The US launched six drone and airstrikes against al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula during the Month of March, equaling the total of the previous five months. The intensified airstrikes coincided with the strengthening of AQAP’s hold on southern Yemen.
“The target was Christians,” the official spokesman of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan Jamaat-ul-Ahrar said after a suicide bomber killed more than 70 people, mostly women and children, at a park in Lahore.
While the US military said that the strike will deny AQAP “safe haven,” the air campaign waged by the US against the jihadist group since 2009 has done little to halt its advance.
Abu Warda Santoso As Syarqi Al Indunisi declared allegiance to Abu Bakr al Baghdadi days after the Islamic State emir announced the formation of the caliphate. Santoso has called on Indonesians to attack Special Detachment 88, the counter-terrorism police.
“We want to be a third power in Iraq,” the commander of Saraya Khorasani said. “Why can’t the Hashd [Popular Mobilization Force] be like the Revolutionary Guard in Iran?”
Omar al Shishani’s status has been uncertain since the US announced it targeted him last week, and it is still unknown if he is dead, alive, or seriously wounded.
Al Qaeda leaders Abu Yahya al Libi and Atiyah Abd al Rahman provided detailed feedback on the Movement of the Taliban’s proposed charter.
State linked Hizb-i-Islami Gulbuddin explosive experts Abdullah Nowbahar and Abdul Saboor to a suicide attack that was carried out by a young woman that killed 12 people in Kabul. Additionally, Saboor has been linked to a suicide attack that killed six Americans.
The head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told AFP that Shishani “was seriously injured” and taken to a hospital in Raqqah province, where he was treated by a European doctor.
Over the past year, the Taliban have seized control of, or contested, a number of districts in a belt that spans southwestern Herat, eastern Farah, northern and central Helmand, Uruzgan, and northwestern Kandahar. The Taliban have historically used these safe havens to organize operations against neighboring districts and provincial capitals.
The US military claimed it targeted and possibly killed Omar al Shishani, a capable field commander for the Islamic State, in an airstrike in Shadaddi. Shishani’s death has not been confirmed.
The creation of the Chief of Staff Committee is one way al Qaeda has ensured that it can adapt to US counterterrorism operations designed to kill key leaders and operatives.
More than 150 Shabaab fighters are said to have been killed in a strike on a Shabaab camp north of the capital of Mogadishu.
It is unclear if the US or Russia killed Amr al Absi, the Islamic State’s governor for the Syrian province of Aleppo. The US launched an airstrike in northern Syria on March 3, where Absi is said to have been killed.
A letter to Atiyah by “Ahmad,” who likely is Ustad Ahmad Farooq, shows how al Qaeda attempts to manipulate the media. Also, al Qaeda in Pakistan based its media operations from Wana, South Waziristan, which is home to a Taliban group supported by the Pakistani state.
According to a letter in Osama bin Laden’s files, a US drone strike that killed Abu Laith in 2008 also killed a Libyan and 10 other “Arabs, Tajiks, and Turkistanis.”
In a letter written sometime in 2010 to al Qaeda’s leadership, AQAP emir Nasir al Wuhayshi detailed the areas in Yemen where the group had significant influence. AQAP took control of many of these areas in a 2011 offensive.
The presence of Taliban prisons in Helmand highlights the rapidly deteriorating security situation in Helmand, where Afghan forces are losing ground to the jihadist group.
“The government itself, the military has been very cooperative and very engaged in the fight against terrorism,” Secretary of State John Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, despite Pakistan’s continuing support of the Taliban and other jihadist groups.
The Islamic State promotes it capabilities as it continues to fight an uphill battle to gain supporters in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the main Taliban factions and al Qaeda still have the upper hand.
The attack took place in the tribal agency of Kurram, where the al Qaeda-linked Haqqani Network is known to have moved its base of operations.
In addition to Musa Qala, the Afghan National Army withdraw from its base in Now Zad. Afghan officials said both districts are now fully under the control of the Taliban.
The Afghan Army commander in charge of the fighting in Helmand characterized the Army’s withdrawal from Musa Qala as a redeployment of forces.
The government and the Taliban are waging an information war as security in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate.
The Taliban and al Qaeda have a vested interest in halting the spread of the Islamic State in Paktika, given the province’s importance to the two jihadist groups.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula expanded the territory under its sphere of influence after capturing five towns in southern Yemen over the past two weeks.
Mullah Hassan Rahmani, a member of the Taliban’s Quetta Shura, had previously opposed the appointment of Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour as the jihadist group’s new emir. Rahmani reconciled with Mansour just weeks before his death.
Jalal Bala’idi, a prominent AQAP field commander khow is also known as Hamza al Zinjibari, “was killed in a Crusader strike that targeted him while he was amongst the sons of his tribe in Abyan province,” the jihadist organization confirmed.
The US is reported to have killed 18 Taliban fighters from Sajna Mehsud’s Taliban faction in an airstrike in an area in Paktika province known to serve as a safe haven for several terrorist groups, including al Qaeda.
Abu Dujana al Basha is a son-in-law and trusted aide to Ayman al Zawahiri and is known as the “hidden commander” for his organization behind the scenes, including the establishment of al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent. Al Qaeda has not officially confirmed Basha’s death.