The so-called Zeinabeyyat is a women’s military group established by Houthis to suppress and abuse women and arrest the families based on Iranian ethics, according to Yemeni officials and observers and like reported by aawsat.com.

Advisor to Yemeni Minister of Information Faisal al-Awadhi explained that Zeinabeyyat is a group of marginalized women trained by Iran-backed Houthi insurgents.

“All the Iranian militias in the region are pursuing the same approach, by recruiting children and women,” he said.

Awadhi points out that Houthi militias “exploit socially marginalized poor families,” saying the majority of the Zeinabeyyat have such a background while the leaders are from the Hashemite families and trainers who recruit members.

Although the role of the Zeinabeyyat is to storm into houses, search them, intimidate families and harass any demonstrators against Houthi militias, they have gone beyond that and are now looting homes, especially gold and jewelry. They even steal children’s toys.

“They can be described as enemies with guns but without ethical principles. Zeinabeyyat raid houses for the purpose of looting, intimidation and torture … It is a trained militia that steals mobile phones and confiscates toys while breaking into houses,” continued Awadhi.

On Saturday, Zeinabeyyat groups attacked a women’s demonstration against Houthi militias in Tahrir square in Sana’a.

According to eyewitnesses, the women’s demonstration was suppressed, a number of participants were arrested, and several others were hospitalized after being injured.

The group increased its house raids after the killing of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh by Houthi militias on December 4. Homes of officials of the General People’s Congress (GPS), which was headed by Saleh, were raided, women abused, and children intimidated. They also confiscated personal belongings, jewelry and mobile phones.

Yemeni political writer and analyst Hamdan al-Ali states that the Yemeni society does not accept men to enter and search houses. Houthis then established these groups to suppress and arrest women freely.

A female family member of a GPS official recalled the raid on her home in Sana’a.

“The mercenaries, this is the money of the people, and you must return to it,” she says.

Sixteen jihadists from the Gaza Strip have been killed in recent days in Syria, where they were fighting in the ranks of the Islamic State, senior jihadist Abu Abdel Rahman al-Maqdesi told Breitbart Jerusalem.

According to al-Maqdesi, all of the 16 were killed in the Dir ez-Zor Governorate, most of them in American and Russian airstrikes. Three of the 16 were killed fighting Kurdish militias in the region.

Nine of the jihadists were said to have come from the city of Rafah in southern Gaza while others came from Khan Younis, also in the south, and other areas of the Gaza Strip.

Al-Maqdesi said the most prominent Palestinian jihadist to be killed was Rassem Abu Jazar, a former official with the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ so-called military wing. Abu Jazar left Hamas, joined the jihadists in Gaza, and in 2013 managed to cross into Sinai and make his way to Syria and Iraq, where he fought in the ranks of IS.

Abu Jazar left the Gaza Strip with his family before arriving in Syria. He was one of the first Palestinian jihadists to join the ranks of IS and among the first Hamas officials to do so.

Abu Jazar moved up the ranks of IS and became one of the organization’s most senior members in the region of Aleppo. According to al-Maqdesi, Abu Jazar’s family and the families of the other jihadists killed recently were informed of their loved ones’ deaths partly through Palestinian jihadists who continue to fight with IS in Syria.

Another prominent figure killed recently was Abdullah Kulab from Rafah, the jihadist said. Kulab was a brother of Mustafa Kulab, who blew himself up last August along with a Hamas patrol that tried to prevent him and another jihadist from crossing into Sinai. A Hamas police officer was killed in the blast.

Those killed also included Imad al-Nahass, Muhamad Abu Shbeika and Muhamad Abdelal. Abu Shbeika and al-Nahass spent some time as operatives for Hamas’ “military wing” before leaving the group and joining IS in Syria and Iraq.

At least 8,000 people have been arrested as anti-government protests in Iran enter their third week.

Iranian authorities have rounded up young protesters from a number of provincial cities such as Hamadan, Isfahan and Lorestan, according to Saudi-owned Arab broadcaster Al Arabiya. The outlet cited unnamed sources inside Iran.

