Chad Says Forces Killed Al Qaeda #2, top Al-Qaida Commander in Mali:

 Chad Says Forces Killed Top Al-Qaida Commander in Mali: ​​Moustapha says over the past decade, Abou Zeid has taken on the Mauritanian, Nigerien and Malian armies and made a name for himself engineering kidnappings in 2008, 2009 and 2010. He characterizes Abou Zeid as a powerful field commander who could mobilize fighters as determined as him.

He rose to international infamy for his involvement in kidnapping dozens of European hostages in the Sahel, beginning in 2003. Zeid has been described as inflexible, cruel, violent, audacious, intelligent, radical and without pity. He was born in Algeria and commands a southern battalion of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, known as AQIM. His command is known to be one of AQIM's most radical factions.

Chadian forces  deployed in northern Mali also claim to have killed Moktar Belmoktar, the mastermind behind the mid-January attack on a natural gas plant in Algeria that left 36 foreigners dead, Chad's military chief said late Saturday. If that is true Al Qaeda in Africa has been decapitated.

Abou Zeid alone was a great kill for our side It took him many years of fighting to gain that killer experience. He will be replaced if not already but he was Al Qaeda's number 2 in Africa and he will not be replaced easily.65 terrorists hiding in those unknown mountains were killed. They will be replaced but with persistence we will persevere.

*DAKAR, Senegal - Just as Al Qaeda once sought refuge in the mountains of Tora Bora, the Islamist militants now on the run in Mali are hiding out in their own forbidding landscape, a rugged, rocky expanse in northeastern Mali that has become a symbol of ...

I know our so called leaders are fond of saying we will fight the extremists wherever they are that means the world is the front in the so called war on terror. We are not winning this so called war on terror it has not even really begun.

Our so called leaders and war mongering Republicans are fond of saying that we did nothing to deserve the attack on 9/11 but on the contrary we did everything to deserve it. This has been a long time coming. 1400 years of dissension has come to a head and it will not be quelled easily as you see.

There is an easy answer to this and that is too fight and continue to fight, there is no easy way out though. We have no other choice as this will not be quelled by diplomacy. We must see this through to the end. Years ago I said like it or not, this will turn into a war against Islam. We will be forced to isolate them in their own lands for our own safety. 

It is an unpopular thought but we will not have a choice. Once on their own they will turn on themselves as they already are because they cannot tolerate any version of Islam other than their own.

Syria is erupting and Iraqi's are killing each other as we know and it will engulf the entire middle east Bush knew this would happen and ignored all good advice and intelligence to the contrary, as he had to in order to stay the course and prosecute his idea of new order.

 Reagan is credited with ending the cold war but he set in motion many of the problems of today. 

Bush finished the job by belittling every country in the word and attacking Iraq unsettling the middle east. Obama is doing his damnedest to make things right but he is not getting cooperation and I do not think he will have the time.

Anyway by virtue of Bush's superiority complex and destabilization of the already unstable middle east which we also contributed to by injecting Israel into the mix and again resetting boundaries as we saw fit, again ignoring traditional boundaries and dislikes.

Bush liked to say we must defeat the so called insurgents in Iraq or they will follow us home. Now we are hearing from Al Qaeda in Pakistan and elsewhere that they are coming soon.They will follow us home period.

I would like to see this resolved with Diplomacy but no way. We have messed over Islam all around the world now they want retribution all around the world. They want to turn the clock back but that is impossible. You can not turn time back. 

We have hit the stage in man and the planets life cycle called the mature stage where we must be taking care of them but we are not. Life's cycle, The final stages! This is the much talked about moment of our time.

A nation, a people, must either accept your position be happy with what you have today or you see the alternative. What a hell of a future is all I can say!

James Joiner
Gardner, Ma
http://anaverageamericanpatriot.blogspot.com

All NATO Nations race to Mali as Islamists are now a regional threat

*EU approves military mission to Mali: EUROPEAN Union foreign ministers formally approved the launch of a 500-strong EU military mission to train the Malian army, which has already begun work on the ground. 

