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Les forces françaises de l'opération Barkhane au nord du Burkina Faso, en novembre 2019. Photo Michele Cattani. AFP

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Huit ans après ses débuts au Mali en janvier 2013, l’intervention militaire de la France au Sahel s’est ensablée dans une guerre dont on ne voit pas la fin et qui rappelle l’enlisement des Soviétiques puis des Américains en Afghanistan. Le problème ne tient pas qu’aux défis de la lutte contre le terrorisme dans des territoires immenses, mais aussi à l’entêtement de dirigeants qui ne veulent pas perdre la face et qui refusent d’admettre publiquement leurs erreurs d’analyse.

L’Elysée n’a jamais annoncé clairement quel était «l’état final recherché», comme disent les militaires. Officiellement, les soldats de l’opération Barkhane n’ont pas pour objectif de rétablir l’ordre au Sahel.…  Seguir leyendo »

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The killing of al Qaeda deputy leader Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, which multiple current and former U.S. officials have attributed to a team of Israeli agents, according to the Associated Press, was a big blow to the top tier of America's decades-long terrorist enemy. A long-standing member of al Qaeda's senior leadership who had been in Iran since 2003, his death was yet another victory in a US-led counterterrorism campaign that in recent months has killed the group's purported media chief in Afghanistan, according to an AP report, and a string of senior leaders based in Syria. Meanwhile, rumors persist that al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri may also have recently died from natural causes.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Il n’existe aucune justification à des exécutions cruelles telles que celles qui ont eu lieu récemment en France et en Autriche. Cette fois, c’était en Europe. À de nombreuses autres occasions, les citoyens d’autres régions du monde étaient visés. Tous les dirigeants à travers les continents et les régions doivent continuer à unir leurs forces pour lutter contre le discours de haine et contre le terrorisme.

Les récents attentats terroristes perpétrés en Europe visaient les fondements de nos sociétés. Ce n’est pas la première fois que les terroristes ont cherché à déchirer des sociétés. Comme par le passé, nous voulons unir nos forces avec tous nos partenaires pour lutter contre cette menace avec unité et détermination.…  Seguir leyendo »

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«Nous sommes en guerre à la fois contre un ennemi extérieur et intérieur.» L’expression est lâchée par le ministre de l’Intérieur. En guerre «culturelle» contre un ennemi idéologique, l’islamiste, qui pénètre la société et manœuvre les consciences ; et en guerre tout court contre des ennemis immédiats, les terroristes. La rhétorique belliqueuse répond aux multiples appels lancés ces derniers jours à se donner «enfin» les moyens de lutter, quitte à «sortir du cadre», à «s’exonérer des lois de la paix», à adopter une «législation de guerre» et à «en finir avec l’Etat de droit». Ce serait le prix à payer pour juguler les menaces et apaiser les anxiétés.…  Seguir leyendo »

An article entitled “The Crusaders’ Worst Nightmare” in the ISIS newsletter al-Naba. Crisis Group downloaded the newsletter from the website Jihadology. The newsletter was originally distributed by ISIS’s messaging network.

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As the COVID-19 pandemic swiftly reorders the priorities of policymakers and the public worldwide, conflicts that only recently occupied centre stage in the global policy and media debate are receding into the background. The fight against the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere is no exception.

But while UN Secretary-General António Guterres has argued that mankind faces a common enemy in COVID-19, and thus appealed for a “global ceasefire”, ISIS has made clear that it sees things differently. In a new editorial in its weekly newsletter, ISIS has told its membership that their globe-spanning war is to go on, even as the virus spreads.…  Seguir leyendo »

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On Nov. 29, London Bridge was the site of another terrorist attack. Usman Khan, a 28-year-old convicted on terrorism offences in 2012 and then released from jail last year, stabbed two people to death and injured three others. British police shot and killed Khan, and the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack the following day.

A week later, a Saudi trainee at a Navy base in Pensacola, Fla., murdered three sailors before military security shot him dead. The Navy grounded nearly 300 Saudi trainees while the FBI investigated the incident as a presumed terrorist attack.

These two acts jolted Western governments and security agencies to the risk of jihadist terrorism.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Le 11 novembre a été inauguré, à Paris, un monument en mémoire des soldats « morts pour la France » loin de leur pays depuis 1963. Si on examine le contexte dans lequel sont morts les 549, et hélas bientôt 562, soldats dont le nom y est inscrit, on s’apercevra que presque tous sont tombés en luttant non contre des Etats, mais contre des organisations armées. Aujourd’hui, et pour ne considérer que le Sahel, nous affrontons Ansar Eddine, Al-Qaida au Maghreb islamique (AQMI), la katiba Macina et la katiba Al-Mourabitoune réunies dans un Groupe pour le soutien de l’islam et des musulmans (GSIM), ainsi que l’Etat islamique dans le Grand Sahara (EIGS).…  Seguir leyendo »

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«Fuera todos los yihadistas extranjeros. Turquía “no es un hotel”». Con estas palabras, pese a su habitual estilo irritante, Ankara plantea un problema legítimo, aunque durante años haya sido “la autopista de la yihad”. Ahora, la idea del Gobierno de Recep Tayyip Erdogan de enviar repentinamente a los llamados “combatientes extranjeros” a sus países de origen es lo que ha hecho estallar el caso.

