonesia’s 1945 Constitution and the pluralist state ideology of Pancasila until police threatened to put them in a cell.

“Deportees regarded the government as the infidel, the enemy. When we tried to engage with the children we couldn’t use the usual technique of singing and clapping hands because that was regarded as satanic.”

In January 2016, multiple explosions near the Sarinah shopping mall in Central Jakarta – including one in a Starbucks cafe – killed eight people, including four civilians.

It was the first terrorist attack in Indonesia to be claimed by IS.

Since then there have been a number of IS-inspired attacks, mostly low-impact suicide bombings targeting police.

But the day after the Marawi battle began in May, two explosions near a bus station in East Jakarta killed five people and an ominous link was revealed to the conflict in the Philippines.

The borders between Indonesia and the Philippines are notoriously porous and militants can easily travel by boat between the two countries without passing through immigration.

One of those arrested over the East Jakarta bus stop bombing had helped arrange travel for Indonesians to the Philippines. Another arrested by police chillingly urged Indonesians over messaging app Telegram to “learn from the conquest of Marawi”.

“One possible impact of Marawi is an increased risk of violence in other countries in the region as local groups are inspired or shamed into action by the Philippine fighters,” Jakarta-based terrorism expert Sidney Jones writes in a recent report.

In July a pressure cooker bomb exploded prematurely in a dormitory in Bandung, West Java.

The man accused of assembling it – a 21-year-old meatball seller called Agus Wiguna – had been “obsessed” with fighting with the IS-affiliated group in Marawi, according to police.

He reportedly planned to detonate bombs in a restaurant, coffee shop and church in Bandung before flying to the Philippines.

“Once the battle for Marawi is over, it is possible that South-east Asian [IS] leaders might encourage Indonesians to go after other targets, including foreigners or foreign institutions – especially if one of them comes back to lead the operations,” Jones writes.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull also did not mince his words.

“With the bitter memory of the 2002 Bali bombing, I am keenly alert to the risk that the next mass-casualty attack on Australian victims could well be somewhere in South-east Asia, where [IS] propaganda has galvanised existing networks of extremists and attracted new recruits,” he told a security summit in June.

The latest edition of IA’s glossy online magazine Rumiyah also focuses on the Philippines as IS loses its grip on a swath of Iraq and Syria, with a cover story on “The jihad in East Asia”.

Anggara Suprayogi, one of the 30 Indonesians fighting with IS-linked militants in Marawi, had planned to leave for Syria to fight early this year.

But when he made contact with an Indonesian in Raqqa he was urged to fight in the Philippines instead.

“Of course she was in shock,” Agung Budi Laksono tells Fairfax Media. “What mother wouldn’t be? Any mother whose son secretly went to war that was not a war for his country.”

He says Anggara had been an obedient son who loved his family and was active in the local community.

“If Anggara found a wallet, he would look for the owner’s address, return the wallet and refuse any gift,” Agung says. “That in my eyes is a positive, it’s rare.”

Religion had been everything to him: he had even refused to use banks because charging interest is forbidden under Islam because it is thought to be exploitative.

Anggara was not the first Indonesian who wanted to fight for IS in Syria or Marawi that Agung came across in his year working in Tangerang.

“It exists quite a lot,” he says. “One of the reasons is a limited understanding of jihad.”

What Indonesia has on its side is one of the most effective anti-terrorist police units in the world.

Detachment 88, established in the wake of the 2002 Bali bombings, has foiled multiple terror plots ranging from a plan for a female suicide bomber to blow herself up outside the presidential palace to a proposed attack on the Myanmar embassy in Jakarta.

Any attacks that have occurred are followed up almost immediately with a string of arrests.

An intelligence source says despite low technological capacity – there is not one central database of foreign fighters in Indonesia, for example – Detachment 88 is highly skilled at monitoring, infiltrating mosques and intercepting plots.

“Yes, there is growing intolerance and there is inspiration from South-east Asia, but putting aside lone wolf and small attacks most plots are stopped and that is a tick,” the source says. “Australia is probably not doing as well as they are doing.”

The ANU’s Fealy says the sheer number of returnees as IS crumbles in the Middle East, coupled with the conflict in Marawi, has raised the terrorism threat in the region “quite a bit”.

