Al Qaeda’s central leadership remains organized with its branches actively carrying out orders passed down from Ayman al Zawahiri who sits at the helm and remains an influential figure in Jihad. Host Bill Roggio is joined by Long War Journal contributor Caleb Weiss to discuss the state of Al Qaeda under Zawahiri’s leadership.
Host Bill Roggio is joined by Caleb Weiss — a senior analyst at the Bridgeway Foundation and long-time contributor to FDD’s Long War Journal — for an update on the latest surrounding various jihadist groups across the African continent.
FDD’s Long War Journal has assessed that 17 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces are under direct Taliban threat.
The effort to degrade and contain Shabaab without will be all the more difficult without a U.S. presence in the country.
The Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan highlights the often overlooked relationship between the Afghan Taliban, its Pakistani brothers, and al Qaeda, and Pakistan’s complicity in propping up terror networks.
Muqtada al Sadr has reactivated two of his longstanding militia forces in Iraq in response to the U.S. killing Qods Force commander Qassem Soleimani.
Qods Force commander Qassem Soliemani and Popular Mobilization Forces deputy Abu Mahdi al Muhandis were terror and insurgency masterminds who were revered in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and beyond for their support of the Iranian-backed Shia militias and terrorist groups that have destabilized several countries in the Middle East.
US troops in Iraq have been targeted three times in mortars and katyusha rocket strikes since last weekend. Shia militias that are supported by Iran are suspected of carrying out the attacks, which take place as tensions between the US and Iran increase.
AFRICOM announced the death of Abdulhakim Dhuqub, the second in command of the Islamic State’s network in Somalia.
Shabaab has managed to launch 418 attacks of different types during the six-month timeframe in support of its persistent and ongoing insurgency against Somalia’s weak central government and allied African Union forces.
The rise of the Islamic State in Jawzjan province over the past year has threatened the Taliban’s operations in the Afghan north.
The standoff between the police and Hezbollah Brigades may portend an upcoming power struggle between Iraq’s established security forces and the Iranian-supported Shia militias that make up the Popular Mobilization Units.
At least four other US Special Forces personnel, as well as a Somali special forces soldier, were also wounded. The Special Forces soldiers were ambushed in an area that is a known Shabaab stronghold.
The IJU is the second foreign jihadist group to highlight joint battlefield operations with the Afghan Taliban in recent weeks.
Turkistan Islamic Party fighters, alongside the Afghan Taliban, released a video showing the combined forces overrunning remote Afghan military outposts in mountainous terrain.
Khattab al Masri, a foreign fighter who sided with Omar Hammami during his dispute with Shabaab, reconciled with the terrorist group and was killed while fighting Ethiopian forces in 2016.
The report also notes that the US State Department has pressed the Iraqi government for the return of the tanks, but this has not happened.
The explosion, which took place as Somail police were parading, killed at least 18 people and wounding at least another 15. Shabaab claimed credit for the attack.
The video serves as an important reminder of Shabaab’s continual potent threat against both African Union and Somali forces inside Somalia.
The US military launched its first airstrike against the Islamic State’s network in the eastern African country of Somalia earlier today, complementing a decade long air campaign against Shabaab, al Qaeda’s branch in the country.
The IJU joins a list of jihadist groups that have publicized its training camps inside Afghanistan, including the Taliban, the Turkistan Islamic Party, and the Imam Bukhari Jamaat.
training camp joins similar training camps in Afghanistan advertised by the Taliban, the Turkistan Islamic Party, Imam Bukhari Jamaat, Harakat-ul-Mujahideen and others.
Somali officials estimate that more than 200 people were killed in a pair of bombings and a suicide assault on a hotel in the Somali capital. Neither Shabaab nor the Islamic State has claimed credit for the deadly attacks, but Shabaab has targeted many hotels in Mogadishu using the same tactics.
As the Taliban has had military success against Afghan security forces throughout the country, it released footage from seven of its camps. The Taliban said that jihad is a “divine obligation” for all Muslims.
The Imam Bukhari Jamaat and the Islamic Jihad Union have claimed attacks in eastern and northern Afghanistan. Members of these two groups are also known to have operated in Syria.
The video, from Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a powerful faction of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, highlights the training of suicide bombers and an assault on a Pakistani military base that took place last November.
One of the alleged spies was accused of working for the CIA and directing drone strikes on Shabaab officials for the agency.
At least 11 rocket launchers, four howitzers (including two US-made M198 howitzers), one American-made M1 Abrams, and one US M88 Recovery Vehicle were spotted in a Hezbollah Brigades convoy moving towards Mosul.
The attack on the Criminal Investigation Department in Mogadishu is the second complex suicide assault by al Qaeda branch in East Africa in the past week.
Shabaab says that the former MP was one of the drivers in yesterday’s double suicide car bombing near an African Union base.
The Hamza al Zinjibari training camp, which is named after a former senior leader of AQAP, is an extension of various historical al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan according to the group.