Yearly Archives: 2012




Somalia

Ugandan troops killed several Shabaab fighters during clashes near Marka. Security forces captured 15 Shabaab fighters in Mogadishu. Nigeria will send 140 police officers to support AMISOM.






Libya

A police lieutenant was shot and killed at his home near Benghazi by an unknown assailant; the policeman’s mother was injured in the attack. The Interior Ministry announced plans to investigate complaints against policemen, after a video surfaced on YouTube allegedly showing signs of torture on a suspect arrested in Benghazi.





Iran

The Rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran in the Middle East


Algeria

Algeria prepares for ‘guerrilla’ warfare


Afghanistan

The Taliban killed three policemen in an assault on a checkpoint in Uruzgan and another in an attack on the governor’s convoy in Faryab. The NDS found a car bomb in Parwan.



Iraq

Insurgents killed three Iraqi soldiers in an IED attack in Hamdaniya, north of Mosul. Security forces arrested five al Qaeda operatives, including a wanted “slaughterer,” in a raid in Fallujah.


Syria

Syrian moderates fear being edged out of uprising


Yemen

A jihadist identified two of the five al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula fighters who were killed in a Dec. 24 drone strike in Hadramout as Abdullah Bawazir and Nabil al Kaldi. Both men escaped from a prison in Mukallah in June 2011.


Syria

UN envoy Brahimi proposed a peace plan that included a transitional government with executive powers until new elections could be held. The National Coalition said it would agree to any plan that excludes President Assad. Russia sought to revive an earlier peace plan without the stipulation.


Israel

Israel’s internal security service arrested 10 members of an armed cell of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Two suspects are charged with plotting to kidnap an Israeli soldier; the other eight face related terror charges.


Egypt

Prosecutors ordered an investigation into opposition leaders over allegations that they planned to overthrow the government. An Islamist group in Sinai threatened to launch a crusade against drug use and cigarette smoking. Two ministers resigned over economic reforms.


Russia

Ibragim Dudarov, a deputy mufti in North Ossetia, was shot and killed by unknown gunmen near Vladikavkaz. His mufti said Islamist militants were not active in North Ossetia. The attack is the seventh this year against Islamic leaders in Russia. Police shot and killed Alim Lampezhev, a wanted militant leader in Kabardino-Balkaria, along with two […]


Algeria

Algerian army, air force, national gendarmerie, and special operation forces are conducting guerilla training exercises near the southern border to prepare for possible clashes with armed Islamists in northern Mali. Algeria is also tightening border controls, to curb the “co-operation and co-ordination between smuggling gangs, armed terrorist groups and arms trade mafia along the border […]


Mali

The al Qaeda-linked Ansar Dine destroyed the last of the mausoleums of the Sufi saints in Timbuktu. Ansar Dine’s Islamic police say the destruction of the tombs is unrelated to the UN’s approval of a military intervention in Mali.