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The first clues appeared in Kenya, Uganda and what is now South Sudan. A British arms researcher surveying ammunition used by government forces and civilian militias in 2006 found Kalashnikov rifle cartridges he had not seen before. The ammunition bore no factory code, suggesting that its manufacturer hoped to avoid detection. Within two years other researchers were finding identical cartridges circulating through the ethnic violence in Darfur. Similar ammunition then turned up in 2009 in a stadium in Conakry, Guinea, where soldiers had fired on antigovernment protesters, killing more than 150. For six years, a group of independent arms-trafficking researchers...

Police in Canada said Monday that two men suspected of plotting to derail a passenger train were guided by Al Qaeda elements in Iran, but the statement surprised many experts who study terrorism in the Middle East and Iran. “It frankly doesn’t compute for me,” said Barbara Slavin, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. "If there is any link, I would think it was extremely tangential." Iran and Al Qaeda have frequently had chilly relations, according to Slavin and other experts. Iran is majority Shiite, while Al Qaeda is firmly Sunni. In Syria, Al Qaeda has jumped into the...

Obama’s Al Qaeda Jayvees Announce Caliphate, 5 Year Plan to Take Over Africa and IndiaPosted By Daniel Greenfield On June 29, 2014 @ 11:09 pm In The Point | 4 Comments This was Obama in January. Obama compared Al-Qaeda-linked militants in Iraq and Syria to junior varsity basketball players, downplaying their threat as small-league.New Yorker editor David Remnick pointed out to the president that the Al Qaeda flag is now seen flying in Falluja in Iraq and in certain locations in Syria, and thus the terrorist group has not been “decimated” as Obama had said during his 2012 reelection...

More evidence is emerging of the cooperation between Iran and al Qaeda. Last June, the Obama Treasury Department named six al Qaeda facilitators operating in Iran under a "secret deal" between al Qaeda and the Iranian regime. Then, in December, a federal court found that Iran had "aided, abetted and conspired with" al Qaeda in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Now, RAND scholar Seth Jones has published an important new essay in Foreign Affairs detailing the evolution of the Iran-al Qaeda relationship. Jones spent much of the past year at West Point culling through hundreds of...

The most immediate threat Iran poses to American national security isn't its nuclear (weapons) program. It's the safe haven Tehran is giving al Qaeda terrorists, who are planning and directing jihad across the globe.If the United States and its allies in the War on Terror don't take firm action against Iranian support to al Qaeda, the price in blood and treasure attributable to Osama bin Laden's killers — in Iraq and elsewhere — will continue to soar.Shockingly, it's been long forgotten that Iran became home to some of al Qaeda's most wanted after the fall 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. Tehran...

Senior U.S. officials have told TIME that the 9/11 Commission's report will cite evidence suggesting that the 9/11 hijackers had previously passed through Iran  Next week's much anticipated final report by a bipartisan commission on the origins of the 9/11 attacks will contain new evidence of contacts between al-Qaeda and Iran—just weeks after the Administration has come under fire for overstating its claims of contacts between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's Iraq. A senior U.S. official told TIME that the Commission has uncovered evidence suggesting that between eight and ten of the 14 "muscle" hijackers—that is, those involved in gaining control...

Virtually unnoticed, since late 2001, Iran has held some of al Qaeda's most senior leaders. Several of these operatives, such as Yasin al-Suri, an al Qaeda facilitator, have moved recruits and money from the Middle East to central al Qaeda in Pakistan. Others, such as Saif al-Adel, an Egyptian that served as head of al Qaeda's security committee, and Abu Muhammad al-Masri, one of the masterminds of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa, have provided strategic and operational assistance to central al Qaeda. The Iranian government has held most of them under house arrest, limited their freedom of...

(Reuters) - Inquiries into the bloody assault on an Algerian gas plant are uncovering increasing evidence of contacts between the assailants and the jihadis involved in killing the U.S. ambassador to Libya nearly a year ago.The extent of the contacts between the militants is still unclear and nobody is sure there was a direct link between the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and the carnage at In Amenas, where 39 foreign hostages were killed in January.But the findings, according to three sources with separate knowledge of U.S. investigations, shed some light on the connections between Al Qaeda affiliates...

The Islamic State Widens its Bridgehead in North AfricaPosted By Ari Lieberman On December 3, 2014 @ 12:05 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 6 Comments As ISIS continues its brutal occupation of large swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq, effectively blurring the border between those two pseudo nations, a new, if not more menacing threat is emerging in North Africa where the Islamic State is looking to plant its cancerous roots.In Egypt, the Sinai based Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, an Islamist organization responsible for dozens of terror attacks throughout the country announced on its Twitter account that it had...

KANO, Nigeria — More than 102 people were killed in the bomb explosions at the central mosque in this city, said a hospital worker. A mortuary attendant at the Murtala specialist hospital Kano, Malam Isa Labaran, on Saturday told Associated Press that he counted over 102 dead bodies deposited inside the mortuary on Friday after the multiple explosions at the mosque.

