Tag Archives: assassination

The Trouble With “Ending Forever Wars”

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 12 August 2021

In early July, President Joe Biden confirmed his intention to withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan by September 2021. Biden cited a February 2020 U.S. “agreement” with the Taliban that he had “inherited” from the Trump administration. In truth, President Donald Trump had made no agreement. He had already begun pulling troops out by October 2019 and signed a fig leaf to cover his unconditional withdrawal.

Biden reassessed other Trump policies and could have reassessed this one, not least since the Taliban were in violation even of their vague paper promises — most notably on their commitment to deny space to al Qaeda and negotiate peace in good faith. The truth is that Biden is ideologically committed, as Barack Obama and Trump were, to ending American involvement in “forever wars.” Regardless, this does not mean those wars end or the threats that drew the United States in actually go away. Continue reading →

Just What Is Iran Capable Of?

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 8 June 2021

Massive explosion at Khojir in eastern Tehran lights up the night sky, 25 June 2021 [image source]

The clerical regime in Iran, born in terrorism and dedicated to its export, has carried out atrocities across the world since 1979. The Islamic Republic has made Israel and Jews a special target of its murderous Revolution, and this has naturally incurred what one might call “resistance” from the Israeli government. What is notable in recent times is how the global ledger is shaping up, albeit while the strategic regional situation is quite different. The Israelis have delivered blow after blow to Iran, many of them within Iran, including removing senior officials, and the Iranian theocracy has proven unable to reply because its terrorist infrastructure is so badly infiltrated and just sheerly incompetent. Continue reading →

Islamic State Advertises its Afghan Escalation and Holding Territory in Africa

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 29 May 2021

Al-Naba 288, front page

The Islamic State (IS) released the 288th edition of Al-Naba yesterday, and amid the commonplace items—insurgent reports from Iraq and Syria, Egypt and Africa, its main editorial and the ideological essay(s)—the two items on its front page were most interesting. The top item was a series of reports from Afghanistan about the ongoing progress of IS as NATO draws down. The second item down was from Nigeria, about the imposition of zakat, the tax for the needy, which had some suggestive details about IS’s procurement of territory in Africa. Continue reading →

The Last Coup of the Russian Tsardom

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 29 March 2021

Tsar Pavel I

A few days ago, it was the 220th anniversary of the palace coup that, in the early hours of 24 March 1801, deposed the Russian Tsar, Pavel (Paul) I, the last of the Russian monarchs to fall in this way.[1] Continue reading →

Inducement and Terror: How the Islamic State Deals With Sunni Social Leaders

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 14 March 2021

Abdul Munim al-Badawi (Abu Hamza al-Muhajir), the then-leader of Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia (AQM), released his fourth audio statement on 28 September 2006. The speech was entitled, “Ta’alaw ila Kalimatin Sawa” (تعالوا إلى كلمة سواء): “Come to a Just Word”.[1] An English transcript was released by the jihadists and is reproduced below. Continue reading →

When Kissinger Met Pinochet

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 14 January 2021

Chile’s ruler Augusto Pinochet meeting U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in Santiago, 8 June 1976

The first time U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger met Chile’s ruler, General Augusto Pinochet, was at a meeting of the Organisation of American States (OAS) in Santiago on 8 June 1976. Kissinger had deliberately kept a public distance from Pinochet because of the myth—which will never die—that he and President Richard Nixon orchestrated the coup d’état that brought Pinochet to power in September 1973. But with the OAS meeting in Pinochet’s capital city, Kissinger finally had to meet Pinochet. Kissinger’s sent two very distinct messages to Pinochet, one public, one private. Continue reading →

Women and Terrorism: The Case of the May 19th Communist Organization

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 8 January 2021

This article was originally published at European Eye on Radicalization

The world has been captivated this week by the scenes of an insurrectionary mob overrunning the United States Capitol at the behest of President Donald Trump. It is unlikely that many people remember or even know that nearly forty years ago, this building—the meeting place of the U.S. Congress, the place where laws are made—was bombed by a Communist terrorist group, a group remarkable for its all-female membership. A new book, Tonight We Bombed the U.S. Capitol: The Explosive Story of M19, America’s First Female Terrorist Group, by William Rosenau, a senior policy historian at CNA and a fellow in the International Security program at New America, examines this forgotten episode. Continue reading →

Islamic State Spokesman Vows Revenge Against Enemies, Plays the Israel Card

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 21 February 2020

The Islamic State’s (IS) spokesman, Abu Hamza al-Qurayshi, gave his second speech on 27 January 2020. The speech was entitled, “Allah Destroyed Everything Over Them, and for the Kafireen is Something Comparable”, by IS’s official English translation. The title is drawn from the Qur’an, the Surah of Muhammad (47), verse 10. The verse can be rendered as, “God Destroyed Them Completely, and a Similar Fate Awaits the Disbelievers”. Below is a copy of the transcript of Abu Hamza’s speech, with some editions for transliteration and translation, and some interesting sections highlighted in bold. Continue reading →

Coalition Partner in Syria Represses Dissent

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 12 November 2019

Ahmad al-Hashlum, Hasan Qassab, Hamza al-Malla, Mazen al-Harami

There has been a renewed crackdown on dissent in the areas of Syria run by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). While on Syrian soil, the PKK uses the name Democratic Union Party (PYD), and its armed wing is called the People’s Protection Units (YPG). The YPG/PKK is the dominant force in the “Syrian Democratic Forces” (SDF), the U.S.-led international Coalition’s ground partner in Syria against the Islamic State (ISIS). Continue reading →

The First Speech of Islamic State Spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 7 November 2019

Taha Falaha (Abu Muhammad al-Adnani) [right] appearing in an Islamic State video alongside Tarkhan Batirashvili (Abu Umar al-Shishani, 3 June 2017, displaying a scene from 2014 when IS demolished the borders between Iraq and Syria. Falaha was killed in August 2016. It is common for IS to hold back pictures and footage of its leaders for time-spans that can reach over a decade.

Taha Falaha was the effective deputy of the Islamic State (IS) when he was killed on 30 August 2016, by which time he was also overseeing the foreign attacks campaign by IS and serving as governor of the IS-held areas in Syria. Likely, however, Falaha, is best-known internationally by his kunya, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, and for his role as IS’s official spokesman, particularly his speech in September 2014 inciting Muslims in the West to commit terrorist attacks against their native countries. Falaha had been recruited in Aleppo in 2002 by IS’s founder, Ahmad al-Khalayleh (Abu Musab al-Zarqawi) and steadily advanced through IS’s media department, eventually being announced as the official spokesman with his first speech, released on 1 August 2011. An English-language transcript of that first speech, an hour-long audio message entitled, al-Dawlat al-Islam Baqiya (“The Islamic State Remains” or “The Islamic State Endures”), was released by “Ansar al-Mujahideen English Forum Language and Translation Department” and was posted to their forum on 4 March 2012. The transcript is reproduced below with some editions from the Arabic transcript and some important parts highlighted in bold. Continue reading →