*German government will send 330 troops for Mali support


*65 Islamic rebels, 13 Chad troops killed in Mali: The statement said the clashes were in the Adrar des Ifoghas mountains of northeastern Mali. Chad has deployed some 1,800 troops in Mali as part of the French-led military intervention begun in January to wrest control of northern Mali from the Islamic radicals linked to al-Qaida.
The Islamic rebels retreated to mountainous hideouts near Mali's northern border with Algeria, after being expelled at the end of January by French and Malian forces from the major towns in northern Mali.

 *US sends troops to Niger for drone missions: "We're basing drones there to help the French, and this deployment is the security element," the officer said. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss details of the operation publicly. French forces have been battling to push Islamic militants out of northern Mali in recent weeks in an effort to oust insurgents who seized local control after the civilian government collapsed last year.

*Predator drones are already flying over Mali to assist French troops, who intervened in January and have driven back militants and Tuareg rebels, who had taken over three major cities and were threatening Mali's capital, Bamako. The drones flying from Niger will be unarmed surveillance aircraft tracking suspected militants operating in the remote parts of northern Mali.

 

* Mali’s neighbours are still at risk of a spill-over from the crisis, at least around the border areas, which remain porous, argued Gilles Yabi of International Crisis Group. “AQIM would withdraw towards the north using networks it has built in Libya when trafficking. It could go as far as south of Tunisia where there has recently been a huge weapons influx,” Guichaoua told IRIN. “MUJAO, which has a more cosmopolitan composition, with fighters from Niger, Nigeria, Moor people from Mauritania, [and] Saharawi people, would rather withdraw to Niger or Mauritania. Nevertheless MUJAO is less structured and could factionalize in accordance with the origins of its members.” The Moor and Saharawi are inhabitants of Africa’s westernmost region around Morocco, western Algeria and Mauritania and have African and Arab ancestry. 

*DAKAR, Senegal - Just as Al Qaeda once sought refuge in the mountains of Tora Bora, the Islamist militants now on the run in Mali are hiding out in their own forbidding landscape, a rugged, rocky expanse in northeastern Mali that has become a symbol of ...

I know our so called leaders are fond of saying we will fight the extremists wherever they are that means the world is the front in the so called war on terror. We are not winning this so called war on terror it has not even really begun.

Our so called leaders and war mongering Republicans are fond of saying that we did nothing to deserve the attack on 9/11 but on the contrary we did everything to deserve it. This has been a long time coming. 1400 years of dissension has come to a head and it will not be quelled easily as you see.

There is an easy answer to this and that is too fight and continue to fight, there is no easy way out though. We have no other choice as this will not be quelled by diplomacy. We must see this through to the end. Years ago I said like it or not, this will turn into a war against Islam. We will be forced to isolate them in their own lands for our own safety. 

It is an unpopular thought but we will not have a choice. Once on their own they will turn on themselves as they already are because they cannot tolerate any version of Islam other than their own.

Syria is erupting and Iraqi's are killing each other as we know and it will engulf the entire middle east Bush knew this would happen and ignored all good advice and intelligence to the contrary, as he had to in order to stay the course and prosecute his idea of new order. Reagan is credited with ending the cold war but he set in motion many of the problems of today. 

Bush finished the job by belittling every country in the word and attacking Iraq unsettling the middle east. Obama is doing his damnedest to make things right but he is not getting cooperation and I do not think he will have the time.

Anyway by virtue of Bush's superiority complex and destabilization of the already unstable middle east which we also contributed to by injecting Israel into the mix and again resetting boundaries as we saw fit, again ignoring traditional boundaries and dislikes.

Bush liked to say we must defeat the so called insurgents in Iraq or they will follow us home. Now we are hearing from Al Qaeda in Pakistan and elsewhere that they are coming soon.They will follow us home period.

I would like to see this resolved with Diplomacy but no way. We have messed over Islam all around the world now they want retribution all around the world. They want to turn the clock back but that is impossible. You can not turn time back. 

We have hit the stage in man and the planets life cycle called the mature stage where we must be taking care of them but we are not.  Life's cycle, The final stages! This is the much talked about moment of our time.

A nation, a people, must either accept your position be happy with what you have today or you see the alternative. What a hell of a future is all I can say!

James Joiner
Gardner, Ma
http://anaverageamericanpatriot.blogspot.com

France the Islamist target of the day

 
Somali rebels claim second French commando dies of wounds: Al Shabaab wants to impose their strict version of sharia, or Islamic law, across the Horn of Africa state. It is calling on France to end its support for the Somali government and a withdrawal of the 17,600-strong African peacekeeping force propping up the UN backed administration.