Tehran member of parliament Mahmoud Sadeghi said on Tuesday (9 January) that 3,700 people have been detained since protests broke out in late December. At least 21 people were killed in violence between protesters and authorities.

But the Iranian government puts the number of arrests at only 450.

The White House said earlier this week it was “deeply concerned” at the number of arrests the Iranian government had made against people “engaging in peaceful protests”.

However, US President Donald Trump is today (12 January) expected to extend a sanctions waiver for Iran, leaving its 2015 nuclear deal intact. The deal relaxes sanctions on Iran in return for the suspension of its nuclear development programme.

A spokesman for British Prime Minister Theresa May said earlier this month: “We believe there should be meaningful debate about the legitimate and important issues that the protesters are raising, and we’re looking to the Iranian authorities to permit that.”

The demonstrations in Iran are the most widespread since crowds took to the streets over a disputed presidential election in 2009. They began initially over price rises and corruption, but have grown into a wider display of anger towards the government and ruling clerics.

Years of sanctions imposed by the international community over the country’s nuclear programme – despite recently being relaxed – have hit the Iranian economy hard.

The official unemployment rate is just over 12%, but in some parts of the country this rises to more than 60%. Inflation is around 11%, and the average household budget has fallen from just under $15,000 a year in 2007 to 12,500 in 2016, according to the Central Bank of Iran.

About 500 soldiers from the headquarters of the 10th Mountain Division will deploy this spring to Iraq.

The soldiers will replace personnel from the headquarters of the 1st Armored Division, of Fort Bliss, Texas, as a part of Operation Inherent Resolve to help Iraqi forces defeat ISIS, like reported by taskandpurpose.com.

In a statement shared by the Army, 10th Mountain Division commander Maj. Gen. Walter E. Piatt said the division staff have been building up to the deployment for several months.

Among them was a warfighter training exercise in September that pitted the division headquarters against an enemy with more troops and firepower than they had.

“We are honored to be part of the global coalition in support of the Iraqi Security Forces as they consolidate gains from their successful efforts to achieve a lasting defeat of ISIS in Iraq,” he said. “We will build upon the success of the 1st Armored Division as we look forward to partnering with the coalition forces and the Iraqi Security Forces as they build long-term stability through credible and ready security forces.”

Army Lt. Gen. Paul Funk, commanding general of Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve, said a coalition that has grown to 74 nations reclaimed 65,000 square kilometers (25,096 square miles) of land from ISIS, also known as the Islamic State or Daesh, in 2017. Yet he warned the allies can’t let up.

“Their repressive ideology continues,” Gen. Funk said in a New Years message posted to the coalition Facebook page. “The conditions remain present for Daesh to return, and only through coalition and international efforts can the defeat become permanent.”

President Donald Trump, in a New Year’s Eve video posted to his official Twitter account that highlighted his first year in office, included an excerpt from a speech in which he vowed to “defeat radical Islamic terrorism” and “not allow it to take root in our country.”

The announcement was one of several made by the Army today, including the deployment of the 101st Airborne Division headquarters to Afghanistan and brigade-level deployments for the 3rd Infantry Division to South Korea and the 1st Cavalry Division across Europe.

Fort Drum’s public affairs office said the 10th Mountain Division currently has soldiers deployed in 13 countries.

Al-Houthi Militias are recruiting children from tribes and families from districts that are still under Al-Houthi control by using force and intimidation to join battle fronts and face their inevitable death, only to serve Iran’s agendas.

Iranian-backed Al-Houthi Militias are collapsing rapidly, and now in need for recruiting new fighters, especially that they are now on the verge of defeat.

This situation forced the Militias to forcibly recruit and kidnap youths and boys from schools and supermarkets.

A number of Yemeni Scholars warned from responding and joining these militias because militias are unjust criminals and invaders who have shed the blood of innocent people and destroyed mosques.

The scholars also called on the legitimate government and Arab Coalition Forces to liberate districts and governorates that are still under Al-Houthi Militias, so the people of Yemen can live in peace and stability.

Islamic State has inaugurated a Kurdish emir for the first time at the region between Diyala and Salahuddin provinces, a senior security source said according to iraqinews.com.