Este es un tema embarazoso. Lleno de implicaciones jurídicas, dificultades logísticas y aspectos morales relacionados con las familias de los terroristas. Suponiendo que todos lo sean. La cuestión de los combatientes extranjeros de la “guerra santa”, procedentes sobre todo de Asia y África, pero entre los que también hay muchos de Europa y Estados Unidos, es la fruta envenenada del octavo año de conflicto en Siria.…  Seguir leyendo »

Soldiers sit at a watch post next to the runway inside Mogadishu airport’s secure perimeter, where international organizations such as the United Nations and European Union are based, in Mogadishu, Somalia. (Dai Kurokawa/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)

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On Oct. 13, al-Shabab sent mortar rounds into the United Nations base at the Mogadishu airport, one of the most fortified areas in Somalia. A July hotel attack and car bombing in a Somali port town left more than 26 dead. In May, al-Shabab detonated a car bomb near the presidential palace in Mogadishu, killing nine people.

Al-Shabab is an Islamist extremist group affiliated with al-Qaeda, seeking to oust the Western-backed federal government of Somalia and install an Islamic government instituting sharia law. Despite coalition efforts to counter this militant group, al-Shabab continues to demonstrate resiliency and the ability to launch attacks both domestically and cross-border into Kenya.…  Seguir leyendo »

This image released by the Department of Defense on Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2019, and displayed at a Pentagon briefing, shows an image of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. (Department of Defense via AP

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The death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, caused by a raid by Army Delta Force operators based in Iraq, was an enormous but not fatal blow to that dangerous terrorist network. Others among the ISIS leadership are being hunted and killed.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was outraged that President Trump didn’t notify Congress before the raid, though he did notify Russia. Custom, not the law or the U.S. Constitution requires notifying Congress, so she’s way off base. The sad fact is that we had to notify Russia because Russia controls the airspace our Delta guys had to fly through to get to their target.…  Seguir leyendo »

US military vehicles after withdrawing from a key base in northern Syria.

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They are good at dismay, the Europeans. Their cheek-clutching horror at US President Donald Trump's abandonment of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) was worthy of Munch's "The Scream."

But to have reacted with surprise at this much-telegraphed decision reveals a staggering level of naivety. Worse still, their failure to anticipate the behavior of America's mercurial President reveals both cowardice and stupidity -- not among the tiny number of special forces from the United Kingdom, France, Denmark and elsewhere, who were sent to help with the defeat of ISIS, of course. But certainly among the leaders of wealthy western nations that have the greatest strategic interest in what happens in the Middle East.…  Seguir leyendo »

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‘Bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia!” The instructions to the Delta team in pursuit of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi were probably less direct than that of the Mexican crime lord in the Sam Peckinpah splatter movie but there’s little doubt that it was effectively an American hit job. In the end, the trapped leader of the Islamic State death cult blew himself up, sparing the need for an awkward debate about the ethics of targeted assassinations.

The problem, though, is that most modern terror organisations cannot be decapitated. When Osama bin Laden was eventually run to ground in Pakistan in 2011, a cache of porn and works by Noam Chomsky on the bookshelves of his hideout, it became clear he had become largely irrelevant to the daily proceedings of al-Qaeda.…  Seguir leyendo »

An image grab from a video released in 2014 shows Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi preaching at a mosque in Mosul. Photo by Al-Furqan Media/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

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The killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi does not mean the automatic end of ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria). But the immediate future of ISIS depends more on local dynamics in Syria than on whether it still has a leader or not.

Baghdadi was a powerful tool for ISIS, especially at a time when the organisation was planning to establish a so-called state. Considering that there could not be a caliphate without a caliph, ISIS put Baghdadi in the public eye to give its supporters around the world an identifiable figurehead.

Despite the military defeat of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, its supporters still saw in the presence of Baghdadi hope of restoring the caliphate one day.…  Seguir leyendo »

Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim Badrid, rebautizado como Abu Bakar al Bagdadi. AAP/EPA/ al Furqan ISIS media

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Si el 29 de junio de 2014 estuvo marcado por la proclamación del Califato en la Mezquita de Al Nuri en Mosul, el 26 de octubre de 2019 será recordado por el obituario de su líder, el autoproclamado Califa Ibrahim que murió en la ciudad siria de Barisha.