The Emir of Kano last week told worshippers at the same mosque that northerners should take up arms against Boko Haram, which has been fighting for a hardline Islamic state since 2009. ,,, He said it was possible that the group carried out the attack as a direct response to Sanusi's comments last week, although it may have been planned beforehand. "Whatever the case, the group has sent a message to northern leaders that crossing them will have consequences," Noakes said in an email exchange. Boko Haram attacks in recent months have ranged from the far northeast of Nigeria, across...

Full Title: "Nigeria: Megachurch Pastor “TB Joshua” Followers believe a C-130 Hercules Military plane flying at low Altitude may have dropped Explosives on the Church Building" Followers of Megachurch owner and Pastor “TB Joshua” believe it is possible that a C-130 Hercules military cargo plane flying at low altitude dropped explosives on a guesthouse at Nigerian pastor TB Joshua’s Megachurch, killing 116 people inside? That depends on who you ask. Joshua, a self-proclaimed prophet, failed to show up Wednesday at a coroner’s inquest into the causes of the September 12 collapse at the building in the grounds of his Lagos...

National Security Advisor Susan Rice disputed Republican critiques of President Obama's foreign policy by arguing that "political polarization" accounts for the "one weakness" of American strength in international affairs. "The one weakness that our friends and partners point to and the one thing that undermines our strength around the world is our political polarization," Rice said during an event hosted by the Women's Foreign Policy Group. Rice didn't mention Republicans specifically, but cited policy fights that they have provoked, such as over budget issues. "When countries look at us, they wonder and they worry if we will have our collective...

Boko Haram is a radical Islamic wanna-be ruling force in Nigeria who kidnapped nearly 300 school girls in one fell swoop in April of this year. Michelle Obama was outraged. EightyU.S. military troops flew in, vowing to never leave until the girls are found. The Nigerian government agreed to a ceasefire against the captors, claiming the group is preparing to release the girls—who they openly call “sex slaves” and threaten to sell in the market. Yet, hundreds more girls and women have been kidnapped since April by the same wanna-bes, including 60 immediately after the ceasefire proclamation and 30 more...

Doubts grow about government ‘truce’ with Boko Haram after dozens are reportedly abducted and bombing kills five people ___ Sixty women and girls have been kidnapped from two towns in north-east Nigeria, according to reports, dealing a fresh blow to government claims of a truce with the Islamist militant group Boko Haram. Residents of the town of Wagga told Agence France-Presse that suspected Islamist gunmen had gone door-to-door looking for young women and girls and abducted 40 of them. Lazarus Baushe, an elder of the Wagga community, said: “They left 1,500 naira (£5.67) and some kola nuts in each home...

Suspected Boko Haram militants kidnapped at least 25 girls in an attack on a remote town in northeastern Nigeria, witnesses said, despite talks on freeing over 200 other female hostages they seized in April. John Kwaghe, who witnessed the attack and lost three daughters to the abductors, and Dorathy Tizhe, who lost two, said the kidnappers came late in the night, forcing all the women to go with them, then later releasing the older ones. The attack cast further doubt on government reports that it has secretly reached a temporary ceasefire with the rebels to secure the release of more...

VIDEO (19:55)- Uncut: Victim recounts how Boko Haram extremists attacked him in front of his wife and children just because he is a Christian and left him for dead, plus the plight of hundreds of kidnapped girls.

The Islamist militant group Boko Haram has agreed to a ceasefire and the release of more than 200 kidnapped school girls, according to Nigerian officials. The girls were abducted six months ago from a school in Chibok. […] “Boko Haram issued the ceasefire as a result of the discussions we have been having with them,” said Hassan Tukur, who represented the Nigerian government at talks with the militant organization in neighboring Chad. “They have agreed to release the Chibok girls,” he continued. The girls have been missing for the past six months, despite international efforts mobilized by the Twitter hashtag...

Islamist militant group Boko Haram and the Nigerian government have agreed to a cease-fire. Nigerian Chief of Defense Staff Alex Badeh issued an order Friday, telling all service chiefs "to comply with the cease-fire agreement between Nigeria and Boko Haram in all theaters of operations." The text went out after Danladi Ahmadu, who calls himself the secretary-general of Boko Haram, told VOA that a cease-fire agreement had been reached.

An explosion in southern Lebanon last week destroyed what is believed to have been a Hezbollah weapons depot. This latest in a series of mysterious “accidents” in Hezbollah-controlled precincts proved, as one Israeli official wryly remarked, that those who “sleep with rockets and amass large stockpiles of weapons are in a very unsafe place.” With the Party of God’s overland supply route through Syria choked off by the 22-month-long uprising against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, and Israel virtually in total control of the maritime route, Hezbollah’s stockpile is being systematically degraded.Yet the arsenal of Iran’s other regional proxy force, Hamas,...