Speaking to AlSumaria News, on condition of anonymity, the source said, “IS inaugurated for the first time one ots Kurdish leaders as an emir at Mutaibija region, on the borders between Diyala and Salahuddin.”

The Kurdish leader, according to the source, “was working at the so-called Kirkuk State.”
On Monday, Jabbar al-Maamouri, senior leader with al-Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Forces) said in remarks that the militant group executed some of its members in Salahuddin province for refusing to carry out suicide attacks.

Mutaibija has complicated terrain, with numerous hills that serve as a good hideout for militants. Occasional attacks have been witnessed there by Islamic State against government and paramilitary troops deployments since Iraqi forces, backed by a U.S.-led coalition and PMUs, launched a major offensive to retake areas occupied by IS since 2014.

In December, Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi announced full liberation of Iraqi lands, declaring end of war against IS members.

Iraqi forces, backed by a U.S.-led coalition and paramilitary troops, have been fighting since October 2016 to retake territories Islamic State had occupied. Since then, forces took back the group’s former capital, Mosul, the town of Tal Afar, Kirkuk’s Hawija, and Anbar’s Annah, Rawa and Qaim.

Psiphon, a Toronto-born app, has seen a 1,650% increase in downloads, like reported by motherboard.vice.com

A Toronto-born app has become a go-to tool for millions of Iranians looking to break through Tehran’s repressive internet censorship.

Now just over a decade old, firewall circumvention app Psiphon is arguably the most easy-to-use and effective way to bypass state internet control. In recent weeks, it has become a popular way for protesters in Iran to break through the so-called “Halal internet,” a colloquial term for efforts by the regime to filter what everyday Iranians do and don’t see, blocking entire websites and apps for the country’s 80 million citizens and sometimes cutting off internet altogether.

Since protests cropped up across Iran at the end of 2017, Psiphon reports that its usage has skyrocketed.

“Over the last week, Psiphon saw unprecedented app downloads and usage across our network from all platforms in Iran,” Irv Simpson, who works in development for Psiphon, told Motherboard.

Simpson broke down the numbers: On an average day, the app, available for Windows, Android, and iOS, is downloaded some 35,000-40,000 times. From New Year’s Eve until January 3 of this year, the app was hitting 700,000 per day.

That uptick has come with a five-fold increase in the amount of data going over the Psiphon servers.

The vast majority of this increased activity has come from Iran. Psiphon has tabulated a tenfold increase for mobile usage from the Middle Eastern country over the same four-day period.

Psiphon won’t know all the details of just how many users were actively using the app until it audits the data later on, but Simpson estimates that—at its peak—usage hit eight to 10 million users in Iran.

The huge spike in usage comes as Tehran tries to take out other apps, like encrypted messaging platform Telegram. The Centre for Human Rights in Iran cited one Iranian’s tweet saying that Psiphon was the only app working amid the crackdown.

Much of the filtering has been aimed at preventing protesters from organizing demonstrations, choking off reporting from those protests that do crop up, and limiting the flow of news from the outside world.

The mismash of internet filtering can be largely traced back to the patchwork of Iranian internet service providers, who do the heavy lifting at the behest of the state.

It also seems as though the state itself is at odds with how aggressively it is looking to censor speech online. Conflicting messages have emerged from the government regarding whether restrictions on apps like Instagram and Telegram will continue, with President Hassan Rouhani—of the more moderate wing of the Iranian government—indicating the restrictions will ease, and the more conservative hardliners within the regime suggesting they will continue.

“It’s unclear what the official line of the Rouhani administration is,” said Mahsa Alimardani, who works with British human rights organization Article 19 and studies at the Oxford Internet Institute. She told me the range of censorship has been “diverse,” going on-and-off for specific apps and, sometimes, the internet more broadly.

Psiphon is different than just a regular VPN. That is, it is not a tool designed to mask or hide a user’s traffic, per se. Instead, its role is to hide the user altogether, as it allows the device to slip past internet filtering through one of the company’s many servers worldwide, giving it an advantage compared to other VPNs or censorship-circumvention software. Alimardani said Psiphon’s reputation has been that it is “good and responsive with getting new software out to replace the versions that get blocked.”

