TALIBAN CLAIM ARGHANDAB OCCUPATION A DIVERSION AND DEMONSTRATION OF STRENGTH Last week’s apparent attempt by the Taliban to occupy the Arghandab district of Kandahar province perplexed many observers. Following the successful raid and breakout of prisoners from Kandahar Prison on June 13, the large-scale operation... MORE

AFGHANISTAN AND PAKISTAN AGREE TO IMPLEMENT BIOMETRIC SECURITY ON BORDER The governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan have agreed to adopt a high-tech method to address the ongoing problem of suspects wanted for terrorism and other crimes crossing their mutual border. At a June 8 meeting... MORE

The news of the security pact currently under negotiation by Baghdad and Washington that would allow the U.S. forces to stay in the country beyond the expiry of the UN mandate in December 2008 has generated swift reaction from Shia Iraqis (al-Jazeera, June 5). The... MORE

In an interview in the May edition of the jihadi al-Fursan magazine of the Islamic Army of Iraq (IAI), the military leader of IAI, Abu al-Abbas al-Baghdadi, discussed the group’s military situation, the reasons for the decline in jihadi operations and current efforts to develop... MORE

Anti-terrorist cooperation between Morocco and Belgium reached its lowest point in the last few months as recent security operations conducted by Rabat exposed a lack of communication between the two nations and a vast difference in counter-terrorist methods. On May 19 Moroccan and Belgian media... MORE

Until recently, the idea of white British converts to Islam carrying out suicide bomb attacks in towns in England’s quiet, rural southwest would have been dismissed as fiction or fantasy. However, in the last two months two such attempts appear to have failed. In April,... MORE

BOSNIAN WAR VETERAN ABU HAMZA CLAIMS U.S. ASKED MUJAHIDEEN TO GO TO KOSOVA Abu Hamza (Imad al-Husseini), a 44-year-old Syrian native and veteran of Bosnia’s foreign mujahideen, recently gave an interview to the Croatian daily Vercernji List (Zagreb, June 1). The ex-fighter is one of... MORE

One day after Yemen announced the arrest of an 11-man al-Qaeda cell, the organization attempted to strike back on May 30 with an attack on an oil refinery in the southern port city of Aden. The attack caused little damage, but called into question statements... MORE

In the context of spreading al-Qaeda’s propaganda in Iraq, pro-al-Qaeda members of jihadi internet forums and enthusiasts of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) are posting ways to break through the so-called “censorship” imposed on ISI news. A recent post entitled “Practical methods of... MORE

DEOBANDIS DEFINE AND REJECT TERRORISM IN NEW FATWA An important Islamic seminary once blamed for inspiring the militancy of Taliban terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan has issued an important new fatwa (Islamic ruling) on the illegitimacy of terrorism. The 152-year-old Darul Uloom Deoband seminary is... MORE