Russians Are Joining ISIS in Droves - Kate Brannen -
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/12/07/russians-are-joining-isis-in-droves.html
Jihadists from Russia and Central Asia are pouring into the caliphate, four times more than a year ago.
Across the globe, the number of foreign fighters traveling to Iraq and Syria continues to climb, but Russia and Central Asia have experienced the most dramatic change over the past year, with some estimates suggesting a 300 percent increase.
Russia, with an estimated 2,400 fighters, is now believed to be the third biggest supplier of foreign fighters to radical Islamist groups fighting in Iraq and Syria, according to new analysis from the Soufan Group, a security consulting firm based in New York.
In June 2014, it was estimated that Russia had around 800 foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria.
"Comparatively speaking, this increase is far more substantial proportionately than that seen in Western Europe over the same time span," the Soufan Group says in a report it plans to release tomorrow. The Daily Beast obtained an early copy.
The only two countries who currently supply more fighters are Tunisia, with an estimated 6,000, and Saudi Arabia, with 2,500. Jordan also continues to rank among the top nationalities fighting with the so-called Islamic State or Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda franchise, with somewhere between 2,000 and 2,500 Jordanians leaving home to fight in Iraq or Syria.
The majority of Russia's foreign fighters is coming from the North Caucasus-Chechnya and Dagestan, areas with long histories of Islamic extremism.
"Local grievances have long been drivers of radicalization in the Caucasus, and as the strong centralized security apparatus of the Russian government limits the scope for operations at home, the Islamic State has offered an attractive alternative," the Soufan Group report says.
But news investigations have also revealed that Russian authorities have encouraged local jihadists to travel to Syria. The logic being: better terrorists fight abroad than make trouble in Russia. According to a report in Novaya Gazeta, Russia's domestic intelligence agency-the Federal Security Service or FSB-facilitated the travel of Russian fighters headed to Syria.
With the terrorist attacks in Paris carried out by French and Belgians who'd traveled to Syria to fight, and with the Islamic State claiming responsibility for the bombing of a Russian airliner in Egypt in October, Russia may be rethinking its strategy to export local fighters. Rather than guaranteeing more safety at home, Russia could be sending men and women off to collect valuable combat skills on the battlefield that can be brought back home to carry out attacks.
Addressing the threat in October, Russian President Vladimir Putin said a task force would be established to strengthen the borders of former Soviet republic states, who have also seen its foreign fighter numbers quickly climb over the last year. The Soufan Group has identified credible reports of foreign fighters in Syria from 12 of the 15 former Soviet states.
Approximately 2,000 militant fighters hail from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, according to the report.
Putin said between 5,000 to 7,000 people from Russia and the former Soviet states had joined the Islamic State. The Soufan Group report says that number is likely closer to 4,700. Either way, an alarming number of people are leaving the region to join the Islamic State, and did so before Russia began its bombing campaign in September against groups that oppose Syrian President Bashar Assad.
It is too soon to tell what effect Russia's more aggressive approach in Syria could have on its own population. Over the past 18 months, recruits from North America have not escalated dramatically, despite the anti-ISIS bombing campaign led by the United States.
"This suggests that the motivation for people to join violent extremist groups in Syria and Iraq remains more personal than political," the Soufan Group report says. "A search for belonging, purpose, adventure, and friendship, appear to remain the main reasons for people to join the Islamic State, just as they remain the least addressed issues in the international fight against terrorism."
Just 18 months ago, the number of foreign fighters in Syria was believed to be somewhere between 12,000 and 15,000. Now, that number appears to have doubled.
Through its own investigation, the Soufan Group found that in total between 27,000 and 31,000 people have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join the Islamic State and other violent extremist groups from at least 86 countries.
This is line with a recent U.S. intelligence assessment that estimates nearly 30,000 foreign fighters have traveled to Iraq and Syria from more than 100 countries since 2011.
Western European countries have seen its foreign fighter numbers double over the last year, jumping from 2,500 in June 2014 to roughly 5,000 today. France, the United Kingdom, Germany and Belgium contribute the biggest numbers to this tally, making up almost 3,700 of the total.
As for fighters traveling from the United States, FBI Director James Comey has said that approximately 250 Americans have traveled or attempted to travel to Syria. In 2014, that number was closer to 70.
"There are no significant patterns of locally based recruitment in the Americas-nor recruitment hot spots-as seen in Europe and the former Soviet republics," the Soufan Group report says.
Knife Intifada - By Matt Ward - http://www.raptureready.com/soap2/ward40.html
Israel is under attack and victim of a new type of terror.