Nacido como Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim Badrid, este iraquí originario de Samarra adoptó el nombre de Abu Bakar al Bagdadi como forma de atribuirse el carisma del que fuera el primer sucesor de Mahoma. Su vida es una incógnita o, en mejor de los casos, una gran conjetura. Incluso después de muerto poco se sabe de este terrorista que supo poner en jaque a Europa entre los años 2015 y 2017 con atentados tan crueles como los de París, Bruselas o Barcelona.…  Seguir leyendo »

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One disturbing aspect of the Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka was that the slaughter of 321 victims came at a time when the United States is suffering what might be described as terrorism fatigue.

The wars against al-Qaeda and the Islamic State are part of a painful past that policymakers and the public want to escape. Those Middle East conflicts were costly and distracting. They didn’t produce many tangible gains, other than killing terrorists. Sept. 11, 2001, feels like it happened a long time ago, and many politicians want to move on.

But the networks of violent extremists are still there, stretching to places most of us probably hadn’t even imagined, like Sri Lanka.…  Seguir leyendo »

Debbie Bookchin. Girls playing in the garden of the Museum of Martyrs in Kobane, the town where some 1,400 mainly Kurdish men and women died fighting ISIS in 2014 and 2015, Northern Syria, March 21, 2019

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As the de facto chief negotiator of the liberated region called the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, Ilham Ahmed, the Kurdish co-chair of the Syrian Democratic Council, has much on her mind. In recent months, she has traveled in the US and Europe, negotiating the future of a domain that is home to an estimated 5 to 6 million people, including a substantial portion of Syria’s 6.2 million internally displaced persons, and, now in addition, thousands of families implicated in Islamic State terrorism who are today living in refugee camps. As Ahmed continues delicate talks with the world’s superpowers over the status of this territory, its future is, to a certain degree, in her hands.…  Seguir leyendo »

Why We Should Take Back Americans Who Fought for ISIS

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What do we do with Westerners who fought on behalf of, or at least traveled to and joined, the Islamic State? Some like Hoda Muthana, who left college in Alabama to join the Islamic State in Syria, have expressed the desire to return to their native country.

As the Islamic State loses its last safe havens in eastern Syria and policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic confront the question of what to do with the Western “foreign fighters,” I thought I could add my voice and unique experiences to the discussion.

I was the first American foreign fighter for Al Qaeda after Sept.…  Seguir leyendo »

Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanakzai headed a Taliban delegation at meetings with Afghan opposition leaders in Moscow this week.CreditCreditMaxim Shemetov/Reuters

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The United States and the Taliban made progress in peace talks in late January after coming to a basic understanding about withdrawing American troops in return for Taliban commitments to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for transnational terrorists. An agreement between the United States and the Taliban has been long overdue — as part of a broader settlement also involving the Taliban's Afghan opponents — and is the way out of a war without victory.

The fear of Afghanistan-based terrorists attacking the United States has been the key reason for keeping American troops in the country and keeping the Taliban out of power, but it is rooted more in perception than in reality.…  Seguir leyendo »

American military advisers at an Afghan National Army base.CreditCreditJames Mackenzie/Reuters

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President Trump may be a controversial and disruptive president. But in regard to Afghanistan, his frustration with the 17-year war differs little from the sentiments of President Barack Obama or most of the rest of us. Reportedly, he has asked for a precipitous cut of up to half the 14,000 American troops serving there, early this year.

That would be a mistake. There is still a strong case to sustain America’s longest war — especially if we redefine it, away from nation-building and toward something more like an enduring partnership with the Afghan people against regional and global extremism. Indeed, Washington should stop looking for an exit strategy and view Afghanistan as one pillar in a broader regional web of capabilities against Al Qaeda, the Islamic State and related movements that show few signs of dissipating.…  Seguir leyendo »

A man, blindfolded and handcuffed, kneels on the ground between two members of the Iraqi security forces after being accused of having links to the Islamic State group and being detained, on Nov. 8. (Alice Martins/For The Washington Post)

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Last month, President Trump claimed the defeat of the Islamic State as justification for his decision to withdraw American troops from Syria. In 2014, at the height of its reign, the Sunni insurgent group governed an estimated 10 million people and 34,000 square miles of territory.

The Islamic State no longer controls significant territory in Iraq and Syria. But during a visit to Baghdad in December, the question being asked by Iraqi government officials was not if the Islamic State is making a comeback, but how soon the group will again be strong enough to recapture and hold territory.

How the Iraqi government is fueling anger

In Iraq, the government’s harsh counterterrorism strategy, which is widely perceived as collectively punishing the Sunnis, is generating new grievances that could increase local support for an Islamic State 2.0.…  Seguir leyendo »