The app might be useful in circumventing efforts to limit access to specific websites or apps, but if Tehran decides to take aim at internet connections or mobile data as a whole, there’s not much Psiphon can do. Simpson says they’ve been targeted by Tehran before, during the previous round of elections, and are likely being affected by outages in specific parts of the country as the protests unfold.

Members of the Iranian public have proven themselves very resourceful in finding new and reliable technology to help them beat the Halal internet.

“There are some really stable circumvention tools that Iranians have been telling me about,” Alimardani said. She’s not releasing the names of those apps, “as the strength of this tech sometimes lies in not being publicized.”

Psiphon was developed inside the Citizen Lab, a part of the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. The lab, and the school, has spent years devising various ways to improve civic engagement in Iran, especially online, with some financial support from the Canadian government.

Yemen’s Houthi rebels have threatened to block the vital shipping route that connects the Mediterranean Sea with the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean, like reported by thenational.ae.

The president of the so-called supreme political council, which runs Sanaa and other rebel-held territory, made the threat in a meeting with the deputy UN envoy to Yemen on Monday, according to both Saudi and Houthi media.

Council president Saleh Al Samad told the UN’s Maeen Shureim that the Houthis will turn to “strategic choices” if the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen does not halt efforts to retake ports in Hodeidah province, where coastline runs along the Red Sea.

Pro-government forces — backed by the coalition — have been making rapid advances in rebel-held Hodeidah, hoping to prevent the Houthis from using the province’s ports to smuggle in weapons from Iran.

According to Saudi Arabia’s Al Hadath news channel, Mr Al Samad said the rebels would “cut international navigation”, while the Houthis’ Al Masirah TV elaborated, reporting that he threatened to “block the Red Sea and target international navigation”.

Paramilitary troops repelled an attack by Islamic State on a border area between Iraq and Syria, a source with the Popular Mobilization Forces was quoted as saying, like reported by iraqinews.com.

“The PMF’s 29th brigade repelled a fierce attack launched by Islamic State militants on Tall Safuk area on the Iraqi-Syrian border, killing eight of the attackers,” the source told Baghdad Today.

“The attack, which lasted for several hours, left two armored vehicles of Islamic State destroyed as well,” the source said.

Last week, the paramilitary troops announced repelling an IS attack at Tall Sufuk border crossing, killing eighteen suicide attackers. On the same day, Spokesman for the Interior Ministry Brigadier General Saad Maan said 15 militants were killed on the border between Iraq and Syria in an operation that was launched after tracking down the Islamic State cell for a few days.

Thousands of IS militants as well as Iraqi civilians were killed since the government campaign, backed by paramilitary troops and a U.S.-led international coalition, was launched in October 2016 to fight the militant group.

Since then, forces took back the group’s former capital, Mosul, the town of Tal Afar, Kirkuk’s Hawija, and each of Annah, Rawa and Qaim in Anbar.

Last month, Abadi announced full liberation of Iraqi lands, declaring end of war against IS members.”

Syrian Coalition-led forces (of which Kurdish units form a key part) have ejected Islamic State militants from a key stronghold on the eastern shore of the Euphrates River in the province of Deir Ezzor, like reported by almasdarnews.com.

US-backed forces operating in eastern Syria captured the town of Gharanij (also spelt Khara’ij) from ISIS. The settlement, laced with defenses to the point of being a fortress on the Euphrates, served as a key stronghold for the terrorist group.

The battle to capture Gharanij was not easy as Syrian pro-Coalition fighters and Islamic State terrorists engaged in clashes for well over a week.

Initially, US-led Arab and Kurdish militias entered the town one week ago and declared it to be under their control, however, not long after, ISIS counterattacked (mostly using tunnels) and drove them out.

Even with the capture of Gharanij, US-backed forces still find themselves in entangled in two other ongoing battles on the east Euphrates bank, again both for ISIS strongholds – these being represented by the strategic towns of Abu Hammam and Haijin.