While the world has been distracted by events in Paris, Syria and the almost daily horrors caused by ISIS, Jews have been dying daily in Israel. The Palestinians have launched an undeclared Third Intifada. This new and very deadly uprising has been caused primarily by the president of the Palestinian Authority-Mahmoud Abbas. His constant baiting and lies over the Temple Mount have provoked a spasm of blood and murder from the young Palestinian men and women that he leads.
Abbas has consistently claimed that Israel intends to cut Palestinians access to the Temple Mount and Al Aqsa Mosque complexes. This is a lie and completely false. The Israeli government has no such aspirations, yet Abbas has continued to spew his hate-filled rhetoric resulting in the deaths of a significant number of Israelis.
Even worse, Imams from all over Gaza have preached from their Mosques of the need for Palestinian men and women to rise up against this perceived oppression in defense of Al- Aqsa using whatever means they can; cars, guns rocks or knives. This, they have been doing, in quite some numbers.
The Knife Intifada, as it has become known, is causing a political and social crisis within Israel. Jews have been run over and rammed to death by Palestinians terrorists in cars. Young children have been seriously injured by rocks thrown onto the wind shields of moving vehicles. Jews have been shot and killed, and unsuspecting men and women of a variety of ages have been stabbed, seriously injured or killed.
An old woman in her eighties was recently chased down by a knife wielding Palestinian man in his mid-twenties. When apprehended he said he was proud of his actions, as were his family as he was "resisting." Truly nothing speaks of courage like the sight of a young man with a knife running down an old woman. Incredibly brave!
This Intifada is affecting the psyche of ordinary Israelis. They are used to feeling besieged from outside their borders, but to experience terror in their own neighborhoods day in and day out is beginning to have a profound effect.
Imagine no longer daring to look at your mobile phone as you walk down the street because of the need to stay alert in case you are attacked.
Imagine waiting for a bus at a bus stop and standing behind the bus shelter instead of in front of it for fear that you may be rammed by a car and seriously injured.
Imagine trying to only walk down the sidewalk toward oncoming traffic so you at least have some warning should a car stray from the road to try to kill you.
If you are a woman, imagine not wearing high heels anymore in case you have to run for your life.
Or imagine making sure that you don't leave anything embarrassing in your home in the morning, in case someone else has to come back to your house that evening because you cannot.
Yet in surveys the overwhelming majority of Israelis remain determined that they will not look on every Arab as if they could be a terrorist. Israelis have determined that they will not stop going to work or to the gym, to the cinema or to restaurants. Many Israelis have determined that they will not lose their perspective amid this growing threat to themselves and their families.
Their spirit is reminiscent of the Blitz spirit seen in London during the 1940s. The fact that ordinary Palestinians are prepared to leave their homes and randomly attack Jewish men, women and children with complete disregard for their victims or their own survival-is as a result of the years and years of lies and hate with which they have been indoctrinated.
Through schools, mosques, social media and their own government, Palestinians of all ages have been fed a daily diet of hatred and lies toward Israel for almost seven decades. This message has now become a generational one.
This Knife Intifada has put the political leadership of Israel at odds with the leadership of the IDF. The Israeli Defense Forces believe they have a solution to this nightmare; a complete lockdown of all Palestinian areas. This would even involve Palestinian areas of East Jerusalem and Palestinian-populated areas of Judea, Samaria and Hebron for an indefinite period.
Israeli military and intelligence experts are of the opinion that the desired effect of a de-escalation of attacks will only be achieved by an ultimatum: Give up terrorism or be cut off from Israel and therefore die economically.
Netanyahu, while leaving this option open, is deeply fearful that a total lockdown on Palestinian areas will have a negative effect politically at home and internationally. (This is an under-statement.) IDF commanders are of the belief that if the Palestinian terror is not stopped it will continue to escalate to the point where the hand of Netanyahu will be forced to take action.
Netanyahu fears that if his hand is forced and the IDF's plans for suppressing this wave of terrorism is implemented then it would be seen as a declaration of all-out war by the Palestinians and lead to a dramatic escalation between the two sides, ultimately ending in full-scale armed combat between them.
This would without question further deeply alienate Israel in the eyes of the world.
The awful strategic reality Israel faces is that with each passing year, most in the world seems to hate her more and more, irrespective of what she does or who is at fault. The fact that Palestinians are carrying out these horrendous attacks day after day on innocent Jewish Israelis is seen as irrelevant; it must be Israel's fault somehow because of the "occupation" as the warped logic goes.
Israelis are isolated and they do stand all alone at this point. This situation will only get worse in the days, months and years ahead. Israel is becoming more hated by all and approaching the day when the whole world will come against her (Zechariah 12:3).