 Mali-based Islamists pledge attacks on French soil: Malian soldiers continued to struggle against well-equipped rebels, who on Monday wrestled away control of the central town of Diabaly, according to French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian. “We knew that the key spots would be towards the west… where the most important fighting is going on today,” Le Drian told French BFM television. 

 Also on Monday, Islamists vowed to strike back at France. "France has attacked Islam. We will strike at the heart of France," Abou Dardar, a leader of Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), one of the Mali-based groups with ties to al Qaeda, told the AFP news agency. Asked where attacks would take place, Dardar said: "Everywhere. In Bamako, in Africa and in Europe." 

Now we know where the majority of Al Shabab went when they left Somalia. African Union troops now in control of Kismayo and Al Shabaab

"France has attacked Islam. We will strike at the heart of France," said Abou Dardar, a leader of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (Mujao), an offshoot of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

European intelligence officials say last year they saw evidence that some jihadists from Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen were looking to move on because of pressure from drone strikes and other interventions, and that Mali (along with Syria) was a top destination. 

In the beginning of last year: Somalia conference opened with Al-Shabaab under pressure: Ahead of a key international conference on beleaguered Somalia, transitional government forces, backed by Ethiopian allies, seized a key southern town that was once a strategic stronghold for Islamic militants.At the United Nations, meanwhile, the Security Council voted unanimously to increase the African Union force in Somalia from 12,000 to 17,731 troops.  It worked!

The town of Baidoa fell into government hands, said Mohamed Ibrahim Habsade, a Somali member of parliament and an officer leading the fight. Baidoa lies on a key commodities route, and last year, global aid agencies flew in emergency supplies to the town to help thousands of hungry Somalis fleeing drought-ridden areas. Al-Shabaab militants abandoned the town in fear as government troops closed in.

Then: Somalia al-Shabab militant base of Baidoa captured: Ethiopian and Somali troops had taken a strategic stronghold of Islamist militants in south-western Somalia.Eyewitnesses told the BBC that about 50 vehicles, including some 20 tanks, had entered Baidoa, which was not defended The BBC's Mohamed Dhore in the capital, Mogadishu, said Baidoa was the most important al-Shabab base after the southern port of Kismayo

.Al-Shabab, which has  joined al-Qaeda, confirmed that it had withdrawn its forces.

Then: Airstrike Targets Al Shabaab, Air strikes pummeled Somalia's southern region on killing six. Among the dead were two leading foreign Jihadists and four of their Somali comrades. The strike came a day after international leaders met in London to discuss boosting efforts against instability in Somalia. 

 The attack was launched against the Islamist militant group, al Shabaab, who largely controled the southern region of the country. The aerial attack took place in the Lower Shabelle region, when unidentified warplanes targeted cars with militants inside. Somali intelligence officials said the foreigners killed in the attack were a Kenyan and an Egyptian.

Shabab had finally been humiliated so no surprise Zawahiri said Somalia's Shabab joined Qaeda: video
African Union: Somalia's al-Shabab Being 'Systematically Destroyed':Zawahiri says Somalia's Shabab joined Qaeda:

Somalia's extremist Shabab fighters have joined ranks with Al-Qaeda, the terror network's chief Ayman al-Zawahiri announced in a video message posted on jihadist forums. "I will break the good news to our Islamic nation, which will... annoy the crusaders, and it is that the Shabab movement in Somalia has joined Al-Qaeda," Zawahiri said."The jihadist movement is with the grace of Allah, growing and spreading within its Muslim nation despite facing the fiercest crusade campaign in history by the West," said Zawahiri in the video released by Al-Qaeda's media arm As-Sahab.:

That has worked well! It will not help Al Shabaab unless they leave Somalia and spread around the world as we said. They will now become another part of the head of the hydra! You can bet they have brought their fighting expertise to Mali and are part of the Jihadists attempting to overthrow the Government and defeat France.

Good luck to France and Mali!

Somalia is winning their long battle! I am impressed and really believe we stand a chance at defeating the Islamist extremism if only the entire world and every region where they flourish comes together and eradicates them.

James Joiner
Gardner, Ma
 http://anaverageamericanpatriot.blogspot.com