But he says the risk to Indonesia is still “well below” what it was in 2002, when Jemaah Islamiyah was at its height.

“At the time we had people like Azahari Husin and Noordin Top who were master bombmakers teaching dozens of people how to make bombs that kill a lot of people,” Fealy says.

“I think there is the potential to get there very quickly, but I think we are still well below that.”

At least four militants four militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorist group were killed in an airstrike in eastern Nangarhar province of Afghanistan, like reported by khaama.com .

The provincial government media office in a statement said the airstrike was carried in the past twenty four hours in Haska Mina district.

The statement further added that the US unmanned aerial vehicles targeted the militants of the terror group in Manogi area.

At least two militants were killed and two others were wounded in the airstrike, the statement said.

The provincial government also added that some heavy and light weapons belonging to the terror group were also destroyed in the airstrike.

The US forces based in Afghanistan conduct airstrikes almost on regular basis in Nangarhar province where the Taliban insurgents, ISIS loyalist, and terrorists from the other groups are attempting to expand their foothold.

At least two members of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Islam group were killed in a similar airstrike in Nangarhar province on Monday.

The officials in the 201^st Silab Corps of the Afghan national army in the East, said the airstrike was carried out in Bandar area of Achin district.

Afghanistan’s branch of the Islamic State terrorist group has expanded its extremist activities to the country’s seven provinces, as opposed to only one province last year, a United Nations report revealed according to voanews.com.

While fighting over territorial control between Afghan forces and Taliban insurgents escalated in 2017, rise in attacks by Islamic State of Khorasan Province, or ISK-P fueled insecurity in the country, said a report by U.N. Office for the Humanitarian Affairs.

“Growing insecurity in Afghanistan is not only characterized by increased attacks on district centers, but also by a doubling of attacks attributable to … Islamic State of Khorasan to more than 230 in the first half of the year,” the agency noted.

It said until the first half of 2016, ISK was operating in the eastern Nagarhar provinces. U.S. and Afghan military officials, however, repeatedly have claimed that IS remains confined to few southern districts of Nangarhar and parts of the neighboring Kunar province.

They maintain that relentless counterterrorism ground and air operations have killed hundreds of fighters linked to the organization and reduced its territorial control in recent months.

OCHA also reported an escalation of fighting in Afghanistan that displaced more than 50,000 civilians in August, the largest monthly displacement in 2017.

The Taliban-led insurgents attacked or fought over control of at least eight district centers in seven Afghan provinces during the month, it said.

“The third week of August has been one of the most active in terms of armed clashes, according to security sources, and the whole month continued a trend of starkly intensified conflict across the country,” it added.

From January to end of July, anti-state armed groups had already attacked and taken control of more than a dozen district centers around Afghanistan, noted the U.N. humanitarian agency.

Afghan security forces have since retaken control of only two districts, Qala-e-Zal and Sangin in northern Kunduz and southern Helmand provinces respectively, often after heavy fighting that included the military deploying reinforcements and pounding enemy positions with airstrikes.

The intensification in Afghan fighting is evident from dropping of more 555 bombs by the U.S. military in August, the most in a single month. Most of them focused on Helmand and Nangarhar, a U.S. military spokesman told VOA last week.

The United Nations says Afghan civilian casualties have already spiked to record levels this year, calling on warring sides to ensure protection of civilians.

But hostilities are expected to escalate in the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s “new strategy” unveiled last month to break the stalemate with the Taliban in what has become the longest foreign military engagement in the U.S. history.

The strategy requires a modest increase in American troops and increased airpower for Afghan security forces struggling to halt Taliban battlefield advances.

“The recent decision by Donald Trump to surge additional troops to Afghanistan may also result in a more volatile landscape over the coming months,” cautioned OCHA.

The humanitarian agency said insecurity is likely to increase and further expand over the remainder of the year, adding no seasonal lull in fighting is anticipated as winter arrives later and is expected to be more mild.

The U.N. agency criticized Trump for not addressing the issue of civilian casualties caused by NATO airstrikes.

It noted the U.S. president “announced less political oversight over commanding airstrikes and increasing the leeway of military leaders, which increases the likelihood of airstrikes” on anti-government groups that affect civilians.

OCHA cited two airstrikes carried out by international forces on 28 and 30 August that, according to a U.N. probe, killed at least 28 civilians and injured 16, all women and children.