Ultimately God is going to allow Israel to go to such a place of international isolation and condemnation that they have no other option but to turn to Him and to cry out to Him for deliverance. This is a part of that process and this abandonment by the world proves that He is once again beginning to turn His attention back to dealing with Israel.
This means that the closing of the Gentile age must be close at hand.
Like no other time before, we should be praying for Jerusalem and the Jewish men, women and children that live within Israel's precious God-ordained borders.
"I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you" (Genesis 12:3).
And, lest we should become arrogant, how long do we think it will be before radicalized individuals or groups within our own midst learn the lessons of this cheap, easy, asymmetrical warfare that the Palestinians are so effectively demonstrating, and will start attacking people in a similar manner within our own communities?
Female shooter Tashfeen Malik swore allegiance to ISIS - Bob Unruh -
http://www.wnd.com/2015/12/investigators-eye-wife-as-husbands-terror-trainer/
'Very serious' possibility San Bernardino killer served as husband's terror trainer
Tashfeen Malik, the female gunman in the San Bernardino massacre, posted a note on Facebook pledging allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, three U.S. officials familiar with the investigation told CNN.
Malik allegedly posted under a different account name, either during or before the deadly attacks. The report comes via several federal officials who've investigated the electronic devices the attackers used.
There is also a "very serious" possibility that 27-year-old Malik, the mother of a six-month-old who left the child with relatives and took up arms, along with her husband Syed Farook, and killed 14 people and wounded 21 at a Christmas party for county employees in San Bernardino, was the one who radicalized her spouse, Fox News reports investigators suspect.
The cable outlet cited unnamed federal investigators in reporting that the two also planned a second attack but were confronted - and killed - by police before they could carry that out. At one point as the couple attempted to elude police, Malik fired an assault rifle out the back window of their sport utility vehicle at pursuing officers.
"A U.S. official confirmed to Fox News that the two met and became engaged after [Syed] Farook traveled to Saudi Arabia in September 2013. Malik, a Pakistani citizen, applied for a K-1 visa at the American embassy in Islamabad in May 2014 and Farook traveled to Saudi Arabia that July to bring her to the U.S. After a background check by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, she was granted a conditional green card last summer.
"The Saudi Embassy in Washington has confirmed that Farook's 2014 trip lasted nine days," Fox reported.
They were married Aug. 16, 2014, and both listed their religion as Muslim.
Two brothers who attended the same Southern California mosque as Farook say he was a devout Muslim who showed up to pray every day for two years before he abruptly stopped three weeks ago, according to the Associated Press.
Nizaam Ali and Rahemaan Ali said Thursday Farook had recently memorized the Quran.
Ali said he had met Malik on a few occasions, but she wore a head scarf that obscured her face, reports the Los Angeles Times.
"If you asked me how she looked, I couldn't tell you," Ali said.
They died in a firefight with police in San Bernardino about four hours after they reportedly stormed into a party for county workers with multiple weapons and killed 14.
The victims were identified as Benneta Betbadal, 46; Robert Adams, 40; Nicholas Thalasinos, 52; Isaac Amanios, 60; Aurora Godoy, 26; Larry Kaufman, 42; Michael Wetzel, 37; Shannon Johnson, 45; Harry Bowman, 46; Yvette Velasco, 27; Sierra Clayborn, 27; Tin Nguyen, 31; Juan Espinoza, 50; and Damian Meins, 58.
Another 21 were injured, and authorities have described how the duo had thousands of rounds of ammunition with them when they were killed, as well as thousands more in their home, where investigators also found pipe bombs.
Investigators said the duo tried to erase their digital fingerprints before the attack, destroying cell phones and computer drives.
Fox reported investigators believe that the husband or wife was in contact with suspected al-Qaida terrorists during a trip to Saudi Arabia.
That's despite the fact she had passed a Department of Homeland Security counterterrorism screen on her arrival in the U.S.
"Law enforcement sources told Fox News late Thursday that there was a 'very strong' possibility that Malik functioned as Farook's terror trainer and may have even put together pipe bombs found by authorities at the various crime scenes Wednesday," Fox reported. The detonator from a pipe bomb found at the murder scene was reportedly fashioned with a remote-control toy, as suggested by al-Qaida's online magazine, Inspire, and likely used in the Boston Marathon bombs. Police found in their home a dozen more pipe bombs, which were also identical to those the magazine depicted, along with step-by-step instructions on "How to Build a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom."
Farook, 28, and Malik sprayed a room at the Inland Regional Center with bullets after it had filled up with about 75 of Farook's co-workers, including one with whom he argued just weeks before about whether Islam was actually a peaceful religion.
Among the many questions still to be answered is how the duo obtained more than $30,000 worth of guns and explosives.
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